We perform content analysis on Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) responses from 2003 to 2010, focusing on the extent to which firms account for indirect emissions and have exhibited convergence in carbon reporting. We also examine standardization in reporting and the variation of reporting behavior across industry and country. We find that the CDP has produced a mixed record of improved transparency. In some areas, such as Scope 2 emissions, the CDP has demonstrated an increase in transparency in later years. However, the transparency and quality of direct emissions and Scope 3 emissions have not improved over time. Japanese and European Union firms have increased transparency, while American firms have decreased transparency. Energy‐intensive industries have either increased transparency or remained the same, while less energy‐intensive industries have become less transparent. We demonstrate some evidence of a learning effect among firms after participating in the CDP survey. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

The impact of landmark designation on prices of the property and its neighbors sits at the core of the policy debate and empirical research on historic preservation. Yet these studies suffer from serious methodological limitations and biases. First, as important unobserved characteristics likely correlate with landmark designation, an omitted-variable bias results. Second, if designations depend on property values or neighborhood housing market conditions, the endogenous selection process further undermines inferences about preservation policies’ effects. This article outlines more robust empirical strategies and presents new evidence on landmark designation effects on property values. For a sample of Chicago home sales during the 1990s, a hedonic price analysis suggests that landmark buildings and districts sell at a small premium. To address the omitted-variable bias, a repeat-sales approach demonstrates significant spillover effects of landmark designation on prices. These estimates are also robust to sample-selection bias and some forms of spatial autocorrelation.

Ecological Economics has developed as a "transdisciplinary science," but it has not taken significant steps toward a truly integrated process of evaluating anthropogenic ecological change. The emerging dominance within ecological economics of the movement to monetize "ecological services," when combined with the already wellentrenched dominance of contingent pricing as a means to evaluate impacts on amenities, has created a "monistic" approach to valuation studies. It is argued that this monistic approach to evaluating anthropogenic impacts is inconsistent with a sophisticated conception of ecology as a complex science that rests on shifting metaphors. An alternative, pluralistic and iterative approach to valuation of anthropogenic ecological change is proposed.What do you get if you cross an economist and an ecologist? While genetic technology has (thankfully) not yet allowed for this experiment to be attempted at the level of the individual, over the last 20 years the field of ecological economics has emerged and grown as a result of just this type of cross-fertilization at the disciplinary level. As nurtured through ISEE conferences, other national ISEE meetings, in colleges and agencies, and in the writings in the journal, Ecological Economics, the field is the result of a sustained experiment in integrated ecological and economic understanding of environmental problems and the challenge of sustainable living. Is the post-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary chimera that stands before us a fulfillment of the vision that gave it birth? Or are we feeding a beast that does not serve the purpose for which it was 1

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Many empirical environmental justice (EJ) studies lack a systematic framework in which to undertake research and interpret results. This paper characterizes the conventional EJ study and examines how results can be influenced by the choice of the spatial scale and scope of analysis.After thoroughly examining a sample of prominent EJ studies, a conventional EJ study is performed for (Superfund) National Priorities List sites. The sensitivity of these results to changes in scale and scope choices demonstrates the observed inconsistency in the empirical literature. Implications for interpreting existing EJ research and conducting future EJ research are discussed.

Green building adoption is driven by both performance-based benefits and marketing based benefits. Performance based benefits are those that improve performance or lower operating costs of the building or of building users. Marketing benefits stem from the consumer response to green certification. This study illustrates the relative importance of the marketing based benefits that accrue to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) buildings due to green signaling mechanisms, specifically related to the certification itself are identified. Of course, all participants in the LEED certification scheme seek marketing benefits. But even among LEED participants, the interest in green signaling is pronounced. The green signaling mechanism that occurs at the certification thresholds shifts building patterns from just below to just above the threshold level, and motivates builders to cluster buildings just above each threshold. Results are consistent across subsamples, though non-profit organizations appear to build greener buildings and engage in more green signaling than for-profit entities. Using nonparametric regression discontinuity, signaling across different building types is observed. Marketing benefits due to LEED certification drives organizations to build "greener" buildings by upgrading buildings at the thresholds to reach certification levels.3

This paper examines the effects of a generous, spatially-targeted economic development policy (the federal Empowerment Zone program) on local neighborhood characteristics and on the neighborhood quality of life, taking into account the interactions amongst the policy, changes in neighborhood demographics and neighborhood housing stock. Urban economic theory posits that housing prices in a small area should increase as quality of life increases, because people will be willing to pay more to live in the area, but these changes in prices and quality of life will also affect the demographics of the population through sorting and the housing stock through reinvestment. Using census block-group-level data, we examine how housing prices respond to the Empowerment Zone policy intervention. Changes in the other dimensions of neighborhood quality (demographics and housing stock characteristics) will also help determine the total -or full -effect on housing values of the policy intervention. This paper estimates these direct and full effects in a simultaneous equations setting, compares direct and indirect effects and examines the robustness of the effects to alternate estimation strategies. We find strong evidence for substantively large and highly significant direct price effects, while results suggest that the indirect effects are substantively small or even negative.

Abstract:This article measures the impacts of historic preservation regulations on property values inside and outside of officially designated historic districts. The analysis relies on a model of historic designation to control for the tendency to designate higher quality properties. An instrumental variables model using rich data on historic significance corrects for this bias. The results for Chicago during the 1990s indicate that price impacts from designation inside a landmark district vary considerably across homes inside the districts. Controlling for extant historic quality, which the market values positively, restrictions apparently have negative price effects on average both within and outside districts.2