efficient methods of measuring welfare change and compensated income in terms of ordinary demand functions a utility maximizing consumer with a completely known system of ordinary demand functions q h p c is considered let p qo and p q be two arbitrary equilibrium situations the problem is to evaluate in which of the situations the utility is higher without knowing the utility function revealed preference theory tells that the ordinary demand functions which are in principle observable contain enough information to solve the problem remaining difficulties are therefore mainly computational we present how the compensated income c i c p qo and the compensated demand h p cl1 are calculated with arbitrary accuracy using only the ordinary demand system our two efficient algorithms also have interesting interpretations in terms of index numbers and consumer surplus measures

theoretical and empirical specifications issues in travel cost demand studies the ultimate objective of empirical travel cost demand studies is to obtain an estimate of the welfare derived from utilizing outdoor recreational resources thus it is apparent that travel cost demand equations must be linked to utility maximization deyak and smith freeman bockstael and mcconnell hanemann bockstael hanemann and strand we specify a model of utilitymaximizing recreation demand behavior which postulates that individuals choose the total number of days that they wish to spend at the recreation site this total number of recreation days is the product of the number of trips

joint recreation choices and implied values of time a model of joint recreation quantity choices is developed individuals choose both total time spent at distant sites and the number of trips taken implicitly choosing average on site time the model permits nonzero marginal utility of travel makes on site time endogenous and is linear in the constraints the scarcity value of time is analyzed without assuming the marginal utility of work time is zero a partially testable assumption about relative marginal values of travel and on site time yields nonparametric calculations of the scarcity value of time and marginal values of trips and days on site from people s observed optimal quantity choices

consumer surplus from discrete choice models abstract the budget constrained random utility model rum gives utility consistent measures of welfare but requires the length of the planning period be specified an alternative is to treat the rum probabilities as behavioral and calculate consumer surplus this paper shows that such calculations lead to the same welfare measures as rum calculations the paper provides support and an alternative justification for the standard welfare measured

endogenous on site time in the recreation demand model careful modeling of on site time may substantially improve estimates of the bene fits of recreational visits using the travel cost method especially when on site time is endoge nous this paper reviews the theory of endoge nous on site time and shows how the theory may apply to the random utility model rum an empirical example of a two level nested choice model of sport fishing in southcentral alaska il lustrates a discussion of the relative advantages of the different ways to specify endogenous on site time jel q26

candidate positioning and voter choice of these criteria in the electorate we then formally derive an exhaustive set of critical tests situations in which the criteria predict different vote choices finally through survey experiments concerning health care policy we administer the tests to a nationally representative sample we find that proximity voting is about twice as common as discounting and four times as common as directional voting furthermore discounting is most prevalent among ideological centrists and nonpartisans who make sophisticated judgments that help align policy with their preferences these findings demonstrate the promise of combining formal theory and experiments to answer previously intractable questions about democracy a key characteristic of democracy dahl 1971 1 noted is the responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens two mechanisms play central roles in promoting responsiveness thereby fostering congruence between the preferences of voters and the policy positions of candidates voters in a democracy can select candidates that represent their views and candidates can compete for votes by strategically taking positions that appeal to the electorate both mechanisms are important each depends on the criteria voters use to judge politicians on the issues a lively debate has focused on three theories about how voters judge the policy stances of candidates the first proximitytheory assumesthatcitizensprefercandidateswhosepositionsareclosesttotheirown forexample avoterwhofavorsa5 increaseingovernment spending on health care will be happiest with a candidate who advocates the same level of spending the more a candidate s position diverges from the voter s the less satisfied the voter will feel the presumed positive relationship between proximity and satisfaction

household labor market choices and the demand for recreation this paper introduces household labor market choices into the demand for recre ation showing that the opportunity cost of time wage rate connection is severed when several household members have the opportunity to par ticipate in the labor market at fixed wages an ap plication of recreation demand for households in new bedford massachusetts shows that the rec reation demand models and estimates of con sumer surplus are sensitive to household labor market choices q26

