On the Relation between Local Amenities and House Price Dynamics

This study explores the extent to which local amenities are related to house price volatility, returns and risk‐adjusted returns across 238 MSAs. We find strong evidence that high amenity areas experience greater price volatility. In regards to returns, high amenity areas experience greater (lower) real returns in appreciating (depreciating) markets. However, high amenity areas experience little to no abnormal risk‐adjusted returns. Results from the study are robust to an endogenous treatment of amenities and land supply elasticity. Overall, we conclude that the desirability of a metropolitan area is a significant channel through which land values drive house price dynamics.     

Estimating the Enduring Effects of Fertiliser Subsidies on Commercial Fertiliser Demand and Maize Production: Panel Data Evidence from Malawi

Most studies of input subsidy programmes confine their analyses to measuring programme effects over a one‐year period. This article estimates the potential longer‐run or enduring effects of fertiliser subsidy programmes on smallholder farm households' demand for commercial fertiliser and maize production over time. We use four waves of panel data on 462 farm households in Malawi for whom fertiliser use can be tracked for eight consecutive seasons between 2003/2004 and 2010/2011. Panel estimation methods are used to control for potential endogeneity of subsidised fertiliser acquisition. Results indicate that farmers acquiring subsidised fertiliser in three consecutive prior years are found to purchase slightly more commercial fertiliser in the next year. This suggests a small amount of crowding in of commercial fertiliser from the receipt of subsidised fertiliser in prior years. In addition, acquiring subsidised fertiliser in a given year has a modest positive impact on increasing maize output in that same year. However, acquiring subsidised fertiliser in multiple prior years generates no statistically significant effect on maize output in the current year. These findings indicate that potential enduring effects of the Malawi fertiliser subsidy programme on maize production are limited. Additional interventions that increase soil fertility can make using inorganic fertiliser more profitable and sustainable for smallholders in sub‐Saharan Africa and thereby increase the cost‐effectiveness of input subsidy programmes.     

Cap and trade policies in the presence of monopoly and distortionary taxation

We extend an analytical general equilibrium model of environmental policy with pre-existing labor tax distortions to include pre-existing monopoly power as well. We show that the existence of monopoly power has two offsetting effects on welfare. First, the environmental policy reduces monopoly profits, and the negative effect on income increases labor supply in a way that partially offsets the pre-existing labor supply distortion. Second, environmental policy raises prices, so interaction with the pre-existing monopoly distortion further exacerbates the labor supply distortion. This second effect is larger, for reasonable parameter values, so the existence of monopoly reduces the welfare gain (or increases the loss) from environmental restrictions.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT,NON‐TRADED GOODS AND REAL WAGES

Using a three‐sector general equilibrium model with non‐traded goods, we investigate the impact of foreign direct investment on the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers. We show that foreign direct investment increases the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers alike, but widens the gap between the two under plausible conditions.     

香港交易所致力推动可持续发展新动向

香港交易所《环境、社会及管治报告指引》的公共意见征求工作将在四月初结束,之后交易所准备进入指引制定的下一阶段,在致力推动亚洲的可持续发展方面迈出实质性的一步。在全球金融市场中,香港交易所已经成为IPO的重要中心,所以此次加强信息披露的要求很重要。通过该指引,香港交易所开始驶上国际轨道,与其他交易所及机构型投资者一样注重企业在环保及社会方面披露信息的重要性,要求     

A comment on the role of prices for excludable public goods

Blomquist and Christensen [(2005). The role of prices for excludable public goods, International Tax and Public Finance, 12 ,61–79] argue that welfare is initially decreasing in the price of an excludable public good and that the case for a positive price for an excludable public good price is weak. We argue that this result follows from their particular characterization of the public good and that an alternative and equally reasonable characterization overturns their result. Hence, the policy case for a positive price on the public good is stronger than Blomquist and Christiansen suggest. JEL Classification H21 · H41     

Union security rights at the polls: A call for modeling right-to-work voting

From 1944 to 1986, 19 states held 27 referendums on right-to-work legislation, with 22.5 million people voting on the proposals. Despite its prominence as a public issue, most research on right-to-work laws focuses on their industrial relations impacts, and not on employees’ individual rights to refrain from joining unions or those same employees’ responsibilities to support their bargaining unit representative. Nor has there been any research on what citizen groups determine those rights and responsibilities in a right-to-work referendum. This study explores a potential operational model of anti-right-to-work voting with a multiple regression analysis of Missouri’s 1978 right-to-work election results, and hopes to serve as a stimulus to additional research on these particular dimensions of the right-to-work issue.     

Territorialization in a closing commodity frontier: The Yasuní rainforests of West Amazonia

In Ecuador's Yasuní rainforests and the lived history of the Waorani that live there, the commodification of first rubber and then oil shaped territorialization into particularly violent form. The formative role of rubber production in the 19th century involved local despots' imposition of a regime of violence. Reacting to this violent capitalist system, individual Waorani forged new socio‐spatial territories through violence with rubber slavers and cooperation with the Taromenane, a people who continue to live in isolation. Today, an oil complex exerts control to bring the end of Yasuní's commodity frontier, even while the Waorani Nation and Taromenane hold legal rights to parts of the forests. In this article, I analyse how rubber and oil exploitation has unfolded as capitalist territorial violence, spurring Waorani and Taromenane social expressions and political mobilizations that are at times violent, but primarily not.     

展望“里约＋20峰会”把握企业可持续发展趋势

1992年，联合国在巴西里约热内卢举办了联合国环境和发展大会，有183个国家的代表出席。当时各国已感受到生态破坏的威胁，推动了一系列的国际条约以及新的承诺，并正式提出了可持续发展的理念。时隔20年，“联合国可持续发展大会”将于今年6月在巴西里约热内卢举行，因此也被称为“里约＋20峰会”。