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Economics

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Local Environmental Quality And Inter-Jurisdictional Spillovers, John W. Hatfield, Katrina Kosec Jul 2019

Local Environmental Quality And Inter-Jurisdictional Spillovers, John W. Hatfield, Katrina Kosec

Katrina Kosec

We investigate the classic question of how the provision of a local publicly-provided good--air quality--varies with the degree of decentralization of policymaking. Exploiting exogenous variation in the natural topography of the United States to instrument for the number of local government jurisdictions in a metropolitan area, we show that areas with more jurisdictions have significantly lower air quality, and significantly higher concentrations of the toxic air pollutants most closely associated with cancer and non-cancer health risks. Moreover, we estimate that this increase in pollution lowers housing values by at least 3%. By contrast, local drinking water quality--a publicly-provided good not …

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Bridging Vs. Bonding Social Capital And The Management Of Common Pool Resources, Kathy Baylis, Yazhen Gong, Shun Wang Dec 2012

Bridging Vs. Bonding Social Capital And The Management Of Common Pool Resources, Kathy Baylis, Yazhen Gong, Shun Wang

Kathy Baylis

Social capital can facilitate community governance, but not all social capital is alike. We distinguish bonding social capital (within a village) from bridging social capital (between villages), and we compare their effects on the management of a common pool resource. We develop a theoretical model and show that bonding social capital can improve common pool resource management, while the effect of bridging social capital is mixed. We test these findings using primary data from Yunnan, China on social capital and firewood collection on communal lands. We find that bonding social capital decreases the consumption of the common pool resource, and …

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Market Mechanisms, Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity, Sharon Beder May 2011

Market Mechanisms, Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity, Sharon Beder

Sharon Beder

In most cases the use of market mechanisms to protect the environment aim to maximise economic efficiency rather than environmental effectiveness or equity. The use of emissions trading to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is used as a case study to demonstrate this.

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Do Our Conservation Programs Work? A Spatially Explicit Estimate Of Avoided Forest Loss, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Maria Isabel Ramirez Dec 2010

Do Our Conservation Programs Work? A Spatially Explicit Estimate Of Avoided Forest Loss, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Maria Isabel Ramirez

Kathy Baylis

With the potential expansion of forest conservation programs spurred by climate-change agreements, there is a need to measure the extent to which such programs achieve their intended results. Conventional methods for evaluating conservation impact tend to be biased because they do not compare like areas nor do they account for spatial relations. We assess the effect of a conservation initiative that combined designation of protected areas with payments for environmental services to conserve overwintering habitat for the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in Mexico us a spatial-matching estimator which matches covariates among polygons and their neighbors, to. We measured avoided forest …

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China's Strategic Interests In Cambodia: Influence And Resources, Sophal Ear, Sigfrido Burgos Dec 2009

China's Strategic Interests In Cambodia: Influence And Resources, Sophal Ear, Sigfrido Burgos

Sophal Ear

Cambodia is pivotal to China’s strategies to project greater influence in Southeast Asia, buffer longstanding rivals, and potentially tame America’s hegemony. China’s transformation from regional backwater into influential global actor raises concerns for many countries. As expected, the rise of a powerful regional player makes traditional hegemonic countries anxious.

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