possibilities for including the opportunity cost of time in recreation demand systems recreation demand modelers have attempted to identify and incorporate the opportunity cost of an individual s time in travel and on site in the model larson 1993b focused on the value of leisure time in a model where individuals face a fixed work week in this paper we examine the connection between labor supply and recreation demands and focus on conditional demand systems we illustrate that corner solution models are not needed to explain several interesting time related recreation issues

estimating fishing and hunting leisure spending shares in the united states abstract we apply a bivariate censored demand system to estimate hunting and fishing trip related spending shares in the united states using data from off site surveys the approach considers fishing and hunting destination decisions and includes respondents who were inactive i e did not hunt or fished in a particular season the statistical significance of correlation coefficient parameter supports the use of a joint e g bivariate rather than separate e g univariate decision modeling process for fishing or hunting share equations most individual characteristics are statistically significant as explanatory variables respondents holding recreation licenses tended to spend significantly more on recreation than those without licenses all own price and cross price elasticities are statistically significant and suggest that hunting and fishing are complements the results also suggest that the popularity of hunting may decline as the population ages

revealing preferences for leisure time from stated preference data when consumer choice is constrained by time as well as money willingness to pay can be defined with respect to either numeraire the two measures can be related formally within a utility consistent model of choice subject to two constraints furthermore when information is collected on both the respondent s marginal value of time can be identified a system of willingness to pay time and money and the marginal value of leisure time is estimated jointly in an application to california whalewatching and whale stock enhancement the empirical approach can be applied with only minor additions to survey techniques for nonmarket valuation

using revealed preferences to estimate the value of travel time to recreation sites the opportunity value of travel time vtt is one of the most important elements of the total cost of recreation day trips and arguably the most difficult to estimate most studies build upon the theoretical framework proposed by becker 1965 by using a combination of revealed and stated preference data to estimate a value of time which is uniform in all activities and under all circumstances this restriction is relaxed by deserpa s 1971 model which allows the value of saving time to be activity specific we present the first analysis which uses actual driving choices between open access and toll roads to estimate a vtt specific for recreation trips thereby providing a value which conforms to both becker s and deserpa s theoretical models using these findings we conduct a monte carlo simulation to identify generalizable results for subsequent valuation studies our results indicate that 3 4 of the wage rate provides a reasonable approximation of the average vtt for recreation trips while the commonly implemented assumption of 1 3 of the wage rate generates downward biased results

estimating the cost of leisure time for recreation demand models abstract in this paper we propose a method of determining the opportunity cost of leisure time with an empirical recreation demand application typically the opportunity cost of leisure time is assumed to be some fraction of the wage rate this practice has limitations first it assumes that individuals can trade time for money at their wage second it offers no guidance about how to value the time of an individual who is not in the labor force this paper proposes a method of determining this cost that does not suffer from these drawbacks an empirical example is provided which demonstrates the proposed approach and contrasts it with commonly applied approaches

reconciling models of recreational route and site choices when employing travel cost models the unit cost of the essential input travel in the household s production of a recreation experience is central to obtaining the preference structure for the recreational good however little attention has been given to the choice of the route although the route defines the monetary and time costs used to compute travel costs conventional wisdom considers time and money costs in determining the cost per mile in the estimation of site choices but does not use both in determining the route choices and mileages this paper investigates whether models of recreational site and route choices can be reconciled

the opportunity cost of travel time in recreation demand models deciding how to allocate forage among animals is a fundamentally important process in range management the wisdom of these decisions can be enhanced by estimating the marginal value of forage needed by competing species we present a method for

