Farmland prices and land-use changes in periurban protected natural areas

This paper provides empirical and conceptual insights in analysing the factors that determine the prices of farmland within Protected Natural Areas that are close to densely populated urban areas, the changes in land use experiences as well as the additional control policies needed to curb this unsustainable trend.The Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve nearby the metropolitan area of Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain) is the case study considered and its bordering non-protected rural area is used as a reference for comparison. A spatial hedonic farmland price model is estimated and the willingness of land purchasers to pay for different farmland characteristics quantified both inside and outside the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve. The main results are that: (1) residential development is taking place in all categories of farmland, (2) aside from neighbouring prices, farmland prices depend on different factors depending on whether the marketed plots stand inside or outside the Protected Natural Area, (3) the “reserve effect” on land prices is less powerful than the “proximity to the metropolitan area (and motorway) effect” observed from villages of the non-protected area located in the 3rd crown of Bilbao, (4) the reasons for farmers non-compliance with policy regulations is the necessary knowledge base for the farmland conservation policy design and (5) in the light of the results, three development-control policy instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services, Tradable Planning Permits and development-taxes are discussed considering the factors that could improve compliance.     

Market power and compliance with output quotas

This paper examines the compliance behaviour of a dominant firm in an output quota market when the firm is able to exercise market power in both the quota and the output markets. Provided the firm has an initial quota endowment which is strictly positive, under some circumstances the firm may find it profitable to comply or even over-comply in its quota demand, even in the absence of enforcement. The results are compared to those found in the pollution permit literature for a firm with market dominance only in the permit market, to which some additional observations are also added concerning efficiency outcomes under non-compliance.     

Non-compliance in organic farming: A cross-country comparison of Italy and Germany

This paper describes the Italian and German organic certification systems, including the institutions involved and the definitions of non-compliance and sanctions. Although they are both implementations of the same EU regulatory framework, these systems differ in many respects. Case study data from control bodies on non-compliance and sanctions are presented and analysed using binary choice models. This analysis shows that the occurrence of slight non-compliance and greater farm acreage are significant risk factors that explain severe non-compliance in both countries. However, to implement an efficient risk-based inspection system in the future, the data collection process must be improved and extended to examine personal attributes of farmers and operators.     

Analysis of treatment response data from eligibility designs

In this paper, we develop and compare two alternative approaches for calculating the effect of the actual intake when treatments are randomized, but compliance with the assignment in the treatment arm is less than perfect for reasons that are correlated with the outcome. The approaches are based on different identification assumptions about these unobserved confounders. In the first approach, which stems from [Sommer, A., Zeger, S., 1991. On estimating efficacy in clinical trials. Statistics in Medicine 10, 45–52], the unobserved confounders are modeled by a discrete indicator variable that represents subject-type, defined in terms of the potential intake in the face of each possible assignment. In the second approach, confounding is modeled without reference to subject-type in the spirit of the Roy model. Because the two models are non-nested, and model comparison and assessment of the approaches in a real data setting is one of our central goals, we formulate the discussion from a Bayesian perspective, comparing the two models in terms of marginal likelihoods and Bayes factors, and in terms of inferences about the treatment effects. The latter we calculate from a predictive perspective in a way that is different from that in the literature, where typically only a point summary of that effect is calculated. Our real data analysis focuses on the JOBS II eligibility trial that was implemented to test the effectiveness of a job search seminar in decreasing the negative mental health effects commonly associated with job loss. We provide a comparative analysis of the data from the two approaches with prior distributions that are both reasonable in the context of the data and comparable across the model specifications. We show that the approaches can lead to different evaluations of the treatment.     

To Comply or Not To Comply? Pollution Standard Setting Under Costly Monitoring and Sanctioning

In this paper, we characterize optimal regulatory policies composed of a pollution standard, a probability of inspection and a fine for non-compliance, in a context where both monitoring and sanctioning are socially costly, and the penalty may include gravity and non-gravity components at the regulator’s discretion. Under given penalties, the optimal policy entails compliance with the standard as long as a quite intuitive condition is met. Non-compliant policies may include standards even below the pollution levels that minimize the sum of abatement costs and external damages. Interestingly, the appropriate structure of the penalty under non-compliance is highly progressive, while the best possible shape of the fine under compliance is linear. If the regulator is entitled to choose the structure of the fine, linear penalties are socially preferred and the optimal policy induces compliance.