Browsing by Subject "economics"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A typology of time-scale mismatches and behavioral interventions to diagnose and solve conservation problems.
    (Conserv Biol, 2016-02) Wilson, Robyn S; Hardisty, David J; Epanchin-Niell, Rebecca S; Runge, Michael C; Cottingham, Kathryn L; Urban, Dean L; Maguire, Lynn A; Hastings, Alan; Mumby, Peter J; Peters, Debra PC
    Ecological systems often operate on time scales significantly longer or shorter than the time scales typical of human decision making, which causes substantial difficulty for conservation and management in socioecological systems. For example, invasive species may move faster than humans can diagnose problems and initiate solutions, and climate systems may exhibit long-term inertia and short-term fluctuations that obscure learning about the efficacy of management efforts in many ecological systems. We adopted a management-decision framework that distinguishes decision makers within public institutions from individual actors within the social system, calls attention to the ways socioecological systems respond to decision makers' actions, and notes institutional learning that accrues from observing these responses. We used this framework, along with insights from bedeviling conservation problems, to create a typology that identifies problematic time-scale mismatches occurring between individual decision makers in public institutions and between individual actors in the social or ecological system. We also considered solutions that involve modifying human perception and behavior at the individual level as a means of resolving these problematic mismatches. The potential solutions are derived from the behavioral economics and psychology literature on temporal challenges in decision making, such as the human tendency to discount future outcomes at irrationally high rates. These solutions range from framing environmental decisions to enhance the salience of long-term consequences, to using structured decision processes that make time scales of actions and consequences more explicit, to structural solutions aimed at altering the consequences of short-sighted behavior to make it less appealing. Additional application of these tools and long-term evaluation measures that assess not just behavioral changes but also associated changes in ecological systems are needed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    How Do Gasoline Prices Affect Fleet Fuel Economy?
    (2009) Timmins, CD; Li, S; von Haefen, R
    Exploiting a rich dataset of passenger vehicle registrations in 20 US MSAs from 1997 to 2005, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on the automotive fleet's composition. We find that high gasoline prices affect fleet fuel economy through two channels: shifting new auto purchases towards more fuel-efficient vehicles, and speeding the scrappage of older, less fuel-efficient used vehicles. Policy simulations suggest that a 10 percent increase in gasoline prices from 2005 levels will generate a 0.22 percent increase in fleet fuel economy in the short run and a 2.04 percent increase in the long run.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    On Population Structure and Marriage Dynamics
    (2010) Giolito, Eugenio
    I develop an equilibrium, a two-sided search model of marriage with endogenous population growth, to study the interaction between fertility, the age structure of the population and the age of men and women at first marriage. Within a simple two-period overlapping generation model, I show that given an increase of the desired number of children age at marriage is affected through two different channels. First, as population growth increases, the age structure of the population produces a thicker market for young people, inducing early marriages. The second channel comes from differential fecundity: if the desired number of children is not feasible for older women, women tend to marry younger and men older, with single men outnumbering single women in equilibrium. Using an extended version of the model to a finite number of periods and fertility data, I show that two mechanisms described above may have acted as persistence mechanisms after the U. S. Baby Boom. Specifically, I find that the demographic transitional dynamics after the Baby Boom may account for approximately 23 percent of the increase in men's age of marriage between 1985 and 2009, although the impact on women's age is small.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Real Business Cycles in Emerging Countries?
    (2010) García-Cicco, Javier; Pancrazi, Roberto; Uribe, Martín
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access