modeling multiple objective recreation trips with choices over trip duration and alternative sites traditionally recreation demand studies have focused on single day single activity trips despite anecdotal and empirical evidence that many recreational trips involve overnight stays and multiple purposes this paper develops a random utility model that explores how visitors choose alternative sites and trip durations for multiple objective trips we focus on a recreational activity beach visits that appear to have significant proportions of the population taking single and multiple day trips and many of the multiple day trips involve multiple objectives multiple duration and multiple objective issues are incorporated in pricing trip costs the results of the research suggest that the accepted method for incorporating travel costs into random utility models can lead to biased estimates of the structural utility parameters and consequently biased measures of welfare in a multiple objective trip setting for single and multiple day users

a simple repackaging model of recreational choices the traditional travel cost model uses trips or visits as its measure of quantity and travel cost per trip or visit as its price however because many estimated demand curves do not hold visit length constant they cannot be used to value increments of use the simple repackaging model of muellbauer and fisher and shell is used to derive demand curves exhibiting constant visit length from demand curves exhibiting variable visit length the former allow the marginal quantity valuations that are necessary for management decisions involving capacity or use the travel cost method for measuring recreation demand was originally developed to assist in determining the value of a given resource used for recreational purposes comparison of the recreation value with values in other uses is important for the planning process resource allocation however often requires estimates of the marginal values of additional quantities of the resource i e additional recreation capacity and or increases in the use of the resource or improvements in resource quality marginal valuations of quality improvements involve shifts in the travel cost demand

the role of site and job characteristics in hedonic wage models recent economic analyses of wage rate differentials have generally used some form of hedonic framework in explaining the observed wage structure while these studies have adopted this common theoretical justification the models have been used to serve two distinct objectives the first of these is an empirical test of the theory of equalizing differences originally introduced by adam smith in such applications see brown 7 lucas 26 olson 28 thaler and rosen 36 and viscusi 40 as examples specific job characteristics measured with technical information or with worker perceptions have been used to explain differences in wage rates across individuals and jobs while there are a number of these studies there has not been a consistent pattern of support for the theory indeed with the exception of job risks many characteristics that a priori would be expected to lead to equalizing differences have often exhibited incorrect and or statistically insignificant measured effects on wages the second use for wage models has been as the basis for an index of the quality of life in urban areas in this framework households are assumed to select residential locations so as to maximize their individual welfare migration between cities provides the mechanism for an equilibrium household assignment under ideal conditions the pattern of equilibrium wage rates reflects the attributes of the cities involved see hoch 20 izraeli 23 cropper lo cropper and arriaga salinas 111 and rosen 31 as examples the purpose of this paper is to develop a model for wage rate differentials that includes both job and site characteristics and to estimate the model with a large micro data set our wage models provide estimates of a market clearing envelope which includes each of two types of past analyses as a

credibility and policy convergence in a two party system with rational voters the traditional approach to modeling political parties behavior based upon the contribution of anthony downs 1957 assumes that the parties unique objective is to win elections thus they maximize their popularity the crucial implication of this assumption for a two party system is that if the two parties have the same information about voters preferences full convergence of policies results from electoral competition this is the crucial implication of the median voter theorem more generally it may be argued that different parties are motivated differently because they represent different constituencies parties may not care only about winning elections per se but also about the quality of the policies resulting from an election in this case the candidates of the two parties view winning an election not only as a goal per se but also as a means of implementing a better policy for their respective constituencies this paper shows that electoral competitions imply dynamic inconsistency if the voters are modeled as rational and forwardlooking agents and parties do not care exclusively about being elected but also about which policy to implement once elected the dynamic inconsistency arises as follows the parties have an incentive to announce convergent platforms to increase their chances of election however if the elected party is not committed to its electoral platform it has an incentive to follow its most preferred policy rather than the policy announced in its platform if voters are rational they account for this incentive thus in general in a one shot electoral game the only timeconsistent equilibrium is one in which no convergence is possible the two parties follow their most preferred policies and the voters rationally expect this outcome full convergence of parties platforms results only as a limiting case when the parties are completely indifferent with respect to the quality of the policies resulting from the election thus these results differ from the existing literature on ideologically motivated politicians for instance donald wittman 1977 1983 randall calvert 1985 which implicitly assumes the possibility of binding commitments to electoral platforms complete or partial policy convergence can be the outcome of political competition if the interaction between the parties and the voters is modeled as an infinitely repeated game in fact if the candidates have concave objective functions the welfare maximizing policy rule implies a complete convergence of parties policies however this cooperative and agreed upon policy may or may not be sustainable as a subgame perfect equilibrium depending on parameter values in particular it depends on the discount rates of the two parties the degree of polarization of their preferences and the relative popu graduate school of industrial administration carnegie mellon university pittsburgh pa 15213 and national bureau of economic research cambridge ma 02138 this paper is based upon a chapter of my unpublished doctoral dissertation at harvard university i am greatly indebted to jeffrey sachs for directing my attention toward these issues and for many conversations i also wish to thank andrew abel dilip abreu olivier blanchard ramon caminal andrew caplin alex cukierman morris fiorina benjamin friedman herschel grossman howard rosenthal and the referees for very useful comments the responsibilitv af anv n mtnkieis af calrirp nfnlv mine the result of policy convergence in a two party system is more general than the median voter theorem for discussions of convergence results not at the median see john ledyard 1984 peter coughlin 1984 coughlin and shmuel nitzan 1981 melvin hinich 1977 for earlier work on spatial competition see richard mckelvey 1975 hinich ledyard and peter ordeshook 1972 1973 and the references quoted therein the present paper focuses on the result of convergence rather than on the median voter theorem per se

