This paper aims to explore the impact that hybrid-work schedules will have on urban spatial structure and how that in turn will impact urban residential water demand. I develop a variant of the monocentric city model in which workers have an additional margin in their housing consumption decision through the choice of both indoor floor area and outdoor yard area, both of which require water as an input. The transition to a hybrid work schedule impacts households through three channels: (1) a decline in commuting costs, (2) additional demand for home-office space, and (3) a potential decline in wages through lost agglomeration economies due to fewer in-person interactions. The analysis suggests that the city may expand or contract, and aggregate water use could rise or fall when hybrid-work is introduced, depending on whether the reductions in commuting costs outweigh the additional costs of home-office space and lower wages from reduced agglomeration externalities. When aggregate water use does rise, this increase is less pronounced for households in suburban areas, which become denser and land becomes relatively more expensive, slowing the demand for additional yard space. In contrast, households located closer to the core use relatively more water as land values fall and average housing consumption rises. I extend the model to consider four additional components: subsidizing in-person work, increasing marginal water prices, improvements to home water use technology, and year-round lawn irrigation.
This paper examines how risk attitudes and social preferences shape support for redistributive and environmental policies. We propose a micro-founded explanation in which support for redistribution arises from two mechanisms: an insurance motive and fairness concerns. Both risk aversion and social preferences increase demand for redistribution, with a substitution effect whereby higher aversion to social risk lowers the threshold of social preferences needed to support it. For environmental protection, these factors operate in parallel, increasing support for policies that mitigate negative consumption externalities. When individuals choose between policy domains, preferences depend on perceived future income uncertainty and the weight assigned to externalities, making the overall effect ambiguous. We test these predictions using a nationally representative dataset of 6,000 observations from six European countries. The empirical results confirm our hypotheses.
Many countries combine carbon pricing with renewable-energy policies. Microeconomic theory predicts this combination yields no additional emissions reductions under cap-and-trade and only potentially under carbon taxation, but at a social welfare loss. We undertook a systematic literature review of emissions-reduction synergy, identifying many ex-ante but only one ex-post study – explained by the lack of policy counterfactuals. In 72
At the 57th session of the UN Statistical Commission, methodological guidelines for wealth accounting were identified as a priority for the Beyond GDP agenda. Our paper contributes directly to this need. Genuine Savings (GS), a leading sustainable development indicator in environmental and resource economics, measures changes in inclusive wealth by adjusting national savings for natural capital depletion, physical capital depreciation, and human capital investment. An unappreciated issue is that the distinction between savings-based (GS) and investment-based (GI) measures is treated as semantic. In theory, both are identical given the savings-investment identity underpinning the national accounts. In practice, this identity does not always hold, due to statistical discrepancies and accounting revisions, with the savings side particularly susceptible. This paper is the first to examine how savings-investment discrepancies in the national accounts affect practical wealth accounting. Using data for thirty-three countries and two datasets (World Bank and AMECO), we show that GS and GI disagree, within and across datasets, by more than double the natural capital adjustment itself, enough to generate conflicting sustainability signals in both level and direction of change. These issues are persistent in the World Bank data, the primary global dataset for wealth accounting, while AMECO is largely internally consistent after 1995. Structural break analysis suggests supply and use balancing under the ESA95 revisions, together with reconciliation of the current account balance, reduces the disagreement. We provide practical guidance, including a formal GS-GI distinction, routine savings-investment consistency checks, a more central role for national statistics offices, and an uncertainty band of 3 percentage points of GNI to replace the binary zero threshold.
Rising humid heat poses significant risks to health and welfare. Using high-resolution meteorological data linked to longitudinal survey data from China, we examine relationships between humid heat measured by wet-bulb temperature (WBT) and self-reported physical and mental health. Higher WBT is associated with greater physical discomfort, concentrated in gastrointestinal and cardiovascular symptoms, and higher psychological distress. Relative to dry-bulb temperature, WBT exhibits a more robust relationship with mental health. These responses are largest among individuals with chronic conditions and low-income groups. Elevated WBT also triggers behavioral adjustments, including reduced work hours and exercise alongside increased alcohol and tobacco use. These patterns highlight welfare costs extending beyond clinical endpoints and underscore the importance of accounting for humidity in assessments of climate impacts on health.
