What are public services worth, and to whom? Non-parametric estimation of capitalization in Pune

The availability and quality of basic public services are important determinants of urban quality of life. In many cities, rapid population growth and fiscal constraints are limiting the extent to which urban governments can keep up with increasing demand for these services. It therefore becomes important to prioritize provision of those services to best reflect local demand. We present a strategy to estimate the demand for public services, which is sensitive to heterogeneity in preferences across types of households, and the non-parametric estimation addresses problems arising from functional form restrictions. Using data from Pune, India, we estimate the demand for public services, as represented by the marginal change in the self-assessed monthly rental price of dwellings from the services. We find that the value of publicly-provided services accruing to the poor is greater than that going to wealthier households, and even untargeted across-the-board investment in specific services can be progressive.     

Implications of alternate policies on welfare of slum dwellers: Evidence from Pune,India

In this paper we examine how slum dwellers value location-based amenities. In most developing country cities, residents living in slums have poor-quality dwellings and limited access to basic public services and amenities. Using data from Pune, India, we estimate the residential location choices of slum dwellers, which are conditional on housing quality, neighborhood amenities, and community structure. We use these estimates to simulate the impact of alternate interventions on household welfare. We find that households derive benefits from housing quality and neighborhood amenities. While relocating households to the periphery has adverse consequences for household welfare, we show that households could be adequately compensated out of the increased tax revenue accruing from alternative uses of the vacated central land.     

Least-cost allocation of measures to increase the amount of coarse woody debris in forest estates

Coarse woody debris (CWD) is crucial for maintaining biodiversity in forests but conservation measures to increase CWD must be performed cost efficiently. We estimate least-cost combinations of CWD-increasing measures in a spruce-dominated Swedish forest estate. Specifically, we investigate how using combinations of the measures tree retention, creating high stumps, manual scarification, prolonged rotations, and retention of dying trees impacts the amount of CWD and net present value at the estate level. We found that by combining CWD-increasing measures in an optimal way the amount of CWD on the estate could be increased 322% with a decrease in present value of only 10%. The optimal combination of conservation measures depends on the desired increase in CWD. The analysis thus shows that huge improvements in cost-efficiency of biodiversity-oriented forestry are possible.     

Reciprocal Dumping with Product Differentiation*

This paper examines if international trade can reduce total welfare in an international oligopoly with differentiated goods. We show that intra‐industry trade, i.e. “reciprocal dumping,” can result in lower total surplus than autarky in a Cournot model for any degree of product differentiation. Moreover, trade can reduce welfare compared to autarky in a Bertrand model when the local markets are sufficiently competitive and products are sufficiently close substitutes. Otherwise it unambiguously increases welfare.     

Optimal agenda-setter timing

Abstract .  We analyze the optimal timing problem of an agenda setter who can propose a project that is then voted on by a committee. The payoff consists of a common stochastic component and an idiosyncratic component that differs among committee members. The agenda setter may be biased for or against the project, relative to the median committee member, and chooses when to call the vote. We analyze how the timing decision depends on the political environment and the bias of the agenda setter. We show that both positively and negatively biased agenda setters can implement decisions that differ from those preferred by the median committee member.     

Get Out The Vote: How Encouraging Voting Changes Political Outcomes

How do measures to increase turnout affect election outcomes? I use a novel approach to analyze how these measures influence both voter turnout and the candidates' political positions. In general, lowering the net expense of voting reduces political polarization. If the net expense of voting is made very low, then candidates no longer have an incentive to take partisan positions to motivate turnout and will converge at the median voter's ideal point. For small changes in the net expense of voting, however, decreasing the cost of voting and penalties for not voting (two common measures) can result in drastically different political outcomes. Counter intuitively, measures that make voting cheaper might not increase turnout: since these measures decrease the difference between the candidates' political positions, they also decrease the benefit of voting.     

Use of explorative scenarios in environmental policy-making—Evaluation of policy instruments for management of land, water and the built environment

In order to achieve the Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives (EQOs), three action strategies have been adopted by the Swedish parliament. The strategy addressed in this paper deals with the management of land, water and the built environment. The paper reports on a project involving authorities and researchers in which policy measures required for achieving relevant targets for the strategy were gathered, structured and analysed regarding their potential assuming alternative futures. Measures with proposed policy instruments were qualitatively evaluated against one business as usual scenario and four explorative scenarios varying along two dimensions; level of governance and level of embeddedness. The results show a heavy predominance of administrative policy instruments. This policy strategy depends on a future development where such policy instruments are accepted. In order to achieve the EQOs regardless of future developments, more robust packages of measures including a larger variation in policy instruments need to be developed.     

A Model of an Oligopoly in an Insurance Market

This article analyzes the behavior of an oligopoly of risk-averse insurers that insure many consumers facing identical independent risks; however, the probability of a loss is ex ante not known with certainty. It is shown that there is a continuum of equilibria in the Bertrand game. The most plausible equilibrium can be obtained by requiring that all insurers are content with the number of policies they sell given the equilibrium premium.     

Imperfect Agency and the Regulation of Hospitals

This article addresses the combined problem of imperfect agency and asymmetric information in the regulation of hospitals by modeling the physician as a utility maximizer with both the utility of patients and profit of the hospital as arguments in his or her utility function. The article concludes that optimal regulation of hospitals is based on three important factors: the doctor's marginal rate of substitution between profit of the hospital and utility of the patients, moral hazard in the relationship between the regulator and the hospital, and adverse selection in the same relation.