Population Externalities and Optimal Social Policy

If fertility is not chosen in a socially optimal way, and if policies to directly target fertility are ineffective or politically infeasible, then public policies that affect fertility could have important welfare consequences through the fertility channel. We refer to these effects as population externalities, and in this paper we focus on one important variable that may have a causal impact on fertility: the education of potential parents. If increased education causes families to have fewer children, then a government would want to increase college tuition subsidies in the presence of environmental externalities such as climate change, to indirectly discourage families from having children who will generate future environmental costs. Alternatively, if fertility is inefficiently low, due to imperfect parental altruism for example, governments will want to lower tuition subsidies to encourage child-bearing. We present a simple model of the college enrollment decision and its fertility impacts, and show that such population externalities are quantitatively important: the optimal subsidy increases by about $5000 per year with climate change, and decreases by over $7000 per year with imperfect parental altruism. Our paper demonstrates how public economics can incorporate population externalities, and that such externalities can have significant impacts on optimal policy.

Tiebout Sorting, Zoning, and Property Tax Rates

This paper examines certain implications from the literature on Tiebout’s model of local gov-ernment service provision, particularly Hamilton’s extension of the model to include local control of land use and property taxation. Our empirical analysis focuses on the use of fiscal zoning to lower property tax rates, a topic that has not been addressed in the extensive Tiebout literature. Using data for over 100 municipalities in the Miami, Florida, metropolitan area, we specify property tax rates as a function of fiscal zoning measures, other municipal characteristics, and tax mimicking. We conclude that single-family zoning is by far the most important variable ex-plaining municipal property tax rates.

Passenger Flow Prediction Using Smart Card Data from Connected Bus System Based on Interpretable XGBoost

Bus passenger flow prediction is a critical component of advanced transportation information system for public traffic management, control, and dispatch. With the development of artificial intelligence, many previous studies attempted to apply machine learning models to extract comprehensive correlations from transit networks to improve passenger flow prediction accuracy, given that the variety and volume of traffic data have been easily obtained. The passenger flow on a station is highly affected by various factors such as the previous time step, peak hours or nonpeak hours, and extracting the key features from the data is essential for a passenger flow prediction model. Although the neural networks, k -nearest neighbor, and some deep learning models have been adopted to mine the temporal correlations of the passenger flow data, the lack of interpretability of the influenced variables is still a big problem. Classical tree-based models can mine the correlations between variables and rank the importance of each variable. In this study, we presented a method to extract passenger flow of different routes on the station and implemented a XGBoost model to find the contributions of variables to the prediction of passenger flow. Comparing to benchmark models, the proposed model can reach state-of-the-art prediction accuracy and computational efficiency on the real-world dataset. Moreover, the XGBoost model can interpret the predicted results. It can be seen that period is the most important variable for the passenger flow prediction, and so the management of buses during peak hours should be improved.

Potential geographic distribution and ecological niche of the insect order Megaloptera: the case of the neartic-neotropical transition zone

The Megaloptera are an interesting, but relatively poorly studied group of insects. Among the new world Megaloptera, it is not known the effect of the neartic-neotropical transition zone on their biogeographic distribution. Here we present potential geographic distributions based on ecological niche models of the species of Megaloptera from North America that occurred in the transition zone. Results suggested that the geographic range of Corydalinae (dobsonflies) in the transition zone is associated to mountainous formations and that most species favour for warm climates with higher precipitation rates. Climate types tend to be important for species that show narrow geographic ranges, but precipitation tends to be the most important variable to explain species dispersion. In addition, Chauliodinae (fishflies) and Sialidae (alderflies) may have no relation with the transition zone. Overall, our models support the dispersion of dobsonflies from the neotropics to North America and explain the two endemisms in Mexico as the result of the formation of the transition zone.

Short and/or long-term investment choice: Artificial intelligence analysis of the role of both or-ganizational and behavioral determinants

This paper shows empirically the impact of organizational and behavioral determinants on the CEO's investment horizon choice, using artificial intelligence explanatory methods. We apply our approach to 100 Saudi firms. We test the effect of three organizational determinants: ownership concentration, board independence, and CEO remuneration system; and three behavioral determinants: myopia, the locus of control and commitment, on the CEO's investment horizon choice. The study’s key finding is that executives' commitment bias is the most important variable in terms of modal value that affects firms' long-term investment choice. We also find a positive and significant relationship between myopia and long-term investment choice, whereas the lowliest determinant of the horizon choice is the locus of control. More generally, these results show that CEOs who are likely to be the most myopic may display long-term behavior with the existence of high cognitive involvement.

Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy – A Concept Centric Review of Literature.

Increasing renewable energy footprints now features prominently in the clean energy transition plan for many countries. Consumer’s Willingness To Pay (WTP) for renewable energy is an important variable in this plan. A concept-centric review of 70 research articles conducted in this study reveals that first and most commonly, consumer’s willingness to pay for renewable energy indicates the social acceptance of renewable energy, quantifying the extent of public financial support for meeting nationally set renewable energy targets. Second, it reflects the preferred attributes of renewable electricity supply in deregulated retail electricity markets. And third, it mirrors the non use values of renewable energy sources. A concept augmented matrix presented in the paper helps understand the most popular valuation techniques used to quantify WTP estimates in included studies. This paper concludes by presenting policy enablers to accelerate renewable energy transition in developing economies - where the transition is still in nascent stages.

