the elasticity of prices with respect to monetary components some estimates for the uk 1948 1979 this paper reports estimates of the elasticity of various monetary components in the uk by assessing their ability to explain prices tests of the monetarist proposition that a unit change in a weighted monetary aggregate migh lead to a unit change in the price level in the long run and of the appropriateness of the current practice of constructing monetary aggregates by the simple summation of monetary components are also performed

the information loss through aggregation of the uk monetary components abstract this paper calculates the information content of the uk monetary components in terms of their ability to predict movements in nominal income and assesses how much of this information is lost through restricting attention to subsets of these components and by sum aggregation

participatory environmental education and willingness to pay for river basin management empirical evidence from nigeria this paper examines the role of participation as a tool for improving individuals perceptions and environmental values using a test retest experiment conducted in south eastern nigeria two identical contingent valuation experiments were interspersed by participatory workshops designed to involve respondents in framing and forming the valuation scenario econometric analyses found that participatory education significantly developed individuals perceptions of pollution problems and increased the magnitude and precision of their wtp for a river basin management scheme the extent of changes in perceptions declined with increasing levels of formal education suggesting that less educated respondents are more likely to hold weakly formed preferences

valuing environmental commodities some recent experiments a general model of consumer behavior is proposed to assess six recent experiments that have attempted to reveal preferences for environmental goals each experiment used a mix of both the techniques and the theory of demand for non market commodities and each was designed to estimate a non market attitude associated with the environment and to analyze potential biases in the techniques the six cases show some consistency in results the linkage within the contingent market between the environmental attribute institutional setting and the bidding instrument must be realistic and accepted by the respondent to avoid biased results possibly the most important result is the replication of results using a traditional property value study and a contingent bidding approach all evidence obtained to date suggests that hedonic studies of property values or wages travel costs and survey techniques all yield values well one order of magnitude in accuracy 41 references 2 tables

the role of public policy in emerging green power markets an analysis of marketer preferences abstract green power marketing has been heralded by some as a means to create a private market for renewable energy that is driven by customer demand for green products this article challenges the premise sometimes proffered in debates over green markets that profitable sizable credible markets for green products will evolve naturally without supportive public policies relying primarily on surveys and interviews of us green power marketers the article examines the role of specific regulatory and legislative policies in enabling the green market and searches for those policies that are believed by marketers to be the most conducive or detrimental to the expansion of the green market we find that marketers 1 believe that profitable green power markets will only develop if a solid foundation of supportive policies exists 2 believe that establishing overall price competition and encouraging customer switching are the top priorities 3 are somewhat leery of government sponsored or mandated public information programs and 4 oppose three specific renewable energy policies that are frequently advocated by renewable energy enthusiasts but that may have negative impacts on the green marketers profitability the stated preferences of green marketers shed light on ways to foster renewables by means of the green market because the interests of marketers do not coincide perfectly with those of society however this study also recognizes other normative perspectives and highlights policy tensions at the heart of current debates related to green markets by examining these conflicts we identify three key policy questions that should direct future research to what extent should price competition and customer switching be encouraged at the expense of cost shifting what requirements should be imposed to ensure credibility in green products and marketing how should the green power market and broader renewable energy policies interact

the fiscal framework in a currency union lessons from a comparison between the euro area and the eastern caribbean currency union this paper draws out lessons from the euro area ea that are transferable to the eastern caribbean currency union eccu and other caribbean economies with fixed exchange rates based on observations from both the ea and the eccu we present a new policy framework which is capable of imposing fiscal discipline with the aim of avoiding the risk of unsustainable fiscal policies reappearing and of preventing monetary policy from being undermined by undisciplined national governments in the eccu case we find that fiscal deficits are more a result of financial and trade imbalances than fiscal indiscipline per se consequently constraints on overall debt public and private rather than direct limits on endogenous public deficits appear to be the appropriate response