a downsian spatial model with party activism a unidimensional spatial model is proposed in this article although its formal structure parallels the spatial model of electoral competition this model examines the decisions of individuals as they choose whether or not to become activists in one of two political parties an individual calculus of participation is developed that is similar to the spatial interpretation of the calculus of voting this calculus is then generalized by examining conditions that may hold for aggregate activism probabilities and the relationship between the two forms is investigated some results are then presented which concern the distributions of activists in the two parties these results in general conform to the existence of party cleavages in which there are two stable equilibrium distributions of activists such that the two parties activists are relatively cohesive internally and relatively distinctive externally finally some suggestions are offered about how this model can be combined with the spatial model of candidate competition to provide a more complete model of elections

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

signals or noise explaining the variation in recreation benefit estimates this paper uses meta analysis to summarize the benefit estimates derived from travel cost recreation demand models after reviewing approximately 200 published and unpublished studies prepared from 1970 to 1986 77 were found to report either consumer surplus estimates or sufficient information to derive them using these estimates of the consumer surplus per unit of use from each study it was possible to evaluate the influence of variables describing the site characteristics the activities undertaken at each site the behavioral assumptions and the specification decisions the findings provide clear support for using econometric methods to summarize results from diverse empirical studies they highlight the important research issues in model development and offer a consistency check to the procedures used in benefit transfer analyses for policy evaluations

importance of early snowfall for swedish ski resorts evidence based on monthly data abstract since the early 1970s sweden has experienced an almost uninterrupted surge in demand for downhill skiing however from the 2009 2010 season lift ticket sales have stagnated with the use of monthly data this study investigates the role of snow depth and economic factors in the demand for downhill skiing in sweden the empirical approach is based on a seemingly unrelated regression model allowing snow conditions but not economic factors to differ during the season the estimates show that an early season increase in natural snow depth by 10 cm raises the growth rate of lift ticket sales by 9 percentage points in the same period further the results indicate that downhill skiing is characterised by low income and price elasticities implying weak impacts on demand for such changes the price increase of lift tickets exceeds that of the inflation rate the recent decline in demand might indicate changed leisure preferences

valuing time in travel cost demand analysis an empirical investigation the opportunity cost of time is usu ally a significant part of the price variable in the travel cost demand model thus its accurate mea surement is important to the estimation of demand and benefit valuation for nonmarket resources this paper empirically tests models which assume that income is the basis for opportunity time cost with an alternative pooled model based on a disequi librium labor market for some recreationists ac ceptance of the hypothesis that disequilibrium mod els may be necessary for some individuals implies increased survey information requirements so that the appropriate model can be applied to each indi vidual jel q21

