Data Feature: Earnings Biases in the United Kingdom Regional Accounts: Some Economic Policy and Research Implications

Between the late 1970s and late 1980s, the UK Regional Accounts data suggest a much smaller rise in the South East earnings premium and consequently a much smaller increase in the regional dispersion of earnings than do the other sources of data. We discuss several possible explanations for this discrepancy and conclude it was probably due to problems at the Inland Revenue in allocating tax records across the regions. The historical unreliability of the Regional Accounts has implications for economic research on regional consumption and convergence and may have caused the poorest regions to miss out on EU Structural Funds.     

The marketplace management of illegal elixirs: illicit consumption of rhino horn

This article examines the consumption of illegally traded rhino horn. We conducted a survey on 608 males in Vietnam, a country that is identified as among the world's largest recipients of illicit rhino horn. We find that supposed health benefits, such as body detoxification and hangover treatment, were the most common reasons for rhino horn usage. Consumers also used rhino horn to display economic wealth, acquire social status, and initiate business and political relationships. We illuminate the shift in the perceived place of rhino horn from functional to symbolic: rhino horn is not only supposed to possess curative properties but through its circulation within social and professional networks is also considered part of the consumers’ search for a sense of “self,” a sense of “us,” and the delineation of the “other.” We discuss implications for strategies that serve to reduce or prevent further loss of the rhinoceros.     

Widening the Economic Approach to Hatred

The economics of hate is a barely developed field. There is one paper overtly on the topic by Glaeser and several related papers on racism. war and other important topics. This paper considers the scope for taking the economic analysis of hate beyond the narrow confines of the neoclassical approach by Glaeser and those working in cognate areas.

Distributional Preferences and the Incidence of Costs and Benefits in Climate Change Policy

We explore the relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences, by which we mean individuals’ opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern. We use 1,770 responses to an online stated preference survey. The domestic costs in our survey’s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles, and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries. We also elicit respondents’ perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business-as-usual. WTP is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation, and when respondents believe (and care) that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world’s poor. That WTP for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result: efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit-cost analyses.     

GROWTH AREAS,GROWTH CENTRES AND REGIONAL CONVERSION*

Five arguments in favour of a growth area strategy have been analysed and though all of them lack empirical substance, they have certain merits on a priori grounds. Thus any policy which contributes, on the long-run, to a more rapid concentration of a region's population into relatively large urban areas, is likely to create the conditions for servicing net and replacement demand for social/economic overhead capital at a low per capita cost. Moreover for a given subsidy cost, discriminatory investment in the dense, complex, urbanised areas of a region may maximise the flow of income to regional earners in the short-run: attract the maximum flow of exogenous enterprise and capital; and give the best chance of creating a new export base which reduces the regional balance-of-payments deficit and provides sufficient job-opportunities to restrain the flow out of the region of the economically active. In addition, the quality and content of shortterm regional planning may be improved if the mix and scheduling of public investment over time is given a rigorous spatial dimension. Thus, on all of these counts, there are convincing reasons for encouraging an especially rapid development of the relative large, dense interrelated urban areas and by contrast good reasons for a relative neglect of the small hinterland areas.     

Management of collaborative research: collaboration and exploitation under the UK's information engineering advanced technology programme

An evaluation of a large government-supported programme of research in information technology has enabled a detailed analysis to be made of motives, participant characteristics, management styles and exploitation routes in a large number of collaborative research projects. One particularly successful collaborative structure is discussed in detail. The analysis also highlights a series of issues which must be addressed by programme adminstrators, including the need to strike a balance between rigidity and flexibility in the definition and management of collaborative research programmes.     

Econometric models based on count data. Comparisons and applications of some estimators and tests

This paper deals with specification, estimation and tests of single equation reduced form type equations in which the dependent variable takes only non-negative integer values. Beginning with Poisson and compound Poisson models, which involve strong assumptions, a variety of possible stochastic models and their implications are discussed. A number of estimators and their properties are considered in the light of uncertainty about the data generation process. The paper also considers the role of tests in sequential revision of the model specification beginr ing with the Poisson case and provides a detailed application of the estimators and tests to a model of the number of doctor consultations.     

Resilient and Inclusive Prosperity within Planetary Boundaries

The current model of economic growth generated unprecedented increases in human wealth and prosperity during the 19th and 2Oth centuries. The main mechanisms have been the rapid pace of technological and social innovation, human capital accumulation, and the conversion of resources and natural capital into more valuable forms of produced capital. However, there is evidence emerging that this model may be approaching environmental limits and planetary boundaries, and that the conversion of natural capital needs to slow down rapidly and then be reversed Some commentators have asserted that in order for this to occur, we will need to stop growing altogether and, instead, seek prosperity without growth. Others argue that environmental concerns are low-priority luxuries to be contemplated once global growth has properly returned to levels observed prior to the 2008 financial crisis. A third group argues that there is no trade-off and, instead,, promotes green growth： the （politically appealing） idea is that we can simultaneously grow and address our environmental problems. This paper provides a critical perspective on this debate and suggests that asubstantial researc＇h agenda is required to come to grips with these challenges. One place to start is with the relevant metrics： measures of per-capitawealth, and, eventually, quantitative measures of prosperity, alongside a dashboard of other sustainability indicators. A public andpoliticalfocus on wealth （a stock）, and its annual changes, could realistically complement the current focus on market-based gross output as measured by GDP （a flow）. This could have important policy implications, but deeper changes to governance and business models will be required.