Julio Videras

Associate Professor, Economics Department

Director of the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center

Hamilton College

198 College Hill Road

Clinton, NY 13323

(315) 859-4528

The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center: http://www.hamilton.edu/levitt

 

Education

 

Ph.D. in Economics, University of Colorado at Boulder, May 2002.

M.A. in Economics, University of Colorado at Boulder, December 1998.

B.A. in Economics, Universidad de Málaga (Spain), June 1993.

 

 

Curriculum Vitae

 

Curriculum Vitae: CV_2011.pdf

 

 

Published and Forthcoming Papers

 

  1. “Community Heterogeneity and Revealed Preferences for Environmental Goods,” forthcoming in Contemporary Economic Policy. This paper examines the links between community homogeneity and the demand for environmental quality. Using data from California, this paper shows that communities that are more homogeneous in terms of race and educational attainment are more likely to support the public provision of environmental goods, after controlling for political ideology, voter turnout, and the distribution of benefits and costs across communities. The models also reveal non-monotonic relationships between racial and social groups and support for the public provision of environmental amenities. Support for environmental initiatives in a community typically increases at an increasing rate the greater the concentration of whites. On the other hand, support generally increases at a decreasing rate the greater the share of African-Americans and Asians in the population. Results for a proposal that would have imposed a tax on oil extraction to fund alternative energy projects suggest a different pattern of non-linear associations.  Working Paper: Voting Feb 17 2011.pdf

 

  1. “More Information Isn’t Always Better: The Case of Voluntary Provision of Environmental Quality” forthcoming in Economic Inquiry (with Ann L. Owen and Steve Wu): This paper adds to our understanding of voluntary public goods contributions by modifying the warm glow motive to allow individuals to gain utility from the perceived relative effectiveness of contributions, regardless of whether or not these perceptions are correct.  When misinformed individuals overestimate the impact of their efforts in producing the public good, levels of the public good closer to a social optimum result.  We find evidence for the main ideas of the model using a new survey on pro-environment behaviors, attitude, and knowledge.  People more frequently engage in activities that have higher perceived impacts on environmental quality. Interestingly, this effect exists even if individuals do not consider themselves strong environmentalists. Working paper: Information March 13.pdf

 

3.    “Heat Waves, Droughts, and Preferences for Environmental Policy” forthcoming in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (with Ann L. Owen, Emily Conover, and Steve Wu). Using data from a new household survey on environmental attitudes, behaviors, and policy preferences, we find that current weather conditions affect preferences for environmental regulation. Individuals who have recently experienced extreme weather (heat waves or droughts) are more likely to support laws to protect the environment even if it means restricting individual freedoms. We find evidence that the channel through which weather conditions affect policy preference is via perceptions of the importance of the issue of global warming.  Furthermore, individuals who may be more sophisticated consumers of news are less likely to have their attitudes towards global warming changed by current weather conditions. Working Paper: heat waves 7-26-2011.pdf

 

  1. “The Influence of Social Relationships on Pro-Environment Behaviors,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 63(1):35-50, 2012 (with Ann L. Owen, Emily Conover, and Steve Wu). We examine how social relationships are related to pro-environment behaviors. We use new data from a nationally representative U.S. sample to estimate latent cluster models in which we describe individuals’ profiles of social ties with family, neighbor, and coworkers along two dimensions: intensity of connections and pro-environment norms. While our results confirm the link between social ties and economic behaviors, we show that ties among relatives, neighbors, and coworkers are not perfect substitutes. In particular, we observe consistent relationships between green family profiles and altruistic and community-based behaviors. We also find that the effect of coworker ties is visible for cost-saving activities and altruistic behaviors, and that neighbors matter for working with others in the community to solve a local problem, volunteering, and recycling. Paper: Social Relationships 08_24_2011.pdf

 