biophysical causality and environmental preference elicitation evaluating the validity of welfare analysis over intermediate outcomes stated preference scenarios often describe outcomes to be valued in terms of intermediate biophysical processes or ecosystem services with indirect utility effects rather than in terms of final directly welfare relevant consequences this article evaluates whether valid welfare estimates can emerge from this practice we begin with a theoretical model demonstrating conditions under which stated preference scenarios that include intermediate outcomes will elicit welfare estimates identical to those from parallel scenarios that include associated final outcomes i e convergent validity will hold the model demonstrates that a necessary condition for convergent validity is the ability of respondents to correctly predict biophysical production functions linking intermediate to final outcomes hypotheses from the theoretical model are then evaluated empirically using an application of choice experiments to migratory fish restoration in the u s state of rhode island empirical results are mixed but generally reject convergent validity welfare estimates are not robust to the use of an intermediate outcome in lieu of a related final outcome in stated preference scenarios as predicted by theory results of the analysis suggest that greater attention should be given to the reliability of welfare estimation when final outcomes cannot be quantified

information effects in contingent markets information bias in contingent markets is poorly understood in this paper testable hypotheses concerning beneficial contingent market information effects are developed conceptually perspective information and relative expenditure information were expected to increase comprehension and increase bids provision cost information was expected to counteract free riding behavior and also increase bids hypothesis tests using experimental markets suggested that each information type induced small statistically insignificant bid increases however the combined effect of the three information types induced a desirable statistically significant increase in bids this result supports the contention that not all contingent market information effects are biases

individualized geocoding in stated preference questionnaires implications for survey design and welfare estimation this paper evaluates the common practice of generic mapping in stated preference valuation in which identical policy area maps are shown to all respondents this is compared to a more information intensive alternative in which individualized maps identify the location of each respondent s home relative to policy effects the evaluation is grounded in a theoretical model clarifying the impact of individualized spatial information on preferences for non market outcomes the model is illustrated using an application of choice experiments to riparian restoration in coastal maine results characterize valuation contexts for which valid preference elicitation likely requires the provision of individualized spatial information

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

residential bioenergy heating a study of consumer perceptions of improved woodstoves abstract consumers choices play a key role for the development of biomass heating in the residential sector the city of oslo has granted subsidies to households who change to new improved low emission woodstoves the purpose of this study is to expand the knowledge about users experiences and attitudes to residential biomass heating an adapted model of the theory of planned behavior was used to model households inclination to continue using their woodstoves for heating more than 800 questionnaires were collected from households that recently had invested in an improved woodstove the respondents were satisfied with the new woodstoves the respondents also considered themselves competent to use and maintain the stove and few had problems acquiring fuelwood further analyses showed that the intention to continue to use the new woodstove depends on economic benefits heating performance perceived time and effort to operate the stove environmental effects of heating as well as perceived subjective norm the results imply that when marketing a modern technology for bioenergy heating both public authorities and producers should consider issues related to the users perception of subjective norm such as perceived status of using bioenergy or environmental concerns when designing campaigns to promote the use of woodstoves

the information content of monetary aggregates in the u k abstract this paper presents some results evaluating the information content of several monetary aggregates formed as simple sums or as divisia quantity indices the former tend to dominate the latter there is considerable support for the new broader official monetary aggregate psl2

fiscal sustainability using growth maximizing debt targets this article highlights the importance of debt related fiscal rules and derives growth maximizing public debt ratios from a simple theoretical model on the basis of evidence on the productivity of public capital we estimate public debt targets that governments should maintain if they wish to maximize growth for panels of oecd eu and euro area countries these are not arbitrary numbers but are founded on long run optimizing behaviour assuming that governments implement the golden rule of financing that is they contract debt only to finance public investment our estimates suggest that the euro area should target debt levels of around 50 of gdp if member states are to have common targets that is about 15 points lower than the estimate for the growth maximizing debt ratio in our oecd sample and comfortably within the stability and growth pact s debt ceiling of 60 of gdp we also indicate how forward looking budget reaction functions fit into a debt targeting framework

