trade interdependence the international financial institutions and the recent evolution of sovereign debt renegotiations abstract this paper analyzes the effect of a debtor country s pattern of trade with commercial creditors home countries on the outcome of debt rescheduling negotiations the analysis reveals that a debtor country with more market power has greater leverage in a three way debt rescheduling negotiation that includes the debtor country its creditors and the international financial institutions ifis the paper also considers the effects of the ifi sovereign debt policy on the bargaining power of the parties in debt rescheduling negotiations two bargaining frameworks analyzed and compared in the paper represent the negotiation mechanism at different stages of the ifi sovereign debt policy evolution

do greens drive hummers or hybrids environmental ideology as a determinant of consumer choice this paper uses several california data sets to test for differences in consumption patterns between greens and browns a person s environmentalism is rarely observed in consumer data sets in california a community s share of green party registered voters is a viable proxy for community environmentalism environmentalists are more likely to commute by public transit purchase hybrid vehicles and consume less gasoline than non environmentalists

two dimensional efficiency decomposition to measure the demand effect in productivity analysis this paper proposes a two dimensional efficiency decomposition 2ded of profitability for a production system to account for the demand effect observed in productivity analysis the first dimension identifies four components of efficiency capacity design demand generation operations and demand consumption using network data envelopment analysis network dea the second dimension decomposes the efficiency measures and integrates them into a profitability efficiency framework thus each component s profitability change can be analyzed based on technical efficiency change scale efficiency change and allocative efficiency change an empirical study based on data from 2006 to 2008 for the us airline industry finds that the regress of productivity is mainly caused by a demand fluctuation in 2007 2008 rather than technical regression in production capabilities

outside options in a bargaining model with decay in the size of the cake abstract a simple bargaining model in which the cake decays over time at a positive rate is analysed in the limit the unique perfect equilibrium payoffs take the split the difference form these results generalise to three party bargaining

willingness to pay for voluntary climate action and its determinants field experimental evidence the determinants of individual voluntary climate action vca in combating climate change and its potential scale are frequently debated in public but largely underresearched we provide estimates of the willingness to individually reduce eu greenhouse gas emissions by one ton using the european union emissions trading scheme estimates are derived from an online field experiment with a large highly heterogenous and internet representative sample of voting aged germans jointly estimating willingness to pay wtp non indifference to vca and prior knowledge we uncover important determinants of preferences for vca such as education the information structure among the population and exogenous environmental conditions

finnish consumer perceptions of carbon footprints and carbon labelling of food products abstract the aim of this study was to explore how finnish consumers perceive the communication of carbon footprints for food products the study comprised five semi structured focus groups and an online survey of 1010 respondents the study showed that the term product carbon footprint is familiar to many but there is substantial misunderstanding of its meaning only 7 of the respondents linked product carbon footprint spontaneously to greenhouse gas emissions associated with the product and an additional 5 of the respondents linked it to climate change there are positive attitudes towards carbon labels 90 stated that a carbon footprint would have at least a little impact on their buying decision but the information became meaningful only when many other purchasing criteria such as price and taste were satisfied furthermore 86 preferred carbon labels that allow comparisons of carbon footprints to be made among food products but there is divergence on perceived needs for carbon label content

demand for prepared meals by u s households using the 1987 88 nfcs a heckman two stage procedure was used to estimate the demand for prepared meals by u s households prepared meals were defined as those ready to eat and those ready to cook households headed by younger more educated and time constrained managers were more likely to purchase prepared meals income elasticities ranged from 0 07 to 0 13 while own price elasticities ranged from 0 23 to 0 66 evidence exists to indicate that prepared meals and food away from home are substitutes the presence of teenagers in a household is positively associated with expenditures of prepared meals

generalized models of japanese demand for fish given a relative lack of knowledge about japanese consumer preferences for fish japanese fish demand is modeled using both marshallian ordinary and inverse demand systems each of which nests a number of competing specifications results indicate that the inverse demand systems dominate the ordinary demand systems in forecasting performance and in nonnested tests the inverse system suggests that japanese fish prices are less responsive to changes in consumption than found in previous studies

