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Three Essays On Environmental Regulation And Spatial Modeling
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Book Synopsis Three Essays on Environmental Regulation and Spatial Modeling by : Scott Elliot Lowe
Download or read book Three Essays on Environmental Regulation and Spatial Modeling written by Scott Elliot Lowe and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three essays are presented that integrate spatial models of pollution and regulation into economic analyses of environmental quality. The first essay analyzes the reductions in PM10 concentrations in California over the past decade, and tests whether the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments influenced this decline. Of particular interest is the delegation of power from the Environmental Protection Agency to regional air quality management districts and the spatial resolution in the pollution data used. The second essay analyzes the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM), and links the behaviors of elected officials with characteristics of the facilities that are being regulated. In particular, my results show that the South Coast Air Quality Management District may have penalized facilities based on specific characteristics such as size, employment, and location, as well as their emissions of related pollutants and the emissions of neighboring facilities. The third essay provides estimates of the benefits derived from automobile-related regulations to reduce air toxics emissions. I infer a value for reductions in the risk of cancer from exposure to air toxics using a spatial dataset of air toxics cancer risk levels along with housing attributes and amenities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Book Synopsis Spatial Heterogeneity, Meta-analysis and Spatial Dependence by : Meidan Bu
Download or read book Spatial Heterogeneity, Meta-analysis and Spatial Dependence written by Meidan Bu and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays that collectively address the importance of accounting for spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence of environmental assets and natural resources in policy making. The first essay examines the value of different wetland ecosystem services using an expanded meta-dataset of valuation studies in North America. The purpose of this essay is to explore the sources of variation in wetland values from valuation methodology, ecosystem functions, and site-specific geographic, demographic and socio-economic characteristics. This essay used panel random effect models stratified "by study", "by state" and "by wetland site" to address the issues of correlation between wetland value estimates. Results indicated that wetland welfare measures reported by the same study and in the same wetland site are correlated. By comparing regression results and conclusions from this study with two internationally scoped meta-analysis studies, this essay found that the wetland valuation literature is not robust to regional characteristics, and wetland welfare estimates are sensitive to geographic extent. The second essay extends the first essay to investigate spatial spillover effects of wetland welfare estimates in North America. The primary purpose of the essay is to explore whether wetland values are correlated across space and what determines the correlation. The goal is accomplished by incorporating spatial econometric methods into the meta-analysis framework. The essay constructed three spatial weight matrices based on threshold distances, the ecological similarity and the economic similarity of wetland sites in the metadata. Results indicate that spatial proximity is an important predictor of wetland values regardless of wetland type and function. In part this is captured through shared contexts including resource availability and market characteristics. However, similar ecological and economic profiles are insufficient to capture shared values when transferring value estimates across spatial areas. Results from this study also raised questions on whether ecological functions and economic markets are sufficient for improving international transfers when studies are beyond geographic thresholds. The third essay incorporates spatial econometric models into a stochastic optimization framework to explore the consequences of ignoring the spatial linkage of management units in land management outcomes. The integrated framework combines an economic decision model, a spatial fire simulation model, a spotted owl population prediction model to maximize the expected post-fire and post-treatment NSO population under a budget constraint. Results from this essay inform us that ignoring spatial habitat connections leads to an underestimate of the fuel treatment disturbance and an over-estimate of the expected post-fire and post-treatment NSO population. However, the negative externality of habitat conversions depends on the degree of habitat connections. Additionally, the amount of total treatment area depends on the degree of habitat connections. The optimization outcome suggests less fuel treatment for a landscape with a higher degree of habitat connections. Moreover, the optimization outcome informs us that the spatial configuration of fuel treatment matters for the NSO population protection. Ignoring the spatial habitat connections leads to a fragmented treatment pattern and fails to protect the core NSO habitat from treatment disturbances.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on Economic Modeling and Environmental Policy Evaluation by : Ziqian Gong (Ph. D. in applied economics)
