A note on spurious significance in regressions involving <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">I</Emphasis>(0) and <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">I</Emphasis>(1) variables

We demonstrate that t ratios (the F statistic) for I(1) regressors in a model with an I(0) dependent variable will generally be oversized. This indicates that spurious significance occurs in a situation where it was not previously identified. We also compare the asymptotic rejection rates of t ratios for various combinations of I(1) and I(0) variables in the two-variable linear regression model. These rejection rates systematically increase with the degree of autocorrelation, yielding spurious significance, when both variables are either positively or negatively autocorrelated. In contrast, when one variable is negatively autocorrelated and the other is positively autocorrelated the rejection rates systematically fall and are undersized.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Resourceship</Emphasis>: An Austrian theory of mineral resources

Economists inside and outside of the Austrian-school tradition have formulated a subjectivist theory of mineral resources. While von Mises (1940) presented a rudimentary theory, institutionalist Zimmermann (1933 and after) provided an in-depth mind-centered approach distinct from the objective, neoclassical theory for minerals developed by Jevons (1865, 1866), Gray (1913), and Hotelling (1931). A full-fledged Austrian theory identifies the fixity/depletionism view of minerals as incompatible with entrepreneurship. Mineral resourceship, praxeologically akin to manufacturing, or the making of capital goods, demotes the distinction between depletable and nondepletable resources for the sciences of human action. Instead of nonreproducibility, the interplay of geography and institutions becomes the locus of mineral-resource theory, given the nonuniform distribution of deposits. An Austrian-institutional theory is more robust for explaining changes in mineral-resource scarcity than neoclassical depletionism, and offers a wide research agenda for current debates over resource production, usage, and future availability.

Moments of truncated <Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">F</Emphasis> distributions

Truncated distributions commonly arise in economics and related areas, see, for example, Lee (Econ Lett 3:165–169, 1979), Lien (Econ Lett 19:243–247, 1985; Econ Lett 20:45–47, 1986), Burdett (Econ Lett 52:263–267, 1996), Sercu (Insur: Math and Econ 20:79–95, 1997), Abadir and Magdalinos (Econom Theory 18:1276–1287, 2002), and Horrace (J Econom 126:335–354, 2005). In this note, we consider the most commonly encountered truncated distributions with heavy tails: the truncated t distribution and the truncated F distribution. For each of these distributions, we derive explicit expressions for the moments and estimation procedures by the method of moments and the method of maximum likelihood. An application is illustrated to a popular data set in the econometric literature.      

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Acting</Emphasis> Person: Social Capital and Sustainable Development

Ron Stanfield has had a long and distinguished career as a social economist and commentator on the social economy. Of special concern to us in this article are Stanfield’s interests in social capital, sustainable development, and nurturance which we refer to as caring. We also take up several other virtues including sympathy, benevolence, and generosity that have been part of the economics literature from the time of Smith’s Moral Sentiments along with the associated vices of heartlessness, insensitivity, meanness, greediness, and others. This article attempts to show that (1) adding social capital to the machine-like individual of mainstream economics results in the acting person of personalist economics who becomes more fully a human person through social interactions that foster the development of several virtues or less fully a human person through other interactions that instill certain vices; and that (2) in matters relating to sustainability, becoming more fully a human person calls especially for the practice of the virtues of justice and moderation. In addition we have suggested a framework for thinking about sustainable development in terms of actuating and limiting principles and for developing critical values or performance standards for sustainable development that are person-centered.     

The knowledge problem,determinism, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Sensory Order</Emphasis>

The arguments presented in Hayek's The Sensory Order suggest that the mind/brain is a decentralized spontaneous order. The decentralized nature of decision-making and the central role of classification in perception, cognition, and action, are solutions to the knowledge problem that confronts the system. The nature of this decentralized complex system suggests that the ordering is deterministic and that free will in the sense of a decision-maker being able to stand outside the circle of cause and effect is an illusion. If determinism is correct, how can we hold individuals responsible for their actions? It is argued that the evolution of responsibility, blame and credit are the products of a second Hayekian spontaneous order. Responsibility and the allocation of credit and blame are part of an implicit social contract that facilitates cultural evolution, political freedom, and economic growth. It is responsibility, not the existence of free will, that makes freedom possible.     