capital and the theory of productivity measurement the purpose of this paper is twofold to provide a brief survey of recent approaches to the measurement of total factor productivity and to comment on some of the special problems which are associated with capital thus in sections i iv below four approaches to the measurement of total factor productivity are outlined while section v compares and contrasts the approaches in section vi i consider how the various approaches have to be modified when welldefined rental markets for components of the capital stock do not exist the usual case

the misleading effect of energy efficiency information on perceived energy friendliness of electric goods the european union energy label informs consumers at the point of sale about the energy efficiency and electricity consumption of various electric goods the label should enable consumers to purchase energy friendly products i e products with low energy consumption thereby making a significant contribution to the reduction of overall energy consumption this paper offers a systematic analysis of consumers interpretation of the energy label the results of a set of experimental studies revealed that consumers tend to base their estimates of a product s energy consumption mainly on the energy efficiency class e g a communicated on the energy label and largely ignore information about annual electricity consumption e g 120 kwh year thereby consumers potentially overestimate the energy friendliness of a product assigned a high energy efficiency rating this also holds true when consumers directly compare two products in terms of energy friendliness thus participants chose a higher consuming product because it had a high energy efficiency rating high energy efficiency ratings e g a can distort consumers perceptions of product categories that consume excessively e g freezers participants were seduced into thinking that a high energy efficiency rating e g a means the energy consumption of energy hogs is no longer problematic this paper provides evidence that the energy label could have a contrary effect than the one intended due to people s susceptibility to an energy efficiency fallacy this misinterpretation of the energy label could further explain why overall energy demand is increasing despite enhanced energy efficiency finally implications for policy makers and further research for enhancement of the energy label are discussed

distributional preferences and the incidence of costs and benefits in climate change policy we explore the relationship between willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences by which we mean individuals opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern we use 1 770 responses to an online stated preference survey the domestic costs in our survey s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries we also elicit respondents perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business as usual wtp is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation and when respondents believe and care that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world s poor that wtp for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit cost analyses

predicting consumer demand responses to carbon labels abstract providing carbon footprint labels for all food products is a daunting and potentially infeasible project knowing how consumers substitute away from high carbon goods and what they choose as substitutes is essential for understanding which goods are likely to result in meaningful reductions in carbon emissions this paper proposes a model to systematically estimate how consumers will respond to information from a carbon footprint label our model uses consumers value of their individual carbon footprint with own and cross price elasticities of demand data on carbon emissions from life cycle analysis to simulate shifts in consumer demand for 42 food products and a non food composite and subsequent changes in carbon emissions from different labeling schemes our simulation results have several findings including 1 carbon labels can reduce emissions but labeling only some items could lead to perverse impacts where consumers substitute away from labeled goods to unlabeled goods with a higher carbon footprint 2 carbon labels can inform consumers such that their previous beliefs about carbon footprints matter and 3 carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions among the 42 food products studied

bargaining and value we present and analyze a model of noncooperative bargaining among n participants applied to situations describable as games in coalitional form this leads to a unified solution theory for such games that has as special cases the shapley value in the transferable utility tu case the nash bargaining solution in the pure bargaining case and the recently introduced maschler owen consistent value in the general nontransferable utility ntu case moreover we show that any variation in a certain class of our bargaining procedure which generates the shapley value in the tu setup must yield the consistent value in the general ntu setup

predicting the effects of sugar sweetened beverage taxes on food and beverage demand in a large demand system a censored exact affine stone index incomplete demand system is estimated for 23 packaged foods and beverages and a numeraire good instrumental variables are used to control for endogenous prices a half cent per ounce increase in sugar sweetened beverage prices is predicted to reduce total calories from the 23 foods and beverages but increase sodium and fat intakes as a result of product substitution the predicted decline in calories is larger for low income households than for high income households although welfare loss is also higher for low income households neglecting price endogeneity or estimating a conditional demand model significantly overestimates the calorie reduction