Download or read book Three Essays on Economic Modeling and Environmental Policy Evaluation written by Ziqian Gong (Ph. D. in applied economics) and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three chapters economic modeling and environmental policy evaluation. The first chapter explores the conflicts between preserving natural resources and economic activities. This paper establishes a model to estimate the threshold for the landowners to preserve the natural resource or do economic activities by taking the potential option value (from uncertainty and the irreversibility) into account when they need to decide between these two choices. By employing the real options theory with the numerical method, we could evaluate how the choices will be made towards this dilemma from the perspective of landowners. As an application, the result could provide a reliable and precise policy indication for the government to perform a more rational compensation policy toward natural resource protection than before. The second chapter investigates the impact of monetary policy on climate change. Climate change has been recognized as the most significant externality of today’s global economy. Current research has been predominantly focused on fiscal policy, which will be subject to the political environment. This paper establishes a dynamic general equilibrium model of a closed economy to find the optimal monetary policy under climate change to reduce carbon emissions and encourage the application of renewable energy. We evaluate how renewable energy firms, fossil fuel energy firms, and general goods production firms will respond to different monetary policies from the central bank. As an application, our results could provide a reliable policy tool for decision-makers to meet specific climate goals and encourage a transition to renewable energy. The third chapter provides a way to do the sustainability analysis of the Great Lakes region. The economic impact of climate change on key economic sectors has been studied for a long time. This study established an integrated energy- environmental-economic dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium model. Using this spatial computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, we show how to analyze environmental sustainability and individual well-being resulting from changes in the Great Lakes area’s complex economic and environmental systems. Our general equilibrium framework models interactions between human (economic, behavioral, social) and the environment and represent the interactions between local, regional, national, and global systems across space. This paper provides a tool to understand these linkages between economic agents and different sectors for the policymakers. So, they could use our work to assess the risk that may impact agriculture, energy, and manufacturing sectors under climate change and devise a related policy to maximize the welfare of its population and economy sustainably.
Book Synopsis Essays in Regional Economic and Environmental Policy Analysis by : Andrew William Schreiber
Download or read book Essays in Regional Economic and Environmental Policy Analysis written by Andrew William Schreiber and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of three essays on regional economic analysis of environmental and natural resource policy. My intent in this collection of essays is to demonstrate how advances in data availability and modeling capabilities can facilitate evidence based economic research of policy at the subnational level in the United States. In the first essay, I assess the costliness of water allocation restrictions for irrigators and the broader regional economy. I base the analysis on a calibrated multi-sectoral, multi-regional computable general equilibrium model, and use the model to evaluate economic mechanisms which could improve water and factor utilization in the production of agricultural goods. To achieve this purpose, I use county level economic data and spatial data on groundwater withdrawals for the Central Sands of Wisconsin. Restrictions produce heterogeneous impacts on employment and welfare across counties, depending both on the level of agricultural activity and the policy instruments used to ration water use. Command and control regulation is expensive relative to market based mechanisms, though overall costs are small. Long run losses in aggregate GDP range up to approximately 0.1%, or $10 million across simulations which achieve reduced water withdrawals comparable to levels observed in 1985. The second essay explores the efficacy of the Clean Air Act in regulating ambient air pollution throughout the United States. Ambient air pollution is tracked through a network of in situ monitors. A state's monitors determine compliance with federal National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Although the locations are typically treated as exogenous by researchers, we argue that there may be incentives for the local regulator to avoid siting monitors near pollution hotspots. We develop an analytical model to study the local regulator's incentives in this federalist arrangement and employ satellite-derived pollution estimates to characterize pollution at non-monitored locations to test for model predictions. We find that, on average, local regulators in counties beneath the federal pollution standard avoid pollution relative to counties above the threshold. This result is especially pronounced for monitors specifically designated to target areas of high pollution concentrations. The results suggest that monitoring data in attainment counties may systematically understate pollution, and the resulting regulatory targeting may be less efficient than previously believed. The final chapter illustrates an open source build routine called blueNOTE (National Open source Tools for general Equilibrium analysis) for producing sub-national economic accounts used in economic equilibrium models in the United States. In this chapter, we describe the build routine and a canonical calibrated static multi-regional, multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium (CGE) model which complements the constructed set of data. We focus on the development of state level economic data and show how to extend the core build stream to incorporate additional energy satellite data for formulating an energy based CGE model. The energy based CGE model is used to calculate carbon leakage rates given different regional configurations of state level action in restricting emission levels. In this calculation, we explore result sensitivity from including gravity based state level bilateral trade flows relative to a model calibrated with a pooled national market.
