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We calculate values of forest carbon sequestration and nutrient recycling applying the replacement cost method. The value is then determined as the savings in costs by the replacement of more expensive abatement measures with these ecosystem services in cost-effective climate and nutrient programs. To this end, a dynamic optimization model is constructed, which accounts for uncertainty in sequestration. It is applied to the Stockholm-Malar region in southeast Sweden where the EU 2050 climate policy for carbon emissions and the Baltic Sea action plan for nutrient discharges are applied. The results show that the value of carbon and nutrient sequestration can correspond to approximately 0.5% of the region's gross domestic product, or 40% of the value of productive forest. The largest part of this value is attributed to carbon sequestration because of the relative stringency in targets and expensive alternative abatement measures. However, sequestration is uncertain because of stochastic weather conditions, and when society has a large risk aversion for not attaining climate and nutrient targets, the values of the forest carbon and nutrient sequestration can approach zero.

We calculate values of forest carbon sequestration and nutrient recycling applying the replacement cost method. The value is then determined as the savings in costs by the replacement of more expensive abatement measures with these ecosystem services in cost-effective climate and nutrient programs. To this end, a dynamic optimization model is constructed, which accounts for uncertainty in sequestration. It is applied to the Stockholm-Mälar region in southeast Sweden where the EU 2050 climate policy for carbon emissions and the Baltic Sea action plan for nutrient discharges are applied. The results show that the value of carbon and nutrient sequestration can correspond to approximately 0.5% of the region's gross domestic product, or 40% of the value of productive forest. The largest part of this value is attributed to carbon sequestration because of the relative stringency in targets and expensive alternative abatement measures. However, sequestration is uncertain because of stochastic weather conditions, and when society has a large risk aversion for not attaining climate and nutrient targets, the values of the forest carbon and nutrient sequestration can approach zero.

In this paper, we present evidence on how employers perceive labor regulations and react when these are perceived to constrain the operation of their firm. The paper draws from harmonized surveys of (up to) 17,000 firms around the world, and compares employers? responses with actual labor legislation. We find that employers? concerns about labor regulations are closely matched by the relative stringency of de jure labor laws. Countries that have, from an international perspective, tight labor regulations tend to have higher proportions of employers reporting these regulations as severe constraints. But not all firms are affected in the same way by onerous labor regulations. Medium sized firms are those whose business and prospect for growth are most negatively affected. Similarly, innovating firms are disproportionally affected by tight labor regulations. There is also clear evidence in the data that firms facing tight regulations invest more in training and make greater use of temporary employment. Small firms mainly rely on temporary employment, while medium and large firms, as well as innovating firms, tend to rely more on on-the-job training if labor regulations make hiring and firing very costly.

Much attention has been addressed to the question of whether Europe or the United States adopts a more precautionary stance to the regulation of potential environmental, health, and safety risks. Some commentators suggest that Europe is more risk‐averse and precautionary, whereas the United States is seen as more risk‐taking and optimistic about the prospects for new technology. Others suggest that the United States is more precautionary because its regulatory process is more legalistic and adversarial, while Europe is more lax and corporatist in its regulations. The flip‐flop hypothesis claims that the United States was more precautionary than Europe in the 1970s and early 1980s, and that Europe has become more precautionary since then. We examine the levels and trends in regulation of environmental, health, and safety risks since 1970. Unlike previous research, which has studied only a small set of prominent cases selected nonrandomly, we develop a comprehensive list of almost 3,000 risks and code the relative stringency of regulation in Europe and the United States for each of 100 risks randomly selected from that list for each year from 1970 through 2004. Our results suggest that: (a) averaging over risks, there is no significant difference in relative precaution over the period, (b) weakly consistent with the flip‐flop hypothesis, there is some evidence of a modest shift toward greater relative precaution of European regulation since about 1990, although (c) there is a diversity of trends across risks, of which the most common is no change in relative precaution (including cases where Europe and the United States are equally precautionary and where Europe or the United States has been consistently more precautionary). The overall finding is of a mixed and diverse pattern of relative transatlantic precaution over the period.

"Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate policy developments. In the presence of federal policies, to what extent will state efforts be cost-effective? How does the co-existence of state- and federal-level policies affect the ability of state efforts to achieve emissions reductions?This paper addresses these questions. We find that state-level policy in the presence of a federal policy can be beneficial or problematic, depending on the nature of the overlap between the two systems, the relative stringency of the efforts, and the types of policy instruments engaged. When the federal policy sets limits on aggregate emissions quantities, or allows manufacturers or facilities to average performance across states, the emission reductions accomplished by a subset of U.S. states may reduce pressure on the constraints posed by the federal policy, thereby freeing facilities or manufacturers to increase emissions in other states. This leads to serious "emissions leakage" and a loss of cost-effectiveness at the national level. In contrast, when the federal policy sets prices for emissions or does not allow manufactures to average performance across states, these difficulties are usually avoided. Even in circumstances involving problematic interactions, there may be other attractions of state-level climate policy. We evaluate a number of arguments that have been made to support state-level climate policy in the presence of federal policies, even when problematic interactions arise"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate policy developments. In the presence of federal policies, to what extent will state efforts be cost-effective? How does the co-existence of state- and federal-level policies affect the ability of state efforts to achieve emissions reductions? This paper addresses these questions. We find that state-level policy in the presence of a federal policy can be beneficial or problematic, depending on the nature of the overlap between the two systems, the relative stringency of the efforts, and the types of policy instruments engaged. When the federal policy sets limits on aggregate emissions quantities, or allows manufacturers or facilities to average performance across states, the emission reductions accomplished by a subset of U.S. states may reduce pressure on the constraints posed by the federal policy, thereby freeing facilities or manufacturers to increase emissions in other states. This leads to serious 'emissions leakage' and a loss of cost-effectiveness at the national level. In contrast, when the federal policy sets prices for emissions or does not allow manufactures to average performance across states, these difficulties are usually avoided. Even in circumstances involving problematic interactions, there may be other attractions of state-level climate policy. We evaluate a number of arguments that have been made to support state-level climate policy in the presence of federal policies, even when problematic interactions arise.

