Mirko Moro

Constructing genuine savings indicators for Ireland, 1995–2005☆

In this paper we compute the genuine savings indicators for the Republic of Ireland over the period 1995-2005. We expand and improve existing World Banks estimates by: a) using data collected from official Irish sources; b) employing the net present value method to assess resource depreciation; c) including external costs from SO(2) and NOx emissions; and d) estimating human capital accumulation using the returns to education. We also perform a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of our estimates to different assumptions and parameters. Our estimates are consistently smaller than the World Banks and negative in the first years of the period considered.

Measuring the Local Costs of Conservation: A Provision Point Mechanism for Eliciting Willingness to Accept Compensation

Protected areas are employed worldwide as a means of conserving biodiversity. Unfortunately, restricting access to such areas imposes opportunity costs on local people who have traditionally relied on them to obtain resources such as fuelwood and bushmeat. We use contingent valuation to estimate the local benefits forgone from loss of access to a number of protected area types in Uganda. Methodologically, we innovate by implementing a “provision point” mechanism to estimate willingness to accept compensation (WTA) for loss of access to protected areas. We show that the provision point reduces mean WTA by a significant degree. (JEL Q51, Q56)

Does the Housing Market Reflect Cultural Heritage? A Case Study of Greater Dublin

Does the housing market reflect cultural heritage? We estimate several specifications of a hedonic price equation to establish whether distance to, and density of, cultural heritage site is capitalised into housing prices in Greater Dublin, Ireland. We use a very rich dataset of housing and neighbourhood characteristics and include 104 location-fixed effects, which represent very small areas, ensuring the identification of the price effects on similar houses in similar areas. Our results show that some types of cultural heritage sites, such as historic buildings, memorials, and Martello towers, provide positive spillovers to property prices while archaeological sites seem to be a negative amenity. We interpret these premiums (or lack thereof) as capturing aesthetic beauty.

Income and Preferences for the Environment: Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data

Do people care more about the environment as their income increases? In this paper we use a measure of subjective well-being to directly analyze whether the impact of a number of environmental amenities on self-reported life satisfaction varies with income. We find little empirical support for the marginal effects of environmental amenities being larger for the richest.

Immigration and Self-Reported Well-Being in the UK

Much recent research suggests that immigration has had little, if any, negative impact on the labour market outcomes of natives. In this study we focus on ascertaining the effect of immigration on subjective as opposed to objective indicators of native well-being. Our analytical approach exploits spatial and temporal variation in the net inflows of foreign-born individuals across local areas in England. We find using both a fixed effects and instrumental variable specification that net inflows of foreign-born individuals are associated with modest negative subjective well-being effects for the population as a whole, but that there is a notable degree of heterogeneity in this relationship. Specifically, relatively older individuals (60 ), those with below average household incomes, the unemployed and finally those without any formal educational qualifications experience much more pronounced well-being losses than their younger, financially better-off and employed counterparts. These observed well-being differentials across social groups are similar to voting patterns evident in the recent UK referendum on EU membership. We put forward perceived labour market competition as one of the mechanisms underpinning these results. In support of this premise, we find that the negative relationship between inflows of foreign-born individuals and the subjective well-being of the native-born population in England is much more substantive when macroeconomic conditions are relatively less favourable.

The Cost of Banking Crises: New Evidence from Life Satisfaction Data: Life satisfaction and banking crisis

It is known that banking crises produce large economic costs. Yet might their consequences be even more far‐reaching? We investigate an issue as yet largely unexplored and provide some of the first evidence that banking crises also lead to major, widespread, and lasting psychological losses. We estimate the costs of banking crises with individual life satisfaction; we show that these extend beyond GDP declines and other macroeconomic and financial leakages. For the 2007‐8 financial crisis, we find some evidence that the losses are larger for those countries that had previously experienced a credit boom.