Regional Externalities

Wim Heijman Wageningen University, The Netherlands, E-mail: wim. heijman@wur. nl Generally speaking, externalities occur when a decision causes uncomp- sated costs or benefits to individuals or groups other than the person(s) making the decision. Examples of negative externalities are numerous in the area of the environment and natural resources. Some negative extern- ities result because a particular type of manufacturing technology is used (e. g. water and air pollution caused by industry). Other negative extern- ities occur because of the transportation system (e. g. air pollution caused by intensive car traffic). Though positive externalities draw less attention than negative externalities, their existence is obvious, for example, b- keepers who provide unpaid pollination services for nearby fruit growers or the positive network effects of a telephone system. The more people who own a telephone, the more useful the device is for each owner (Boardman et al. , 2001). From a social planner's perspective, the existence of externalities - sults in an economic process outcome that is not socially optimal because marginal costs of the product involved do not equal its price. This implies that, in a well functioning market economy, negative externalities cause too much of a product to be produced, whereas positive externalities cause too little of a product to be produced.

Klappentext

This book offers practical and theoretical insights in regional externalities. Regional externalities are a specific subset of externalities that can be defined as externalities where space plays a dominant role. The book offers examples of this class of externalities that can be divided into three categories: (1) externalities related to mobility and transport; (2) external economies of scale and cluster effects, and (3) spatial environmental externalities.

Inhalt
Regional Externalities: an Introduction.- Regional Externalities: an Introduction.- Transport.- Modelling Transport in an Interregional General Equilibrium Model with Externalities.- External Effects in Road Traffic: the Pigou-Knight Model and its Extension to Situations With Endogenous Speed Choice and Heterogeneous Traffic.- On Traffic Congestion Models à la Mohring and Harwitz.- Local Collectors Versus Major Infrastructural Works.- Clusters and Product Chains.- Regional Differentiation and Location of Industrial Capacity in the Slovak Republic.- Automobile Sector in the Slovak Republic: Current Situation and Future Prospects.- IT Market and E-Commerce in Transition Economy: Network Externalities.- International Outsourcing in the Netherlands.- Regional Externalities and Clusters: a Dutch Network Case-Study.- Spatial Dimension of Externalities and the Coase Theorem: Implications for Co-existence of Transgenic Crops.- Regional Policy.- Abatement of Commuting's Negative Externalities by Regional Investment in Houses and Buildings.- Risk as an Externality in Quantitative and Marginal Approaches.- Macro Policies and Regional Impacts in Norway.- The Economics of Tree-planting for Carbon Mitigation: A Global Assessment.- Positive Spillovers of Energy Policies on Natural Areas in Poland: an AGE Analysis.