The Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities in Federal Systems: The Political Economy of NIMBY

This paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system. We first show that a decentralized systemyields the first-best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free-riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions. In our model, each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions.This leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity. Thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large, and in thegovernment's weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities. The centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level.Since compensation has proved difficult, a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system.     

Hazardous Facility Siting When Cost Information Is Private: An Application of Multidimensional Mechanism Design

The siting of hazardous facilities often involves externalities that extend beyond the border of the community selected as a site. Thus, the private information of each community is potentially a vector of costs comprising a cost for each of the possible sites. I characterize the conditions for the existence of a direct mechanism that is incentive compatible, individually rational, and budget balancing. Incentive compatibility implies a pattern of compensation payments that often conflicts with compensation policy goals. When nonparticipating communities cannot block the siting of the facility, it will often be possible to implement siting policies with a balanced budget.     

Incentivizing sustainable waste management

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the integration of economic and non-economic concepts of waste management and sustainability to achieve new insights to sustainable waste management. Since landfilling will continue to be a significant waste management method, our theory and practice of sustainable waste management should focus upon incentivizing the development of more sustainable landfills. The model sheds light on the design of efficient and fair landfill siting processes; how production inputs to bioreactor landfilling should be selected; and how management practices during the facility's operation phase can achieve greater economic, ecological and social sustainability.     

Noxious Facilities, Environmental Damages, and Efficient Randomized Siting

This paper considers the efficient siting of a noxious facility that causes environmental damages (for example, increased pollution) in the host community. The analysis shows that there can be multiple efficient locations without transfers, and that an efficient location need not have the smallest WTA or WTP. In general, there exist randomized outcomes that are ex ante efficient and that Pareto dominate efficient outcomes. The analysis also shows that a community’s most preferred lottery never provides full insurance. Under some conditions, lotteries with no host compensation are Pareto superior to those with compensation.     

Sharing the costs of cleaning a river: the Upstream Responsibility rule

The cleaning up of waste present in transboundary rivers, which requires the cooperation of different authorities, is a problematic issue, especially when responsibility for the discharge of the waste is not well-defined. Following Ni and Wang (2007) we assume that a river is a segment divided into several regions from upstream to downstream. We show that when the transfer rate of the waste is unknown, the clean-up cost vector provides useful information for estimating some limits in regard to the responsibility of each region. We propose a cost allocation rule, the Upstream Responsibility rule, which takes into account these limits in distributing costs “fairly” and we provide an axiomatic characterization of this rule via certain properties based on basic ideas concerning the responsibility of regions.     

Production and insurance under regret aversion

This paper examines the behavior of a regret-averse producer facing revenue risk. To insure against the revenue risk, the producer can purchase a coinsurance contract with an endogenously chosen coinsurance rate. Regret-averse preferences are characterized by a utility function that includes disutility from having chosen ex-post suboptimal alternatives. We show that the regret-averse producer never fully insures against the revenue risk even though the coinsurance contract is actuarially fair. When the producer is sufficiently regret averse and the loss probability is high, we further show that the regret-averse producer chooses not to purchase the actuarially fair coinsurance contract. Even when purchasing the actuarially fair coinsurance contract is optimal, we derive sufficient conditions under which the regret-averse producer reduces the optimal output level as compared to that without the coinsurance contract. These results are distinct from those under pure risk aversion, thereby making the consideration of regret aversion crucial.     

“Almost” subsidy-free spatial pricing in a multi-dimensional setting

Consider a population of citizens uniformly spread over the entire plane. The population faces a problem of locating public facilities financed by its users, who face an idiosyncratic private access cost to the facility. We show that, under mild assumptions, an external intervention that covers a tiny portion of the facility cost is sufficient to guarantee secession-proofness or no cross-subsidization, where no group of individuals is charged more than the cost incurred if it had acted on its own. Moreover, we demonstrate that in this case the Rawlsian access pricing is the only mechanism that rules out secession threats.     

