Pollution Abatement Subsidies and the Eco-Industry

This paper considers the combination of pollution taxes and abatement subsidies when some polluting firms procure their abatement goods and services from an oligopolistic eco-industry. The regulator must here cope with two simultaneous price distortions: one that comes from pollution and the other which is caused by the eco-industry’s market power. In this context, we show that taxing emissions while subsidizing polluters’ abatement efforts cannot lead to first-best, but the opposite occurs provided it is the eco-industry’s output which is subsidized. When public transfers also create distortions, welfare can be higher if the regulator uses only an emission tax, but subsidizing abatement suppliers while taxing emissions remains optimal when the eco-industry is concentrated.     

The luck of being of the right gender and color: a detailed discussion about the wage gaps in the Brazilian manufacturing industry

Quality & Quantity - This work analyzed the wage discrimination in the Brazilian manufacturing industry. By recurring to the most updated database, several gaps were analyzed between white and...     

Valuing the Impacts of An Invasive Biological Control Agent: A Choice Experiment on the Asian Ladybird in France

Initially used as a biological control against aphids, the Asian ladybird has become highly invasive in many regions, including Europe. While biological control is usually considered as an environmentally‐friendly alternative to chemical pesticides in controlling pests in crops, there is growing concern that these environmental benefits could be outweighed by the negative consequences of the invasion. These include (i) biodiversity losses as populations of native ladybirds suffer from intraguild predation and competition for resources; (ii) human nuisance in houses, including risks of allergy and (iii) potential losses to wine‐growers. We provide an economic valuation of environmental and private characteristics affected by the Asian ladybird's invasion. We conduct a discrete choice experiment among a representative sample of the French population. Our results show that the consequences of the Asian ladybird's introduction do affect significantly the population's welfare. Among these, the impact on biodiversity through the threat on native species appears to be a significant concern.     

Holt’s exponential smoothing and neural network models for forecasting interval-valued time series

Interval-valued time series are interval-valued data that are collected in a chronological sequence over time. This paper introduces three approaches to forecasting interval-valued time series. The first two approaches are based on multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks and Holt’s exponential smoothing methods, respectively. In Holt’s method for interval-valued time series, the smoothing parameters are estimated by using techniques for non-linear optimization problems with bound constraints. The third approach is based on a hybrid methodology that combines the MLP and Holt models. The practicality of the methods is demonstrated through simulation studies and applications using real interval-valued stock market time series.     

Domestic political competition and pro‐cyclical import protection

Governments, especially in developing countries, routinely practice binding overhang (i.e. setting applied tariffs below binding WTO commitments) and frequently move applied tariffs for given products up and down over the business cycle. Moreover, applied tariffs are pro‐cyclical in developing countries. We explain this phenomenon using a dynamic theory of lobbying between domestic interest groups. Applied tariffs are pro‐cyclical when high‐tariff interests (e.g. import‐competing industries) capture the government: these groups concede lower tariffs to low‐tariff interest groups (e.g. exporting firms or firms using imported intermediate inputs) during recessions because recessions lower the opportunity cost of lobbying and thereby generate a stronger lobbying threat.     

Forecasting core competencies in an R&D environment

This study, carried out in 1998, aimed to develop a method of forecasting core competencies in an agricultural research organization, using the Delphi Technique. First, based on a survey of internal documents and interviews, nine organizational core competencies and their specific components (human competencies) were defined, and expert judges identified. These judges responded to a questionnaire, in which the importance of the future human competencies was assessed and the organization's existing human capacity was evaluated. Means were calculated for both judgements and changes were made in various definitions, based on the experts' comments. Another questionnaire was designed and sent out to an expanded panel of judges to confirm or to revise the priority mean scores obtained or to add scores in the case of competencies that entered later. Factor analysis and reliability scores have demonstrated internal and inter‐competency consistencies. Technological Innovation Management and Geo‐processing appeared as the top priorities and Plant Pathology as the least priority. Priorities for each human competency were also calculated and they have been helpful for decision‐making concerning the selection and graduate training of researchers on the organization studied.     

Environmental Regulation and the Eco-Industry

This paper re-examines environmental regulation, under the assumption that pollution abatement technologies and services are provided by an imperfectly competitive environment industry. It is shown that each regulatory instrument (emission taxes and quotas; design standards; and voluntary agreements) has a specific impact on the price-elasticity of the polluters’ demand for abatement services, hence on the market power of the eco-industry and the resulting cost of abatement. This implies that the optimal pollution tax will be higher than the marginal social cost of pollution, while a voluntary approach to pollution abatement may fail unless the eco-industry itself is willing to participate.We thank Dominique Bureau, Olivier Godard, Émeric Henry, Nicolas Marchetti, Alain-Désiré Nimubona, Anne Perrot, Gilles Rotillon, Katheline Schubert, the editors Michael Crew and Anthony Heyes, and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and suggestions. We also acknowledge valuable comments from seminar audiences at HEC Montréal, the University of Paris I, the University of Toulouse, and the DG-Entreprise of the European Commission in Brussels.     

Constrained public goods in networks

This paper analyses the private provision of public goods where agents interact within a fixed network structure and may benefit only from their direct neighbours’ provisions. We generalise the public goods in the networks model of Bramoullé and Kranton [J. Econ. Theory 135 (2007), pp. 478–494] to allow for constrained provision. In so doing, we characterise Nash equilibria with no intermediate contributors.