Book Synopsis Dissertation Abstracts International by :
Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Essays on Environment and the Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities by : Chunhua Wang
Download or read book Essays on Environment and the Spatial Distribution of Economic Activities written by Chunhua Wang and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental quality and the spatial distribution of economic activities affect each other in many ways. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to understanding the complex interrelationship and its policy implications. This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay examines the roles that locational amenities and increasing returns to scale play in the formation of urban development patterns and regional economic growth. The spatial distribution of amenities is shown to be a major determinant; and the effects of amenities are reinforced by external scale economies and localized information spillovers, both of which promote agglomeration and human capital accumulation. Workers in amenity locations are more productive because of increasing returns, which encourage investment on human capital development. The decentralized equilibrium is not optimal because of the externalities associated with human capital investments. The efficiency can be improved by public policies encouraging human capital investments. Such policies also increase the number and size of cities and the pace of urbanization and economic growth. The second essay examines the effects of natural disasters on population growth across U.S. counties during the period of 1960-2000. Results suggest that except earthquakes and most serious hurricanes, the risks of natural disasters have no statistically significant effects on population growth. We also estimate the effects of natural disasters on county socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, including human capital, age and ethnic composition of population, industrial composition, and income inequality, which correlate with county population growth. The insignificance of those effects indicates that natural disasters have no indirect effects on population growth, either. The third essay considers the roles of mandatory building codes for regulating land development in a natural disaster-prone area as self-insurance and self-protection. To find the optimal building codes, a simple urban economics model is constructed for the analysis. A number of comparative statics results are presented to describe how optimal building codes are affected by the endowed probability of the disaster, the expected loss, productivity levels of self-insurance and self-protection, and socioeconomic characteristics of the area such as wage, population, and the share of land area in the risky region.
Book Synopsis Spatial Modeling of Environmental Pollution and Ecological Risk by : Pravat Kumar Shit
Download or read book Spatial Modeling of Environmental Pollution and Ecological Risk written by Pravat Kumar Shit and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2023-12-04 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spatial Modeling of Environmental Pollution and Ecological Risk provides valuable information and insights for researchers, students and professionals in geography, hydrology, sedimentology, soil science, agriculture, engineering and GIS as they face increasingly complex challenges around development strategies for a sustainable society. Written by the world’s leading researchers in their field, each article will begin with a short introductory essay that includes an overview of the sections' papers. Individual chapters focus on the core themes of research and knowledge and some topics that have received lesser attention. Each chapter will review the current understanding of knowledge regarding the present study and scope and consider where future efforts should be directed. Discusses issues at the forefront of present research in environmental science, bioscience, ecology, pedogeomorphology, landscape, geoscience, forestry, hydrology and GIS Explores state-of-art techniques based on methodological and modeling in modern Deep learning and Machine learning geospatial techniques through case studies Describes novel control strategies, remediation and eco-restoration, and conservation techniques for sustainable development
Book Synopsis Essays on Environmental Regulation and Urban Redevelopment by : Nicholas Broc Irwin
Download or read book Essays on Environmental Regulation and Urban Redevelopment written by Nicholas Broc Irwin and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In my second chapter, I study the role a spatially targeted urban revitalization program in Baltimore, Maryland, has on neighborhood housing markets. Using a unique set of housing activity data coupled with neighborhood level data on demographics, the environment, and amenities, I exploit the implementation of the program, which created a preliminary list of neighborhoods to target for block-level vacant housing demolition and subsequently funded a selection of those neighborhoods to create a quasi-experimental model. My results show that neighborhoods receiving the program funding -- the treated group -- have a subsequently higher number of housing sales and housing renovations than the non-funded neighborhoods -- the control group -- but this effect only materializes when multiple projects receiving funding in a neighborhood. I also find that high levels of crime dampen the effectiveness of the program on neighborhood housing markets. In my third chapter, I focus on the role of spatial spillovers in the decision of individual homeowners to reinvest into their own housing stock. Using parcel level data from 2005-2008 in Baltimore, Maryland, I utilize a social interactions model to study the effect of previous neighboring renovations on the decision to renovate in the current period while controlling for underlying spatial correlation within the neighborhood. I find strong evidence of spatial spillovers in the renovation decision with an additional neighboring renovation increasing the likelihood of a renovation in the current period; results which are consistent across changing neighborhood size. The overall implications of my research are three-fold. Firstly, I find that the use of spatially explicit data, such as housing parcels, allows me to capture highly localized effects that introduce important sources of heterogeneity that would be overlooked without such data. Secondly, I find strong evidence that public policy creates spillovers that have the potential to generate positive multiplier effects that can magnify across broader spatial scales. Finally, I find that spatial relationships can be an important determinant on economic outcomes at both a parcel and neighborhood level.