成本控制前提下的薪酬激励性研究

当今企业的竞争,归根结底是人力资源的竞争,特别是人才的竞争。而薪酬,作为企业吸引、激励和留住人才的手段也日益受到重视。对于企业来说,薪酬意味着巨大的成本。因此,如何在保证成本不变的前提下建立公平合理的薪酬体系,并提高薪酬的激励性是许多企业必须要解决的难题。在分析当前的成本下造成薪酬激励性不高的原因的基础上,提出了企业可如何在成本不变的前提下提高薪酬的激励性的相关对策,填补了理论研究的空白,对企业具有重要的参考意义。     

我国工业生态园区建设的社会背景及发展趋势

工业生态园提供了利用废物循环利用的方法,即利用一种工艺产生的废物作为另一种工艺的原材料,从而减少原材料的使用和废物的产生。工业生态园是依据清洁生产要求和循环经济理念及工业生态学原理设计、建立的一种新型工业园区。文章通过对国内外工业生态园区发展的社会背景及现状的介绍,总结出适合我国的工业生态园区的建设之路,为我国发展循环经济和生态工业区的建设提供有意义的建议与对策。     

煤矿区生态环境动态补偿机理与准则

资源开采领域生态环境问题突出,急需建立生态补偿机制。结合煤炭资源开采的生态环境问题,基于生态公平、社会公平的思想分析了生态补偿的内涵和补偿的内容构成。在开采沉陷预计和动态规划理论技术的支持下,提出基于补偿成本最小化的动态补偿思想,分析动态补偿的机理和准则。认为煤矿区生态补偿既包括对损毁生态环境的恢复治理,还应包括对因生态环境服务水平下降造成的居民的有形无形损失的赔偿,二者之间的联系在于生态功能恢复的时间滞后性和治理资金的时间成本。动态补偿的基本准则是煤矿企业在整个生命周期中分阶段多时点陆续补偿,使生态环境服务损失和补偿最小化。     

Fair imposition

We introduce a new mechanism-design problem called fair imposition. In this setting a center wishes to fairly allocate tasks among a set of agents whose cost structures are known only to them, and thus will not reveal their true costs without appropriate incentives. The center, with the power to impose arbitrary tasks and payments on the agents, has the additional goal that his net payment to these agents is never positive (or, that it is tightly bounded if a loss is unavoidable). We consider two different notions of fairness that the center may wish to achieve. The central notion, which we call k-fairness, is in the spirit of max-min fairness. We present both positive results (in the form of concrete mechanisms) and negative results (in the form of impossibility theorems) concerning these criteria. We also briefly discuss an alternative, more traditional interpretation of our setting and results, in the context of auctions.     

论社会公平正义的地位及其实现途径

实现社会公平正义是社会主义社会的本质特征,是构建和谐社会的必然要求,是我国市场经济发展的客观需要。我国实现社会公平正义面临的突出问题主要表现为权利机会不公平、规则制度不公平、收入分配不公平。实现我国社会公平正义,要积极培育社会主义核心价值观,营造实现社会公平正义的思想氛围;着力推进科学发展,打牢实现我国社会公平正义的物质基础;加强制度建设,创造公平正义的社会环境。     

The Manipulability of Fair Solutions in Assignment of an Indivisible Object with Monetary Transfers

Public decision making often involves the problem of fairly assigning one indivisible object to agents with monetary transfers. An example is the choice of the location of a garbage incineration facility where the accepting district should receive fair compensations from other districts. In this problem, we show that for broad classes of solutions satisfying a welfare lower bound and an efficiency‐oriented condition, the set of equilibrium allocations in the manipulation game associated with a given solution coincides with the set of all envy‐free allocations. This generalizes Tadenuma and Thomson's equivalence result for a class of envy‐free solutions. Our result covers the Shapley value, which is not covered by Tadenuma and Thomson's result.     

Social Norms,Morals and Self-interest as Determinants of Pro-environment Behaviours: The Case of Household Recycling

This paper considers the role which selfish, moral and social incentives and pressures play in explaining the extent to which stated choices over pro-environment behaviours vary across individuals. The empirical context is choices over household waste contracts and recycling actions in Poland. A theoretical model is used to show how cost-based motives and the desire for a positive self and social image combine to determine the utility from alternative choices of recycling behaviour. We then describe a discrete choice experiment designed to empirically investigate the effects such drivers have on stated choices. A hybrid logit model is used to link statements over attitudes to recycling to choices, dealing with a potential endogeneity problem caused by the joint effects of un-observables on attitudes and choices. We find that a substantial share of our respondents prefer to sort their waste at home rather than in a central sorting facility. This preference is associated with a moral/intrinsic motivation, involving a belief that sorting at home is more thorough than central sorting.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF HAZARDOUS WASTE DISPOSAL CHOICE: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF HALOGENATED SOLVENT WASTE SHIPMENTS