THIS STUDY SHOWS THAT THE STRINGENCY WITH WHICH MEDICARE CARRIERS SCREEN "CUSTOMARY, PREVAILING, AND REASONABLE CHARGES" (C.P.R.) INHIBITS SIGNIFICANTLY THE INFLATION OF MEDICARE PHYSICIANS' FEES. THE ADOPTION OF RELATIVE VALUE SCALES OR FIXED FEE SCALE HAS MAJOR RETARDING IMPACT ON FEE GROWTH.

AbstractWe investigate how the stringency of government anti-pandemic policy measures might affect economic policy uncertainty in countries with different degrees of press freedom, various press reporting styles and writing conventions. We apply a text-based measure of uncertainty using data from over 400,000 press articles from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the UK and the USA published before the wide-scale vaccination programmes were introduced. The measure accounts for pandemic-related words and negative sentiment scores weight the selected articles. We then tested the dynamic panel data model where the relative changes in these measures were explained by levels and changes in the stringency measures. We have found that introducing and then maintaining unchanged for a relatively long time a constant level of anti-pandemic stringency measures reduce uncertainty. In contrast, a change in such a level has the opposite effect. This result is robust across the countries, despite their differences in political systems, press control and freedom of speech.

We empirically investigate the responsiveness of international trade to the stringency of environmental regulation. Stringent environmental regulation may impair the export competitiveness of 'dirty' domestic industries, and as a result, 'pollution havens' emerge in countries where environmental regulation is 'over-lax.' We examine the impact of pollution abatement and control costs on net exports in order to grasp this phenomenon. Theoretically, our analysis is related to a general equilibrium model of trade and pollution nesting the pollution haven motive for trade with the factor endowment motive. We analyze data on two-digit ISIC manufacturing industries during the period 1977–1992 in Germany, the Netherlands and the US, and show that trade patterns in 'dirty' commodities are jointly determined by relative factor endowments and environmental stringency differentials.

Tests of the relationship between budget rules and fiscal performance are metric sensitive and arbitrary in the evaluation of the stringency of the rules, in the aggregation of these evaluations in an index and in the imposition of a linearly specified model. We propose a nonlinear principal component analysis to solve these problems and evaluate the relative disciplinary power of each rule. A battery of panel regressions on 1980-2003 optimally transformed data relative to 12 EU countries confirms that, upon controlling for standard economic, political and institutional variables, more stringent rules reduce fiscal imbalances and budget size. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that significantly reduced economic freedom across US states. Many of these new pandemic‐related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom varied significantly from state to state but are largely missed by the existingEconomic Freedom of North America Report(EFNA). This paper adjusts the Our World in DataCOVID‐19 Stringency Indexinto a state‐level measure oflockdown regulatory freedomand then merges it into the EFNA index to better measure relative economic freedom across US states in 2020. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between states once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.

AbstractThe Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to extensive new government regulations and lockdown policies that, according to some prominent definitions, severely reduced economic freedom. However, many of these new pandemic-related regulatory restrictions on economic freedom are largely missed by the Economic Freedom of the World Report (EFW). This paper first adjusts the Our World in Data Covid-19 Stringency Index into a measure of lockdown regulatory freedom and then merges it into the EFW index to better measure countries' 2020 cross-sectional relative economic freedom. We find significant differences in the relative ranking of economic freedom between countries once we adjust for lockdown regulatory restrictions.

A widely held belief is that autocratic governments have been more effective in reducing the movement of people to curb the spread of Covid-19. Using the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT), and a real-time dataset with daily information on travel and movement across 111 countries, we find that autocratic regimes imposed more stringent lockdowns and relied more on contact tracing. However, we find no evidence that autocratic governments were more effective in reducing travel, and evidence to the contrary: countries with democratically accountable governments introduced less stringent lockdowns but were approximately 20% more effective in reducing geographic mobility at the same level of policy stringency. In addition, building on a large literature on cross-cultural psychology, we show that for the same policy stringency, countries with more obedient and collectivist cultural traits experienced larger declines in geographic mobility relative to their more individualistic counterparts. We conclude that, in terms of reducing mobility, collectivist and democratic countries have implemented relatively effective responses to Covid-19.

AbstractPeople with intellectual disability (ID) are living longer than ever before, raising concerns about old‐age‐associated disorders. Dementia is among the most serious of these disorders, and theories relating cognitive reserve to risk predict that older adults with ID should be particularly vulnerable. Previous estimates of relative risk for dementia associated with ID have been inconsistent, and the present analyses examined the possible influence of variation in diagnostic criteria on findings. As expected, relaxation in the stringency of case definition for adults with ID increased relative risk, underscoring the importance of developing valid criteria for defining mild cognitive impairment and early dementia and distinguishing between the two in adults with ID. Once available, these standards will contribute to more effective evidence‐based planning.