Substitution Possibility between Unpriced Pulp and Wastepaper in the U.S. Paper and Paperboard Industry

A greater use of recycled wastepaper would preserve virgin forests as well as reducing the amount of wastepaper going to landfills. These environmental goals depend critically on the elasticity of substitution between pulp and wastepaper in producing paper and paperboard. Since most of the pulp consumed by U.S. paper mills and paperboard mills is transferred internally from vertically integrated pulp mills, the price data on pulp is not available. This paper constructs an econometric model which enables us to estimate the substitution possibility between unpriced pulp and wastepaper in the U.S. paper and paperboard industry. Empirical results show that the elasticity of substitution between unpriced pulp and wastepaper is positive, but not statistically significant.     

An endogenous equilibrium game on traffic congestion externalities

Traffic congestion and road tolls are familiar economic concepts for most undergraduates; however, students often have difficulty explaining exactly how theoretical principles like externalities and social welfare are related to their real-world experiences, such as driving. The authors present a classroom exercise to demonstrate how congestion externalities are generated, the effects on private and social welfare, and how appropriately priced tolls can address congestion externalities. Students are asked to evaluate outcomes in five different driving scenarios, with and without congestion or tolls. The authors offer discussion questions to make the activity engaging and informative. They report the results of their efforts to administer the exercise. This 75-minute exercise is appropriate for introductory or intermediate microeconomics, political economy, or environmental economics classes of various sizes.     

Price vs. quantity-based approaches to airport congestion management

This paper analyzes price and quantity-based approaches to management of airport congestion, using a model where airlines are asymmetric and internalize congestion. Under these circumstances, optimal congestion tolls are differentiated across carriers, and a uniformity requirement on airport charges (as occurs when slots are sold or tolls are uniform) distorts carrier flight choices. Flight volumes tend to be too low for large carriers and too high for small carriers. But quantity-based regimes, where the airport authority allocates a fixed number of slots via free distribution or an auction, lead carriers to treat total flight volume (and thus congestion) as fixed, and this difference generates an efficient outcome as long as the number of slots is optimally chosen.     

Transport Taxes with Multiple Trip Purposes

A congestible urban transport system is considered in which cars and buses are used for commuting and non‐commuting trips. Commuting is a strict complement to taxable labour supply. The optimal tax structure for raising a given amount of government revenue is examined for the cases where differentiation of transport tolls between trip purposes is and is not possible. An application to Belgian urban environments shows that optimal toll differentiation produces significant efficiency improvements. Without differentiation, reforming transport taxes generates substantial gains only when the labour tax can be reduced.     

Congestion and tax competition in a parallel network

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of tolling road use on a parallel road network where each link can be tolled by a different government. Using both theoretical and numerical models, the paper analyses the potential tax competition between countries that each maximise the surplus of local users plus tax revenues in controlling local and transit transport. Three types of tolling systems are considered: (i) toll discrimination between local traffic and transit, (ii) only uniform tolls on local and transit transport are acceptable, (iii) tolls on local users only. The results suggest that the welfare effects of introducing transit tolls are large, but that differentiation of tolls between local and transit transport as compared to uniform tolls does not yield large welfare differences. Also, the welfare effects of toll cooperation between countries are relatively small in comparison with the welfare gains of non-cooperative tolling of transit. The numerical model further illustrates the effects of different transit shares and explicitly considers the role of asymmetries between countries. Higher transit shares strongly raise the transit toll and slightly decrease local tolls. With asymmetric demands, the welfare gains of introducing differentiated tolling rise strongly for the country with lower local demand.     

Estimates of price elasticity of demand for urban freeway use with high-frequency control variables: the case of Santiago,Chile

Estimates are presented of toll and fuel price elasticities of demand for urban freeway use in Santiago, Chile. High-frequency toll and vehicle data were collected from four urban freeways for different route segments and times of day. Estimation was performed using log-linear regression models whose explanatory variables were tolls, fuel prices, city traffic levels and sets of dichotomous variables to control for daily, weekly and monthly seasonality. City traffic is a high frequency control of the activity level of the city. The elasticities to changes in tolls and fuel were all low in absolute value. The toll elasticities were below 0.05 for two freeways and 0.16 for the third, while for the fourth, which had more alternative routes, it was 0.47. The fuel price elasticities were also heterogeneous, with values of approximately 0.45 for two freeways and 0.21 for the third whereas for the fourth, which had the fewest alternatives, it was 0.07.     

