Life satisfaction and self-employment in different types of occupations

In this research, we investigate whether a positive relationship between life satisfaction and self-employment (versus paid employment) exists while simultaneously considering two occupational dimensions: white-collar versus blue-collar work and high-skilled versus low-skilled work. Using Eurobarometer data for a large number of European countries (2008–2012), our findings confirm that self-employed workers are more satisfied with their lives than paid employees are. A life satisfaction premium is also found when the self-employed and paid employees are compared within similar occupations in terms of collar type and skill level. Finally, self-employment can help to overcome low life satisfaction scores associated with blue-collar and low-skilled work.     

Temporary employment,work quality,and job satisfaction

Using European Working Conditions Survey, this paper shows that being employed on a temporary, rather than an open-ended, contract has a negative bearing for job satisfaction. While this effect has been established previously, the novelty of this paper is to show that the effect propagates both directly and indirectly, through working conditions and work quality. Accounting for this indirect effect allows to obtain the effect of the contractual status on job satisfaction that is substantially larger in magnitude as compared to simple direct effects, confirming the importance of accounting for unobservable individual, company-specific, and job-specific heterogeneity when addressing this relationship. Moreover, the extent of co-determination of poorer working conditions and temporary contractual status, as well as the resulting bias in estimating only a direct effect of temporary employment on job satisfaction without accounting for such co-determination, vary depending on a country setting. It is shown that in transition economies, this co-determination is larger than in non-transition economies, possibly because of the workers’ weaker bargaining power, strategic use of temporary employment to circumvent labor regulations, the absence of regulations prescribing equal treatment of workers with different contractual arrangements, or lack of compliance with such regulations.     

Effects of political institutions on air quality

We empirically test existing theories on the provision of public goods, in particular air quality, using data on sulfur dioxide (SO₂) concentrations from the Global Environment Monitoring Projects for 107 cities in 42 countries from 1971 to 1996. The results are as follows: First, we provide additional support for the claim that the degree of democracy has an independent positive effect on air quality. Second, we find that among democracies, presidential systems are more conducive to air quality than parliamentary ones. Third, in testing competing claims about the effect of interest groups on public goods provision in democracies we establish that labor union strength contributes to lower environmental quality, whereas the strength of green parties has the opposite effect.     

农家乐的服务质量、顾客满意度及忠诚度的关系研究——以天目山地区为例

通过问卷调查和当面访谈相结合的方法,以天目山景区周边的农家乐为例,对其服务质量、顾客满意及忠诚度的关系进行研究。结果表明,农家乐服务质量对于顾客满意度、顾客忠诚度具有正向关系,顾客满意度对于顾客忠诚度也具有正向关系。为进一步提升整体农家乐服务质量,增加顾客满意度,提高顾客的重游意愿和推荐意愿,提出相关建议和意见,以期促进天目山景区周边农家乐的可持续发展。     

Errors in variables and spatial effects in hedonic house price models of ambient air quality

In the valuation of the effect of improved air quality through the estimation of hedonic models of house prices, the potential “errors in variables” aspect of the interpolated air pollution measures is often ignored. In this paper, we assess the extent to which this may affect the resulting empirical estimates for marginal willingness to pay (MWTP), using an extensive sample of over 100,000 individual house sales for 1999 in the South Coast Air Quality Management District of Southern California. We take an explicit spatial econometric perspective and account for spatial dependence and endogeneity using recently developed Spatial 2SLS estimation methods. We also account for both spatial autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity in the error terms, using the Kelejian–Prucha HAC estimator. Our results are consistent across different spatial weights matrices and different kernel functions and suggest that the bias from ignoring the endogeneity in interpolated values may be substantial. This paper is part of a joint research effort with James Murdoch (University of Texas, Dallas) and Mark Thayer (San Diego State University). Their valuable input is gratefully acknowledged. The research was supported in part by NSF Grant BCS-9978058 to the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS), and by NSF/EPA Grant SES-0084213. Earlier versions were presented at the 5th International Workshop on Spatial Econometrics and Statistics, Rome, Italy, May 2006, the 53th North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Toronto, ON, Nov. 2006, the 2007 Meetings of the Allied Social Science Assocations, Chicago, IL, Jan 2007, and at departmental seminars at the University of Illinois. Comments by discussants and participants are greatly appreciated. A special thanks to Harry Kelejian for his detailed and patient clarification of the HAC estimator. The usual disclaimer holds.     