  1. “Identity and Environmentalism: The Influence of Community Characteristics” Review of Social Economy LXVIII (4): 465-486, 2010 (With Ann L. Owen and Steve Wu). This paper examines the influence of community characteristics on self-proclaimed environmentalism.  We find that the composition of a community affects the likelihood that a person claims to be a strong environmentalist, even after controlling for individual characteristics and pro-environment behaviors. Individuals are more likely to definitely agree they are strong environmentalists if they live in areas where a large share of the population has post-graduate degrees and if they live in heavily Democratic areas or heavily Republican areas. These community effects occur only when individuals are predisposed to take on an environmental identity. Working Paper: Identity June 2009.pdf

 

  1. “Do All Countries Follow the Same Growth Process?” the Journal of Economic Growth 14(4): 265-286, 2009 (with Ann L. Owen and Lewis Davis). We estimate a finite mixture model in which countries are sorted into groups based on the similarity of the conditional distributions of their growth rates.  We strongly reject the hypothesis that all countries follow a common growth process in favor of a model in which there are four classes of countries, each with its own distinct growth process.  Group membership does not conform to the usual categories used to control for parameter heterogeneity such as region or income. However, the growth processes we do identify correspond to a significant degree with established theories of economic growth. The behavior of one group is broadly consistent with the neoclassical model, the behavior of two of the groups are consistent with two different endogenous growth models, and results for the fourth group are consistent with a poverty trap model.

 

  1. “Reconsidering Social Capital: A Latent Class Approach” Empirical Economics 37(3): 555, 2009 (with Ann L. Owen). We propose a different empirical method for measuring social capital, latent class analysis, based on the idea that social capital is an unobservable multidimensional construct. We show our proposed method allows meaningfully different conclusions about the accumulation of social capital than those obtained by previous research.

 

  1. “Democracy, Participation, and Life Satisfaction” Social Science Quarterly, 89(4):987-1005, December 2008 (with Ann L. Owen and Christina Willemsen). This paper provides evidence that democracy and human rights are strongly and positively correlated with individual levels of well being.  We find further support that the opportunity to participate may be a channel for explaining why democratic institutions contribute to higher levels of well-being.  Finally, we provide evidence that the type of democratic institutions may impact the subjective well being of political minorities, decreasing their well-being in parliamentary systems and possibly increasing them in majoritarian systems.

 

  1. “Trust, Cooperation, and Implementation of Sustainability Programs: The Case of Local Agenda 21,” Ecological Economics, 68(1-2):259-272, December 2008 (with Ann L. Owen).  We examine the implementation of Local Agenda 21, a regional sustainability initiative that requires the coordination of diverse decision-makers, in a sample of 66 developing and industrialized countries. We use a game theoretic framework to motivate our empirical study of the number of Local Agenda 21 programs implemented across countries. We find that higher levels of aggregate trust are associated with more communities adopting a program that requires coordination of multiple stakeholders. We also find that more programs are adopted when the countries institutional structure may reduce the cost of coordination and when the benefits of the program, measured by environmental quality, would be expected to be greater.

 

  1. “Culture and Public Goods: The Case of Religion and the Voluntary Provision of Environmental Quality,” the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 54(2): 162-180, May 2007 (with Ann L. Owen). Using data from approximately 13,000 individuals in 14 different OECD regions, we characterize individuals into systems of religious beliefs using latent class analysis and find that some types of beliefs influence pro-environment behaviors and attitudes, even after controlling for religious denomination, political views and activism, and socio-demographic characteristics.  The results indicate that the system of religious beliefs matters but not being religious per se.  We find a role for beliefs that is separate from social capital accumulated via membership in church groups and church attendance. Paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2007.04.001

 

  1. “Civic Cooperation, Pro-Environment Attitudes, and Behavioral Intentions,” in Ecological Economics, 58(4):814-829, July 2006 (with Ann L. Owen). We find evidence that an individual’s pro-environment attitudes and intentions to pay higher taxes to protect the natural environment are positively associated with her attitudes toward civic cooperation.

