Exports and Externalities: the other side of trade and ecological risk and Technology Diffusion in a Competitive World

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to measure welfare effects of taxes for correcting environmental externalities caused by domestic trade, focusing on exter- nalities that arise through exports. Externalities from exports come from a number of sources. Domestically owned ships, planes, and automobiles can become contaminated while visiting other regions and bring unwanted pests home, and species can be in- troduced by contaminated visitors that enter a region to consume goods and services. The paper combines insights from the public finance literature on corrective environ- mental taxes and trade literature on domestically provided services. We find that past methods for measuring welfare effects are inadequate for a wide range of externalities and show the most widely used corrective mechanism, taxes on the sector imposing the environmental externality, may often do more harm than good. The motivation for this paper is the expansion of invasive species' ranges within the United States. We apply our analytical model to the specifc example of quagga and zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha and Dreissena rostiformis bugenis) invasion into the U.S Pacific Northwest.environmental regulation, tax interactions, invasive species, environment and trade

Stepping stones for biological invasion: A bioeconomic model of transferable risk

Herein we model the widespread dispersal and management of an invasive species as a weak-link public good. The risk of introduction is driven in part by economic activity, is influenced by policies directed at the risk, and economic activity responds/adapts to the risk. Framed around recent introductions and rapid spread of dreissenid mussels in the Western United States, we find three key results. First, partial equilibrium estimates of welfare loss are significantly overestimated relative to general equilibrium estimates. If ecosystem services and market goods are substitutes the partial equilibrium bias is greater than if they are compliments. Second, well-intended policies do not necessarily reduce overall risk; risk reduction actions can transfer risk to another time or location, or both, which may increase total risk. Third, policies of quotas and inspections have to be extreme to improve welfare, with inspections having advantages over quotas.bioeconomic, invasive species, risk, weak-link, welfare, Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty, Q2, Q26, Q57,

How long can austerity persist? The factors that sustain fiscal consolidations

To put public debt on a sustainable path, many governments face the task of enacting large fiscal consolidation followed by years of sustained primary surpluses. By estimating hazard functions for the duration of consolidations, we analyse the features of past consolidation efforts across a panel of advanced economies. Our contribution is to identify the factors that help to start and sustain consolidations, separately discussing governments’ “commitment†to the cause as well as their “capacity†for action. Our analysis suggests that longer consolidations are initiated when public debt is high, fiscal deficits are large, the interest burden heavy and long-term sovereign bond yields elevated. However, we also find that a countries’ “capacity†to change course is important. Higher initial private sector savings, a stronger external balance, a competitive position and stable financial conditions appear to provide more scope for governments to sustain longer-lasting consolidations. Once we have controlled for the initial macroeconomic conditions, there is a lesser role for governments’ commitment as reflected in factors such as the composition and the pace of the fiscal adjustment or the political cycle in explaining the duration of consolidation. However, commitment to permanent, rather than temporary, fiscal adjustment is key

Measuring financial conditions in major non-euro area economies

In this paper, we develop financial conditions indices (FCIs) for 3 industrialized (US, Japan, UK) and 5 emerging (China, Brazil, Russia, India, Turkey) economies. The FCIs are formed as the principal component of a range of financial series for each country and are constructed to account for fluctuations in the business cycle. We show that these FCIs can help predict growth developments and thereby provide a potential leading indicator for the external environment of the Euro area. While we draw upon established methodological considerations in the literature, our main contribution lies in providing FCIs which are available for a broad set of countries, including many emerging economies, and whose movements can intuitively be interpreted. This latter fact allows us to track developments in the 8 investigated financial markets over the last decade

The implications of global and domestic credit cycles for emerging market economies: Measures of finance-adjusted output gaps

We present estimates of finance-adjusted output gaps which incorporate the information on the domestic and global credit cycles for a sample of emerging market economies (EMEs). Following recent BIS research, we use a state-space representation of an HP filter augmented with a measure of the credit gap to estimate finance-adjusted output gaps. We measure the domestic and global credit gaps as the deviation of private-sector real credit growth and net capital flows to EMEs from long-term trends, using the asymmetric Band-Pass filter. Overall, we find that financial cycle information is associated with cyclical movements in output. In the current circumstances, the estimates suggest that if financing and credit conditions were to tighten, it would be associated with a moderation in activity in some EMEs

Exports and Externalities: the other side of trade and ecological risk and Technology Diffusion in a Competitive World

This paper develops a general equilibrium model to measure welfare effects of taxes for correcting environmental externalities caused by domestic trade, focusing on exter- nalities that arise through exports. Externalities from exports come from a number of sources. Domestically owned ships, planes, and automobiles can become contaminated while visiting other regions and bring unwanted pests home, and species can be in- troduced by contaminated visitors that enter a region to consume goods and services. The paper combines insights from the public finance literature on corrective environ- mental taxes and trade literature on domestically provided services. We find that past methods for measuring welfare effects are inadequate for a wide range of externalities and show the most widely used corrective mechanism, taxes on the sector imposing the environmental externality, may often do more harm than good. The motivation for this paper is the expansion of invasive species' ranges within the United States. We apply our analytical model to the specifc example of quagga and zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha and Dreissena rostiformis bugenis) invasion into the U.S Pacific Northwest

An interchangeable role for kainate and metabotropic glutamate receptors in the induction of rat hippocampal mossy fiber long-term potentiation in vivo

The roles of both kainate receptors (KARs) and metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) in mossy fiber long-term potentiation (MF-LTP) have been extensively studied in hippocampal brain slices, but the findings are controversial. In this study, we have addressed the roles of both mGluRs and KARs in MF-LTP in anesthetized rats. We found that MF-LTP could be induced in the presence of either GluK1-selective KAR antagonists or group I mGluR antagonists. However, LTP was inhibited when the group I mGluRs and the GluK1-KARs were simultaneously inhibited. Either mGlu1 or mGlu5 receptor activation is sufficient to induce this form of LTP as selective inhibition of either subtype alone, together with the inhibition of KARs, did not inhibit MF-LTP. These data suggest that mGlu1 receptors, mGlu5 receptors, and GluK1-KARs are all engaged during high-frequency stimulation, and that the activation of any one of these receptors alone is sufficient for the induction of MF-LTP in vivo. © 2015 The Authors Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Scale-dependent Associations among Fish Predation, Littoral Habitat, and Distributions of Crayfish Species

To predict how species establish and disperse within novel communities, the spatial scale at which competition, predation, and habitat interact must be understood. We explored how these factors affect the distribution and abundance of the exotic crayfishes Orconectes rusticus and O. propinquus and the native O. virilis at both the site-specific and whole-lake scales in northern Wisconsin lakes. During summer 1990, we quantified crayfish, fish predators, and fish diets in cobble and macrophyte sites in Trout Lake, comparing resulting patterns to those in 21 lakes surveyed during summer 1987. Within and across lakes, fish abundance was unrelated to habitat. Within Trout Lake, O. rusticus and O. propinquus were common in both cobble and macrophyte. Orconectes virilis was restricted to macrophyte, probably due to strong displacement by the invaders in cobble. Across lakes, O. rusticus increased where habitat was more than 16.7% cobble, O. propinquus was generally rare, and O. virilis abundance was unrelated to cobble. Crayfish were generally small in cobble and large in macrophyte, perhaps because of habitat-specific, size-selective fish predation or because large crayfish leave cobble when it no longer provides refuge. Orconectes virilis, the largest of three congeners, may have a size refuge in macrophyte but not in cobble. Across lakes, O. rusticus was only abundant when fish biomass was low; O. virilis abundance varied positively with fish. Effects of fish predation and habitat on the ability of invaders Orconectes rusticus and O. propinquus to establish and replace O. virilis appear to be scale dependent. At local (site-specific) scales, cobble likely interacts with selective predation for O. virilis to allow the invaders to establish and replace the native. At the lake-wide scale, high cobble facilitates invaders but predation may curb their successful dispersal and establishment at new sites. Models of community assembly and invasions need to incorporate scale dependencies in habitat availability and biotic interactions to effectively assess the invasion potential of novel species