Suchergebnisse

Free trade may not improve welfare when environmental distortions exist. We study the coordination of trade and environmental policies when the distortion is loose property rights governing resources. Using the dual approach of Dixit and Norman (1980), we trade out 'iso-welfare' curves in the space of the degree of environment distortion and the level of the import tariff. We use these curves to find necessary and sufficient conditions for disproportionate reforms, piecemeal or discrete, to be welfare improving. We also find that the needed reduction in the distortion to make trade welfare improving increases as the environmental stock increases, the productivity of the environmentally intensive good increases, or when the country is a large exporter of the environmentally intensive good.

Despite an increasingly large body of research that focuses on the potential demand for autonomous vehicles (AVs), risk preference is an understudied factor. Given that AV technology and how it will interact with the evolving mobility system are highly risky, this lack of research on risk preference is a critical gap in current understanding. By using a stated preference survey of 1142 individuals from Singapore, this study achieves three objectives. First, it develops one measure of psychometric risk preference and operationalizes prospect theory to create two economic risk preference parameters. Second, it examines how these psychometric and economic risk preferences are associated with socioeconomic variables. Third, it analyzes how risk preference influences the mode choice of AVs. The study finds that risk preference parameters are significantly associated with socioeconomic variables: the elderly, poor, females, and unemployed Singaporeans appear more risk-averse and tend to overestimate small probabilities of losses. Furthermore, all three risk preference parameters contribute to the prediction of AV adoption. These modeling results have policy implications at both the aggregate and disaggregate levels. At the aggregate level, people misperceive probabilities, are overall risk-averse, and hence under-consume AVs relative to the social optimum. At the disaggregate level, the elderly, poor, female, and unemployed are more risk-averse and thus are less likely to adopt AVs. These results suggest that it might be valuable for governments to implement policies to encourage technology adoption, particularly for disadvantaged social groups, although caution remains due to uncertainty in the long-term effects of AVs. Individualized risk preference parameters could also inform how to design regulations, safety standards, and liability allocations of AVs since many regulations are essentially mechanisms for risk allocation. One limitation of the paper is that risk preference is measured and modeled only as individual-specific but not alternative-specific variables. Future studies should examine the relationship between the multiple components of risk preference and the multiple risky aspects of AVs.

Compliance with laws and regulations intended to protect common pool resources in the urban context is essential in tackling problems such as pollution and congestion. A high level of non-compliance necessitates investigation into motivations behind compliance. The long-held instrumental theory emphasising the dependence of compliance on tangible deterrence measures fails to adequately explain empirical findings. More recently established compliance models incorporate normative, instrumental and image factors as motivations for compliance. We investigate the importance of normative and image motivations for transportation policy compliance, and the influence of the hukou (China's household registration) on the composition of motivations. Through a case study of Shanghai's license auction policy to inhibit car growth, we use a structural equation model and data from a survey (n = 1389) of policy attitudes and compliance behaviour. The results show that both locals and migrants comply because of instrumental motivation. However, for locals, normative and image motivations not only influence compliance but do so to a greater degree than instrumental motivations. This stands in stark contrast with the fact that there was no statistical relationship between normative and image motivations and compliance for migrants. The significant contribution of normative and image motivations to compliance in locals bears positive implications for compliance, but the absence of that in migrants is worrying. If only instrumental motivations matter, then the government is really constrained in how it can go about keeping social order. Compliance obtained strictly through social control indicates an unsustainable state of governance. ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Samuel Tak Lee Real Estate Entrepreneurship Laboratory

Increased automobile ownership and use in China over the last two decades has increased energy consumption, worsened air pollution, and exacerbated congestion. However, the countrywide growth in car ownership conceals great variation among cities. For example, Shanghai and Beijing each had about 2 million motor vehicles in 2004, but by 2010, Beijing had 4.8 million motor vehicles whereas Shanghai had only 3.1 million. Among the factors contributing to this divergence is Shanghai's vehicle control policy, which uses monthly license auctions to limit the number of new cars. The policy appears to be effective: in addition to dampening growth in car ownership, it generates annual revenues up to 5 billion CNY (800 million USD). But, despite these apparent successes, the degree to which the public accepts this policy is unknown. This study surveys 524 employees at nine Shanghai companies to investigate the policy acceptance of Shanghai's license auction by the working population, and the factors that contribute to that acceptance: Perceived policy effectiveness, affordability, equity concerns, and implementation. Respondents perceive the policy to be effective, but are moderately negative towards the policy nonetheless. However, they expect that others accept the policy more than they do. Respondents also hold consistently negative perceptions about the affordability of the license, the effects on equity, and the implementation process. Revenue usage is not seen as transparent, which is exacerbated by a perception that government vehicles enjoy advantages in obtaining a license, issues with the bidding process and technology, and difficulties in obtaining information about the auction policy. Nevertheless, respondents believe that license auctions and congestion charges are more effective and acceptable than parking charges and fuel taxes. To improve public acceptability of the policy, we make five recommendations: Transparency in revenue usage; transparency in government vehicle licensing and use, categorizing licenses by vehicle type, implementation and technology improvements to increase bidding convenience, and policies that restrict vehicle usage in congested locations.