 

  1.  “Public Goods Provision and Well-Being: Empirical Evidence Consistent with the Warm Glow Theory," has been published in Contributions to Economic Analysis & Policy, Vol. 5: No. 1, Article 9, 2006 (with Ann L. Owen). We find that individuals who contribute to the public good of environmental protection report higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness. Paper at http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/contributions/vol5/iss1/art9/

 

  1. “Ethnic Heterogeneity and the Enforcement of Environmental Regulation,” the Review of Social Economy, vol. LXIV, No. 4, December 2006 (with Christopher J. Bordoni). We find that the percentage of nonwhite population is positively related with administrative penalties imposed on violators. However, penalties are lower in more ethnically fragmented communities.

 

  1. “Religion and Animal Welfare: Evidence from Voting Data” is available on line (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2005.11.033) and in The Journal of Socio-Economics, 35(4): 652-659. This paper examines the influence of religious denomination on the support for a ban of farm production practices that are deemed cruel to animals. The results indicate that adherence to the most politically and socially conservative religious denominations has a negative impact on support for the ban that is both statistically and substantively significant.

 

  1. “Luck and Giving” in Applied Economic Letters, vol.12 (4), 2005: 953-956. The results suggest that financial luck increases charitable giving even after controlling for income, wealth, and relevant socio-demographic variables.

 

  1. "The Appeal of Voluntary Pollution Prevention Programs: What Firms Participate and Why." Contemporary Economic Policy, vol.18 no.4, 2000: 449 - 461 (with Anna Alberini).

 

 

Working Papers and Research in Progress

 

 

Ø “Spatial Patterns of Carbon Emissions: A Geographically Weighted Regression Approach.” I use U.S. county level data to account for spatial correlation and geographical variability in the process liking carbon emissions to population, affluence, and technology. I apply geographically weighted regression to STIRPAT models and show consistent and strong evidence of geographical heterogeneity across counties and states. Working paper: CO2 GWR January 2012, Videras.pdf

 

Ø “True Naturals and Health Seekers.” Our results indicate that there are individuals who engage in pro-environment behaviors in order to protect their households’ well-being but who free ride on the provision of public goods. These defensive environmentalists are less likely to support environmental policies than altruistic consumers are. We show that in order to understand support for different kinds of environmental policies, it is important to classify individuals not only according to the number of pro-environment behaviors they engage in or their self-reported environmentalism but also according to the types of behaviors they undertake. The results will be of interest to policy makers because they advance our understanding of the degree to which “defensive” environmental behavior might actually become a hurdle to solve large global environmental problems.

 

 

 

 

Research Program

My research program focuses on applied environmental economics. To date, my research falls in three overlapping areas: (1) how cultural and social factors influence the voluntary provision of the public good of environmental quality and sustainable development practices; (2) the relationships between community composition, collective action, and the supply and demand of environmental goods; and (3) how to identify and account for sources of unobserved heterogeneity through finite mixture models (latent class models) and spatial analysis.

 

 

Research on Sustainable Consumption Choices

 

Link to 2009 Questionnaire and Data:

https://my.hamilton.edu/levitt/Sustainability/Environmental_survey_2009.html

 

2007 Survey and Knowledge Networks Field Report:  Survey and Knowledge Networks Final Report.pdf

2007 Data: Tabulation of responses: Summary of Responses.ppt

 

Sustainability Program at the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center:

https://my.hamilton.edu/levitt/Sustainable_development.html

 

Courses

·       GIS: ECON483 Syllabus 2011.pdf

·       Environmental Economics. Recent syllabus: Econ 380 Syllabus FALL09.pdf

·       Social Economics: sophomore/junior level course, no textbook, based on articles. Recent syllabus: Social_Syllabus08.pdf

·       Statistics.

·       Topics in Sustainability. Syllabus: Syllabus 2010.pdf

·       Issues in Microeconomics: Principles of Microeconomics, standard material. Recent syllabus: IntroMicro_Syllabus08.pdf