meta data envelopment analysis finding a direction towards marginal profit maximization abstract this paper discusses a new meta dea approach to solve the problem of choosing direction vectors when estimating the directional distance function the proposed model emphasizes finding the direction for productivity improvement rather than estimating the score of efficiency focusing on planning over evaluation in fact the direction towards marginal profit maximization implies a step by step improvement and wait and see decision process which is more consistent with the practical decision making process an empirical study of u s coal fired power plants operating in 2011 validates the proposed model the results show that the efficiency measure using the proposed direction is consistent with all other indices with the exception of the direction towards the profit maximized benchmark we conclude that the marginal profit maximization is a useful guide for determining direction in the directional distance function

time series analysis of deregulatory dynamics and technical efficiency the case of the u s airline industry as markets worldwide become less regulated it becomes increasingly possible and timely to establish the presence of an empirical relationship between technical efficiency and market forces compelling agents to economize this article taking an innovative approach to test the hypothesis that competitive pressure enhances efficiency constructs a methodology to examine time series of technical efficiency indices for cointegration and convergence a panel of u s airlines observed quarterly between 1970 and 1990 is used as a case study cointegration results are suggestive of long run relationships between carriers furthermore convergence tests document less dispersion in firm performance over time

bootstrapping your fish or fishing for bootstraps precision of welfare loss estimates from a globally concave inverse demand model of commercial fish landings in the u s great lakes we extend holt and bishop s 2002 normalized quadratic inverse demand function by obtaining measures of precision of elasticities and consumer welfare loss estimates due to reductions in commercial landings in the u s great lakes even with curvature constraints imposed confidence intervals are obtained by using the bootstrap subsample bootstrap and subsample jackknife

does local labeling complement or compete with other sustainable labels a conjoint analysis of direct and joint values for fresh produce claim as a way to explore the increasing use of sustainability labels in the marketplace this study analyzes the differential values and interactive effects of sustainable production claims organic fair trade and carbon footprint and location claims through a conjoint choice experiment included in a 2008 u s survey locally grown is the highest valued claim and its value is further enhanced with fair trade certification but carbon intensive local products are discounted more severely than those sourced from other locations some negatively valued claims imports and carbon footprint can be mitigated by combining them with other claims organic and fair trade copyright 2011 oxford university press

measuring the joint impact of governance form and economic regulation on airport efficiency abstract this paper examines the joint impact that governance structure and economic regulation has on airport efficiency the previous literature has focused on one or the other of these factors but not both the empirical investigation uses a semi parametric bayesian distance stochastic frontier model as well as a data envelopment analysis dea model based on a panel of airports in several countries we find that the form of economic regulation is relatively more important than the type of governance in affecting efficiency the article provides measures of changes in expected efficiency when either or both the governance form and price regulation changes

multiperson bargaining over two alternatives abstract we present a continuous time model of multiperson bargaining with incomplete information where only two agreements are possible we show that under mild informational assumptions players behave as if they were representing the other players who prefer the same alternative individually playing a war of attrition against a conglomerate player of the opposite side we also provide a characterization of the perfect bayesian equilibria in undominated strategies of the game which yields a unique outcome in most cases journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 c78 d72 d74

the rebound effects of switching to vegetarianism a microeconomic analysis of swedish consumption behavior sustainable diets in particular vegetarianism are often promoted as effective measures to reduce our environmental footprint yet few conclusions take full scale behavioral changes into consideration this can be achieved by calculating the indirect environmental rebound effect related to the re spending of expenditure saved during the initial behavioral shift this study aims to quantify the potential energy use and greenhouse gas emission savings and most likely rebound effects related to an average swedish consumer s shift to vegetarianism using household budget survey data it estimates engel curves of 117 consumption goods derives marginal expenditure shares and links these values to environmental intensity indicators results indicate that switching to vegetarianism could save consumers 16 of the energy use and 20 of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their dietary consumption however if they re spend the saved income according to their current preferences they would forego 96 of potential energy savings and 49 of greenhouse gas emission savings these rebound effects are even higher for lower income consumers who tend to re spend on more environmentally intensive goods yet the adverse effect could be tempered by purchasing organic goods or re spending the money on services in order to reduce the environmental impact of consumption it could thus be recommended to not only focus on dietary shifts but rather on the full range of consumer expenditure

