So what has caused this decline in petrol sales? Are there multiple factors at work here? Have a look at the articles and consider the explanations.
Cycling generated £2.9 billion for the UK economy in 2010 – a rise of 28% over 2009. This amounts to an average ‘Gross Cycling Product’ of £233 for each of Britain’s 12½ million cyclists. What is more, the figures are likely to continue growing rapidly in future years. This is the central finding of the LSE report, The British Cycling Economy, authored by Dr Alexander Grous, a productivity and innovation specialist at the Centre of Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics.
The major benefits to the economy from cycling include the sale of cycles and accessories, cycle maintenance, the generation of wages and tax revenues from 23,000 people employed directly in bicycle manufacture, sales, distribution and the maintenance of cycling infrastructure. There are also health benefits. These are partly the direct benefits to the economy of fewer days taken in sick leave by cyclists (a contribution of £128 million in 2010) and partly the health and well-being benefits to the individual and the saving on healthcare expenditure.
But are enough people being encouraged to get on their bikes? What are the major incentives for people to cycle? The report identifies the following:
• Cycling being made both segment- and gender-neutral, appealing to the widest number of user groups, across all ages and genders;
• Coordinated and preferential traffic signals that facilitate faster and safer journeys;
• ‘Short cut’ routes in dense urban areas and capital cities that join arterial road routes;
• Traffic calming initiatives that include road narrowing and speed restrictions that range from 30km/h to ‘walking speeds’;
• Extensive parking and in some areas, designated women-only spaces with CCTV and enhanced lighting;
• Established bike rental schemes;
• Long-running training programmes for children;
• The prevalence of strict ‘liability laws’ that assume a car driver is responsible in the event of a collision between a car and a cyclist.
Read the following articles and report and then consider, as an economist, how the benefits and costs should be analysed and what policy implications might follow.
Articles
Wheels of fortune: how cycling became a £3bn-a-year industry Independent, Tim Hume (22/8/11)
Cycling worth £3bn a year to UK economy, says LSE study Guardian (21/8/11)
Cycling industry gives economy £3bn boost BBC News (22/8/11)
Growth in cycling ‘boosting economy’, says LSE BBC News (22/8/11)
Britain Gets Back On Its Bike British Cycling (22/8/11)
‘Gross Cycling Product’ worth £2.9bn to UK economy says LSE Road.cc (22/8/11)
Report
The British Cycling Economy: ‘Gross Cycling Product’ Report LSE, Dr Alexander Grous
Questions
- How is the figure of £2.9bn derived? Explain whether it is a ‘value-added’ figure?
- Which of the benefits can be regarded as externalities?
- Are there any external costs from cycling? If so, what are they and how might they be minimised?
- How might incentives be changed in order to encourage more people to cycle?
- Assume that you are a government or local authority considering whether or not to increase investment in cycle paths. What factors would you take into consideration in order to make a socially efficient decision?
Economics studies the choices people make. ‘Rational choice’ involves the weighing up of costs and benefits and trying to maximise the surplus of benefits over costs. This surplus will be maximised when people do more of things where the marginal benefit exceeds the marginal cost and less of things where the marginal cost exceeds the marginal benefit. But, of course, measuring benefits and costs is not always easy. Nevertheless, for much of the time we do make conscious choices where we consider that choosing to do something is ‘worth it’: i.e. that the benefit to us exceeds the cost.
When we make a choice, often this involves expenditure. For example, when we choose to buy an item in a shop, we spend money on the item, and also, perhaps, spend money on transport to get us to the shop. But the full opportunity cost includes not only the money we spend, but also the best alternative activity sacrificed while we are out shopping.
Then there are the benefits. Not all pleasurable activity costs us money. The sight of beautiful contryside or the pleasure of the company of friends may cost us very little, if anything, in money terms. But they may still be very valuable to us.
If we are to make optimal decisions we need to have some estimate of all costs and benefits, not just ones involving the payment or receipt of money. This applies both to individual behaviour and to collective decisions made by governments or other agencies.
Cost–benefit analysis seeks to do this to help decisions about new projects, such as a new road, a new hospital, environmental projects, and so on. But just how do we set about putting a value on the environment – on the pleasure of a walk in bluebell woods, on protecting bird life in wetlands or sustaining ecosystems?
For the first time there has been a major study that attempts to value the environment. According to the introduction to the report:
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA) is the first analysis of the UK’s natural environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society and the nation’s continuing prosperity. Carried out between mid-2009 and mid-2011, the UK NEA has been a wide-ranging, multi-stakeholder, cross-disciplinary process, designed to provide a comprehensive picture of past, present and possible future trends in ecosystem services and their values; it is underpinned by the best available evidence and the most up-to-date conceptual thinking and analytical tools. The UK NEA is innovative in scale, scope and methodology, and has involved more than 500 natural scientists, economists, social scientists and other stakeholders from government, academic and private sector institutions, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The following podcast and webcast look at the report and at some of the issues it raises in terms of quantifying and incorporating environmental costs and benefits into decision taking.