Book Synopsis Spatial Aspects of Environmental Policy by : Wayne Gray
Download or read book Spatial Aspects of Environmental Policy written by Wayne Gray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a recent explosion of research incorporating a spatial dimension in environmental and natural resource economics, where the spatial aspects of human behaviour or the natural environment make a crucial difference in the analysis and policy response to the problem. Much of this research has been driven by the growing availability of spatially explicit social science data and the development of tools and methodological advances to use these data. Collected in this volume are 24 key articles considering the reasons for spatial variation in policies, due to either efficiency or equity considerations, and the consequences of that spatial variation for both environmental and economic outcomes. These articles demonstrate that the failure to address spatial issues in the analysis can create two problems: (1) the analysis provides a poor basis for predicting actual behaviour that is specifically based upon spatial considerations, and (2) the analysis fails to provide a basis for designing spatially targeted policies that could lead to more efficient outcomes.
Book Synopsis Three Essays on the Spatial Analysis of Sustainable Dairy Farming in New Zealand by : Wei Yang
Download or read book Three Essays on the Spatial Analysis of Sustainable Dairy Farming in New Zealand written by Wei Yang and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Ph.D. thesis consists of three essays on the sustainable development of the New Zealand dairy industry. The first essay focuses on the relationship between dairy yields and intensive inputs. The second and third essays are concerned with farm-level management practices on nutrient pollution, the interactions between farmers, and the impact of farmer choice on the environment. Spatial spillover effects, which are considered as important issues at either the regional level or farm-level decision-making, are addressed in all three essays. As the New Zealand dairy industry faces the challenge of increasing productivity and dealing with public concerns over nutrient pollution, effective policy needs to address regional dependency and differences in productivity and fertiliser use. The first essay employs spatial panel data models to establish whether unobserved spatial effects exist and investigate how spatial effects influence the relationship between dairy yields and intensive farming inputs across regions. Results show positive spatial spillovers for most intensive inputs. The high level of effluent use and estimated negative yield response to nitrogen suggests that an opportunity exists for the greater use of effluent as a substitute for nitrogen fertiliser. Substitution has the potential to reduce dependence on fertilisers and contribute to a reduction in nutrient pollution. The second essay analyses spatial dependence in the adoption of best management practices (BMPs) to protect water quality. Bayesian spatial Durbin probit models are applied to survey data collected from dairy farmers in the Waikato Region of New Zealand. Results show that farmers located in close proximity to each other exhibit similar choice behaviour, indicating that access to industry information is an influential determinant of dairy farmers’ adoption of BMPs. In addition, these findings address the importance of farmer interactions in adoption decisions because participation in dairy-related activities is identified as an extension of information acquisition. Financial problems are one of the biggest obstacles for farmers to adopt BMPs. Overall, the second essay highlights the importance of considering spatial interaction effects in farmers’ decisions, which is important to the formulation of agri-environmental policy. The third essay investigates how dairy farmers’ social interactions influence the relationship between their environmental performance and nutrient management practices (NMPs). Spatial Durbin error models are employed to analyse farm-level sample data in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Social interactions are modelled by a spatial weights matrix and an adjacent weights matrix. Results show that dairy farmers’ environmental performance is positively influenced by geographically close farmers’ and socially close farmers’ NMPs, such as wintering off cows and increasing the frequency of soil tests. Results also indicate that encouraging the farmer-to-farmer communication improves dairy farmers’ environmental performance.