risky monetary aggregates for the uk and us abstract we extend the scope of monetary aggregation beyond capital certain assets that make up central bank data sets and identify groups of assets that form monetary aggregates composed of both capital certain and risky capital uncertain assets we construct monetary aggregates for the us and uk using a superlative index and relax a key assumption of the consumption capital asset pricing model ccapm a one year planning horizon by using forecasted returns on risky assets our new risky monetary aggregates perform well in var tests we recommended exploring risky assets as providers of liquidity services in future research on this topic

the role of uncertainty in the relationship between fairness evaluations and willingness to pay participants in contingent valuation studies may be uncertain about a number of aspects of the policy and survey context the uncertainty management model of fairness judgments states that individuals will evaluate a policy in terms of its fairness when they do not know whether they can trust the relevant managing authority or experience uncertainty due to insufficient knowledge of the general issues surrounding the environmental policy similarly some researchers have suggested that not knowing how to answer wtp questions participants convey their general attitudes toward the public good rather than report well defined economic preferences these contentions were investigated in a sample of 840 residents in four urban catchments across australia who were interviewed about their wtp for stormwater pollution abatement four sources of uncertainty were measured amount of prior issue related thought trustworthiness of the water authority insufficient scenario information and wtp response uncertainty a logistic regression model was estimated in each subsample to test the main effects of the uncertainty sources on wtp as well as their interaction with fairness and proenvironmental attitudes results indicated support for the uncertainty management model in only one of the four samples similarly proenvironmental attitudes interacted rarely with uncertainty to a significant level and in ways that were more complex than hypothesised it was concluded that uncertain individuals were generally not more likely than other participants to draw on either fairness evaluations or proenvironmental attitudes when making decisions about paying for stormwater pollution abatement

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

the aggregation error in divisia monetary aggregates some findings for the u k 1963 1980 abstract in this paper we examine the potential aggregation error or information loss in the construction of divisia indices of monetary aggregates for the uk all the indices produce no information loss but in detail our findings differ from those for the us

supporting renewable energy on liberalised markets green electricity between additionality and consumer sovereignty abstract the german feed in regulation has been perhaps the most effective promotional policy for green electricity however with the growing momentum of the liberalisation process the current regulation is challenged by structural problems about how to address the demand side price regulation lefts only little room for private green electricity market activities moreover the success of the feed in regulation depends on a strict differentiation of the political segment and the emerging green electricity markets the question therefore is about the role green electricity markets can or should perform in general in order to evaluate green electricity markets the additionality criteria is frequently used implying that markets are only desirable if they lead to additional environmental effects the additionality criteria has two implications first transformed into individual behaviour additionality implies that consumers are assumed to act as pure altruists however there is evidence from empirical studies that green electricity consumers behave more as impure altruists they are not so much interested in the objective environmental impact of their behaviour but more objected to receive a private satisfaction from buying an environmental friendly product whereas theoretical models in the case of pure altruism suggest that private activities crowd out totally when policy becomes active in supporting the public good this crowding out disappears in the case of impure altruism second using end state criteria such as the additionality principle as pre condition and neglecting process criteria such as consumer sovereignty means to prevent establishing competitive market process right at the outset in principle

norms and economic motivation in the swedish green electricity market abstract the purpose of this paper is to provide an econometric analysis of the most important determinants of swedish households choice to pay a price premium for green electricity we draw on recent developments in the literature on integrating norm motivated behavior into neoclassical consumer theory and assume that individuals have a preference for keeping a self image as a morally responsible person consumer behavior in the green market place will then be heavily determined by how purchases of different goods affect this self image the analysis is based on postal survey responses from 655 swedish households which are analyzed within a binary choice econometric framework the results indicate that the impact of choosing green on the household budget largely influences the choice between green and brown electricity as does the degree of perceived personal responsibility for the issue and the felt ability to affect the outcome in a positive way we find limited support for the notion that perceptions about others behavior in general affect individual moral norms and ultimately expressed behavior but this is also complemented by the influence of explicit social influence the difficulty in observing others purchases makes it however difficult to distinguish between social and moral norms in the case of green electricity

