The estimation of the impact of residential zoning on land values

Assuming that residential zoning places an upper limit on the ratio of capital to land, an appropriate econometric technique is suggested to estimate the effect of zoning on land välues.     

Relating environmental attitudes and contingent values: how robust are methods for identifying preference heterogeneity?

We assess the importance and robustness of cluster analysis and latent class analysis as methods to account for unobserved heterogeneity. We provide a critique and comparison of both methods in the context of measuring environmental attitudes and a contingent valuation study involving endangered species. We find strong evidence of robustness for these methods: group characterization and assignment of individuals to groups are similar between methods, and willingness-to-pay estimates are consistent. In addition, there are significant differences in willingness-to-pay across environmental attitudinal groups, and we find that accounting for unobservable heterogeneity provides a significantly better fitting model.     

Amenity values of proximity to National Wildlife Refuges: An analysis of urban residential property values

This research quantifies the property value benefits of National Wildlife Refuges near urban areas on the eastern coast of the U.S.A. Our approach is made possible through access to confidential U.S. Census data identifying property values surrounding all refuges with high geographic resolution. Results from hedonic property value models suggest that the amenity values of refuges located near urbanized areas are capitalized into the value of homes in very close proximity, averaging $11 million per refuge. These capitalized values add directly to the local tax base and are considerable complements to the annual economic value created by the refuge system.     

居住行为及环境演变对住宅照明的影响

随着科技的发展及80后年轻人逐渐成为社会的中坚力量,居住行为及居住环境的变化对住宅照明产生了巨大影响,住宅绿色照明将更注重从照明的根本目的出发,形成以注重照明效果而非以照明器具代替照明以及适应性、智能性为主要特点的新的照明设计策略.     

The threat of regulatory environmental inspection: impact on plant performance

The expected costs of violating a regulation would typically increase if the probability of regulatory inspection increases. Thus, changes in the anticipated threat of inspection should affect firm compliance. Like environmental protection agencies in several other countries, the Norwegian agency typically emphasizes compliance with institutional requirements (e.g. firm-internal routines and auditing systems) rather than emission caps. Using a panel dataset of polluting Norwegian plants, we find that the threat of inspection significantly reduces the probability of serious violation. However, emissions are not significantly affected. We point at various reasons for the regulator to emphasize institutional requirements, but we also argue that the lack of effect on emissions encourages the agency to review the pros and cons of the common emphasis on institutional requirements over emissions.      

Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation

We use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972–1994 period to study the deforestation process. Relying on both parametric and semiparametric models, we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process. We first study the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and then analyze determinants of deforestation. Our data sample provides no evidence of an EKC. We also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries.     

Legal regulation of enterprises'' environmental impact: a survey

The enterprise coordinates social resources, which changes the dialogue between human and the environ-ment into that between enterprise and environment. The profit-making character of enterprise leads to the abandon-ment of environmental ethics. Enterprise, which has the capability to solve environmental problems, however, lacks-the motive to do it. It has controlling power over society and should assume the responsibility of environmental protection. For its lack of environmental conscience, the external institutional arrangements should be made for enterprise. The strategy for environmental cost should be designed in connection with the interest orientation of en-terprise. And various tegal measures in constitutional law, social law, civil law, administrative law and criminal law should be utilized to regulate enterprise's behaviors regarding environmental protection.     

Flooding risk and housing values: An economic assessment of environmental hazard

Climate change, the ‘boom and bust’ cycles of rivers, and altered water resource management practice have caused significant changes in the spatial distribution of the risk of flooding. Hedonic pricing studies, predominantly for the US, have assessed the spatial incidence of risk and the associated implicit price of flood risk. Using these implicit price estimates and their associated standard errors, we perform a meta-analysis and find that an increase in the probability of flood risk of 0.01 in a year is associated to a difference in transaction price of an otherwise similar house of - 0.6%. The actual occurrence of a flooding event or increased stringency in disclosure rules causes ex-ante prices to differ from ex-post prices, but these effects are small. The marginal willingness to pay for reduced risk exposure has increased over time, and it is slightly lower for areas with a higher per capita income. We show that obfuscating amenity effects and risk exposure associated with proximity to water causes systematic bias in the implicit price of flood risk.     