Book Synopsis Essays in Environmental and Development Economics by : Allan Hsiao
Download or read book Essays in Environmental and Development Economics written by Allan Hsiao and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: [1] Weak environmental regulation has global consequences. When domestic regulation of carbon-intensive industries fails, the international community can intervene by targeting these industries with import tariffs. I argue that import tariffs must possess two features - coordination and commitment - in order to be effective. Without coordination across importers, tariffs are undermined by leakage to unregulated markets. Without commitment to upholding tariffs over the long term, tariffs are reduced over time as importers give in to static incentives. I develop a dynamic empirical framework for quantifying these forces in settings with incomplete regulation and sunk investment, and I apply it to the market for palm oil, a major driver of deforestation and one of the largest sources of emissions globally. [2] Does electoral accountability discipline public spending? After the fall of Suharto, Indonesia held local elections for the first time in decades. I use a dynamic discrete choice framework to study how democratization affected the spatial allocation of public investment in healthcare infrastructure. On one hand, democratization limits distortions from Suharto-era biases toward certain areas, such as those within the patronage network. On the other hand, spillover effects are less internalized as districts become more focused on their own constituents. [3] Many infrastructure investments have spatial effects that make optimal allocation a difficult, combinatorial problem. Schools are one such example: when graduates seek employment nationally and migrate, schools have effects that extend beyond local labor markets. But policymakers often allocate infrastructure investments with simple rules like population cutoffs, ranked lists, and need-based formulas that do not account for spatial interdependencies. How effective are these simple rules compared to more sophisticated approaches? I use a spatial equilibrium model of individuals' education and migration decisions to study this question in the context of Indonesia's Sekolah Dasar INPRES program, the largest school construction program in history.
Book Synopsis U.S. Health in International Perspective by : National Research Council
Download or read book U.S. Health in International Perspective written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
Book Synopsis Integrated Environmental Modeling by : Anu Ramaswami
Download or read book Integrated Environmental Modeling written by Anu Ramaswami and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unified presentation of environmental model development, implementation, and testing Integrated Environmental Modeling teaches model development, model implementation, and model testing skills in a unified manner, crosscutting the three "media" comprising environmental systems--air, water, and soil--by focusing on parallels and similarities between them, and introducing a new generation of multimedia models. No other single volume offers comprehensive coverage of chemical transport and fate in all three environmental media, including the resulting impacts on the biosphere and human health, with a focus on the fundamental processes underlying environmental modeling. Integrated Environmental Modeling provides broad-based training in the development of pollutant transport and fate models in air, water, and soil, with a focus on five essential competencies: * Understanding the fundamental process principles that govern contaminant transport and transformations in multimedia environments, emphasizing the parallels and links between different media * Learning model development skills, starting from the simplest conceptual models and building more complex and realistic models that couple component process modules at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales of resolution * Using statistical methods and data sources to estimate input parameters and characterize model sensitivity and uncertainty * Gaining hands-on experience with computer-aided implementation and evaluation of fate and transport models using realistic case study examples * Applying fate and transport models to evaluate pollutant interactions with the biosphere, particularly in human exposure modeling and health risk assessment Complete with case studies, Integrated Environmental Modeling is a valuable, single-source tool for senior and graduate students in environmental science and engineering courses on pollutant transport, remediation, and risk assessment, and an essential reference text for professionals in industry, consulting, and government agencies responsible for environmental assessment and risk analysis.