the united kingdom demand for renewable electricity in a liberalised market abstract this paper analyses how the liberalisation of the uk electricity market in 1998 may encourage demand for renewable electricity through pricing and informational incentives the analysis argues that prices and beliefs will be crucial for influencing customers willingness to pay for environmental costs associated with electricity generation as well as their decision to not just buy the cheapest electricity in 1998 when uk electricity markets are liberated a small price differential between renewable and standard electricity certainly less than 20 and clear credible and captivating information about the external costs of electricity generation could create a considerable demand for renewable electricity but because renewable generating capacity will initially be small and slow to adjust to incentives initially high demand may drive up prices discouraging customers from wanting to buy renewable electricity low demand on the other hand will not provide the incentives to invest new capacity which probably means that renewable technology will not be able to reduce its unit costs of electricity generation and compete in a liberalised market without continued financial support to avoid either scenario this paper recommends that government should extend the non fossil fuel obligation nffo to promote investment in renewable technology provide tax incentives to minimise the price differential between renewable and standard electricity encouarge non governmental organisations to develop schemes for providing customers with clear consistent and reliable information about sources of renewable electricity and stagger the introduction of electricity liberalisation while the analysis is of a speculative nature such policies may create incentives for markets to reduce environmental damage associated with electricity generation

using contingent valuation to explore willingness to pay for renewable energy a comparison of collective and voluntary payment vehicles abstract this study uses a split sample dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey of 1574 u s residents to explore willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy under collective and voluntary payment vehicles and under government and private provision of the good we also evaluate the impact of participation expectations on stated wtp we find some evidence that when confronted with a collective payment mechanism respondents state a somewhat higher wtp than when voluntary payment mechanisms are used similarly private provision of the good elicits a somewhat higher wtp than does government provision we also find that contingent valuation responses are strongly correlated with expectations for the wtp of others our results shed light on strategic response behavior and the incentive compatibility of different cv designs and offer practical insight into u s household preferences for how to support renewable energy

the application of laboratory experimental economics to the contingent valuation of public goods we have implicitly argued in the last section that a dynamic iterative survey mechanism may well need to be employed in the design of contingent valuation survey instruments in order to improve the accuracy of responses furthermore due to the current inaccuracy of hedonic and travel cost approaches for valuing public goods the least cost method in our view for establishing anchor or true individual values for testing alternative survey instruments is to use laboratory experiments the objective of these experiments should be the development of the most simple survey design which gives accurate responses subject to the budget of the investigator is a complex iterative voting procedure required how fast will such a procedure converge to true values what is the effect on incentives of relaxing the unanimity voting feature for large groups all of these operational questions can at least qualitatively be answered in an experimental laboratory setting

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

contingent valuation techniques for assessing environmental impacts further evidence abstract this paper provides further evidence on the development and application of the iterative bidding technique used to assess environmental impacts three specific issues the hypothetical nature of the survey technique the questionnaire information structure and the bidding procedure starting point are examined theoretically and empirically to determine their effect on individual bid behavior the empirical results indicate that the importance of these influences may have been overstated in earlier studies

fiscal leadership and central bank design this article investigates the impact on economic performance of the timing of moves in a policy game between the government and the central bank for a government that has both redistributional and stabilization objectives it is shown that both inflation and income inequality are reduced without sacrificing output growth if the government assumes a leadership role compared with a regime in which monetary and fiscal policy are determined simultaneously further it is shown that government leadership benefits both the fiscal and monetary authorities through the enhanced coordination that this arrangement implies jel classification e52 e61 f42

