the effects of induced mood on bidding in random nth price auctions we investigate the effects of mood on decisions in random nth price auctions there are two possible ways in which mood can affect behavior 1 mood can affect the valuation of the object being auctioned or the willingness to pay wtp and 2 mood can affect the bidding behavior itself to identify these two possible effects we study decisions with induced values and with homegrown values our data show that positive mood generates an upward bidding bias in the induced value condition however only under certain conditions do we observe weak mood effects on wtp

empirical evaluation of bureaucratic models of inefficiency two separate but related strands of literature exist regarding the efficiency of public sector service provision the theoretical base developed in the bureaucratic models of supply and the methodological base developed in the operations research and economic literatures most analyses focus exclusively on either the measurement or causes of inefficiency this paper seeks to empirically test bureaucratic models of supply by drawing on the measurement literature in anticipation of the results it is found that there does exist empirical evidence supporting some of the implications of these models

resolving differences in willingness to pay and willingness to accept reply gwendolyn c morrison 1997 raises a logical point regarding our experimental test of the divergence between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta measures of economic value shogren et al 1994 she argues that our design does not provide a true test of the existence of a fundamental endowment effect since we did not control for the potential of a pivoting indifference map daniel kahneman et al 1990 she concludes that even though our ev idence shows that the mean wtp and wta bids for market goods with close substitutes e g candy bars and coffee mugs converge after market experience the endowment effect might still be alive and well albeit at statisti cally insignificant levels

incorporating contextual information in public sector efficiency analyses a comparative study of nsw local government using the planning and regulatory function of 173 nsw local governments several approaches for incorporating contextual or non discretionary inputs in data envelopment analysis dea are compared non discretionary inputs or factors beyond managerial control in this context include the population growth rate and distribution the level of development and non residential building activity and the proportion of the population from a non english speaking background the approaches selected to incorporate these variables include discretionary inputs only non discretionary and discretionary inputs treated alike and differently categorical inputs adjusted dea and endogenous dea the results indicate that the efficiency scores of the five approaches that incorporated non discretionary factors were significantly positively correlated however it was also established that the distributions of the efficiency scores and the number of councils assessed as perfectly technically efficient in the six approa

value elicitation in laboratory markets discussion and applicability to contingent valuation in discussing the preceding three papers my assignment was to add the perspective of someone who uses contingent valuation methods my view is that contingent valuation cv is one tool for economic analysis that offers unique opportunities to clarify the preferences of the public for environmental economic policy and management tradeoffs i look to the lab for two reasons i the lab offers opportunities to examine the assumptions and techniques of cv and ii the lab offers an alternative approach to conducting cv my intention is to stimulate thinking on the scope of the lab s value for cv research and to stimulate use of the

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

consumer attitudes toward low stake risk in food markets consistency of quality is viewed as important for producers of consumer goods however there is no literature testing the importance of quality consistency on consumers willingness to pay for consumer goods we use an experimental auction market to investigate how inconsistency in tenderness affects consumers willingness to pay for beef we find that most consumers are risk averse with respect to sensory quality both the average tenderness and the variance of tenderness affected the consumers willingness to pay for beef reducing the uncertainty of the sensory quality by categorizing the beef into three tenderness classes increased the total value of the beef by 8

delivering a secure electricity supply on a low carbon pathway abstract the energy system can only be considered sustainable in the long term if it is low carbon affordable and secure these three create a complex trilemma for all stakeholders in the energy business who have to strike a careful balance without neglecting any one aspect this discussion paper examines the issues surrounding security of supply of the power system which has received less attention than the other aspects it looks at how threats and mitigation measures can be classified in terms of where they act on the supply chain and the timescale over which they act only by considering the full range of timescales from seconds to decades can the full picture emerge of the effects of new technologies on security of supply an examination of blackouts over the past 40 years sheds light on the causes of failure to supply and the most vulnerable aspects of the supply chain

measuring efficiency in education an analysis of different approaches for incorporating non discretionary inputs measuring efficiency in the education sector is a highly complex task one of the reasons is that the main resource of schools the type of students they have lie outside of their control which means that it must be treated differently to other factors in analysis this study examines the different options available in the literature for incorporating non controllable inputs in a data envelopment analysis in order to determine the most appropriate model for evaluating schools our empirical study presents the results obtained using the model proposed by fried et al 1999 though we use bootstrap techniques to avoid problems of bias in the estimations

bias and precision in the dea two stage method in data envelopment analysis dea the two stage method is a popular procedure for accounting for exogenous influences on efficiency with the conventional two stage method a dea is first conducted using only traditional endogenous inputs and outputs then the first stage dea scores are regressed on the environmental contextual exogenous inputs of interest the regression outcomes are used to identify exogenous inputs that influence the first stage dea scores to a statistically significant degree and to adjust dea scores to account for these influences herein it is demonstrated empirically that the conventional method exhibits substantial bias and low precision with the degree of bias and precision affected by input variance and correlation a reverse two stage procedure that yields estimates without the bias and precision problems that compromise the validity of the conventional method s estimates is suggested