Alternative standards and instruments for air pollution control in Poland

Like other Central European countries, Poland faces the twin challenges of improving environmental quality while also fostering sustainable economic development. In this study we examine the costs of different standards for air pollution control, and the cost savings from using incentive-based policy instruments in lieu of more rigid command-and-control policies. The comparisons are based on the results of a simulation model of energy use and air pollution control for the Polish economy over 1990–2015. The model simulates least-cost energy supply decisions under different environmental policy assumptions, the corresponding emissions, and the cost of achieving the specified policy objectives. The model results suggest that incentive-based policies will have efficiency gains over command policies that are at least worthy of consideration and may be quite substantial. The size of the gains in practice depends in part on how much flexibility is built into the command approach, e.g., capacity for intrafirm trading as well as alack of technology-specific requirements. To achieve these gains, an increase in the current levels of emissions fees is desirable both to strengthen abatement incentives and to improve the capacity of the Polish government to overcome past environmental damages. However, it seems highly unlikely in practice that fees could be raised to the levels necessary to meet current Polish emissions standards. To make further headway, an evolutionary approach to emissions trading patterned after (and profiting from the experience with) emissions trading in the U.S. seems useful. The program could start out relatively modestly and increase in ambitiousness as the Polish economic transition proceeds.     

Technology adoption decisions under a mixed regulatory system of tradable permits and air pollution fees for the control of Total Suspended Particulates in Taiwan

By using a newly proposed tradable permit system built under the current air pollution fee regulation for the control of Total Suspended Particulates in Taiwan as an example, a mixed-integer non-linear programming model that minimizes the total regulatory costs of firms is applied to investigate how different permit trading ratios and the design of banking might affect firms’ technology adoption decisions and permit trading behavior. By incorporating binary variables in the model to represent firms’ decisions as to whether or not to install new control equipment, the results show that when the unit air pollution fee rate is higher than the firms’ abatement costs, the design of banking causes many firms to install new control equipment that results in an over-reduction of emissions. If no air pollution fee is imposed, the trading ratio plays a more important role than the reservation rate for banking in determining the firms’ emission reduction strategies under a pure permit trading scheme. While the conclusion from this study that uses a non-uniformly mixed pollutant as an example may hold only when certain conditions are met, the framework can be applied to other uniformly mixed pollutants through parameter changes without any limitation. In addition, the modeling technique presented here offers policy-makers a very convenient approach to empirical analysis.      

Financing,reputation and information disclosure quality in the Chinese market

In this article, we propose a theoretical model based on the reputation theory and hypothesize a positive relation between the information disclosure quality and the company’s refinancing decision. We collected data from the listed companies, which refinances in Shenzhen main board and SME board during 2006–2012, as a panel sample, and tested the hypothesis empirically. The results indicate that there exists a significant positive correction short-term relation between refinancing decision and the information disclosure quality, but in the long term the relationship between the information disclosure quality and refinancing decision is not significant.     

Climate policy in Western Europe and avoided costs of air pollution control

Abatement of CO₂ emissions will be accompanied by reduced air pollutant emissions such as particulate matter (PM), SO₂, and NO_x. This, in turn, will reduce the need for end of pipe (EOP) pollution control technologies to meet future air quality targets. This dynamic could put more stringent air quality goals within reach, and increase the political feasibility of climate policy. This paper presents a CGE model that has been modified to include the emissions and EOP abatement of PM, SO₂, and NO_x from stationary sources in the EU-17. Emissions of pollutants are modeled as fixed-factor complementary inputs to their associated source. Abatement in each sector is modeled as a substitution between the pollutants and discrete abatement technologies, each of which is sector-specific and characterized by a marginal abatement cost and technical capacity constraint. Scenarios are run to 2020, to assess the costs and co-benefits of simultaneous air quality and climate policies. We find that under the Kyoto Protocol in 2010, the welfare cost of pollution control is reduced by 16% compared to the baseline, effectively offsetting the cost of CO₂ abatement by 15%. The co-benefit results depend heavily on policy choices, and their magnitude relative to total costs is likely to decline as greenhouse targets become more ambitious. In our scenarios, pollution control cost savings range from 1.3 to 20% in 2020, yielding a climate cost offset range of 0.2 to 3.9%. The CO₂ credit imports allowed by the EU via the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offer a total savings of $9.7bn in 2020, but only need to be compensated by an additional $0.3–0.4bn in domestic pollution control from stationary sources.     

The value of health benefits from ambient air quality improvements in Central and Eastern Europe: An exercise in benefits transfer

This study is an initial effort to estimate one important category of benefits of environmental improvements in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), those related to the effects of air pollution on human health. Our estimates are derived from data on ambient air quality in selected CEE locations, together with a model that links these ambient conditions to physical impacts on health and attaches economic values (in dollar terms) to these impacts. Given data limitations, our focus here is on three pollutants: particulates (PM), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and lead (Pb). Our data set includes ambient concentrations for these pollutants in four CEE countries: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine.Given the ambient data, dose-response functions taken from the clinical and epidemiological literature in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe are used to generate estimates of the change in physical effects. These effects then are given an economic value by applying two approaches for scaling unit valuation figures applicable to the U.S. A Monte Carlo model is constructed to propagate the uncertainties of the dose-response functions and unit values to obtain confidence intervals on the total benefits from pollutant reductions in each country. We examine scenarios where the CEE countries improve ambient conditions for the pollutants in question to meet European Community (EC) standards and then compare these scenarios to ones involving uniform percentage ambient reductions across locations in each country.