Hazardous Waste Hits Hollywood: Superfund and Housing Prices in Los Angeles

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the effect of various actions taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under CERCLA, commonly known as the Superfund Program, on housing prices. This study uses a housing transaction panel dataset encompassing the five major counties of the Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area to estimate the program’s influence on the local housing market. Using house and time-varying census tract fixed effects, I am able to avoid many of the endogeneity problems seen in previous research attempting to measure the Superfund treatment effect. An estimate of the effect on housing prices is given for each of the major events that occur under a typical Superfund remediation. After controlling for confounding correlated unobservables, I find a 7.3 % increase in sales price for houses within 3 km of a site that moves through the complete Superfund program. The analysis gives evidence of positive price appreciation for housing markets and serves as a lower bound for measuring remediation benefits.     

Analysis of prices in tradable emission markets: an empirical study of the regional clean air incentives market in Los Angeles

The Regional Clean Air Incentives Market is an emissions trading programme, which is expected to help in reducing oxides of nitrogen and sulphur from stationary sources in the Los Angeles area. This paper uses econometric techniques to determine the factors that can explain the development of the price of emission permits. By controlling for various characteristics of the trades, the regression results allow one to isolate the impact of each factor and conduct a detailed analysis of the implications of this factor on price. The results show that the price of permits is affected by institutional factors such as the trading rules and regulations governing the permit programme. The permits are priced higher in the coastal zone, higher for trades recorded in 1997 as compared to 1994 or 1995 and are affected by the trader category. Brokers are involved in well over half of the trades and have acquired a substantial inventory of permits. Facilities buying from brokers pay higher prices than if they buy from another facility. The price of trades beyond 2003 is higher than for current trades, which could be indicative of expectations of high growth rates in the Los Angeles region or due to expectation of more stringent regulations in the future.     

A bivariate probit approach to the determination of employment: a study of teen employment differentials in Los Angeles County

Following a bivariate probit approach and using the 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) for Los Angeles County, this study shows that the employment of teenage workers depends on both the worker's participation decision as well as the employer's hiring decision. Omission of the role of participation decision from the estimation of employment probability yields misleading evidence of hiring discrimination against Blacks. This evidence, however, disappears when the participation and hiring equations are estimated jointly in a bivariate framework. The study finds no evidence of discrimination against females and Latinos. In addition, the study shows that family, household and neighbourhood characteristics play significant roles in the determination of teen employment.     

The Telecommunications Act at three years: an economic evaluation of its implementation by the Federal Communications Commission

The competitive free-for-all that Congress envisioned in the 1996 Telecommunications Act has for the most part not appeared. The Act calls for two forms of regulatorily-assisted entry into local markets: lease of network elements and resale. The FCC has decreed that the charges for those elements and the resale discounts must emulate the costs of an ideally-efficient firm. This standard is in fact not efficient, and the FCC’s attempt to jump-start the entry of competitors in this way has short-circuited the competitive process itself and jeopardized achievement of the goals of the Act.     

Case management: key to access, quality, and financial success

Several strategic, organizational, and operational variables drive successful case management programs. Organizational goals and accountability for support by administrative and medical staff leaders set the stage for a comprehensive program. The integration of utilization review, discharge planning, and other functions into the role of the case manager improves productivity and continuity. Choosing a model for assigning patients, a variable unique to the institution, should be carefully considered. Regardless of the power of strategic goals or the creative selection of a model, daily practices that promote daily review and communication will reveal all of the opportunities for improved performance. Complications are avoided one patient at a time and patients deserve vigilance. Length of stay is shortened 1 day at a time and we can no longer afford to miss these opportunities. In the period of high census, an unnecessary day for one patient at the end of his/her stay may mean another patient being diverted to another hospital away from his/her physician and past medical records. Creating constructive physician partnerships and cooperative relationships with postacute care providers can bring a case management program to higher level of performance. While many organizations have employees called "case managers," fewer have a comprehensive approach that has the potential to drive so many important indicators of performance.     

Family planning programme in India: an economic evaluation

The author evaluates the cost-effectiveness of India's national family planning program.     

Regulation of network infrastructure investments: an experimental evaluation

This paper reports the results of an experiment evaluating three regulatory schemes for network infrastructure, in terms of their ability to generate efficient levels of capacity investment. We compare the performance of (1) price cap regulation, (2) a regulatory holiday for new capacity, and (3) price cap regulation with long term contracts combined with a secondary market. The setting is one in which network users can benefit from acting strategically, and are better informed than the network operator about demand growth. We find that the regulatory holiday creates an incentive to underinvest relative to optimal levels. Long term contracts also fail to improve on single price-cap regulation, and may reduce investment by providing noisier signals about future demand.     