Possible economic impacts of a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation: an application of <Emphasis Type="Italic">FUND</Emphasis>

Climate change can lead to a substantial reduction of the strength of the thermohaline circulation in the world oceans. This is often thought to have severe consequences particularly on the North Atlantic region and Northern and Western Europe. The integrated assessment model FUND is used to estimate the extent of these impacts. The results indicate that, owing to a slower warming (rather than cooling) of the regions most affected by a thermohaline circulation collapse, climate change induced damages in these regions would be smaller in case of a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation. However, even with a thermohaline circulation collapse, the total and marginal impacts of climate change are negative.JEL Classification: Q510, Q540We are grateful to Till Kuhlbrodt for providing the CLIMBER data and to Andre Krebber for processing them. The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research through the INTEGRATION project, the US National Science Foundation through the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change (SBR-9521914) and the Michael Otto Foundation provided welcome financial support.     

The Impact of Climate Change on the Balanced Growth Equivalent: An Application of <Emphasis Type="Italic">FUND</Emphasis>

The Stern Review added balanced growth equivalents (BGE) to the economic climate change research agenda. We first propose rigorous definitions of the BGE for multiple regions and under uncertainty. We show that the change in the BGE is independent of the assumed scenario of per capita income. For comparable welfare economic assumptions as the Stern Review, we calculate lower changes in BGE between a business as usual scenario and one without climate impacts with the model FUND than the Stern Review found with the model PAGE. We find that mitigation policies give even lower changes in BGE and argue that those policy choices should be the focus of the research effort rather than total damage estimates. According to our results, the current carbon tax should be below $55/tC. Sensitivity analyses show that the Stern Review chose parameters that imply high impact estimates. However, for regionally disaggregated welfare functions, we find changes in BGE that are significantly higher than the results from the Stern Review both for total damage as for policy analysis. With regional disaggregation and high risk aversion, we observe fat tails and with that very high welfare losses.      

<Emphasis Type="Bold">The Free-Market Innovation Machine - Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism</Emphasis>

Book Review

The Free-Market Innovation Machine - Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism     

A study on abdominal wagging in the fire ant, <Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Solenopsis invicta</Emphasis>, with speculation on its meaning

Social vertebrates have a rich repertoire of communication signals and modalities. Recent work on the social insects has uncovered a diverse set of communication modalities including chemical, tactile, visual, and auditory signals to communicate a wide variety of information on the location of distant food sites, distress, and aggression. Here, we investigated abdominal wagging in the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta. We found that the abdominal “wagging” that occurred inside the fire ant nests differed significantly from the abdominal “flagging” that is known to occur outside the fire ant nests. Neither sounds nor venom was emitted during abdominal wagging inside the fire ant nests. Moreover, the incidence and duration of abdominal wagging was greater when workers were tending brood or ingesting food than when engaged in non-brood related tasks or in donating food. Lastly, inside the nests, abdominal wagging neither attracted nor repelled nearby workers. Thus, we speculate that wagging is an expression of pleasure while tending brood or ingesting food that falls along the continuum between the aggressive nature of abdominal flagging and the distress call of abdominal stridulation.     

Symposium introduction to Hayekian themes in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Order of Public Reason</Emphasis>

This introduction provides an overview of the papers in the symposium on Hayekian themes in The Order of Public Reason.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">The Nature of the Farm: Contracts,Risk, and Organization in Agriculture</Emphasis>

Book Review

The Nature of the Farm: Contracts, Risk, and Organization in Agriculture     

Spatially Uniform <Emphasis Type="Italic">versus</Emphasis> Spatially Heterogeneous Compensation Payments for Biodiversity-Enhancing Land-Use Measures

The importance of compensation payments for biodiversity-enhancing land-use measures has grown over the past decade, particularly in connection with agri-environmental policy. Given that both the costs and the benefits of biodiversity-enhancing land-use measures are subject to spatial variation, the criterion of cost-effectiveness calls for spatially heterogeneous compensation payments. However, when deciding whether to implement uniform or heterogeneous compensation payments, the regulator has to compare the disadvantage of uniform payments in terms of cost-effectiveness with the disadvantages of spatially heterogeneous payments. To help resolve this issue, this paper provides a simple ecological-economic model that allows the reduced cost-effectiveness associated with uniform payments for biodiversity-enhancing land-use measures to be assessed for different types of benefit and cost functions.JEL classification: Q20