decomposition of the fisher ideal index of productivity a non parametric dual analysis of us airlines data in this paper we offer a non parametric method of decomposing the fisher ideal index of productivity into individual factors measuring i technical efficiency change ii allocative efficiency change iii shift in the cost function iv scale economies due to output change and v an adjustment factor reflecting change in the output attributes cross section data from the us airline industry for the years i 983 and i 984 are utilised in an empirical application illustrating this method the rate of multifactor productivity growth mfpg over time in the single output multiple input case can be measured by the difference in the rates of growth in the quantity of output and the divisia index of input quantity when no technical inefficiency exists this rate of mfpg can be decomposed into two additive components i the rate of technical change measuring the rate of change in the volume of output holding the input bundle unchanged and ii a returns to scale effect showing change in productivity with changes in the input quantities without technical change when technical efficiency varies over time a part of the measured rate of mfpg would be due to efficiency

non cooperative bargaining theory an introduction the paper provides an informal introduction to some of the main themes of the recent literature on non cooperative or sequential bargaining models it focuses in particular on the relationship between the new approach and the traditional axiomatic approach exemplified by nash bargaining theory it illustrates the new insights offered by the non cooperative approach by reference to a detailed analysis of the manner in which the presence of an outside option available to one of the parties will affect the negotiated outcome finally the difficulties which arise in extending this analysis to two person bargaining with incomplete information and to n person bargaining are discussed this is a revised version of the fourth review of economic studies lecture presented in april 1985 at the joint meeting of the association of university teachers of economics and the royal economic society held in oxford the choice of lecturer is made by a panel whose members are currently professors hahn mirrlees and nobay and the paper is refereed in the usual way this paper aims to provide an informal and elementary introduction to an approach to bargaining which has received a great deal of attention over the past few years the approach involves writing down some particular sequence of moves offers and replies to be made over time in the course of negotiations and then looking for a non cooperative equilibrium in the game thus specified in practice a perfect equilibrium or in games of incomplete information a sequential equilibrium while the approach appears at first sight to be very different in spirit from the traditional axiomatic approach in which a bargaining solution is specified by appealing to a number of general requirements which are deemed appropriate on the basis of some a priori considerations the two approaches are in fact complementary while the

the impact of restaurant calorie labels on food choice results from a field experiment i introduction in 2009 americans spent 42 of their food dollars on meals away from home morrison mancino and variyam 2011 consumers choose to eat outside the home for a variety of reasons but there is mounting concern that this spending pattern will have a detrimental effect on americans diet and overall health todd mancino and lin 2010 estimated that for each additional meal eaten away from home consumers ate an additional 134 calories by their estimation the average person will gain two pounds each year just by eating out one meal a week not only does food away from home tend to be higher in calories its nutrient quality pales in comparison to meals prepared in the home todd mancino and lin 2010 the combined increases in eating away from home and u s obesity overweight rates have caught the attention of policymakers in an effort to help promote healthier food choices several cities counties and states have passed or are considering legislation which would require nutrition labeling on restaurant menus cspi 2010 with the passage of the 2010 healthcare bill a standardized menu labeling system will soon be required in chain restaurants and vending machines across the country the labeling guidelines currently being set by the food and drug administration fda will take precedence over local labeling laws although the specific guidelines have not been released they were expected to be released by the end of 2011 but have still not been finalized to date it is probable that chain restaurants those with 20 or more outlets will be required to provide 1 calorie information for all menu items on all menus menu boards food tags and drive throughs 2 additional nutrition information for all menu items available upon request and 3 a statement of the recommended daily caloric intake 2 000 calories day for the average individual however vending machines will only be required to post calorie counts for all items fda 2011 while the literature on menu labeling in restaurants is growing large gaps in knowledge remain this research was designed to fill many of these gaps by explicitly calculating the value of information voi present in two types of calorie labels using data collected from a field experiment in which restaurant diners were unaware of the ongoing study the innovativeness of our approach can be seen by briefly surveying the existing literature on the topic past research on the effectiveness of nutrition labeling has been remarkably inconclusive both in grocery store see moorman ferraro and huber 2012 for a discussion and restaurant settings some studies concluded that providing nutritional information on restaurant menus lowers caloric intake e g milich anderson and mills 1976 roberto et al 2010 wisdom downs and loewenstein 2010 yet other studies found that the information has no effect e g elbel et al 2009 finkelstein et al 2011 harnack et al 2008 mayer et al 1987 schwartz et al 2012 even among studies finding an effect the size of the effect tended to be small for example balfour et al 1996 and yamamoto et al 2005 found that only a small proportion of consumers 16 and 29 respectively changed their menu item selection when presented with nutrition information importantly no previous studies have provided an estimate of the economic value of nutritional information on restaurant menus which could be used in a cost benefit analysis one of the primary weaknesses of previous research relates to external validity in particular many of the previous studies were conducted in artificial settings where participants were aware of the on going research the earliest studies on restaurant menu labeling were not actually conducted in restaurants but in laboratory or cafeteria settings balfour et al 1996 cinciripini 1984 harnack et al 2008 mayer et al 1987 milich anderson and mills 1976 roberto et al

