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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Henry George and The Reconstruction of Capitalism

A bstract . The moral basis for the recommendation of Henry George that land , not labor and capital, be taxed is explained. The justification is that the value of land is socially created by density of population and as a result of private and public improvements , such as roads and utilities. This policy is advocated on the basis of its very successful, if limited, use in many places. It is contended that the need for many forms of social intervention in the economic process, which have many side consequences, would be dramatically lessened.     

Anonymous monotonic social welfare functions

This paper presents two results about preference domain conditions that deepen our understanding of anonymous and monotonic Arrovian social welfare functions (ASWFs). We characterize the class of anonymous and monotonic ASWFs on domains without Condorcet triples. This extends and generalizes an earlier characterization (as Generalized Majority Rules) by Moulin (Axioms of Cooperative Decision Making, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1988) for single-peaked domains. We also describe a domain where anonymous and monotonic ASWFs exist only when there are an odd number of agents. This is a counter-example to a claim by Muller (Int. Econ. Rev. 23 (1982) 609), who asserted that the existence of 3-person anonymous and monotonic ASWFs guaranteed the existence of n-person anonymous and monotonic ASWFs for any n>3. Both results build upon the integer programming approach to the study of ASWFs introduced in Sethuraman et al. (Math. Oper. Res. 28 (2003) 309).     

A brief study of age specific birth proportions,Japan and Singapore

The suitability of age-specific birth proportions (ASBP), or percentage distribution of births, as a rough and ready index of fertility change was analyzed by establishing a theoretical framework for its limitations and uses. The discussion suggested that the utility of ASBP as an indicator of fertility change depends on the characteristics and behavior of the population being considered. The concept was then empirically applied to birth trends in Japan and Singapore for 2 different time periods. Analysis suggested that ASBP trends in Japan reflected changes in age-specific fertility rates relative to general fertility rate as well as trends in parity distribution. The Singapore analysis was more complicated, raising different issues. As very limited empirical work has been done on ASBPs, the utility of ASBPs as an indicator of fertility change cannot be definitely ascertained. It was suggested however that ASBP trends may be applicable in countries where the age distribution of fertile-aged women is fairly stable. More empirical research should be done on ASBP trends in other countries, the behavior of A matrix as discussed in this paper, and useful empirical relationship of ASBP with other fertility measures.     

Exact finite sample properties of double k-class estimators in simultaneous equations

In our earlier paper [Srivastava, Agnihotri and Dwivedi (1980)] the dominance of double k-class over k-class with respect to exact mean squared error matrix criteria is established. It is observed that given a member of k-class, one can pick up a member of double k-class that will provide an improved estimator of the coefficients. This result prompted us to study the exact finite sample properties of the double k-class estimator. For this, we have considered a structural equation containing two endogenous variables and have investigated the properties of double k-class estimators of the coefficients of explanatory endogenous variables assuming characterizing scalars to be non-stochastic.