Uban Tolled Roads and the Value of Travel Time Savings*

The recent interest in the privatization of major urban roads has opened up the debate on the tolling of such facilities. Central to the identification of optimal tolls is a knowledge of the amount of money individuals are willing to outlay to save travel time. This paper combines a utility maximization framework with stated response data to determine values of time savings in the presence of varying levels of toll for the full set of urban journey purposes. The empirical results provide a basis for establishing one benchmark for toll setting, in the context of substantial lengths of urban roads. There are no tolled urban roads in any major urban area throughout the world     

A differentiated tolls system – an effective transport policy tool for Slovenia?

We provide an econometric model of passenger and freight transportation demand based on panel data for 10 sections of toll roads in Slovenia. Transportation demand on Slovenian motorways is price inelastic. The price elasticity of transportation demand statistically varies among different parts of the toll sections, so it would seem sensible to introduce a differentiated toll system that would allow the simultaneous achievement of multiple objectives, such as increasing the internalization of the external costs of transport, increasing transportation demand management on the basis of price and increasing cost recovery for the maintenance and development of toll roads in Slovenia. Transportation demand is even more responsive to changes in fuel price than changes in tolls, so transportation policy can manage transportation demand using differences in fuel prices. Based on estimates of demand models differentiated according to several geographical groups of road sections, we also find that growth in the price elasticity of transportation demand in Slovenia can be achieved through the expansion of the transport supply by increasing the competitiveness of rail transport and alternative transportation routes.     

Unpriced quality

A monopolist charges the same price for differentiated products when high quality products are likely to be assigned to low valuation consumers. The argument explains the use of ‘unpriced quality’ for concert tickets, movie theaters, and elsewhere.     

Entry, Prices, and Investment in Regulated Industries

The paper studies how the optimal regulatory policy is affected by the possibility of unregulated firms entering the market. In such cases, the regulator may prefer to limit price and cost reductions in the regulated incumbent. The extent to which this happens is shown to depend on the extent of the regulator's commitment: if it commits to a chosen policy, then the market outcome following entry is less competitive than it would be without commitment: price and production costs are both higher. We also show that, unlike the natural monopoly case, incentives for cost reducing investment are stronger when the regulatory policy has a short regulatory interval.     

Coordination of sectoral climate policies and life cycle emissions

Drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions involves numerous specific actions in each sector of the economy. The costs and abatement potential of these measures are interdependent because of sectoral linkages. For instance, the carbon footprint of electric vehicles depends on the electricity mix. This issue has received large attention in the literature on Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). This paper analyzes how life cycle considerations should be integrated into policy design. We model a partial equilibrium with two vertically connected sectors, an upstream (e.g. electricity) and a downstream (e.g. transportation) one. In each sector, a dirty and a clean technology are available. The clean downstream technology consumes the upstream good and may thus shift emissions to the upstream sector. Our main contribution is to detail how optimal subsidies on clean technologies should incorporate life cycle emissions when carbon pricing is limited. The optimal downstream subsidy should be corrected for all external costs generated in the upstream sector, not only unpriced pollution but also the fiscal externality due to the subsidy to the clean upstream technology. We also analyze the joint optimization of upstream and downstream policies. The upstream subsidy should not incorporate features of the downstream sector, whereas the downstream optimal subsidy depends upon the upstream sector characteristics. All results are illustrated using a calibrated example of the electrification of passenger cars.     

Ex Post Welfare under Alternative Health Care Systems

The implications of a societal aversion to inequality for the optimal structure of the health care system are studied. The agents are assumed to be ex ante identical, but to differ ex post in the state of their health. Inequality aversion is introduced by postulating a strictly concave ex post social welfare function. It is shown that the optimal public health care system allocates health care differently than would private health insurance; specifically, people who are relatively unhealthy with and without treatment receive more health care, and people who are relatively healthy with and without treatment receive less health care. The aggregate quantity of health care under the optimal public health care system can be either greater or smaller than under private health care insurance. If the public health care system is optimally designed, allowing agents to purchase supplementary private health care insurance cannot raise social welfare and is likely to decrease it.     

When a High Discount Rate Encourages Biodiversity

Include land in a neoclassical growth model and introduce a standard biogeographic relation between species recliners (biodiversity) and land. Assume that species provide utility. The optimal constant amount of land preserved for species is obtained from steady-state conditions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a high discount rate preserves more land when the elasticity of substitution between goods and species exceeds unity or when this elasticity is less than unity and technology is such that the output effect of a change in the interest rate exceeds the substitution effect.     