on the determinants of local government performance a two stage nonparametric approach abstract this article analyzes the efficiency of local governments in the comunitat valenciana spain and their main explanatory variables the analysis is performed in two stages firstly efficiency is measured via nonparametric activity analysis techniques specifically we consider both data envelopment analysis dea and free disposable hull fdh techniques the second stage identifies some critical determinants of efficiency focusing on both political and fiscal policy variables in contrast to previous two stage research studies our approach performs the latter attempt via nonparametric smoothing techniques rather than econometric methods such as ols or tobit related techniques results show that efficiency scores especially under the nonconvexity assumption fdh are higher for large municipalities thus there is empirical evidence to suggest that resources may be better allocated by large municipalities however the inefficiency found is not entirely attributable to poor management as second stage analysis reveals both fiscal and political variables to be explicably related to municipality performance moreover the explanatory variables impact on efficiency is robust to the chosen technique either convex dea or nonconvex fdh

university library benchmarking an international comparison using dea abstract this paper proposes a framework for assessing the technical efficiency of 118 university libraries from australia austria canada germany switzerland and the united states the flexible non parametric approach of data envelopment analysis has been chosen to analyse the performance differentials of university libraries we also investigate whether the institutional settings affect the degree of library efficiency the findings of the intercountry efficiency comparison revealed that almost one third of the university libraries are technically efficient using environment specific frontiers to distinguish differences in managerial efficiency from differences in environmental efficiency we found considerable differences in technical efficiency between european and non european university libraries however as regards the environmental setting the non european best practice frontier outperforms the european best practice frontier

nonconventional renewable energy governance in brazil lessons to learn from the german experience abstract this paper presents a comparative analysis of energy governance regarding nonconventional renewable energy sources ncres in brazil and germany brazil is a world leader in the use of conventional renewable energy sources such as hydro power while germany has been achieving outstanding results in fostering ncres the focus is on two critical issues the legal and regulatory framework and the institutions created to support the ncres market development the comparison shows that despite the very different energy situations and policy drivers valuables lessons can be extracted from the german experience the main lesson for brazil is to think ncres as a strategic opportunity to rely less on fossil fuel and large hydroelectric power plants to decentralize the electric power sector to use the huge solar biomass and wind power potential available in the country and to create a environment friendly ncres industry to this end three critical points were identified 1 the legal and regulatory framework should be improved 2 long term energy planning taking into account social economic and climate issues and 3 the current institutions supporting ncres in brazil should be upgraded and or new ones such as more specific energy agencies should be created

governing transitions cases and insights from two periods in the history of the uk gas industry the paper aims to inform historically the analyses of future sociotechnical transition pathways in the electricity sector particularly those developed by the transition pathways to a low carbon economy project it also aims to inform the theoretical approach to transitions by focusing on key decisions at branching points that led to transitions in the uk gas energy services regime which occurred under different governance patterns the first historical case study covers the market led transformation of the manufactured gas regime from 1877 to 1914 which developed the end uses of gas beyond lighting to include cooking and extended access to working class consumers the second case study covers the period from 1948 to 1977 historically reconstructing the transition from town gas to natural gas this state led and coordinated conversion to natural gas was preceded by a period of destabilisation of the manufactured gas regime the co existence of several niche technologies and the hybridisation of the key actors and technological infrastructures of the incumbent regime comparing the cases provides insights for future energy service transitions by addressing the significance of power trust and networking in the decision making processes involved in the governance of energy transitions

efficiency measures and productivity indexes in the context of university library benchmarking data envelopment analysis dea has attracted considerable attention during the last few decades as an intuitively clear method for performance assessment theoretical developments have taken turns with empirical efficiency studies in this paper we empirically analyse performance differences across university libraries from different countries from a cross section and a longitudinal perspective we use the malmquist index approach to disentangle environmental efficiency from technical efficiency te to highlight performance differences eventually induced by environmental factors beyond the control of library management as well as to decompose productivity changes over time into changes in te and changes in technology in our cross section analysis we found that north american na libraries are more productive at higher input levels than the european libraries from germany and austria at which we looked in this contribution moreover the largest na libraries are still able to improve performance as t