Podcast and Webcast
‘The hidden value’ of our green spaces BBC Today Programme, Tom Feilden (2/6/11)
Report puts monetary value on Britain’s natural assets BBC News, Jeremy Cooke (2/6/11)
Articles
NEA report highlights need for biodiversity Farmers Guardian, Ben Briggs (2/6/11)
Nature is worth £19bn a year to the UK economy – report Energy & Environmental Management Magazine (2/6/11)
In praise of… the unquantifiable Guardian (3/6/11)
Priceless benefits of bluebell woods Guardian letters, Dr Bhaskar Vira and Professor Roy Haines-Young (4/6/11)
Nature ‘is worth billions’ to UK BBC News, Richard Black (2/6/11)
Putting a price on nature BBC News, Tom Feilden (2/6/11)
Value of Britain’s trees and waterways calculated in ‘ground-breaking’ study The Telegraph, Andy Bloxham (2/6/11)
Nature worth billions, says environment audit Financial Times, Clive Cookson (2/6/11)
Nature gives UK free services worth billions Planet Earth, Tom Marshall (3/6/11)
UK scientists put price on nature with National Ecosystem Assessment GreenWise, Ann Elise Taylor (2/6/11)
Report
UK National Ecosystem Assessment: link to report DEFRA
UK National Ecosystem Assessment (June 2011)
The UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis of the Key Findings
Questions
- How would you set about valuing the benefits of woodlands?
- According to the report, the health benefits of living close to a green space are worth up to £300 per person per year. How much credance sould we attach to such a figure?
- What do you understand by the ‘ecosystem approach’ and the term ‘ecosystem services’?
- Explain Figure 2 on page 3 of Chapter 2 of the report.
- Should decision makers quantify only those benefits of ecosystems experienced by humans? Would all environmentalists agree with this approach?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of quantifying all costs and benefits in money terms?
- Compare the consequences over the next 50 years of a ‘world markets’ scenarios with that of a ‘nature at work’ scenario.
- What policy implications follow from the report?
The world’s population is set to go on rising – at least to 2050. And as population rises, so will the demand for food. But here we come up against a potentially catastrophic illustration of the law of diminishing returns. Population is set to grow, but the world supply of land is pretty well fixed. And with global warming, some land may become unusable.
According to Sir John Beddington, an expert in population biology and lead author of a government-commissioned report, The Future of Food and Farming, there could be serious consequences of this population rise, including rapid rises in the demand for food, rising food prices, rising land prices, the degradation of land, growing food poverty in many developing countries, growing political unrest and serious environmental damage. As the report’s Executive Summary states:
The global food system will experience an unprecedented confluence of pressures over the next 40 years. On the demand side, global population size will increase from nearly seven billion today to eight billion by 2030, and probably to over nine billion by 2050; many people are likely to be wealthier, creating demand for a more varied, high-quality diet requiring additional resources to produce. On the production side, competition for land, water and energy will intensify, while the effects of climate change will become increasingly apparent. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate will become imperative. Over this period globalisation will continue, exposing the food system to novel economic and political pressures.
Any one of these pressures (‘drivers of change’) would present substantial challenges to food security; together they constitute a major threat that requires a strategic reappraisal of how the world is fed.
The report specifically looks at five key challenges for the future:
A. Balancing future demand and supply sustainably – to ensure that food supplies are affordable.
B. Ensuring that there is adequate stability in food prices – and protecting the most vulnerable from the volatility that does occur.
C. Achieving global access to food and ending hunger – this recognises that producing enough food in the world so that everyone can potentially be fed is not the same thing as ensuring food security for all.
D. Managing the contribution of the food system to the mitigation of climate change.
E. Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services while feeding the world.
So what can be done and how realistic are the policy solutions? The following broadcasts and articles examine the arguments
Webcasts and podcasts
Articles
Report
Questions
- Summarise the main findings of the report.
- Does increasing the output of food per agricultural worker contradict the law of diminishing returns? Explain.
- What are the current failings of the system of global food supply?
- Why are problems of food supply likely to intensify?
- What externalities are involved in global food production? What impact do these have?
- In what ways might the externalities be internalised?
- What are the benefits and dangers of new technologies as means of increasing food supply?
- To what extent do the goals of increasing food supply and environmental sustainability conflict with each other?
- Explain the main drivers of change that affect food supply and demand? In what ways do these drivers interact with each other?
- “Although the challenges are enormous there are real grounds for optimism.” Explain the report’s authors’ thinking here.