paying for mitigation a multiple country study a contingent valuation study conducted in china sweden and the united states was used to investigate citizens willingness to pay wtp for reducing co2 emissions we find that a majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase the share of americans that believes these statements is smaller and a relatively larger share of americans also believes that nothing can be done to stop climate change sweden has the highest wtp while china has the lowest jel q51 q54

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

a multilateral telephone bargaining game abstract this paper studies a multilateral bargaining game with unanimity rule offers and responses are communicated through private telephone conversations and they are never revealed to all players with a plausible restriction on beliefs we obtain a unique perfect public equilibrium

food and life cycle energy inputs consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency food consumption is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector are substantial and need to be lowered to stabilise climate change here we present an inventory of life cycle energy inputs for 150 food items available in sweden and discuss how energy efficient meals and diets can be composed energy inputs in food life cycles vary from 2 to 220 mj per kg due to a multitude of factors related to animal or vegetable origin degree of processing choice of processing and preparation technology and transportation distance daily total life cycle energy inputs for diets with a similar dietary energy consumed by one person can vary by a factor of four from 13 to 51 mj current swedish food consumption patterns result in life cycle energy inputs ranging from 6900 to 21 000 mj per person and year choice of ingredients and gender differences in food consumption patterns explain the differences up to a third of the total energy inputs is related to snacks sweets and drinks items with little nutritional value it is possible to compose a diet compatible with goals for energy efficiency and equal global partition of energy resources however such a diet is far from the swedish average and not in line with current trends

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

unconditional elasticities in two stage demand systems an approximate solution two stage budgeting postulates that the consumer s utility maximization decision can be decomposed into two steps in the first stage total expenditure is allocated over broad groups of goods in the second stage group expenditures are allocated over elementary commodities in this article we assume that the current weighted true cost of living price indices defined for each broad group of elementary commodities vary only very slightly with sub utility levels hence it is possible to approximate the first stage of a two stage budgeting structure by a maximization problem involving a single price index and a single quantity index for each of the broad groups relationships between conditional and unconditional expenditure and price elasticities are derived within this context

bargaining and international environmental agreements this article surveys game theoretic papers focused on the negotiation process that leads to an international environmental agreement most of the papers considered apply bargaining theory although other approaches have been considered as well among other issues the papers considered analyze the burden sharing rule that will result from a negotiation over a global public good the role of information asymmetries the impact of unilateral commitments delegation and ratification whether or not countries are going to form groups during the negotiation process and the influence of the expectation of a future bargaining process on investment decisions the basic bargaining model is optimistic as it predicts that countries will reach an efficient agreement immediately however all the developments of this model surveyed afterwards are rather pessimistic and even the basic model has perverse incentives for pre negotiation signals

