Taking,giving, and impure altruism in dictator games

We show that, if giving is equivalent to not taking, impure altruism could account for List’s (in Journal of Political Economy 115(3):482–493, 2007) finding that the payoff to recipients in a dictator game decreases when the dictator has the option to take. We examine behavior in dictator games with different taking options but equivalent final payoff possibilities. We find that recipients tend to earn more as the amount the dictator must take to achieve a given final payoff increases, a result consistent with the hypothesis that the cold prickle of taking is stronger than the warm glow of giving. We conclude that not taking is not equivalent to giving and agree with List (in Journal of Political Economy 115(3):482–493, 2007) that the current social preference models fail to rationalize the observed data.     

Light pollution,sleep deprivation,and infant health at birth

We conduct the first study to examine the fetal health impact of light pollution based on a direct measure of skyglow, an important aspect of light pollution. Using an empirical regularity discovered in physics (called Walker's law) as an instrumental variable, we address the potential endogeneity problem associated with the skyglow variable. We find evidence of reduced birth weight, shortened gestational length, and increases in preterm births. Specifically, increased nighttime brightness, characterized by being able to see only one‐fourth to one‐third of the stars that are visible in the natural unpolluted night sky, is associated with an increase of 1.48 percentage points in the likelihood of a preterm birth. Our study adds to the literature on the impact of early‐life exposure to pollution, which so far has focused primarily on air pollution. Our study has important policy implications regarding the necessity of minimizing skyglow that is, for example, contributed by streetlights.     

Green Polities: Urban Environmental Performance and Government Popularity

Ascertaining whether local election results are driven by incumbents' performance while in office or mechanically reflect constituencies' ideological affiliation and macroeconomic conditions is crucial for evaluating the alleged accountability‐enhancing property of decentralization. On the basis of a unique score of urban environmental performance and the results of all elections held in the major Italian cities over a decade, we investigate the role of local (fiscal and environmental) vs. national issues in municipal elections. Although the empirical evidence points to a strong ideological attachment and a somewhat weaker “fiscal conservatism,” it reveals that media reported environmental rankings have an impact on the popularity of city governments.     

Externalities of National Pharmaceutical Policy when Markets are Integrated through Parallel Trade

This paper studies externalities of nationally determined cost‐sharing systems, in particular coinsurance rates, under pharmaceutical parallel trade in a two‐country model with a vertical distributor relationship. Parallel trade generates a price‐decreasing competition effect in the destination country of the parallel import and a price‐increasing double marginalization effect in the source country. An increase of the coinsurance rate in the destination country mitigates the double marginalization effect in the source country. An increase of the coinsurance rate in the source country reinforces the competition effect in the destination country. This may be a case for policy coordination in the European Union.     

Determinants of total efficiency in water utilities in Mexico

By using panel data analysis across 368 water utilities in Mexico over the period 2010–2014, we find that small firms are more efficient than medium and large providers and that increasing production is associated with less efficiency. Billing, income collection and profitability are relevant factors to improve efficiency. Medium and large firms require to measure consumption by service with meters in order to increase efficiency, while small firms do not require it.     

A regularity theory of causality for the social sciences

Quality & Quantity - This article discusses a regularity theory of causality (RTC) for the social sciences. With RTC, causality is a relationship between X and Y characterized by three...     

Nonlinear dynamics in economic modelling

Decisions in Economics and Finance -     

Measuring pesticide overuse and its determinants: Evidence from Vietnamese rice and fruit farms

Pesticides have long been important for the development of agricultural production. However, improper use of pesticides may result in inefficiency with respect to farm profitability, in addition to external effects of pesticide use on environmental and human health. This paper employs a production function that explicitly accounts for the role of damage abatement inputs (i.e. pesticides) in the production process, to examine the optimal use of pesticides. It then investigates determinants of pesticide overuse versus underuse and the intensity of overuse. The empirical application uses data on Vietnamese rice and fruit farms drawn from the 2016 Vietnamese Household Living Standards Survey. Results show about 95% of farmers overused pesticides for both rice and fruit farming systems. The Mekong Delta, also known as the ‘Rice Bowl’ of Vietnam, has higher levels of overuse on rice farms than two other regions. Overuse intensity is lower for female and poorer rice farmers while intensity is higher for those with more income and more family members. For fruit farms, younger farmers or those with more family members were more likely to overuse versus underuse pesticides.     

Urban Political Ecologies and Children's Geographies: Queering Urban Ecologies of Childhood

This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and children in the city. While dominant representations and idealizations of nature and childhood depend on the binary logic of the nature/culture and rural/urban divide, there is also a simplification and romanticization of nature in children's geographies and a lack of children and their spaces in urban political ecology. We argue that children and nature in cities need to be removed from a binary model of being and attended to in more nuanced ways in urban political ecology and children's geographies. In this regard, we suggest that both nature and children in cities need to be queered. We need to ask how the production of urban spaces (re)creates particular romantic and idealized relations with natures that reify the binaries between nature/culture, and male/female through a heteronormative framework. The purpose of this article is to bring the critical nature–society theories of urban political ecology into conversation with work in children's geographies that explores the ‘nature' of childhood, and in doing so queer the relationship between children and nature. Drawing on research on queer ecologies, and queered childhoods, we aim to provide a framework to rethink and queer both nature and children in cities.