Hedonic models and air pollution: Twenty-five years and counting

This paper reports a meta analysis of how effectively hedonic property models have detected the influence of air pollution on housing prices. Probit estimates are reported describing how data, model specification, and local property market conditions in cities represented in thirty-seven studies influence the ability of hedonic models to uncover negative, statistically significant relationships between housing prices and air pollution measures.Partial support for this research was provided by the Russell Sage Foundation. Thanks are due David Cordray, Heidi Hartman, and Larry Hedges of the Foundation's Meta-Analysis Panel for constructive comments, to Ray Palmquist for suggestions and assistance in assembling the results from his studies, to Rick Freeman and Tom Tietenberg and two anonymous referees for comments on the research, and to Barbara Scott for constructive editing of earlier drafts of this paper.     

Economic mechanisms for environmental protection: Business versus market transaction costs

This study presents theoretical arguments and evidence that attempt to show the contribution of economic mechanisms typical of a business for resolving problems of environmental protection. Firstly, a brief synopsis is given of the classic solutions that environmental economics proposes for correcting environmental externalities. Next, the benefit of expanding these two mechanisms is discussed so that they include those intermediate mechanisms for which it is not possible to clearly establish if they are developed within the domain of the market or the business. The study's focus resides in the fact that the explicit expansion of the range of solutions proposed from a macroeconomic point of view establishes a connecting point between environmental economics and business economics, an area in which academic attention to environmental matters has been significantly less. The present work forms part of research project SEC2002-00835, financed by MCYT-FEDER.     

Multiple Species Boreal Forests – What Faustmann Missed

Recent research in natural sciences shows that the dynamics in boreal forests are much more complex than what many models traditionally used in forestry economics reflect. This essay analyzes some challenges of accounting for such complexity. It shows that the optimal harvesting strategy for forest owners is history dependent and for some states of the forest, more than one strategy may be optimal.This paper confirms earlier literature on shallow lakes and coral reefs and shows that this kind of phenomena seem much more common than previously thought. They are valid for a wide range of ecosystems that cover large surfaces and they do not depend on the choice of some specific function to model the non-linearity. There are also indications that theses results could be obtained even for resources with concave growth if at least one species with non-linear growth affects their dynamics.     

Identification and Measurement of Australian Consumer Sentiment

This article was prepared by Dr L. V. Defris and J. S. McDonnell of the Institute research staff. The authors wish to thank Professor R. F. Henderson and Dr P. J. Sheehan for their helpful comments.     

Endogenous structural change and crisis in a multiple time-scales growth model

The slow and endogenous twist of economic macro-structure makes up an important evolutionary feature of capitalist economies, and may be at the root of structural crisis. In this line, a Goodwinian growth model with increasing returns and profit-sharing that tries to picture a simple scenario of the seventies crisis is considered. It is shown that the exhaustion of the Kaldor-Verdoorn “productivity law” can entail, in a nonlinear framework, a “catastrophic” bifurcation from a “high” to a “low” growth path. Slow/fast dynamical systems then allow one to formalize a multiple time-scales dynamics where the growth path is shaped by the structural framework in which it takes place, but has also a long -un feedback. Structural change and crisis appear as long term and endogenous outcomes.     

THE VALUE OF CLEANER AIR: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

Policymakers in the legislative and regulatory arenas face increasing public expectations that authorities will both promulgate and implement strict environmental programs. At the same time, the aggregate cost of such programs is rising and is impacting economic sectors previously untouched. In this context, a major study used an integrated interdisciplinary perspective to determine what economic benefits would result from air pollution controls. Specifically, the study developed estimates for the health benefits of reducing ozone and fine particulate matter concentrations in the nation's most polluted region—the South Coast Air Basin centering on Los Angeles. This paper presents the economic methodologies and results of that study. It also discusses how health and atmospheric sciences informed the economic assessment.     

The effects of supportive management and job quality on the turnover intentions and health of military personnel

To be competitive in today's increasingly complex and rapidly changing envi‐ronment, organizations must retain personnel and promote the well‐being of employees. We examine the relationship of both support provided to person‐nel and job quality with employee health and turnover intentions among a sample of 450 military personnel. Factors involving the supportive manage‐ment of personnel (i.e., supervisory support, organizational support, and work‐life balance) and factors pertaining to job quality (i.e., work stimulation and job clarity) were indirectly related to health and to turnover intentions through the mediating influence of job satisfaction. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Elasticity estimates of farmed salmon demand in Spain and Italy

In this paper, estimates of the elasticities that characterize the structure of demand for farmed salmon in Spain and Italy are reported. The demand models are specified using a Box-Cox transformation of the variables and a Hausman test is used to determine price endogeneity in the demand equations. The results show short-run unitary own-price elasticity of demand for farmed salmon in both markets, but long run estimates show significant elastic price response. Short run substitution of salmon for other fish species is not observed and, for both Spain and Italy, farmed salmon is characterized as a luxury good. Interestingly, we show that our a priori expectations about own-price elasticities being lower in smaller market areas is confirmed. Finally, the results obtained are compared to other recent results reported in the salmon demand literature.