Using an integrated fuzzy set and deliberative multi-criteria evaluation approach to facilitate decision-making in invasive species management

There are two issues at the core of invasive species risk management: on the one hand, decision-makers struggle to balance environmental goals against other often competing societal goals such as economic benefits and social welfare; on the other hand, uncertainty often prevails in understanding the invasion process and in communicating invasion risks to the stakeholders. In this paper, we describe how an integrated Deliberative Multi-Criteria Evaluation (DMCE) and fuzzy set approach can tackle these two issues in the analysis of alternative risk management strategies, using the example of European House Borer (EHB, Hylotrupes bajulus Linnaeus). DMCE offers a platform for stakeholders to interact and to make a trade-off decision between multiple goals based on social learning and deliberation. The fuzzy set approach, applied within a DMCE framework, explicitly incorporates the inherent uncertainty in estimating potential EHB impacts and in evaluating participants' subjective preferences. This integrated method, therefore, provides a promising approach for tackling the dual challenges of competing goals and uncertainty in the evaluation of invasive species risk management options.     

The three webs: an attempt at an understanding of the future

This article poses questions about the significance of increased internationalization of science which has developed since the cold war. It deals with three different aspects of present-day science: particle ptpsics, nanotechnology and space exploration. In a simple way, research can be divided into three different froms: information (which, by definition, I call public), knowledge (that is, covered by intellectual property rights (IPR)) and training. Further, I assume that innovation is commercial and thus has a profit motive, in contrast with the scientific goal of enlarging our view of the universe. There is, however, a more fundamental issue which is the realization that the type of accounting economy we have is too naive to develop our society further. Consider figures form the US Department of Commerce-if research is one cost unit, engineering to protogpe is three and full production 20, or even 50 for pharmaceuticals. These figures indicate the present importance placed on rates of return on capital in assessing the effectiveness of research.     

Telecommunications Regulation and New Services: A Case Study at the State Level

This study introduces methodology to quantify the effects that regulation has on the innovation and the introduction of new products, and compares state-regulated services in Indiana under rate of return regulation (RoRR) and under alternative regulation. The econometric model comprises a count process (for innovation) followed by a duration process with selection (for regulatory delay). When the firm is released from RoRR, the rate of service creation triples and expected approval delays nearly disappear. The firm may have introduced up to 12 times as many services to consumers if the alternative regulation had been in place the entire time.     

Structural changes in exports of an emerging economy: Case of Turkey

This paper indicates that Turkish exports are subject to structural changes as Turkey integrates into global production networks. Integration, which leads vertical specialization in production and changes in the commodity composition of Turkish exports in favor of non-traditional commodities, paces up during economic reform periods. As the export shares of non-traditional commodities, which have higher import and income sensitivity but lower real exchange rate elasticity, increases, coefficients of the aggregate export function change accordingly. Nevertheless, high import and income elasticity of exports imply that the global growth pattern plays a significant role in determining exports of Turkey.     

The fiscal outlook in Austria: an evaluation with Generational Accounts

During the next few decades the populations of most developed countries will grow older and older as a result of the low fertility rates since the 1970s and/or the continuously increasing life expectancy. Generational Accounting which was introduced in the early 1990s, can illustrate the effects of this ageing process on a country’s fiscal situation and on the intergenerational redistribution. Austria’s age dependency ratio will more than double over the next four decades in most official projections. In our paper we quantify for Austria how unsustainable its public finances are due to the demographic development. We show that despite recent reforms of the pension and health systems the demographic development produces a major problem for Austria’s coffers. Furthermore we compare our results to similar calculations for Germany and Switzerland.     

Public debt management and credibility: Evidence from an emerging economy

This study is a contribution to the literature concerning the management of the public debt in emerging economies. A novelty in this article is the introduction of a fiscal credibility index based on the market's expectations in regard to the public debt to GDP ratio. The main objective is to present empirical evidence for the Brazilian case concerning the framework of the public debt composition and also the effect of this framework on public debt to GDP ratio. The findings demonstrate that the commitment with the public debt increases the fiscal credibility and that it is crucial for the success of the management of the public debt. Contrary to what is recommended in the standard literature an increase in the average maturity and the share of inflation-linked bonds imply costs that cannot be neglected.     

License scheme: an optimal waste management policy under asymmetric information

A system requiring a waste management license from an enforcement agency has been introduced in many countries. A license system is usually coupled with fines, a manifest, and a disposal tax. However, these policy devices have not been integrated into an optimal policy. In this paper we derive an optimal waste management policy by using those policy devices. Waste management policies are met with three difficult problems: asymmetric information, the heterogeneity of waste management firms, and non-compliance by waste management firms and waste disposers. The optimal policy in this paper overcomes all three problems.