a bivariate count data model for household tourism demand households choice of the number of leisure trips and the total number of overnight stays is empirically studied using swedish tourism data a bivariate hurdle approach separating the participation to travel and stay the night or not from the quantity the number of trips and nights decision is employed the quantity decision is modelled with a bivariate mixed poisson lognormal model allowing for both positive as well as negative correlation between count variables the observed endogenous variables are drawn from a truncated density and estimation is pursued by simulated maximum likelihood the estimation results indicate a negative correlation between the number of trips and nights in most cases own price effects are as expected negative while estimates of cross price effects vary between samples copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

the opportunity cost of travel time as a noisy wage fraction few issues are more important to welfare estimation with recreation demand models than the specification of the opportunity cost of travel time the two most common approaches to specifying this cost treat it as a fixed fraction of the recreationist s wage and either estimate the fraction done infrequently or assume it takes some value done commonly with references to results from the commute time literature used to justify the latter however these approaches lack firm conceptual rationales and the consequences of using them are not fully understood recognizing that information limitations often preclude more general approaches we use a joint recreation travel labor supply model to show that under relatively modest assumptions the opportunity cost of travel time can be expressed as a wage fraction with noise this formulation is straightforward to implement as part of random parameters based recreation demand models we then evaluate the welfare consequences of using the two approaches noted above which are special cases of the noisy wage fraction specification our results suggest that the more critical restriction to relax in opportunity cost of travel time specifications is the absence of noise rather than the specific level of the wage fraction

hedonic onsight cost model of recreation demand for many recreational activities onsite pecuniary costs can be a significant portion of the cost of a recreational trip onsite expenditures however often depend upon endogenous quality choices made by the household we formulate a recreation demand model that formally accounts for household selection of quality of onsite time household behavior is constrained by income prices and the onsite hedonic price schedule assuming complete optimization a reduced form marshallian demand curve for recreation trips still results and a specialized version of roy s identity provides a basis for welfare analysis instrumenting for endogenous quality choices does not improve demand estimation

exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss consumer s surplus is a widely used tool in applied welfare economics both economic theorists and cost benefit analysis often use consumer s surplus despite its somewhat dubious reputation the basic idea is to evaluate the value to a consumer or his willingness to pay for a change in price of a good from say pricep to pricep because price changes affect consumer welfare an evaluation of this effect is often a key input to public policy decisions yet consumer s surplus is probably the most controversial of widely used economic concepts both paul samuelson and ian little conclude that the economics profession would be better off without it it is my feeling of the situation that substantial agreement exists on the correct quantities to be measured the amount the consumer would pay or would need to be paid to be just as well off after the price change as he was before the price change the quantities correspond to john hicks compensating variation measures an alternative measure which takes ex post price change utility as the basis of comparison is hicks equivalent variation the controversy arises in the measurement of these quantities the usual measurement procedure is to use the area to the left of the marshallian market demand curve between two price levels jules dupuit originated this measure of welfare change and alfred marshall and hicks derived appropriate conditions for its use the primary condition for the area to the left of the demand curve to correspond to the compensating variation is to have constant marginal utility of income marshall gave this condition and if it holds the same quantity will be derived as the area to the left of the compensated hicksian demand curve this area to the left of the compensated demand curve is exactly what the compensating variation and equivalent variation measure thus the constant marginal utility of income is a sufficient condition for marshallian consumer s surplus to be equal to hicks consumer s surplus in this case arnold harberger s plea to use the welfare triangle as one half times the product of the price change times the quantity change to measure deadweight loss corresponds to the correct theoretical amount of welfare change in a recent paper robert willig derives bounds for the percentage difference between the correct measure of either the compensating or equivalent variation and the marshallian measure derived form the market demand curve his bounds which depend on the income elasticity of demand for the single good in the region of price change being considered as well as the proportion of the consumer s income spent on the good demonstrate that the marshallian consumer s surplus is often a good approximation to hicks consumer s surplus the fact that the proportion of the consumer s income spent matters as well as the income elasticity was first pointed out by harold hotelling willig contends that the approximation error will be less than the errors involved in estimating the demand curve thus he hopes to remove the need for apology that applied economists often need to give to theorists who remark on the inappropriateness of using marshallian consumer s surplus to measure welfare change however in this paper i show that for the case primarily considered by willig of a single price change which is also the situation in which consumer s surplus is often used in applied work no approximation is necessary professor of economics massachusetts institute of technology and research associate national bureau of economic research i would like to thank peter diamond erwin diewert daniel mcfadden robert merton robert solow hal varian joel yellin and the referees for help and comments research support from the national science foundation is acknowledged the reason that we still have two rather than one of samuelson s six measures of consumer s surplus arises from an index number problem of the correct basis for the welfare comparison i will give both measures but plan to concentrate on the compensating variation