Disposal of hazardous waste is more complex than simply choosing the option with the lowest price: Legislation may hold a waste generator responsible for cleaning up a badly contaminated waste disposal site if the operator of that site goes bankrupt. This paper estimates conditional logit models of a generator's choice of waste management facility (TSDF) for shipments of halogenated solvent waste originating in California in 1995. The probability that a facility is selected as the destination of a shipment depends on the cost of shipping to and disposal at the facility, on existing contamination at the site, and on the track record of the facility, suggesting that generators do seem to balance current disposal costs with the likelihood of future liability. There is no evidence that generators prefer facilities owned by publicly traded firms, but when generators do choose TSDFs belonging to a publicly traded company, they prefer wealthier companies. (JEL Q21)     

Estimating the Optimal Scale of Public Investments: The Case of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facilities

This paper addresses the regulatory problem of estimating the optimal scale of public capital investments, such as regional low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) disposal facilities and sports stadiums, when regulators can require information disclosures from firms. I evaluate the efficacy of the Illinois LLRW mandatory forecast disclosure rule against an estimated ARIMA model of LLRW volume disposed over the 1985–1995 period; the ARIMA model is shown to be more accurate. I conclude with an ARIMA model forecast of lifecycle volumetric capacity of a proposed LLRW disposal facility in Illinois.     

An axiomatic theory of political representation

We discuss the theory of gerrymandering-proof voting rules. Our approach is axiomatic. We show that, for votes over a binary set of alternatives, any rule that is unanimous, anonymous, and gerrymandering-proof must decide a social outcome as a function of the proportions of agents voting for each alternative, and must either be independent of this proportion, or be in one-to-one correspondence with the proportions. In an extended model in which the outcome of a vote at the district level can be a composition of a governing body (with two possible parties), we discuss the quasi-proportional rules (characterized by unanimity, anonymity, gerrymandering-proofness, strict monotonicity, and continuity). We show that we can always (pointwise) approximate a single-member district quota rule with a quasi-proportional rule. We also discuss a more general environment, where there may be more than two parties.     

The Welfare Effects of Incentive Schemes

This paper computes the change in welfare associated with the introduction of incentives. We calculate by how much the welfare gains of increased output due to incentives outweigh workers' disutility from increased effort. We accomplish this by studying the use of incentives by a firm in the check-clearing industry. Using this firm's production records, we model and estimate the worker's dynamic effort decision problem. We find that the firm's incentive scheme has a large effect on productivity, raising it by 12% over the sample period for the average worker. Using our parameter estimates, we show that the cost of increased effort due to incentives is equal to the dollar value of a 5% rise in productivity. Welfare is measured as the output produced minus the cost of effort; hence, the net increase in the average worker's welfare due to the introduction of the firm's bonus plan is 7%. Under a first-best scheme, we find that the net increase in welfare is 9%.     

Hazardous waste sites and property values in the state of New Jersey

The polluter pays principal is justified as a deterrent to future pollution. However, the US experience suggests that it has considerably reduced the clean up rate of existing hazardous waste sites. Coaseapos;s theorem is used as basis to propose that a partnership between the polluters and property owners near these sites will not only ease financial burden but will also speed up the pace of cleanup. A hedonic price model is used to empirically estimate the impact of siting of hazardous waste sites on property values and determine the economic feasibility of the proposed partnership. The empirical estimates are based on municipality level data from the state of New Jersey. The benefis from speedy clean up of hazardous waste sites to New Jersey property owners are observed to exceed the cleanup cost of these sites.     

Moral hazard with bounded payments

We study the moral hazard problem with general upper and lower constraints M on compensation. We characterize the optimal contract and show existence and uniqueness. When minimizing costs for given effort, a principal harmed by M will pay according to M on some range of outcomes; when M reflects limited liability or a minimum wage, the contract is option-like. When the principal also chooses effort, a principal harmed by M might nonetheless never pay according to M. This cannot occur if the cost of inducing effort in the standard principal-agent problem is convex, for which we provide sufficient conditions related to the informativeness of outcome about effort.