Does the diversity of human capital increase GDP? A comparison of education systems

This paper examines how different education systems affect GDP by influencing the diversity of human capital. We construct an overlapping generation model in which agents are heterogeneous in income and innate ability, and the final goods are produced with differentiated intermediate goods. It is shown that under a realistic condition, the diversity of human capital induced by income inequality always lowers the GDP of the next period, while the diversity of human capital induced by heterogeneous ability can increase GDP, if the produced intermediate goods are sufficiently substitutable and firms have a large span of control. Hence, as public education equalizes education resources across households, it mitigates the negative effect of income inequality on GDP, while the effects of ability tracking crucially depend on the production structure of the economy.     

碳贸易价格风险变动趋势与我国CDM发展策略

本文构建并拟合了包含分布转换的Markov-GARCH模型,计算了基于该模型的风险价值(VaR),对国际碳贸易市场价格风险变动趋势进行了分析。研究结果表明:碳贸易市场价格在均值、方差、峰度、波动聚集性以及分布形式方面都具有机制转换的特性;欧盟推出的EU ETS改革措施将促使未来碳贸易市场价格波动风险进一步降低。我国应当适时提高CDM合同最低限价;减少向CDM合同国际买方支付的风险溢价;暂停上马HFC-23和N2O分解类项目;加快国内碳贸易和碳金融市场的发展,争夺国际碳贸易市场定价权。     

Evaluating the Effect of Conservation Policies on Agricultural Land Use: A Site-specific Modeling Approach

This study evaluates quantitatively the effect of three policies (payments for cropland retirement, fertilizer use taxes and payments for crop rotations) on agricultural land use in the upper Mississippi River basin. This is done by estimating two logit models of land use decisions using data from the 1982, 1987,1992 and 1997 Natural Resource Inventories. The models predict farmers' crop choice, crop rotation and participation in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) at more than 48,000 Natural Resource Inventories sites under each of the three policies. Results suggest that an increase in the CRP rental rates would significantly increase the CRP acreage, but most of the acreage increase would come initially from less fertilizer‐intensive crops. In contrast, a fertilizer use tax would significantly reduce acreage planted to more fertilizer‐intensive crops, and thus would likely be cost effective for reducing agricultural chemical use and pollution. Although an incentive payment for a corn‐soybean rotation would raise acreage of this rotation and reduce the acreage of continuous corn, the acreage response is in general quite inelastic. Cette étude évalue quantitativement les effets rovoqués par les trois politiques (paiements pour le retrait des terres cultivables, taxes sur l'utilisation d'engrais et paiements pour l'alternance des cultures) sur les terres agricoles du bassin supérieur du Mississipi. Ceci est obtenu en évaluant deux modéles logit des décisions sur l'utilisation des terres provenant des données des «Natural Resource Inventories» de 1982, 1987, 1992 et 1997. Les modéles prédisent le choix des cultures des agriculteurs, l'alternance des cultures et la participation du «Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)» dans plus de 48 000 Natural Resource Inventories dans le cadre de chacune des trois politiques. Les résultats suggérent qu'une augmentation des taux de location du CRP accroisse de maniére significative la surface de CRP, mais la majeure partie de cet accroissement de surface provenaient initialement de cultures moins intensives sans engrais. Cependant, l'utilisation d'une taxe sur l'utilisation d'engrais pouvait réduire de maniére significative la surface plantée avec des récoltes intensives utilisant plus d'engrais, et ainsi ce serait sans doute plus économique pour réduire la pollution et l'utilisation de produits chimiques en agriculture. Bien que des paiements incitatifs à l'alternance maïs‐soja réduisent la surface d'une culture continue de maïs et augmentaient la surface de l'alternance maïs‐soja, les résultats aux transformations des surfaces des terres seraient tout à fait rigides.     

An analysis of an airport–airline relationship under a risk sharing contract

This paper analyzes a risk sharing incomplete contract under which an airline agrees to serve an airport in exchange for payment to/from the airport based on the difference between a realized and a target load factor. The key results are that we specified the relevant conditions on payments and utilities under which the incomplete contract can overcome the under-effort problem and achieve the efficient utility levels. These results are numerically illustrated by showing the impacts of the project prospect deterioration and the uncertainty increases on effort and utility levels.     

Analysis on bargaining about global climate change mitigation in international aviation sector

Understanding the basic interaction mechanism among nations surrounding the CO₂ emissions is critically important for the policy formulation analysis in aviation sector at present, especially for market-based measures such as emission allowance trading. We performed simulation analysis of the effects on pricing of emission allowances by including major players such as China and India into the hypothetical global CO₂ emission trading scheme according to non-cooperative game framework. In the presence of a negative public good, i.e., CO₂, we extended the Lindahl–Bowen–Samuelson condition to include a class of uncertainty typical in climate change policy into utility. By using the result, we explained, with some numerical examples, the welfare effects caused by the changes of factors, such as level of uncertainty, degree of risk averse, asymmetric utility structure, initial allocation among players, based on our model surrounding the bargaining of CO₂ emissions allocation games.     

From Microlevel Decisions to Landscape Changes: An Assessment of Agricultural Conservation Policies

The growth in conservation programs has created a need for modeling frameworks capable of measuring microlevel behavioral responses and macrolevel landscape changes. This paper presents an empirical model that predicts farmers' production practices and the resulting levels of agricultural runoffs at more than 42,000 agricultural sites in the upper-Mississippi river basin under alternative conservation policies. Results suggest that payments for conservation tillage and crop rotations increase the use of these conservation practices. However, the acreage response is inelastic and the programs are not likely to be cost effective on their own for addressing hypoxia problem in the Gulf of Mexico.     

The time-series properties of the risk premium in the Yen/Dollar exchange market

In this paper a VAR model is employed to construct a measure of the conditional expectations of the future yen/dollar spot rate. This measure allows us to examine the dynamics of an ex-ante time-series for the risk premium in the market. The VAR model produces ‘better’ forecasts than the survey responses for turbulent periods such as 1981–1982 and 1984–1985. The VAR-generated expectations are then used to construct a risk premium time-series. This risk premium series seems to be more reliable than the ones obtained using either survey data on expectations of the future spot exchange rate or the ex-post realized spot exchange rate. Tests on the risk premium series suggest that a risk premium was present, but that it was virtually constant throughout the sample. The conditional variance of the risk premium changed over time, but its unconditional distribution seemed stable across subsamples. Despite these features, the volatility of the series was substantial and varied considerably throughout the sample.