Book Synopsis Information, Environmental Policy, and Aquacultural Expansion by : April Athnos
Download or read book Information, Environmental Policy, and Aquacultural Expansion written by April Athnos and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private management of non-point sources of pollution is an important concept in economics. Regulators are often unable to trace pollutants to their origins and efforts to limit many disaggregated sources of pollution are costly and invasive. Wells and septic systems, common in the rural and suburban United States, represent privately-owned non-point water pollution sources when they fail to protect households and water resources. "Time of Sale or Transfer" (TOST) policies are gaining popularity across the state of Michigan and in other states across the country to require rigorous well and septic system evaluations at the time a house is sold. In cases where threats to public and environmental health are identified, Health Department administrators impose mandatory repair or replacement orders. Without a letter of Health Department approval, a house with a well or septic system cannot be legally transferred. Despite the growing traction of these policies, however, little is known about the effects of TOST program adoption on the housing market. In lieu of empirical evidence, many homeowners and policymakers in Michigan claim that the policies suppress house prices and argue against the instruments. My first essay addresses this empirical gap in the economic literature by estimating the causal impact of policy adoption on house values. I use an event study approach to compare regulated well and septic system homes to a set of neighboring controls just outside the regulation area. Results suggest that there is not a large, statistically significant price decline following policy adoption, with evidence indicating a price penalty no larger than 4 percent.The second essay analyzes the effect of TOST inspection resulting in Health Department required corrective actions. I motivate my empirical strategy with a model of negative TOST information shocks during the contract closing period of a house sale. The data for this essay are inspection-sale pairs constructed by combining county-level inspection records, housing transaction records, and property characteristics. I identify a house price penalty of about 7.5 percent to 10.5 percent after TOST adoption by using a hedonic price model with structural controls, spatial controls, and time fixed effects. These results are robust to a repeat sales model specification as well as an approach controlling for building quality with assessor-assigned grades. Further, there is no evidence of significant heterogeneity based on whether a well or septic system triggers mandatory corrective action, whether the problems identified are high- or low-risk, or which Health Department administers the program. In contrast, a quantile regression shows strong evidence of price impacts led by the low end of the house price spectrum. This suggests that the houses that fail at the highest rates also experience the largest price penalties and belong to homeowners least able to shoulder the costs. Regulators must consider the heterogeneity of these pecuniary effects when regulating externality-generating on-site water systems through the housing market.The third essay studies how to expand aquaculture production int he North Central Region (NCR). U.S. per capita seafood consumption stands at an all-time high due to population and income growth and consumer preference shifts toward healthy proteins. U.S. aquaculture, however, has not kept pace and imports serve most of the U.S. fish market. This study estimates willingness-to-pay (WTP) for several search and credence fish attributes using a hypothetical choice experiment of U.S. fish consumers. Search attributes, like prices, can be readily discerned by consumers before purchase while credence attributes, such as region of production, cannot be easily identified before or after purchase and require labels. Our study varied attributes and levels over three species historically produced in the North Central Region (NCR) but underrepresented in the literature---rainbow trout, yellow perch, and walleye. Using a random utility framework, we identify average price premia of $1.64/lb., $1.97/lb., and $0.84/lb. for an NCR-specific label, wild-caught label, and fresh fillet forms, respectively. We also estimate marginal WTP for trout, yellow perch, and walleye of $19.99/lb., $15.89/lb., and $17.37/lb., respectively. Our findings suggest that NCR aquaculture producers can expand by intensifying trout production while continuing to market yellow perch and walleye in the region. Nationally, an NCR-source label is not valued more than a wild-caught label, implying that overcoming consumers' aversion to farmed fish will require more than marketing fish as products of the NCR.
