Sabina L. Shaikh

Mitigating climate change by planting trees : the transaction costs trap

Land-use change and forestry projects are considered a low-cost option for addressing climate change mitigation. In Canada, afforestation is targeted to sequester enough carbon to meet one-fifth of its international obligations, and at lower cost than emissions reduction. We examine economic aspects of the institutions and incentives needed to encourage landowners in Canada to adopt tree planting on a large scale. Based on data from a survey of landowners, the transaction costs of getting landowners to convert their land from agriculture to plantation forests appear to be a significant obstacle, possibly increasing the costs of afforestation projects beyond what conventional economic analysis suggests. (JEL Q25)

Underutilized and Under Threat: Environmental Policy as a Tool to Address Diabetes Risk

Purpose of ReviewDiabetes is a burgeoning threat to public health in the USA. Importantly, the burden of diabetes is not equally borne across society with marked disparities based on geography, race/ethnicity, and income. The etiology of global and population-specific diabetes risk remains incompletely understood; however, evidence linking environmental toxicants acting as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as particulate matter and arsenic, with diabetes suggests that environmental policies could play an important role in diabetes risk reduction.Recent FindingsEvidence suggests that disproportionate exposures to EDCs may contribute to subgroup-specific diabetes risk; however, no federal policies regulate EDCs linked to diabetes based upon diabetogenic potential. Nevertheless, analyses of European Union data indicate that such regulation could reduce diabetes-associated costs and disease burden.SummaryFederal laws only regulate EDCs indirectly. The accumulating evidence linking these chemicals with diabetes risk should encourage policymakers to adopt stricter environmental standards that consider both health and economic impacts.

RESEARCH ARTICLE: Value of Time Clustering and the Efficiency of Destination-Based Congestion Pricing

In cities with a hub-and-spoke style transportation system, each individuals transit decision produces externalities contained within a particular transit spoke. When spokes vary in the typical number of drivers, in the capacity of the infrastructure, or in the average income of commuters, the efficient tax to charge drivers to minimize the externalities may vary across spokes. The size and importance of this variation are evaluated by comparing the potential welfare benefits of a congestion tax in Chicago, which is different rates for different highways to a tax that is a single rate. Using the 2000 United States Census Public Use Microdata to estimate wage distribution and data from the Illinois Department of Transportation on vehicle speed and road occupancy, this research provides estimates of optimal taxes for each neighborhood and for the city in aggregate. Results show that optimal tax rates vary substantially, from a low of

Treating respondent uncertainty in contingent valuation: a comparison of empirical treatments

6.75 per vehicle per day to a high of

The geography of ecosystem service value: The case of the Des Plaines and Cache River wetlands, Illinois

16.50, but that the overall welfare difference between charging a neighborhood-specific tax and charging a citywide tax is minor. This occurs because the number of drivers changes very slowly at high tax rates, meaning that a wide range of taxes can produce nearly optimal results in terms of welfare. An optimal congestion tax of

Are agricultural values a reliable guide in determining landowners' decisions to create carbon forest sinks?

11.25 per day is estimated to result in 400,000 fewer downtown commutes per day, reducing pollution costs valued at

Molecular tools for bathing water assessment in Europe: Balancing social science research with a rapidly developing environmental science evidence-base.

2.9 million per year.