The impact of heterogeneity of discount factors and asset returns on inequality

We investigate the effect of differential access to financial markets, discount factor and wealth endowment on poverty and inequality. We construct a model of educational and savings choice with heterogeneous agents. Motivated by empirical evidence, in this economy the return on savings is a non-decreasing function of the amount saved. As expected, more patient households tend to become wealthier and more educated. The heterogeneity on portfolio returns is shown to be key to our main result: the model closely fits the data on income and wealth inequalities, being able to explain the existing Brazil’s inequality patterns. The model was also calibrated to the US, with similar fit. We then evaluate two types of public policies based on cash transfer schemes (CTSs), that aim to reduce poverty and inequality. We find that the CTS version in which receiving the benefit is conditional on educating the household’s youngster outperforms its unconditional version in almost all dimensions analysed.     

The impact of smart meters on residential water consumption: Evidence from a natural experiment in the Canary Islands

Smart meters can promote behavioral changes and water conservation by improving information and providing feedback about water consumption to households. In this paper, we evaluate a large-scale programme implemented by the municipal water company of La Laguna (Tenerife). Exploiting quasi-experimental variation brought about program, we estimate the effect of water meter replacement on measured water consumption and the behavioral effect of the installation of the smart metering technology allowing households to access daily water consumption and real-time feedback through an online portal. Our main empirical analysis employs a difference in differences identification strategy and uses annual consumption data from 51,674 households observed over 10 years. We find a positive effect of water meter replacement on measured water consumption. Our main finding is that providing access to the smart metering technology induces households to reduce consumption by around 2% on average. Our results point to consumers’ engagement with the information portal as the main mechanism behind the observed behavioral response.     

The impact of environmental regulation on Chinese spatial development

We examine the relationship between environmental regulation and spatial development in China. Exploiting changes in national pollution standards for three industries, ammonia, paper and cement, we measure the impact of environmental regulation on industry productivity. Our results suggest that national pollution standards do not affect industry productivity, but they reallocate productivity spatially. We show that regulated industries located in developing cities increase their productivity compared to similar industries in other cities. This means that environmental regulation affects the spatial distribution of technology in China and might influence long‐term spatial development by reducing geographical disparities.     

The impact of the judicial objective function on the enforcement of environmental standards

We investigate the influence of a judge’s objective function on the type of sanctions used for enforcing environmental standards. We focus on the difference between monetary and non-monetary penalties. We examine the extent to which judges take social costs of sanctions into account when making judgments in court in the context of environmental violations. We also conduct an empirical analysis to test the main findings of the theoretical model using court data from several Belgian jurisdictions. We find that besides minimizing environmental damages judges also take social costs of sanctions into account in their decision-making.     

Relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures: An input-output analysis

In this paper we evaluate the relationships between household expenditures and the environmental impact categories climate change, acidification, eutrophication and smog formation, by combining household expenditures with environmentally extended input-output analysis. Expenditure elasticities are examined with regression analysis, and are compared and interpreted on the basis of insight at the product level. With data from the Netherlands in the year 2000, we find that environmental impact increases with increasing household expenditures, although the degree to which the environmental impact increases differs per impact category. Climate change and eutrophication increase less than proportionally with increasing expenditures. Acidification increases nearly proportionally with increasing expenditures, whereas smog formation increases more than proportionally. It appears that the mix of necessities and luxuries to which an environmental impact is related is essential in explaining the relationship.     

The impact of environmental regulation on productivity in German industries

The objective of this paper is to adjust a traditional total factor productivity (TFP) measure for the direct effect of environmental regulation on material and capital input. For this purpose we consider the fact that part of material input and pollution abatement capital have not been used to increase output but to cover the cost of using the environment as a factor of production. Therefore TFP growth rates are lower if part of the material input is allocated to abatement activities instead of producing output. We propose to treat compliance with environmental regulation as an unproductive input linked to the use of productive material input. Our aim is to answer and discuss two questions: How to measure the effect of environmental regulation on TFP, and does the effect matter. We examine data from 1975–1991 for ten pollution intensive German industries.We would like to thank Cornelia Oßwald for valuable research assistance. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for many helpful comments.     