A substitution orbit model of competitive innovations

Successful innovation and diffusion of technology can be attributed to the identification of the orbit of emerging new technologies that complement or substitute for existing technologies. This dynamism resembles the co-evolution process in an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, in order to maintain sustainable development, the complex interplay between competition and cooperation, typically observed in predator-prey systems, create a sophisticated balance. Given that an ecosystem can be used as a masterpiece system, this sophisticated balance can provide suggestive ideas for identifying an optimal orbit of competitive innovations with complement or substitution dynamism.Prompted by such a sophisticated balance in an ecosystem, this paper analyzes the optimal orbit of competitive innovations and, on the basis of an application of Lotka-Volterra equations, it reviews substitution orbits of Japan's monochrome to color TV system, fixed telephones to cellular telephones, cellular telephones to mobile Internet access service, and analog to digital TV broadcasting. On the basis of substitution orbits analyses, it attempts to extract suggestions supportive to identifying an optimal policy option in a complex orbit leading to expected orbit.Key findings include policy options that are effective in controlling parameters for Lotka-Volterra equations leading to expected orbit.     

Alertness, local knowledge, and Johnny Appleseed

Anderson and Hill argue that property rights entrepreneurs, driven by non-replicable Kirznerian alertness, identify unowned and unpriced attributes of a resource and capture rents to those resources by limiting access to them. I argue that alertness is non-replicable, but it is also not random. Kirzner’s analytical framework emphasizes an individual’s local knowledge and subjective interpretative schema. Incorporating these concepts and emphasizing two types of local knowledge, about social and commercial conditions, explains why some people are alert to profit opportunities and others are not. This implies that economic restrictions are more detrimental to entrepreneurship than previously understood. I provide evidence by examining Johnny Appleseed’s successful nursery business.     

中国中长期煤炭需求预测

首先对中国煤炭需求与经济增长的关系进行验证,然后将工业化水平、城市化率等变量纳入煤炭需求协整模型,分析了经济增长、工业化水平、城市化率、煤炭价格、煤炭利用效率和能源替代效应对煤炭需求的影响,并预测了在3种经济增长速度(高、中、低)下2012—2030年中国的煤炭需求。结果显示:未来20年期间中国煤炭需求仍将持续增长;经济低速增长下中国煤炭需求的增幅远低于经济高速或中速增长下的增幅;在城市化和工业化进程中,煤炭消费总量将经历刚性高增长阶段;煤炭利用效率、煤炭价格和能源替代效应对煤炭需求有一定影响。     

Electric vehicles: Market penetration and positive externalities

In this paper, we develop a methodology for approximating the market penetration potential for electric vehicles (EVs). The model is dynamic in nature and explicitly accounts for the competitive effects of conventional vehicles. Unlike many previous models, it does not require an estimation of the time required to achieve a 50% market share. Instead, the model allows one to endogenously determine the rate of market penetration, as well as the ceiling level. We note that some electric vehicle characteristics limit marketability to consumers unaffected by the disadvantages associated with operating EVs. These characteristics are accounted for in the model by the use of a substitution index. The addition of the substitution index allows one to explicitly account for variations in prices, climate, and geographic contour, all of which affect market potential. Electric vehicles are expected to result in positive social benefits by way of reduced pollution emissions and because of the concomitant decrease in the consumption of gasoline that market adoption would bring about. However, the social benefits will not be captured in the market and will not, therefore, encourage the use of these alternatives to conventional vehicles. This means that the rate of adoption of electric vehicles will be slower than is socially optimal, which is a potential argument for government subsidies for electric vehicles. In this paper, we explore a method for analyzing the benefits associated with the adoption of electric vehicles.     

Efficiency properties of binary ecolabeling

We investigate efficiency properties of binary ecolabels in a homogeneous good market with heterogeneous consumers. Faced with the minimum technology standard, firms make endogenous entry, certification, and price/quantity decisions. We consider both perfect and imperfect competition with or without sunk fixed costs. Our findings are as follows. Ecolabeling alone does not achieve the first-best outcome and, to achieve the second best, may need to set the standard less strict than the efficient level. Without sunk fixed costs, ecolabeling can achieve the first-best outcome provided that both the technology standard and the complementary pollution tax are set at efficient levels. With sunk fixed costs, however, differential excise taxes that would restore allocative efficiency induce more entry than optimal, and thus, can be even welfare decreasing relative to no tax outcome. Tightening the technology standard may ameliorate such an adverse effect of the corrective tax system by reducing excessive entry and pollution per output by the certified firms.