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

are french consumers ready to pay a premium for eco labeled seafood products a contingent valuation estimation with heterogeneous anchoring could the future french eco label for fresh seafood products find its place in the french market this study employs a contingent valuation method to estimate french consumers willingness to pay wtp for eco labeled fresh seafood products we exploit original data from a survey carried out in 2010 where 626 participants responded to a double bounded dichotomous choice model through an ascending or descending bid system controlling for shift and anchoring effects in random effect probit models we significantly improve estimation of wtp and its determinants for the three species studied monkfish lobster sole in particular when using heterogeneous anchoring we show that wtp is positively correlated to respondents income and also to their environmental concern to living alone to living far from the coast and to trusting ngos or public institutions more than producer organizations to implement an eco label we also show that the mean price premiums do not differ between species finally on average the maximum premium consumers accepted to pay is approximately 10 of the product price

what should fiscal councils do fiscal watchdogs so called fiscal councils have been proposed as a method to counter deficit bias of fiscal policy the paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surve

contingent valuation a new perspective after several decades of academic research on the contingent valuation cv method a consistent behavioral explanation of hypothetical bias is still lacking based on evidence from economics economic psychology and the political sciences i propose an explanation that is based on two simple working hypotheses about respondent behaviour in contingent valuation surveys the first hypothesis is that survey respondents are unable to form consistent preferences about unfamiliar goods unless the choice context offers reliable informative cues that can be rationally exploited in simplified heuristics the second hypothesis is that the probability and impact of strategic responses in dichotomous choice questions about public goods depends on the extent to which the presented hypothetical costs differ from the actual costs the literature on hypothetical bias is revisited in the light of these behavioral hypotheses i find that the hypotheses are generally supported by the empirical data moreover the hypotheses are able to explain several important empirical phenomena that previous research has not been able to explain in particular they solve the puzzle that pre election polls but not cv surveys are able to predict actual referendum outcomes and they explain why income effects on willingness to pay are lower in cv responses than in actual votes if confirmed by further studies the hypotheses will have important implications for future research and practice first the hypothetical costs presented in the dichotomous choice question should to be close enough to the actual costs to be credible to all respondents this can be achieved by specifying the costs as a percentage rather than absolute change in taxes second the respondents should be given the option to answer based on information about the positions of large parties and interest groups with known political orientation rather than based on the raw policy information theory and evidence suggest that this new survey paradigm largely eliminates the fundamental problems of the conventional stated preference methods

stuck between a roc and a hard place barriers to the take up of green energy in the uk abstract this paper examines the uk mechanisms for ensuring future investment in renewable energy through consumer adoption of green energy tariffs and the renewable obligation certificate roc system using a national survey and focus groups the stated willingness by uk customers to pay a premium for renewable or green energy and actual take up of such tariffs is assessed substantial differences between willingness to pay for and the adoption of green energy tariffs are reported this disparity is linked to a range of factors including consumer confusion lack of supply complexities of constructing green source tariffs under the roc system and a lack of customer trust it is concluded that the re definition of the green energy market in favour of green source tariffs greater direct compliance with the renewable obligation by addressing supply constraints and efforts in providing clearer information and choices for consumers via a compulsory green energy accreditation scheme are required if willing consumers are to contribute to investment in renewable energy

money inflation and casuality another look at the empirical evidence for the usa 1953 84 this paper addresses the issue of the existence of a causal relationship between inflation i e change in the price level and change in the money supply three different causality tests are discussed and implemented for two separate time periods the results are mixed and somewhat difficult to interpret on intuitive grounds while a causal relationship is found to exist between changes in the consumer price index and changes in the narrowly defined money supply there is no relationship indentifiable between the other price and money supply data series used given this result one can see why different results are frequently obtained the different researchers focusing on the question of a relationship between the supply of money and prices finally the results of a previous paper by feige and pearce are called into question as the result of a serious misspecification