separability and the shadow value of leisure time recreation choices are often viewed as short run decisions conditioned on longer run labor supply using weak separability to reflect this relationship the wage rate is the shadow value of time for individuals who get no utility from work whether or not they are observed to be trading time for money in the short run this result widens the circumstances under which the wage rate not some fraction thereof is the theoretically correct shadow value of time modifications to such a conclusion are developed for cases in which work is a source of utility and in which the first stage choice is not continuous

the hedonic travel cost model a view from the trenches accessible to them consequently it is reasonable to expect that economic models of these decisions will recognize the role of recreation sites characteristics for individual demands and that they will allow for the possibility that the individual s optimal choices may not involve interior solutions in all the available recreation sites in response to these expectations the recent literature has seen a number of innovations in recreation demand models one of these models is based on a fundamen

recreation demand choices and revealed values of leisure time i introduction at least since the work of becker 1965 it has been recognized widely that time may play an important role in consumer demand one of the areas where this may be most significant empirically is in the valuation of natural resource amenities through their associated recreation demands a principal reason is that recreation is a time intensive commodity so that the value of the time spent in recreation would be expected to play a large role in its overall value the potential bias to consumer s surplus estimates of the net economic value of recreation from excluding time prices from the demand model has been recognized from the outset for example by knetsch 1963 and clawson 1959 to incorporate time into recreation demand models researchers have generally adopted the practice suggested by mcconnell 1975 of defining the full price of recreation as the money cost of a trip plus its monetized time cost though the use of full budgets also called for by the becker approach is less widespread bockstael et al 1987 pointed out quite clearly that both full budgets and full prices are required in the demand function if the recreationist is jointly choosing labor supply with recreation at an exogenous marginal wage but that the structure of demand was unclear if the individual was not making such marginal labor supply choices i e if he or she was working fixed hours subsequently larson and shaikh 2001 showed that the full prices full budgets specification is sufficient to satisfy the constraints on demand parameters that arise because choice is made subject to two binding constraints regardless of the individual s position in the labor market they also pointed out that models that use full prices but only money income in effect ignoring the role of time as a resource constraint cannot be consistent with the requirements of choice subject to two constraints although the outlines of how time should enter the structure of demand are becoming clear a major unresolved issue is how to determine its value in practice several studies have followed the basic logic of becker s early work assuming that the opportunity cost of recreation time i e the value of other time forgone in favor of recreation is an exogenous parameter such as the average wage rate or more commonly some fraction thereof this fraction is either chosen arbitrarily or estimated as part of the recreation demand model as in cesario 1976 mcconnell and strand 1981 and smith et al 1983 such assumptions may be erroneous for a variety of reasons assuming the average wage is the appropriate opportunity cost of time presumes that the individual faces no constraints on hours worked derives no utility or disutility from work and has a linear wage function as has been noted by chiswick 1967 bockstael et al 1987 and smith et al 1983 this is unlikely to be true for many people assuming some constant fraction of the wage is the opportunity cost of time especially an arbitrarily chosen fraction also seems likely to be incorrect for most people for all of these reasons an individual s average wage does not necessarily reveal anything about the shadow value of discretionary leisure time either as an upper or lower bound in a recent advance feather and shaw 2000 adapted the heckman 1974 labor supply model to include information supplied by recreationists about their labor supply status in particular whether they felt under or over employed relative to their desired number of hours this information is used to identify subgroups in the data for which the shadow value of leisure time is less than the wage or more than the wage which helps in the estimation of both a wage function and a shadow value of leisure time function this approach produces individual specific estimates of the opportunity cost of leisure time based on their demographics and labor market decisions which are used in a subsequent recreation demand analysis