The impact of environmental policy on international competitiveness in manufacturing

The aim of this study is to test the hypothesis that environmental stringency adversely affects the international competitiveness (net exports) in manufacturing sectors. The model follows the standard factor endowment approach to explain the effects of environmental regulatory policy on net exports in different product-based industries. An econometric model is constructed, which includes factor endowments and environmental regulations to examine how strict environmental policies impact export competitiveness. A panel dataset of 10 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, over 17 years, 1987–2003, was constructed for the modelling effort. The study finds that environmental regulations can be a way to combat the flight of manufacturing out of developed countries if the output from these industries can be identified as environmentally friendly. A positive relationship between net exports and environmental regulations was found for paper products, wood products and textile products. However, most manufacturing industries are harmed by increased environmental regulations.     

Distributive impact of structural change: Does environmental degradation matter?

Vulnerability to reduction of natural capital depends on defensive substitution possibilities that, in turn, are affected by the availability of other productive factors. However in several developing countries asset distribution tends to be highly skewed. Taking into account these elements, this paper proposes a model considering an economy polarized into two classes (the rich and the poor) and characterized by the following stylized facts: income and productivity of the rural poor is highly dependent on natural resources; labour remuneration in rural sector represents the opportunity cost for wage labour; the rich can partially substitute natural capital with physical capital and wage labour. In this context, agents differ for feed back mechanisms and interactions between their choices of production and environmental dynamics. Moreover environmental depletion may trigger economic transition, but the structural change is likely to result regressive.     

中国数字基础设施发展对环境污染的影响研究

我国正在大力推进数字经济建设和绿色发展转型。因此,本文利用2006—2019年中国省级面板数据,使用固定效应模型、空间杜宾模型、中介效应模型等方法从多维度检验数字基础设施发展对环境污染的影响及其机制。研究发现：数字基础设施发展减少了工业二氧化硫、工业烟尘、PM2.5、工业废水等污染物的排放。作用机制分析显示,数字基础设施发展能够通过促进绿色创新和优化产业结构两个渠道来减少污染排放。本文还发现数字基础设施发展对环境污染的影响存在空间异质性和空间溢出效应。本文的研究有助于更好地理解我国数字经济发展对污染减排的影响、作用机制和地区空间差异,也佐证了数字经济和绿色发展之间的协同关系。     

Effects of different environmental regulations and their heterogeneity on air pollution control in China

This study endeavors to explore the impact of different environmental regulations and their heterogeneity on air pollution control in China. By employing a slacks-based measure of directional distance function model, considering undesirable outputs, the efficiency of air pollution control of China’s 30 provinces during 2001–2014 is evaluated. The estimates indicate that the efficiency of air pollution control is fluctuating, and there is obvious regional differences. By using provincial-level panel data and panel threshold models, empirical results show that: (1) There is a nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation and air pollution control efficiency, and it can be positively correlated, but it is constrained by the stringency of regulation: there is a single threshold for formal (command-and-control (CAC) and market-based) regulation, while there is a double threshold for informal regulation. (2) Different environmental regulations have different governance effects. Compared with CAC regulation, market regulation can attract more attention of enterprises. (3) It may be ineffective to expect informal regulation to improve the air pollution control efficiency. Therefore, in order to achieve real sustainable development, the government should set up reasonable regulation stringency and optimize the combination of regulation tools.

     

Financial conditions and economic activity: the potential impact of the targeted long-term refinancing operations (TLTROs)

This article explores the relationship between financial conditions and real economic activity in the euro area as a whole and for Greece in particular. We use a financial conditions index (see Angelopoulou et al. 2014) which is constructed using a wide range of prices, quantities, spreads and survey data in line with theory. We update the indices and use them within a VAR framework to estimate the potential impact of the targeted long-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) on aspects of economic activity. Our results suggest that financial conditions do have a significant effect on economic activity, and thus the TLTROs, to the extent that they are designed to improve financial conditions, will provide a boost to the real economy.     

The impact of endowment heterogeneity and origin on contributions in best-shot public good games

Economists and psychologists have long argued the origin of wealth influences individual behavior. In a previous study (Cherry et al., 2005), we found the origin of endowment did not significantly affect behavior in linear public good games with summation contribution technology. In such games, however, both Nash behavior (everybody gives nothing) and social optimal behavior (everybody gives the entire endowment) call for symmetric levels of contributions. Results from this new study indicate that the origin of wealth might matter in more asymmetric situations, such as in a best-shot public good game with heterogeneous groups. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C72, C92, H41