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Essays on Productive Efficiency, Shadow Prices, and Human Capital. PhD Thesis

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  • Marklund, Per-Olov

    (Department of Economics, Umeå University)

Abstract

This thesis consists of five papers, four of them basically concerning environmental issues, while the fifth paper addresses the issue of measuring output from the educational sector. The first paper starts from the fact that industrial activity causes environmental damage. Therefore, public authorities are called upon to regulate the behavior of producers by, e.g., legislating maximally allowed emission levels, which give rise to abatement costs. In this paper, marginal abatement costs (MACs) are estimated and a procedure to empirically analyze why MACs may vary between producers is suggested. The main focus is on whether the MACs in the Swedish pulp industry reveal that differences between counties in, e.g., economical characteristics, were influential when the authority, during 1983-1990, restricted 12 geographically scattered plants regarding emissions. The result indicates that county differences were influential. The second paper analyses and suggests a procedure for testing the Porter hypothesis. Part of this hypothesis is based on the argument that increased environmental stringency not only brings a cleaner environment, but also makes the polluting producers aware of the opportunity of using resources more efficiently. The particular test suggested considers whether there is a positive correlation between producers’ technical output efficiency and environmental stringency, approximated by a regulatory intensity index. It is empirically applied on 12 Swedish pulp plants during 1983-1990. No support for the Porter hypothesis is found in this particular case. The third paper deals with the climate policy issue. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union agreed to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases by 8 percent in comparison with the level in 1990. The Burden-Sharing Agreement (BSA) further redistributes the 8 percent reduction target among the member states. This paper evaluates the BSA both from an economical and a political perspective, i.e., whether cost-efficiency and equity, respectively, were considered when the BSA was settled. The empirical result indicates that both efficiency and equity were considered as important to the BSA. The fourth paper evaluates the Swedish Producer Responsibility Ordinance (PRO), fully implemented in 1994, which states that sorted out, domestically collected waste paper, must be recycled by the paper industry and, therefore, cannot be incinerated by the heating industry in purpose of recovering energy. The result indicates that this policy has contributed to inefficient waste paper allocation among some of the paper producers. The result further indicates that the priority made by the PRO, i.e., that waste paper recycling is preferable to incineration, should be reconsidered. The fifth paper relates the empirical attempts of measuring output from the educational sector to theoretical results about the welfare significance of a comprehensive Net National Product (NNP) measure. It is shown that economic theory provides a more focused way of interpreting such output estimates. The paper also contains estimates of the output from the Swedish educational sector. Among the results, it is shown that the private gross output value produced by higher education is approximately 2 percent of GDP. Furthermore, the private rate of return on investments in higher education in Sweden is calculated to 8.6 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Marklund, Per-Olov, 2004. "Essays on Productive Efficiency, Shadow Prices, and Human Capital. PhD Thesis," Umeå Economic Studies 621, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:0621
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Coggins, Jay S. & Swinton, John R., 1996. "The Price of Pollution: A Dual Approach to Valuing SO2Allowances," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 58-72, January.
    2. Xepapadeas, Anastasios & de Zeeuw, Aart, 1999. "Environmental Policy and Competitiveness: The Porter Hypothesis and the Composition of Capital," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 165-182, March.
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    4. Mohr, Robert D., 2002. "Technical Change, External Economies, and the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 158-168, January.
    5. Sofia Ahlroth & Anders Björklund & Anders Forslund, 1997. "The Output Of The Swedish Education Sector," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 43(1), pages 89-104, March.
    6. Martin L. Weitzman, 1976. "On the Welfare Significance of National Product in a Dynamic Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 156-162.
    7. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1993. "Derivation of Shadow Prices for Undesirable Outputs: A Distance Function Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 374-380, May.
    8. Thomas Aronsson & Karl-Gustaf Löfgren, 1995. "National product related welfare measures in the presence of technological change: Externalities and uncertainty," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(4), pages 321-332, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lundström, Christian, 2017. "On the Returns of Trend-Following Trading Strategies," Umeå Economic Studies 948, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    2. Huhtala, Anni & Marklund, Per-Olov, 2005. "Incorporating environmental impacts into value added from organic and conventional farming," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19259, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    3. Huhtala, Anni & Marklund, Per-Olov, 2005. "Environmental Targets and Shadow Prices of Bad Outputs in Organic and Conventional Farming," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24575, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Raattamaa, Tomas, 2016. "Essays on Delegated Search and Temporary Work Agencies," Umeå Economic Studies 935, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    5. Ankarhem, Mattias, 2005. "A Dual Assessment of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: The Case of Sweden," Umeå Economic Studies 660, Umeå University, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    allocative efficiency; bad output; burden-sharing; cost-efficiency; environmental regulation; equity; greenhouse gas emission control; human capital; marginal abatement cost; parametric directional output distance function; percentile bootstrap; Porter hypothesis; private return from education; producer responsibility ordinance; technical efficiency; waste paper allocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • Q20 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - General
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

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