a dual narrative modelling approach for evaluating socio technical transitions in electricity sectors the sustainability transition of electricity sectors is a matter of competition between multiple emerging renewable systems and dominant established conventional systems these transitions are multi dimensional and are featured with non linear and causal interactions between social technical economic and political components understanding the dynamic of transitions i e how transitions unfold can inform effective policy interventions this paper aims to present a narrative modelling approach to improve the understanding and description of transition dynamics in electricity sectors the central ideas of the paper are 1 the use of qualitative transition narratives helps to capture the co evolving nature of society and technology which are simplified in modelling approaches 2 narratives with concepts from the sustainability transitions field also guide the development of a model structure and 3 computational models in return reproduce the complexity of transition dynamics i e feedback loops non linearity and time delays the features which are impracticable to analyse with transition narratives alone we use the historical transition of india s electricity sector to demonstrate the implementation of our proposed approach first an overview of the transition narratives is presented and the model structure developed based on the narratives is explained then it is argued how the coupling of the narratives and model improves our understating of the positive impacts as well as the side effects of stable feed in tariffs and accelerated depreciation on the penetration levels of wind and solar electricity

experimental auction procedure impact on valuation of quality differentiated goods despite increased use of experimental auctions a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results this study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions results indicate the second price auction generates higher valuations than english becker degroot marschak bdm and random nth price auctions especially in latter bidding rounds and that random nth price auction yields lower valuations than english and bdm auctions we find that endowing subjects with a good prior to eliciting bids can have an impact on valuations but the effect varies across auction mechanism

information technology efficiency and productivity evidence from korean local governments this study evaluates the performance of korean local government by measuring their technical efficiency te and total factor productivity tfp growth and more importantly examining the impact of information technology it on this performance the study is different from received analysis in that a unique measure of the state of it the informatization index is used to investigate the impact of it on both te and tfp growth empirical analyses are conducted on data from 222 korean local governments for the period 1999 to 2001 in particular data envelopment analysis techniques are applied to calculate te scores and tfp growth rates for sampled local governments the empirical findings confirm the positive impact it has in improving technical efficiency and accelerating productivity growth the estimated coefficients are correctly signed with other regional characteristics controlled for when te scores and tfp growth rates are regressed on the index in addition the findings indicate that economies o

measuring production efficiency of acute hospitals in scotland 1991 94 validity issues in data envelopment analysis data envelopment analysis is a potentially useful technique for measuring production efficiency and is being increasingly applied to health care services as with other areas however some fundamental concerns need to be addressed before data envelopment analysis can be accepted widely as a routine tool these include issues of validity and specification error this paper suggests a broad framework for assessing validity which should be developed further and gives illustrative examples of the problems in a real application within health care data from 75 scottish acute hospitals for three years from 1991 94 are analysed internal validity is assessed by examining the effect on the results obtained of the choice of inputs and outputs selected for analysis external validity is assessed by examining differences in the results obtained from the data for each of the three years in both cases it is concluded that there is a disturbing lack of concordance between the different results obtained caution mu

assessing school efficiency in portugal using fdh and bootstrapping this study explores a new data set that contains information both on inputs and outputs for a sample of portuguese secondary schools an fdh reference technology is used to determine radial technical efficiency scores and slacks although it is known that there is no reason to assume convexity in the study of education efficiency frontiers this is the first study ever to use fdh at the school level effectively relaxing the convexity assumption a two stage approach is used whereby the significant environmental variables that explain fdh efficiency scores and slacks are identified for the purpose of statistical inference the first application of the bootstrapping algorithms suggested by simar and wilson 2003 is conducted the study concludes that the unemployment rate access to health care services adult education and living infrastructures are determinants of school efficiency the differences between the coast and the interior of portugal seem to be more relevant as far as school efficiency is

using laboratory experimental auctions in marketing research a case study of new packaging for fresh beef this paper illustrates the use of laboratory experimental auctions in a pretest market research program for new products we review the experimental auctions literature discuss the range of auction mechanisms available and present the advantages and disadvantages of using a particular mechanism for a laboratory pretest market we then present a step by step example of how a theoretically incentive compatible auction mechanism fifth price sealed bid was used in a laboratory pretest market for vacuum packaged beef based on the illustration we discuss the potential for using laboratory experimental auctions in pretest market research we present the limitations that may be encountered in such applications and outline research aimed at improving the behavioral properties of the technique

measuring predetermined socioeconomic inputs when assessing the efficiency of educational outputs data envelopment analysis a mathematical programming technique has often been applied to measuring the efficiency with which outputs are produced the technique derives efficient combinations of outputs for given inputs constant returns to size may be assumed or one may choose to examine whether decreasing or increasing returns hold true the technique was originally developed with cost data as the inputs but many of the applications in education have been required to concern themselves with inputs of a social nature where the inputs are frequently categorized this paper develops a method for measuring these categorized inputs in a more satisfactory way a dea analysis is undertaken of results for the local education authorities of england in the early 1980s and is followed by a stochastic frontier analysis