Sustainability as a measure of tourism success: the Portuguese Promotional Tourism Boards' view

PurposeThe study explores the concept of sustainability as a measure of tourism success from the perspectives of the Portuguese Promotional Tourism Boards.Design/methodology/approachThe study reviews current approaches to defining sustainability and explores how this can contribute to measuring success in tourism destinations using the case of the Portuguese Promotional Tourism Boards to shed light on the theme issue question.FindingsThe evidence that the impacts of tourism are not all beneficial to destinations and their residents is mounting and well addressed by the main world tourism agencies who are now promoting alternative ways for the industry to adopt a more holistic approach to measure the success of tourism destinations. This approach is also being adopted and promoted by some of the world's best tourism destinations.Originality/valueBased on contributions from the Portuguese Regional Promotional Tourism Entities (ERTs), it was possible to define a successful tourism destination as the one that creates income for the local community and ensures the quality of life of the population; values and preserves local identities, heritage, culture and traditions; and promotes the sustainable use of ecosystems and the preservation of natural resources, while practising a circular economy approach. Based on the same source, it was possible to identify the most important variable in evaluating the success of a tourist destination: the level of satisfaction of residents with tourism.

Effect of Exchange Rate Misalignment on Bilateral Trade Between Kenya and European Union: 2000-2016

The exchange rate is an important variable in international trade because a country's competitiveness is determined by the expectations on how trade reacts to its movements. To orient the economy outwards, Kenya has pursued various measures from the 1990s to the 2000s. Kenya also signed up for nonreciprocal trade with the European Union under the Cotonou agreement. Despite the export-oriented efforts, Kenya's trade has remained skewed towards imports and a widening trade deficit which seems to follow the weakening of the Kenya shilling. The main policy dilemma therefore, is how imports accelerated in an environment of unhindered European Union market access, hence the motivation of this study. The study adopted a dynamic modeling approach since previous and present values affect exchange rate and trade. The results show that the economic fundamentals drive the real exchange rate. In terms of misalignment, the exchange rate is overvalued to a maximum of 5.9 percent and undervalued up to 5.2 percent. The estimated misalignment hurts imports but has a positive, statistically insignificant effect on exports. The results of this study suggest that the monetary authority should ensure the exchange rate remains stable and within the 6 percent range while monitoring all the underlying determinants. Additionally, hedging instruments should be made available and affordable to traders.

KASEKTEN PEREMPUAN DI PESANTREN: PONDOK PESULUKAN THORIQOT AGUNG TULUNGAGUNG

In Javanese Islamic discourse in general, Javanese scholars look more at the broad horizon of Sufistic teachings and practices as an important variable in the Islamization of Java. The author feels that the micro area that discusses daily spirituality, especially women's spirituality, is an area of study that is worthy of research. In the practice of spirituality, of course, it cannot be separated from magical power, it is believed to have supernatural powers. The power is obtained in practice or penijazahan. Then there are various theories about mysticism, kebatinan to sects, in fact women are also actively involved in cosmology or social facts in Java. Therefore, the author poses a research question, namely, why the position of women in the narrative of daily spirituality is considered secondary and how is the practice of kasekten in Pondok Pesulukan Tharekat Agung. This paper specifically discusses the practice of spirituality or female students at the Thoriqot Agung Islamic boarding school in Tulungagung district. Practice or education is generally known as the path that can lead a person to gain enlightenment (sakti). This study uses an ethnographic-based qualitative approach. The findings of this study explain that sociological aspects and patriarchal religious interpretations condition women's spirituality to always be at a secondary level. Women who engage in spiritual practice cannot get the same degree as men, such as becoming Murshid, even though they are already spiritually established. Thus, women are only counted as students in the Tarekat and are not as charismatic as men who hold the title of Kyai Tarekat.

Closing an Eye for the Reliability of Orbital Tightening in Pain Detection: A Model-Specific Simplification of the Mouse Grimace Scale

Despite its long establishment and its applicability in pain detection in mice, the Mouse Grimace Scale still seems to be underused in terms of acute pain detection during chronic experiments. However, a broadening of its applicability can identify possible refinement approaches such as cumulative severity and habituation to painful stimuli. Therefore, this study focuses on two main aspects: First, five composite MGS criteria were evaluated with two independent methods (the MoBPs algorithm and a penalized least squares regression) and ranked for their relative importance. The most important variable was used in a second analysis to specifically evaluate the context of pain after an i.p. injection (intervention) in two treatment groups (CCl4 and oil (control)) at fixed times throughout four weeks in 24 male C57BL/6N mice. One hour before and after each intervention, video recordings were taken and the MGS assessment was performed. In this study, the results indicate orbital tightening as the most important criterion. In this experimental setup, a highly significant difference after treatment between week 0 and 1 was found in the CCl4 group, resulting in a medium-sized effect (W = 62.5, p-value <0.0001, rCCl4= 0.64). The oil group showed no significant difference (week 0 vs 1, W = 291.5, p-value = 0.7875, rcontrol= 0.04). Therefore, the study showed that the pain caused by i.p. injections was only dependent on the applied substance and no significant cumulation or habituation occurred due to the intervention. Further, the results indicated that the MGS system can be simplified.