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

the structure of motivation for contingent values a case study of lake water quality improvement abstract critics of the contingent valuation cv method have argued that individuals apply noneconomic motives in responding to cv questions implying that elicited values are not valid measures of the economic benefit of environmental improvement this study examines the role of such motives by using measures of attitude and motive strength to interpret willingness to pay wtp values for a set of nested environmental goods with potential use and nonuse benefits motivational structure is found to be more complex than suggested by the simple distinction between valid economic theoretic and noneconomic motives social motivations possibly associated with the benefit of contributing to a public good rather than the benefits of the good itself are potentially relevant to the wtp decision but do not give rise to separable values the strength of perceived personal responsibility for provision of the good is significantly associated with wtp but also with the theoretically desirable property of enhanced scope sensitivity wtp is not found to be associated with the extent to which the individual feels under some general moral obligation to contribute to good causes motives arising from ethical concerns for the environment and altruism are also potentially relevant to wtp but are closely related to underlying motives associated with existence and personal use values respectively it is suggested that the cv debate should be informed by further empirical investigation of the extent to which motives for wtp can be treated as separable

auctions experiments and contingent valuation laboratory experiments are a welcome development that promise to make a significant contribution to the study of economic behavior heiner 1985 plott 1982 smith 1982 1985 while relatively new to economics controlled laboratory studies of human behavior have long constituted the core of experimental psychology where there is a wealth of methodological experience from which experimental economists might profitably draw in particular current attempts to apply laboratory auction methods to valuing nonmarket environmental goods would be improved by more rigorous experimental design and data analysis procedures

nudging acceptability for wood ash recycling in forests a choice experiment abstract in this paper our objective is to assess the general french population s acceptability of application of wood ash in forests a measure currently not allowed but under consideration by the government the main originality of our approach is that we test how a nudge can be used as an instrument to increase social acceptability conveying objective information regarding ash recycling furthermore although we do not consider it as a welfare measure we show how the estimation of the willingness to pay can be considered as a complement to the more traditional social acceptability measure three nudges were introduced as three treatments in a discrete choice experiment in the first treatment the options with wood ash application were highlighted to indicate to the respondents that they corresponded to pro environmental measures positive framing in the second treatment we changed the wording of the two non status quo options to highlight the recycling aspect of wood ash application in the last treatment we adopted a productive wording to highlight the fact that wood ash application increases wood production treatments in particular positive framing and productive wording influence the willingness to pay but depend on the attitudes of the respondents

environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts in sweden abstract competition in the electricity market allows customers to choose between suppliers as a consequence customers may demand electricity from specified sources of energy in sweden the swedish society for nature conservation ssnc operates a system of environmental labelling of electricity delivery contracts since 1996 labelling is available for suppliers offering electricity from renewable sources of energy with some additional criteria companies may acquire a licence to use the label by showing ability to deliver such electricity and by agreeing to be audited the system is private independent it is operating on the bases of credibility earned by the ssnc during 90 years as an environmental organisation and 10 years as operator of environmental labelling of consumer products the system is market oriented compatible with wto and eu market principles and independent of governmental environmental restrictions subsidy or quota systems it is relying on voluntary agreements the results are desirable if only a few by electricity under labelled contracts as well as if every customer do so the market is growing a majority of the suppliers have a license and may offer labelled contracts in the year 2000 7 of all electricity sold to final consumers was sold under labelled contracts

households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana abstract access to reliable electricity is important in increasing the living standards of households and promoting sustainable development however ghanaian households have had to grapple with frequent power outages and poor quality electricity services in recent times this study examines the factors influencing households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana using data collected from 950 households in the cape coast metropolitan area and the tobit regression technique it was revealed that monthly income prior notice on power outages business ownership separate meter ownership household size and education significantly affect willingness to pay for reliable electricity services on the average households were prepared to pay 44 percent gh 6 80 us 3 42 more relative to the mean monthly electricity bill in the sample to improve electricity services it is envisaged that the findings would be used by policy makers and utility companies to make electricity generation and distribution more sustainable and efficient