the effect of marketing messages and payment over time on willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves abstract smoke from inefficient biomass cookstoves contributes to global climate change and kills approximately four million people per year cooking technologies such as manufactured fuel efficient cookstoves that mitigate the negative effects of traditional cookstoves exist but adoption rates are low the international development community debates whether this low adoption of fuel efficient cookstoves is due to a lack of adequate product information or due to household financial constraints we ran vickery second price auctions in rural uganda to elicit willingness to pay for fuel efficient cookstoves comparing the effect of informational marketing messages and time payments on willingness to pay a randomized trial tested the following marketing messages this stove can improve health this stove can save time and money and both messages combined none of the messages consistently increased willingness to pay in a second experiment we compared willingness to pay for two different contracts one with payment due within a week and one with equal installment payments over 4 weeks consistent with household financial constraints time payments raised willingness to pay by 40

the deadweight loss of christmas when economists comment on holiday gift giving it is usually to condone the healthy effect of spending on the macroeconomy however an important feature of gift giving is that consumption choices are made by someone other than the final consumer a potentially important microeconomic aspect of gift giving is that gifts may be mismatched with the recipients preferences in the standard microeconomic framework of consumer choice the best a gift giver can do with say 10 is to duplicate the choice that the recipient would have made while it is possible for a giver to choose a gift which the recipient ultimately values above its price for example if the recipient is not perfectly informed it is more likely that the gift will leave the recipient worse off than if she had made her own consumption choice with an equal amount of cash in short gift giving is a potential source of deadweight loss this paper gives estimates of the deadweight loss of holiday gift giving based on surveys given to yale undergraduates i find that holiday gift giving destroys between 10 percent and a third of the value of gifts while these recipients may be unrepresentative of the u s population their gifts are not necessarily unrepresentative holiday expenditures average 40 billion per year implying that a conservative estimate of the deadweight loss of christmas is a tenth as large as estimates of the deadweight loss of income taxation i also explore how deadweight loss and the tendency to give cash gifts vary with the relationship and age difference between giver and recipient i find that gifts from friends and significant others are most efficient while noncash gifts from members of the extended family are least efficient and destroy a third of their value i develop a simple expected utility model to explain the decision to give cash as opposed to in kind gifts the data are consistent with the model cash gifts are most common from the sorts of givers whose noncash gifts have the lowest expected value to recipients given their cost and high variability in recipient valuation

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

economic efficiency and frontier techniques abstract most of the literature related to the measurement of economic efficiency has based its analysis either on parametric or on non parametric frontier methods the choice of estimation method has been an issue of debate with some researchers preferring the parametric and others the non parametric approach the aim of this paper is to provide a critical and detailed review of both core frontier methods in our opinion no approach is strictly preferable to any other moreover a careful consideration of their main advantages and disadvantages of the data set utilized and of the intrinsic characteristics of the framework under analysis will help us in the correct implementation of these techniques recent developments in frontier techniques and economic efficiency measurement such as bayesian techniques bootstrapping duality theory and the analysis of sampling asymptotic properties are also considered in this paper

the adding up test in an incentivized value elicitation mechanism the role of the income effect in the context of testing the construct validity of stated preference studies some researchers advocate the use of an adding up test designed to gauge whether elicited values are sufficiently sensitive to a change in the scope i e size of a good crucial to the applicability of this test in practice which relies on endowing a subsample of respondents with a good free of charge is that the income effects due to endowment are negligible in this study we apply the adding up test in an experimental value elicitation format to examine the potential effect of endowment as part of the test design on the adding up property of elicited values the results show that the adding up property can be affected by free provision of part of the bundle

bid sensitivity and the structure of the vickrey auction a research study explored a version of economist w vickrey s second price sealed bid auction used for the valuation of nonmarket goods the sensitivity of revealed values generated by this variation were examined a standard second price auction with repeated market trials was compared to a random nth price auction and a combinatorial private collection auction with sequentially revealed values results showed the consistency of revealed values in a low probability risk scenario

synergies and trade offs between governance and costs in electricity system transition affordability and costs of an energy transition are often viewed as the most influential drivers conversely multi level transitions theory argues that governance and the choices of key actors such as energy companies government and civil society drive the transition not only on the basis of costs this paper combines the two approaches and presents a cost appraisal of the uk transition to a low carbon electricity system under alternate governance logics a novel approach is used that links qualitative governance narratives with quantitative transition pathways electricity system scenarios and their appraisal the results contrast the dominant market led transition pathway market rules with alternate pathways that have either stronger governmental control elements central co ordination or bottom up proactive engagement of civil society thousand flowers market rules has the lowest investment costs by 2050 central co ordination is more likely to deliver the energy policy goals and possibly even a synergistic reduction in the total system costs if policies can be enacted and maintained thousand flowers which envisions wider participation of the society comes at the expense of higher investment and total system costs the paper closes with a discussion of the policy implications from cost drivers and the roles of market government and society