total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 1978 this article total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 78 was reprinted with permission from the december 1982 issue of the economic journal this article proposes a methodology that decomposes total factor productivity change into two distinct elements technological progress and changes in technical efficiency technological progress is defined as the change in the best practice production frontier all other productivity change is attributed to technical efficiency change the article provides a theoretical framework for decomposing total factor productivity growth as well as a specification and estimation of the deterministic frontier production function it employs a programming technique to estimate a flexible functional form of the production frontier the paper then applies this technique to empirical data from yugoslavia of the period from 1965 to 1978 it concludes that for yugoslavia improvements to technical efficiency comprise the dominant contribution to total factor productivity change this agrees with accumulating evidence that in many developing economies productivity gain due to technological mastery of imported technology is substantial

a framework for analyzing changes in strategic performance in this paper we present a framework for analyzing changes in strategic performance traditional measures for comparing the strategic performance across firms or over time have been return on investment roi and its component ratio return on sales ros we decompose the ros ratio into four separate ratios that capture the impact of changes in a firm s productivity price recovery product mix and capacity utilization on its profitability these ratios help to highlight the micro sources of strategic success or failure they can be used to assess changes in the performance of a firm compared to itself over time or to other firms in its industry group this framework can also be used to evaluate changes in the dynamic performance of an industry as a whole we illustrate the use of these ratios with a 4 year analysis of the performance of a large manufacturing company we also demonstrate how the technique can be applied to an industry with an evaluation of the performance of u s telecommunications firms between 1975 and 1987 a period during which the industry experienced a progressive increase in competitive pressure

willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co benefits among high flying young adults in the uk voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change certain offset project types may also deliver co benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity supporting human development and poverty reduction and enabling market and technology development in low carbon sectors these co benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market depending on their effects both on consumers willingness to pay wtp for offsets and on implementation costs however the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer wtp for offsets with varying attributes this exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate wtp for certified and uncertified offsets with or without these specific co benefits in an aviation context it is to the best of our knowledge the first to do so our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co benefits and by emphasising those co benefits to consumers they also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets helping compensate for increased costs provided that consumers are made fully aware of them

food labeling and eco friendly consumption experimental evidence from a belgian supermarket using an incentive compatible framed field experiment we investigate whether consumers food consumption is more eco friendly when the information about a product s environmental impact is more easily accessible through an online survey we identify a food label that is perceived to be the most easily accessible for assessing a product s eco friendliness among six alternatives these alternatives vary on multiple dimensions including whether a standardized score of the overall environmental impact is added this new food label is subsequently tested in an experimental food market embedded in a belgian supermarket we find that the presence of the new label that was preselected in the online survey leads to more eco friendly food consumption relative to either the label currently used in the supermarket or the label that contains the raw information of the environmental impact in our experimental food market the use of an easy to interpret but comprehensive environmental information label increases the overall eco friendliness of our subjects food consumption by about 5 3 relative to the default label used in current markets

getting consumers to eat more whole grains the role of policy information and food manufacturers the 2005 dietary guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole grains this case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole grain food products we find that release of the dietary guidelines and related media attention did increase availability and sales of whole grain foods a large impact on consumption occurred through reformulation of existing products induced by competition among food suppliers this study reveals the key role product reformulation plays in inter firm competition and in realization of dietary changes recommended by public

how consumers are willing to pay for low carbon products results from a carbon labeling scenario experiment in china carbon labeling has been recently developed to lead the public towards lower carbon consumption in an attempt to create a low carbon economy by identifying the greenhouse gas emissions produced during the full life cycle of a product carbon labeling can affect the behavior of the consumers who purchase low carbon products based on data from a carbon labeling scenario experiment conducted by the research group in six cities throughout china we adopted the dunnett s t3 test approach for single factor variance analysis to find the differences in consumers willingness to pay for low carbon products between different types of consumers then we used a logistic regression model to analyze the relationship between the consumers willingness to pay and their demographic variables the results indicate 1 significant differences exist in the willingness to pay for low carbon products for different consumers and 2 education level and monthly income significantly impact consumer willingness to pay based on these findings we proposed relevant policy implications

