Distributional impacts of car road pricing: Settlement structures determine divergence across countries

Social questions of distribution and equity are of major importance for the political acceptance of car road pricing. The argument that kilometre-based private vehicle charging disadvantages the poor is often the core reason for opposing its introduction. An article in this journal [Steininger, K.W., Friedl, B., Gebetsroither, B., 2007. Sustainability impacts of car road pricing: a computable general equilibrium analysis for Austria. Ecological Economics 63, pp. 59–69] proved the opposite for one European country, i.e. that the rich bear most of the burden. In the present paper we use the very same model structure and apply it in a simulation to the data of another country. While macroeconomic and environmental conclusions are similar, we find a different distributional impact of car road pricing in our case. This issue is also of relevance in the analysis of the distributional implications concerning (recently significant) gasoline price increases.     

The Informational Content of Transactions

This paper studies the price discovery process in security markets. In particular, it analyzes the incorporation of information into security prices in a quote-driven security market from the perspective of information theory. In essence, it draws on a sequential trading mechanism, which is standard in market microstructure theory, and in which information is processed on the basis of individual transactions. It is demonstrated that the ex-ante information content of a transaction is proportionate to the average Kullback–Leibler distance of the prior and the posterior probability measures that quantify the uncertainty on the state of nature prior to and after that transaction, respectively. It is shown that the information on the state of nature, reflected in the security price, never decreases ex-ante by an upcoming transaction, which in turn accounts for the fact that the order flow is informationally valuable. Finally, it is pointed out that security markets in which the order flow is completely uninformative for the state of nature feature maximum depth; that is, those security markets are maximally liquid.Acknowledgements: I am grateful to David R. Wolf for his valuable guidance concerning some subtleties of information theory. The precious comments of an anonymous referee are appreciated.     

The Influence of Exchange Rates on Red Meat Trade between Canada and the United States

The effect of exchange rates on the trade of red meat between Canada and the United States is an important policy issue. While Canadian producers benefit from higher livestock prices as the Canadian dollar declines in value, higher costs of feed grains and protein as well as macroeconomic effects offset much of the perceived gain. In this paper, these effects are quantified using a quarterly econometric model of the North American livestock sector in which both livestock and feed prices in Canada are linked, through exchange rates, to their counterparts in the United States market. The results suggest that devaluation leads to significant increases in Canadian net exports of beef and to small increases in net exports of pork. Both effects are small when compared with total North American trade and production. ?effet du taux ?échange sur le commerce de viande rouge entre le Canada et les Etats-Unis a de considérables implications sur les politiques agricoles. Bien que les producteurs Canadiens bénéficient lorsque les prix de la viande sont haussés par une dévaluation du dollar Canadien, ces gains sont réduits par des prix plus élevés pour les grains et les protéines de même que par des répercussions macroéonomiques. Dans cet article, les effets de changements dans le taux ?échange sont quantifiés par ?entremise ?un modèle économétrique trimestriel des secteurs bovins et porcins en Amérique du Nord. Les prix des animaux et des grains au Canada sont reliés à leurs vis-à-vis américains par le taux ?échange. Les résultats suggèrent qu' une dévaluation entraîne une hausse significative de ?exportation nette de boeuf et une faible augmentation de ?exportation nette de pore. Toutefois, les effets sont modestes lorsque comparés aux volumes de production et de ventes pour le marché Nord Américain.     

ENACTED SENSEMAKING IN CRISIS SITUATIONS[1]

Sensemaking in crisis conditions is made more difficult because action that is instrumental to understanding the crisis often intensifies the crisis. This dilemma is interpreted from the perspective that people enact the environments which constrain them. It is argued that commitment, capacity, and expectations affect sensemaking during crisis and the severity of the crisis itself. It is proposed that the core concepts of enactment may comprise an ideology that reduces the likelihood of crisis.     

Explaining the Variability of Apartment Rents

The research reported here uses regression analysis to analyze rent variations in a sample of apartment data from the Phoenix metropolitan area. Many of the variables used in hedonic price studies of houses are found to be significant in explaining variations in apartment rent. There are differences between hedonic studies of houses and apartments particularly with respect to common area features or amenities. The analysis of various submarkets also produced interesting results. Various uses can be made of the results of this and similar studies by appraisers (market-derived adjustments), property managers (setting rents) and feasibility analysts (the design of apartment projects).     

Explaining Underutilization of Tax Depreciation Deductions: Empirical Evidence from Norway

Many corporations do not claim all of their allowable tax depreciation deductions. Intuitively, this kind of behavior might seem odd. However we propose several possible explanations. First, we find strong evidence that firms facing current tax losses or carrying forward past losses underutilize depreciation in order to recover tax losses before they expire. Second, corporations with bad economic performance tend to underutilize their deductions, suggesting that corporations use costly windowdressing on their accounting measures. Third, we find support for the hypothesis that tax compliance costs discourage the utilization of accelerated depreciation, especially by small firms. We do not find much support for other hypotheses. For example, we find no evidence of substitution between tax depreciation and private debt due to competition between the benefits of private bank monitoring and the tax savings from using tax allowances to postpone tax payments, as suggested in earlier literature. We also study the effects of the uniform reporting accounting system (typical of many European countries) which can, under certain circumstances, constrain dividends. Forgoing some tax depreciation can loosen the dividend constraint, but the evidence does not support this motivation. Unusual access to extremely detailed individual firm tax return forms in Norway made our empirical analysis possible. In addition, the 1992 Norwegian tax reform provided a natural experiment for testing some of the hypotheses. We use the time-series and cross-sectional variation across Norwegian corporations in 1988, 1991, 1992 and 1993.     

Sense and reliability. A conversation with celebrated psychologist Karl E. Weick. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

Most of us see the organizations we operate in--our schools or companies, for instance--as monolithic and predictable, subjecting us to deadening routines and demanding dehumanizing conformity. But companies are more unpredictable and more alive than we imagine, according to Karl Weick, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on organizational behavior. Weick says executives can learn a lot about managing the unexpected from organizations that can't afford surprises in the workplace--nuclear plants, firefighting units, or emergency rooms, for instance. In this conversation with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, Weick examines the characteristics of these high-reliability organizations (HROs) and suggests ways that other organizations can implement their practices and philosophies. The key difference between high-reliability organizations and other companies is the mindfulness with which people in most HROs react to even very weak signs that some kind of change or danger is approaching. For instance, nuclear-plant workers Weick has studied immediately readjust dials and system commands when an automated system doesn't respond as expected. Weick contrasts this with Ford's inability to pick up on weak signs in the 1970s that there were lethal problems with the design of the Pinto gas tank. HROs are fixated on failure. They eschew plans and blueprints, looking instead for the details that might be missing. And they refuse to simplify reality, Weick says. Indeed, by cultivating broad work experiences and enlarging their repertoires, generalist executives can avoid getting paralyzed by "cosmology episodes"--events that make people feel as though the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system.