On the Role of Job Assignment in a Comparison of Education Systems

This paper reexamines how differences in systems for financing education influence GDP by highlighting a neglected function of education policy: it affects the magnitude of gains from job assignment. When more productive jobs demand more skill, privately financed education can increase productivity gains from matching between jobs and skill by increasing the availability of highly educated people. This differs from the standard argument that publicly financed education increases the total amount of human capital by equalizing educational opportunities. It is shown that if job opportunities have large variations in productivity, education policy may face a serious efficiency--equity trade-off.Job assignment, Human capital, Education system

A spatial analysis of land use change and water quality in Lake Biwa, Japan

Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Does the Diversity of Human Capital Increase GDP? A Comparison of Education Systems

This paper examines how different education systems affect GDP by influencing the diversity of human capital. We construct an overlapping generation model in which agents are heterogeneous in income and innate ability, and the final goods are produced with differentiated intermediate goods. We analyze an economy in which an income distribution converges to a stationary distribution. It is shown that the diversity of human capital induced by income inequality always lowers the GDP of the next period, while the diversity of human capital induced by heterogeneous ability can increase GDP, if the produced intermediate goods are sufficiently substitutable and firms have a large span of control. Hence, as public education equalizes education resources across households, it mitigates the negative effect of income inequality on GDP, while the effects of ability tracking crucially depend on the production structure of the economy.Span of control, Complementarities, Human capital, Ability tracking

Reducing Nitrogen Runoff from the Upper Mississippi River Basin to Control Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico: Easements or Taxes?

This paper integrates economic and physical models to estimate the social cost of reducing nitrogen loads from the Upper Mississippi River Basin to the Gulf of Mexico under three conservation easement policies and a fertilizer use tax. The economic models predict farmers' choice of crops and management practices at more than 44,000 Natural Resource Inventory sites in the basin. The physical model assesses the impact of land use changes on nitrate-N concentrations in the Mississippi River. Results suggest that the fertilizer-use tax is much more cost effective than the three easement policies. Incentive payments for conservation tillage are most cost effective among the three easement policies, but can reduce nitrate-N concentrations by only 37%. The potential for incentive payments for corn-soybean rotations is even more limited. Payments for cropland retirement can be used to achieve the largest reduction in nitrate-N concentrations, but are least cost effective among the four policies considered in this paper.Fertilizer-use taxes, conservation easements, hypoxia, land use changes, nitrate water pollution, nonpoint source pollution, SWAT, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q24, Q25, Q28,

The Empirics of Environmental and Distributional Impacts of Conservation Targeting Strategies

This study compares the environmental and economic effects of alternative targeting strategies (benefit, cost, and benefit-cost ratio targeting) for reducing nitrate-N water pollution in the Des Moines Watershed in Iowa. The objective is achieved by applying an integrated modeling system to nitrate-N runoff from the Des Moines Watershed. Our integrated modeling system consists of an econometric model and a physically-based hydrologic balance simulation model. The econometric model estimates the opportunity cost of CRP participation is calculated at each parcel. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is then used to simulate the level of nitrate-N runoff at each NRI parcel in the watershed. Our results show that the benefit-cost targeting achieves the highest nitrate-N runoff reduction for a given budget. The cost targeting results in the largest amount of land out of production. This strategy, however, results in the smallest environmental benefits. The benefit targeting takes the smallest amount of resource out of production and results in highest output level. The percent differences in the amount of land retired and total nitrate-N runoff reduction among alternative targeting strategies tend to be larger when the conservation budget is smaller. Finally, benefit targeting and benefit-cost ratio targeting tend to result in similar environmental and economic outcomes. Differences in nitrate-N runoff and acres of land retired between these two strategies are shown to be quite small.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Applying Geographically Weighted Regression to Conjoint Analysis: Empirical Findings from Urban Park Amenities

The objective of this study is to develop spatially-explicit choice model and investigate its validity and applicability in CA studies. This objective is achieved by applying locally-regressed geographically weighted regression (GWR) and GIS to survey data on hypothetical dogrun facilities (off-leash dog area) in urban recreational parks in Tokyo, Japan. Our results show that spatially-explicit conditional logit model developed in this study outperforms traditional model in terms of data fit and prediction accuracy. Our results also show that marginal willingness-to-pay for various attributes of dogrun facilities has significant spatial variation. Analytical procedure developed in this study can reveal spatially-varying individual preferences on attributes of urban park amenities, and facilitates area-specific decision makings in urban park planning.Choice experiments, conjoint analysis, dogrun, geographically weighted regression, spatial econometrics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Radiation hydrodynamics simulations of wide-angle outflows from super-critical accretion disks around black holes

By performing two-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations with large computational domain of 5000 Schwarzschild radius, we revealed that wide-angle outflow is launched via the radiation force from the super-critical accretion flows around black holes. The angular size of the outflow, of which the radial velocity (v_r) is over the escape velocity (v_esc), increases with an increase of the distance from the black hole. As a result, the mass is blown away with speed of v_r > v_esc in all direction except for the very vicinity of the equatorial plane, theta=0-85^circ, where theta is the polar angle. The mass ejected from the outer boundary per unit time by the outflow is larger than the mass accretion rate onto the black hole, ~150L_Edd/c^2, where L_Edd and c are the Eddington luminosity and the speed of light. Kinetic power of such wide-angle high-velocity outflow is comparable to the photon luminosity and is a few times larger than the Eddington luminosity. This corresponds to ~10^39-10^40 erg/s for the stellar mass black holes. Our model consistent with the observations of shock excited bubbles observed in some ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), supporting a hypothesis that ULXs are powered by the super-critical accretion onto stellar mass black holes.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

empirical findings from treaty-level panel data

This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of international environmental agreements (IEA). Although there exists large number of empirical studies regarding IEA effectiveness, much of those studies focus on ratification decisions and regulated environmental behaviors at country level. This approach, however, is limited for investigating the attributes of different treaties and identifying factors affecting the success of IEA. To avoid this limitation, this study develops a treaty-level panel data including 14 environmental agreements adopted and entered into force last 20 years. This aggregated approach enables to look further insights regarding the attributes of each IEA, and identify the factors significantly affecting the effectiveness of agreements. From our results, several treaty-specific attributes are shown to be significant. Specifically, sanction for non- compliance is the most influential inducement for the effectiveness of IEA. A mechanism of financial assistance for less-capable developing countries is also found to be positive inducement, but mechanism of technical assistance is not significant at any statistical levels. Our results also indicate that involving larger number of countries, especially large-scale fast-growing developing countries such as BRICs, is another significant factor. Although this is not compatible with a strict sanction for non-compliance, introducing well-designed financial mechanism may be one of possible solutions for this incompatibility problem and making the IEA more attractive and effective