Book Synopsis Gas, Weed, and Fumes by : Edward Rubin
Download or read book Gas, Weed, and Fumes written by Edward Rubin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation presents a three-part study in modern empirical environmental economics. In these three studies, I focus on five core economic issues—equity, incentives, environmental quality, consumer behavior, and causality—and ask what environmental economics can teach us about three common topics: energy consumption, cannabis legalization, and pesticide application. The first chapter examines how residential natural gas consumers respond to changes in the price of natural gas. With 70 million consumers, residential natural gas has grown to a first-order policy issue. This first chapter provides the first causally identified, microdata-based estimates of residential natural-gas demand elasticities using a panel of 300 million bills in California. To overcome multiple sources of endogeneity, we employ a two-pronged strategy: we interact (1) a spatial discontinuity along the service areas of two major natural-gas utilities with (2) an instrumental-variables strategy using the utilities' differing rules/behaviors for internalizing upstream spot-market prices. We then demonstrate substantial seasonal and income-based heterogeneities underly this elasticity. These heterogeneities suggest unexplored policies that are potentially efficiency-enhancing and pro-poor. The second chapter explores what may be unintended—or unconsidered—results of cannabis legalization. Cannabis legalization advocates often argue that cannabis legalization offers the potential to reduce the private and social costs related to criminalization and incarceration—particularly for marginalized populations. While this assertion is theoretically plausible, it boils down to an empirically testable hypothesis that remains untested: does legalizing a previously illegal substance (cannabis) reduce arrests, citations, and general law-enforcement contact? The second chapter of this dissertation provides the first causal evidence that cannabis legalization need not necessarily reduce criminalization—and under the right circumstances, may in fact increase police incidents/arrests for both cannabis products and non-cannabis drugs. First, I present a theoretical model of police effort and drug consumption that demonstrates the importance of substitution and incentives for this hypothesis. I then empirically show that before legalization, drug-incident trends in Denver, Colorado matched trends in many other US cities. However, following cannabis legalization in Colorado, drug incidents spike sharply in Denver, while trends in comparison cities (unaffected by Colorado's legalization) remain stable. This spike in drug-related police incidents occurs both for cannabis and non-cannabis drugs. Synthetic-control and difference-in-differences empirical designs corroborate the size and significance of this empirical observation, estimating that Colorado's legalization of recreational cannabis nearly doubled police-involved drug incidents in Denver. This chapter's results present important lessons for evaluating the effects and equity of policies ranging legalization to criminal prosecution to policing. Finally, the third chapter investigates the roles pesticides play in local air quality. Many policymakers, public-health advocates, and citizen groups question whether current pesticide regulations properly equate the marginal social costs of pesticide applications to their marginal social benefits—with particular concern for negative health effects stemming from pesticide exposure. Additionally, recent research and policies in public health, epidemiology, and economics emphasize how fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations harm humans through increased mortality, morbidity, mental health issues, and a host of socioeconomic outcomes. This chapter presents the first empirical evidence that aerially applied pesticides increase local PM2.5 concentrations. To causally estimate this effect, I combine the universe of aerial pesticide applications in the five southern counties of California's San Joaquin Valley (1.8M reports) with the U.S. EPA's PM2.5 monitoring network—exploiting spatiotemporal variation in aerial pesticide applications and variation in local wind patterns. I find significant evidence that (upwind) aerial pesticide applications within 1.5km increase local PM2.5 concentrations. The magnitudes of the point estimates suggest that the top decile of aerial applications may sufficiently increase local PM2.5 to warrant concern for human health. Jointly, the three parts of this dissertation aim to carefully administer causally minded econometrics, in conjunction with environmental economic theory, to answer unresolved, policy-relevant questions.
Book Synopsis Essays in Honor of Joon Y. Park by : Yoosoon Chang
Download or read book Essays in Honor of Joon Y. Park written by Yoosoon Chang and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2023-04-24 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volumes 45a and 45b of Advances in Econometrics honor Professor Joon Y. Park, who has made numerous and substantive contributions to the field of econometrics over a career spanning four decades since the 1980s and counting.
Author :Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics Publisher :Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics University of California ISBN 13 : Total Pages :422 pages Book Rating :4.:/5 (31 download)
Book Synopsis A.P. Giannini and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics by : Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics
Download or read book A.P. Giannini and the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics written by Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics and published by Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics University of California. This book was released on 2009 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