most productive scale size versus demand fulfillment a solution to the capacity dilemma abstract the field of economics associates capacity planning with economic scale size and finds the characteristics of the production function whereas the operations management community focuses on demand fulfillment to reduce the loss of sales or inventory for profit maximization however there is a troublesome capacity trade off for firms that need to achieve economic scale size and demand fulfillment simultaneously in particular a firm s demand is variable and some of the variation is random this study proposes a multi objective mathematical program with data envelopment analysis dea constraints to set an efficient target which shows a trade off between the most productive scale size mpss benchmark and a potential demand fulfillment benchmark the study also employs the minimax regret mmr approach and the stochastic programming sp technique to address target variations caused by demand fluctuations the result shows how capacity planning via the proposed models can help managers address the capacity dilemma

getting rid of trans fats in the us diet policies incentives and progress artificial trans fats in foods increase chronic disease risk in the us population federal nutrition label regulation enacted in 2003 requires mandatory disclosure of trans fat content on packaged foods this action created incentives for the food industry to reduce trans fats both in response to consumer demand and through competition to maintain product reputation subsequent public actions include a ban on trans fat use in new york city restaurants and lawsuits against food companies which created further incentives to remove trans fats especially in the food service industry industry has reformulated packaged foods and found substitutes for restaurant fry oils and trans fats are disappearing from the us food supply market response extends throughout the supply chain and has spurred research to alter oilseed crop characteristics the widespread and relatively rapid industry response likely has improved the quality of us diets and demonstrates the potential for policy actions to spur such improvements

carbon labelling of grocery products public perceptions and potential emissions reductions abstract public perceptions of a uk carbon labelling trial were assessed via three focus groups the public found it very difficult to make sense of labelled emissions values without additional information there was also little evidence of a willingness to use labels for product selection there is a strong case for using carbon reduction labels to indicate a programme of on going emissions reductions rather than expecting consumers to incentivise emissions reductions by actively choosing the lower carbon variant of two or more products the normalisation issues and emissions reduction potential of carbon labelling are discussed

a unique solution to n person sequential bargaining abstract rubinstein s two person sequential bargaining model yields a unique subgame perfect equilibrium this uniqueness result does not hold with three or more persons based on greenberg s theory of social situations uniqueness is here offered as follows assume a player can profitably reject a suggested path at one of his decision nodes by suggesting a new one to later players if by doing so he gains more than e a path is acceptable of and only if no player can profitably reject it by suggesting another acceptable path it is shown that only the stationary division is acceptable for any e 0

valuing climate protection through willingness to pay for biomass ethanol abstract this study uses a multi part split sample contingent valuation method cvm and fair share fs survey to better understand the public s valuation of mitigating global climate change through its willingness to pay for biomass or cellulosic ethanol in addition to a basic cvm question a related scenario was developed that asked half of the survey respondents to state their fair share cost to lessen a potential food shortage in the next decade also through the expanded use of cellulosic ethanol three alternative biomass feedstocks were assessed farming residues forestry residues and paper mill wastes and municipal solid wastes overall a slightly larger proportion of respondents were wtp extra for cellulosic ethanol in the basic cvm scenario than in the fs scenario though no significant differences were found in the wtp for the different feedstocks bid curve lognormal regression results for the two models were similar supporting the idea that asking a fs rather than a conventional wtp question may be justifiable in some circumstances such as in cases of a national emergency

the demand for climate protection empirical evidence from germany abstract an experiment designed to find the real demand for climate protection was conducted among a sample of the residential population in mannheim germany participants were offered the opportunity to contribute to climate protection by purchasing european union allowances which were then withdrawn from the european emissions trading scheme our experiment showed a median willingness to pay wtp of zero and a mean wtp of approximately 12 t co 2

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed