Economic Evaluation of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in Italy

The paper deals with the social and economic dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation in Italy. The ultimate aim of the paper is to provide policy makers and experts with a conceptual framework, as well as methodological and operational tools for dealing with climate change impacts and adaptation from an economic perspective. In order to do so, first a conceptual and theoretical framework of the economic assessment of climate change impacts is presented and the state of the art about impact assessment studies is briefly analysed. Then, the Italian case is taken into account, by underlying the main impacts and adaptation challenges that are likely to be implied by climate change in the next decades. The analysis of the Italian case is particularly addressed through the description of the methodology and results of two case studies. The first one, dealing mainly with impact assessment, is carried out at the national level and is part of a EC funded project on Weather Impacts on Natural, Social and Economic Systems (WISE). The second one is carried out at the local level and focuses on sea level rise impacts and adaptation in a plane south of Rome. The two case studies allow to propose simple and flexible methodologies for the economic impact assessment and the economic valuation of adaptation strategies.Climate change, Economic impact assessment, Adaptation, Cost benefit analysis

The Economic Impact of Invasive Species in the Ornamental Commodity in Puerto Rico: Towards Establishing a Multidimensional Framework for Data Collection and Analysis

The ornamental commodity in Puerto Rico is valued for its economic contribution in the agricultural sector, its contribution to the esthetics of natural scenarios that impact the tourism sector, and for its environmental role. In the fiscal year 2001, ornamentals generated 4.8% of the total Agricultural Gross Product. In that year the production value at farm level was $34.1 million, the export value$0.5 million, and the import value $11.5 millions. Of the local production value, 1.5% was exported and 34.3% of the ornamental local market value was imported. The active trade traffic in Puerto Rico is a factor that increases the risk of the introduction of invasive species that affect the agricultural sector. It is necessary to estimate the economic impact of the established invasive species and those with high potential for introduction. The economic analysis must consider the impact on production, on market, and on the environment. The direct and indirect impact on market and non-market areas has to be estimated. The study presented in this paper pretends to gather economic data on the ornamental commodity and biological data on invasive pests and diseases to initiate the development of a comprehensive species risk management framework that incorporates the economic impact of invasive species.invasive species, ornamental, economic impact analysis, Crop Production/Industries,

The Impact of Reducing the Administrative Costs on the Efficiency in the Public Sector

The goal of the paper is to evaluate the impact of reducing the administrative costs on the efficiency in the public sector. Within the general framework provided by the specialised literature, the proposed methodology uses the classical model of a function of production, thus describing the factors of influence of the administrative costs on production and productivity in the public sector. The theoretical results are empirical exemplified for a local service of public utility. Adapting the theoretical model to the empirical situation is grounded on statistic methods of analysis and regression. The interpretation of results inscribes in the economic framework specific for public economics. The results aim both the novel model of analysis and the concrete evaluation of the economic impact of reducing the administrative expenditure in the public sector. At the same time, the general topic of reducing the administrative costs is extended towards the public sector. The most relevant conclusion refers to the capacity of the classical economic models in developing the public sectoradministrative costs,efficiency, productivity, public sector

Capital market expectations and the London office market

The analysis of office market dynamics has generally concentrated on the impact of underlying fundamental demand and supply variables. This paper takes a slightly different approach to many previous examinations of rental dynamics. Within a Vector-Error-Correction framework the empirical analysis concentrates upon the impact of economic and financial variables on rents in the City of London and West End of London office markets. The impulse response and variance decomposition reveal that while lagged rental values and key demand drivers play a highly important role in the dynamics of rents, financial variables are also influential. Stock market performance not only influences the City of London market but also the West End, whilst the default spread plays an important role in recent years. It is argued that both series incorporate expectations about future economic performance and that this is the basis of their influence upon rental values

Economic Linkages Across Space

We develop a diagrammatic framework that can be used to study the economic linkages between regions or cities. Hitherto, such linkages have not been the primary focus of either the theoretical or empirical literatures. We show that our general framework can be used to interpret both the New Economic Geography and Urban Systems literatures to help us understand spatial economic linkages. We then extend the theoretical framework to allow us to consider a number of additional issues which may be particularly important for analyzing the impact of policy. Such policy analysis will also require empirical work to identify the nature of key relationships. In a final section, we consider what the existing empirical literature can tell us about these relationships.Spatial linkages, Urban systems, New Economic Geography, Urban and regional policy

Corporate governance and economic growth

We estimated the impact of the performance of corporate governance on economic growth in a cross-country framework in two specifications. For analysis we have employed log liner model. We found that performance of corporate governance is significantly negatively related to the economic growth in both specification and in all models and hence it matters not only for the current year but it continues to persistent in future also. Addition to it, we found that role played by human capital is insignificant but physical capital and government final consumption expenditure plays significantly positive role in the economic growth of cross-section of countries. We also find that impact of life expectancy and fertility rate is negative and positive on economic growth respectively. We found that trade does not has significant impact on the economic growth in cross-section of countries.Corporate governance, Economic growth, Cross-country

Linking Health, Nutrition and Wages: The Evolution of Age at Menarche and Labor Earnings among Adult Mexican Women

This study uses a human capital framework to evaluate the impact on labor market productivity of investments in health and nutrition in Mexico. The research extends the existing literature by proposing age at menarche as an effective indicator for analyzing the impact on productivity in the labor market of health and nutritional investments during childhood and adolescence. As in the case of adult height and body mass index, indicators that have been widely used in the analysis of the health-productivity relationship, menarche is a variable that reflects the secular increase in the level of economic development of many countries in the region. Age at menarche has shown a steady decrease of approximately 3-4 months per decade in many countries over the past 150 years. This decrease is a reflection of a variety of socio-economic factors and in particular nutritional status as a child. Despite the parallels between menarche and adult height as indicators of cumulative health status, age at menarche has apparently not been previously incorporated into the analysis of the impact of health on economic development. The paper considers the correlates of age at menarche in the framework of a reduced form health production function. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of policy-sensitive health variables as determinants of age at menarche, and hence long-run female health. Hourly wages are used to measure the impact on labor market productivity of investment in health and nutrition early in the life cycle. Age at menarche is presented as a proxy for certain aspects of the health and nutritional components of human capital. The integrated human capital framework that underlies the theoretical model is developed in Schultz (1997), and applied in such works as Schultz (1996), Schultz and Tansel (1997) and Strauss and Thomas (1997).

Corruption, fiscal policy, and growth: A unified approach

Copyright @ 2011 Brunel UniversityIn this paper, we study the effects of bureaucratic corruption on fiscal policy and the subsequent impact on economic growth. Here corruption takes three forms: (i) it reduces the tax revenue raised from households, (ii) it inflates the volume of government spending, and (iii) it reduces the productivity of ‘effective’ government expenditure. The analysis distinguishes between the case where fiscal choices are determined exogenously to ensure a balanced budget and the case where the government optimally sets its policy instruments. Our policy experiments reveal the complexity of the channels through which corruption impacts upon growth, and the conditions under which the direction of the effect takes shape. The findings from our unified framework could rationalise the diverse (and sometimes, apparently conflicting) empirical evidence on the impact of corruption on economic growth offered in the literature

Measuring the impact of international R&D cooperation: the case of Spanish firms participating in the EU Framework Programme

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effects of international R&D cooperation on firms’ economic performance. Our empirical analysis, based on Spanish firms’ participation in the Framework Programme (FP) between 1995 and 2005, has confirmed that: (1) cooperation within the FP has a positive impact on the technological capacity of firms, captured through intangible fixed assets and (2) the technological capacity of firms is positively related to their economic performance, measured by labour productivity.International R&D cooperation, Framework Programme, Impact assessment