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In a lovely May 16, 2009, Rose Garden setting, President Barack Obama announced stricter fuel economy standards for the U.S. auto fleet. The new fuel economy rules, which include the [...]

Oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and softshell clams, Mya arenaria, along the Massachusetts coast were harvested by European colonists beginning in the 1600's. By the 1700's, official Commonwealth rules were established to regulate their harvests. In the final quarter of the 1800's, commercial fishermen began harvesting northern quahogs, Mercenaria mercenaria, and northern bay scallops, Argopecten irradiaras irradiaras, and regulations established by the Massachusetts Legislature were applied to their harvests also. Constables (also termed wardens), whose salaries were paid by the local towns, enforced the regulations, which centered on restricting harvests to certain seasons, preventing seed from being taken, and personal daily limits on harvests. In 1933, the Massachusetts Legislature turned over shellfisheries management to individual towns. Local constables (wardens) enforced the rules. In the 1970's, the Massachusetts Shellfish Officers Association was formed, and was officially incorporated in 2000, to help the constables deal with increasing environmental problems in estuaries where fishermen harvest mollusks. The constables' stewardship of the molluscan resources and the estuariee environments and promotion of the fisheries has become increasingly complex., Introduction The beds of oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and softshell clams, Mya arenaria, on the south coasts of Cape Cod Bay, Mass., must have staggered the minds of the settlers of [...]

Thomas A. Hemphill is an assistant professor in the School of Management, University of Michigan-Flint. Business Economics (2009) 44, 51-56. doi:10.1057/be.2008.3 Beginning in 2007, many U.S. industry associations radically adjusted [...]

Foreign aid has often been intended by donors to entice recipient nations into policy and institutional reforms favorable to private sector economic development. In this study, we investigate the relationship between aid and changes to economic freedom in recipient nations over the 1990-2000 decade. The evidence is mixed. In general, we find that foreign aid has no significant effect on economic freedom overall. However, using a hedonic approach on the different categories of economic freedom, we find that aid has still managed to contribute toward a policy and institutional environment favorable to growth, as the different categories of economic freedom improved by aid more than offset those which are harmed by aid, in terms of their impact on growth. (JEL 010, 019), 1. INTRODUCTION Donors have multiple objectives in providing foreign assistance to poor countries. Aid is motivated in part by donors' foreign policy objectives; for example, much U.S. aid goes to [...]

Local government regulations of forestry practices on private land are often developed independently and without a full understanding of possible economic consequences. The number of forestry-related ordinances is growing, particularly in the southern United States. St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, is a prime example of an increasingly exurbanized area that has passed a number of forestry-related ordinances. Impacts of forestry-related ordinances on timber harvesting activities were examined using seemingly unrelated regression. Results indicate that a significant negative relationship exists between an ordinance requiring a $10,000 road performance bond and the level of timber harvest in the Parish. (JEL Q23, Q28), I. INTRODUCTION A growing trend of concern to many in the forestry community is the proliferation of state and local government regulations of forestry practices on private land (Granskog et [...]

The environmental economics literature has ignored the effects of the interaction among capital mobility, private and public pollution abatement, and cross-border pollution on environmental policies. We analyze these effects in the context of a general equilibrium model. We find, among other things, that (i) when countries are symmetric, the presence of public pollution abatement makes Nash equilibrium pollution taxes efficient while lump-sum taxes remain inefficient; and (ii) when countries are asymmetric, both taxes are inefficient and the Nash equilibrium pollution taxes depend mainly on the direction of capital mobility, factor intensity, and the degree of cross-border pollution. These results indicate that policy cooperation is more important when countries are different. JEL Classification: F18, F22, H21, 1. Introduction In response to growing environmental concerns, governments and international organizations have designed policies of pollution abatement and control (PAC). In a 2003 report the Organisation for Economic Co-operation [...]

Ensuring access to quality water supplies is among the most pressing environmental policy challenges of the 21st century, and not just in the developing world. In the United States, demographic [...]

There are strong arguments for the thesis that climate change will develop into the single most important global problem of the first half of this century. Rising sea levels; hurricanes [...]

The challenge of tackling human-derived climate change has emerged over the past two decades to become one of the most important, yet divisive, issues on the agenda of the international [...]

This paper assesses the potential for the 'payments for environmental services' (PES) conservation approach in Vietnam. This was done by conducting an experimental PES scheme involving sustainable forest management. The work was constrained by the fact that all land in Vietnam is state-owned and that there has been limited PES market development in the country. However; the results of the experiment (in forest areas where the fundamental conditions for PES were met) were quite promising. Participation in the trial scheme was good, despite the fact that it was an experiment of limited duration. Moreover, institutional support was already available and effective. Expected environmental impacts were also observed: the sustainable forest management regime that was tied to the PES scheme resulted in a reduction in both soil erosion and in destructive natural forest extraction activities. In light of these findings, it is suggested that more practical policy/programme trials should be implemented. These will allow Vietnamese policy-makers to gain more experience and knowledge before the large-scale implementation of PES is tried in the country. Keywords- sustainable forest management, payments for environmental services scheme, willingness-toaccept, socio-economic and environmental impacts, Vietnam., I. Introduction The majority of the poor in Vietnam Five in the country's hilly and mountainous areas. Many upland farmers provide significant environmental services that benefit the wider community. They [...]

This paper adds to the debate over whether self-policing can increase environmental protection by considering an issue that has been ignored in previous models--that self-policing may influence future enforcement. The model combines self-policing with targeted enforcement and allows for both deliberate and inadvertent violations. As expected, rewarding self-policers with more lenient future enforcement increases auditing, remediation, and disclosure of inadvertent violations. Self-policing can also serve as a complement to deliberate compliance and can thus further increase environmental performance. However, under reasonable conditions, self-policing can be a substitute for deliberate compliance and could therefore be detrimental to environmental protection. JEL Classification: K32, K42, Q52, Q58, 1. Introduction There is an on-going debate in both the theoretical and empirical literature about the effectiveness of self-policing policies such as the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Audit Policy. The [...]

In early 2006, landowners in Boiling Springs Lakes, N.C., began clear-cutting timber from their property after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that development could threaten local red-cockaded [...]

State voluntary cleanup programs (VCPs) were established in the 1990s to encourage cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated properties. I ask three questions: First, what properties are attracted to VCPs? Second, is there an interaction between VCP incentives and enterprise or brownfield zone incentives? Third, does participation in VCPs affect property values? Data from Colorado's VCP suggest that (a) the main determinants of participation are the size of the parcel and the surrounding land use, (b) other incentives have little effect, (c) properties with confirmed contamination sell at a 43%-56% discount, and (d) participation does tend to raise the property price. (JEL R14, Q58, K32), I. INTRODUCTION Environmental regulation and enforcement-based environmental programs sometimes result in unintended consequences that defeat the purpose of the programs themselves. Many observers argue that the U.S. Superfund program is [...]

Big names like Apple and Deli have gone public in recent months with commitments to stop using brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in the plastics they use. Some types have turned [...]

Economists usually present a rather gloomy view of climate change. They argue that efficient policies should only slow climate change this century, not stop it. Aggressive near-term policies lead to [...]