Christopher S. Decker

Corporate Environmentalism and Environmental Statutory Permitting

Studies have shown that despite infrequent inspections and low penalties for statutory violations, a large fraction of firms comply with environmental restrictions. What then motivates compliance? I investigate this question by focusing on the length of time it takes environmental agencies to process and issue new source construction permits pursuant to Clean Air Act regulations and new industrial discharge permits pursuant to Clean Water Act regulations. I find that plants (or firms) with fewer instances of noncompliance receive permits for major projects more quickly. In addition, I find that permit delays are sensitive to economic conditions as well, such as local area unemployment. As far as voluntary pollution control behavior is concerned, I find that regulators that issue permits for plant modifications focus primarily on statutory compliance, but when permitting new plant construction, where there is no plant compliance history to go on, voluntary pollutant releases do matter.

Easter Island: historical anecdote or warning for the future?

Two standard solutions for the ‘Malthusian Trap’ involve institutional reforms and technological progress. Using Easter Island as an example, we investigate the hypothetical role that technological progress and population management reform might have played in preventing the collapse of the island’s civilization. The model includes a composite manufactured good and a composite harvested renewable resource. Fertility is assumed to rise with per capita income. The resource’s carrying capacity and intrinsic growth rate as well as labor’s harvesting productivity are subject to technological progress. Fertility is subject to population management reform. The model yields a system of two simultaneous, nonlinear, non-autonomous differential equations. We first study the system’s steady states. The system is then parameterized for Easter Island and its comparative dynamics are investigated in simulations. We find that technological progress can generate large fluctuations in population, renewable resources, and per capita utility, sometimes resulting in system collapse. With high fertility rates, the population and the resource vanish. None of the simulations investigated here exhibit a constantly growing per capita utility over time. Finally, we evaluate the applicability of these results to contemporary societies.

Do increases in petroleum product prices put the incumbent party at risk in US presidential elections

This article investigates the impact of petroleum product prices on recent United States’ presidential elections by modelling the probability of the incumbent presidential party losing a state (under the United States’ electoral college system) it had carried the previous presidential election. The main finding is that the probability of the incumbent party losing a state previously carried increases with petroleum product prices but only in those states that have primarily energy consuming economies. We also find that increases in the number of international conflicts, increases in real state per-capita income growth, and increases in state per capita grants-in-aid all reduce the likelihood of losing previously carried states while higher taxation growth increases this likelihood.

The Impact of Military Forts on Agricultural Investments on the Great Plains in 1880

Abstract The authors investigated empirically the relationship between agricultural development and proximity to military forts in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado in 1880. Agricultural investments were substantially higher in counties where a military fort was present, suggesting that military forts stimulated agricultural development on the Great Plains. However, the reverse was not true. The authors found no statistical support for the notion that forts located in counties already experienced substantial development. Moreover, the authors found that the presence of a military fort increased agricultural development, whereas fort closings tended to slow agricultural development.

Compensation negotiation and corporate governance: the evidence from China

Abstract This paper examines CEO pay dispersion for the listed companies in China. We apply a two-tier stochastic frontier model to the CEO compensation framework where asymmetric information generates a surplus between the minimum wage that CEOs accept and the maximum payment that firms offer. This surplus leads to CEO pay dispersion coming from the negotiation power between the CEO and the firm. We generate the surplus extracted by each CEO-firm pair and analyze how corporate governance affects them. An empirical analysis finds that: (1) On average, CEOs are paid 23.26% more than the benchmark; (2) additionally, we examine the bargaining power in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). We find that CEOs in SOEs have less bargaining power due to compensation regulations. We then examine compensation for new CEOs hired externally and find that CEOs hired externally have less bargaining power on average; and (3) corporate governance has a significant effect on the salary bargaining power of each agent. More specifically, the CEO-Chairman dummy has a significant positive effect on the bargaining power of firms and CEOs, but the latter is larger. Board size has a negative effect on both. Independent directors help improve the bargaining power of the firms and board meeting times help enhance the bargaining power of the CEOs. Equity concentration has a significant negative effect on both sides.