Climate Change Taxes and Energy Efficiency in Japan

In 2003 Japan proposed a Climate Change Tax to reduce its CO₂ emissions to the level required by the Kyoto Protocol. If implemented, the tax would be levied on fossil fuel use and the revenue distributed to encourage the purchase of energy efficient equipment. Analysis using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model shows that this policy is unlikely to bring Japan into compliance with its Kyoto target unless the subsidy encourages improvement in energy intensity well beyond Japan’s recent historical experience. Similar demand-management programs in the US, where there has been extensive experience, have not been nearly as effective as they would need to be to achieve energy efficiency goals of the proposal. The Tax proposal also calls for limits on international emission trading. We find that this limit substantially affects costs of compliance. The welfare loss with full emissions trading is 1/6 that when Japan meets its target though domestic actions only, the carbon price is lower, and there is a smaller loss of energy-intensive exports. Japan can achieve substantial savings from emissions trading even under cases where, for example, the full amount of the Russian allowance is not available in international markets.     

Measurement of Compensation: Union and Nonunion

For many purposes, the economic impact of unions is better measured by the proportion of union wages in total payrolls rather than by the proportion of unionized employees in the overall workforce. We use recently available Current Population Survey data to generate estimates of the former. We also show that published data from the Survey on median union and nonunion wages produce substantially larger estimates of the union 1 nonunion wage differential than figures based on mean wages. Finally, we note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Cost Index gives undue weight to the union sector because of its Laspeyres methodology.     

Default- and call-adjusted duration for corporate bonds

Call and default can potentially alter the timing and amounts of promised cashflows for callable, corporate bonds. While prior research has indicated the theoretical importance of adjusting Macaulay duration for the impacts of default and call, the question of their relative impact remains a matter of debate [The High Yield Debt Market, Dow Jones Irwin, New York, 1990, p. 18; J. Finan. 53 (1998) 2225]. We develop a theoretical analysis incorporating both default and call effects on duration and test its implications employing a previously unexplored data base of Canadian, investment grade, corporate bond indices containing an unusual provision making it possible to identify callable and noncallable indices.     

Road safety perspectives among employees of a multinational corporation in urban India: local context for global injury prevention

In rapidly developing economies, like urban India, where road traffic injury rates are among the world's highest, the corporate workplace offers a non-traditional venue for road safety interventions. In partnership with a major multinational corporation (MNC) with a large Indian workforce, this study aimed to elicit local employee perspectives on road safety to inform a global corporate health platform. The safety attitudes and behaviours of 75 employees were collected through self-report survey and focus groups in the MNC offices in Bangalore and Pune. Analysis of these data uncovered incongruity between employee knowledge of safety strategies and their enacted safety behaviours and identified local preference for interventions and policy-level actions. The methods modelled by this study offer a straightforward approach for eliciting employee perspective for local road safety interventions that fit within a global strategy to improve employee health. Study findings suggest that MNCs can employ a range of strategies to improve the road traffic safety of their employees in settings like urban India including: implementing corporate traffic safety policy, making local infrastructure changes to improve road and traffic conditions, advocating for road safety with government partners and providing employees with education and access to safety equipment and safe transportation options.     

Access to Markets and the Benefits of Rural Roads

Roads play a central role in rural development, yet little is known about the size and distribution of benefits from such investments. This paper develops a method for estimating household-level benefits from road projects using the relationship between the value of farmland and its distance to agricultural markets. The empirical analysis, using data from Nepal, suggests that providing extensive road access to markets would confer substantial benefits on average, much of these going to poor households. However, the benefits would not be large enough or targeted efficiently enough to appreciably reduce income inequality in the population.     

Steven F. Wilson. Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on Public Schools

Plagued by failures, the corporate educational movement wasnearly consumed by the flames after the dot-com stock crash.Out of the ashes, however, now comes a remarkable book by StevenF. Wilson. Readers are treated to a most unusual set of meaculpas involving corporate excesses and mistakes. Yet, Wilsondoes not perform any last-rites, but rather joins contritionwith frank suggestions to reposition a new generation of educationmanagement organizations (EMOs) for the coming day when No ChildLeft Behind mandates that     

David Mitch, John Brown, and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, eds. Origins of the Modern Career. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. xiii + 342 pp. ISBN 0-7546-3496-5, $99.95.

Here is a sturdy volume that presents the theory, methods, andevidence involving employment patterns that constitute the moderncareer. This information is especially important to scholarsof labor studies who are interested in making historical comparisonsacross disciplinary frameworks. While the audience is likelyto be small, the book’s concerns traverse central juncturesin social history. For an edited volume the essays presented here are unusuallycogent, especially given the range of topics.