eu participation and the external trade of greece an appraisal of the evidence this paper investigates the trade effects caused by the accession of greece to the eu a large part of the analysis is in terms of trade flows disaggregated by the 21 categories of the greek tariff schedule these series are original data sets which have been constructed by the author to be used here for the first time the main message is that after 1981 events took a turn closer to the pessimistic pre accession predictions our findings indicate that during the post integration period the external trade of greece has been reoriented towards the eu countries and greece lost part of its comparative advantage in those sectors in which such an advantage exists we also suggest that as far as imports are concerned eu participation has caused gross trade creation for imports from the eu countries and gross trade diversion for imports from the rest of the world as far as exports are concerned the results indicate that eu participation has caused only a modest increase in greek exports to the eu market

on site time in the demand for recreation the standard travel cost model has treated on site time ambiguously over the years this paper shows how to handle on site time by exploring the implications of two assumptions in the travel cost model first people choose the amount of time that they spend on a site and second the time spent on site is exogenous this paper uses a duality result to show that when on site time is chosen the standard travel cost demand function takes a particularly simple form with slight modification standard estimation and welfare calculations continue to hold

time is money improved valuation of time and transportation costs the proper valuation of time isimportant for estimating the demand for severaleconomic goods this paper explores the propervaluation of time when estimating recreationaldemand where time costs represent asubstantial portion of the purchase price toestimate demand this paper uses a travel costframework to analyze actual behavior revealedpreference data and hypothetical behavior stated preference data which is induced byhypothetical increases in access fees traveltime and travel distance by comparing theresponses to these three contingencies theanalysis adjusts and improves the valuation oftime costs as evidence of this improvement this analysis demonstrates a great increase inthe consistency between the revealed and stateddata similarly this paper improves thevaluation of transportation related costs

latent consideration sets and continuous demand systems this paper develops a theoretically consistent continuous demand system model that incorporates latent probabilistic consideration sets in contrast to existing discrete choice consideration models the proposed model is econometrically tractable with consumption data for many goods the model s empirical properties are illustrated with an 89 site recreation data set from the 1994 national survey of recreation and the environment nsre parameter and welfare estimates suggest that the latent consideration set models fit the data better and may imply a bias variance tradeoff relative to traditional models

short run constraints and the increasing marginal value of time in recreation leisure activities such as local recreation trips usually take place in discrete blocks of time that are surrounded by time devoted to other commitments it can be costly to transfer time between blocks to allow for longer outings these observations affect the value of time within those blocks and suggest that traditional methods for valuing time using labor markets miss important considerations this paper presents a new model for time valuation that uses non employment time commitments to infer the shadow value of time spent in recreation a unique survey that elicited revealed and stated preference data on household time allocation is used to implement the model the results support the conclusion that there is an increasing marginal value of time for recreation as the trip length increases

accounting for stochastic shadow values of time in discrete choice recreation demand models abstract in this paper a discrete choice recreation demand model that explicitly accounts for a stochastic shadow value of time function is proposed using data from a survey of san diego beach users the stochastic shadow value of time labor supply and beach choice are jointly estimated results from this joint estimation approach are compared with the familiar two step approach that estimates labor supply first and uses predicted values of time in the recreational site choice model the approaches produce markedly different welfare measures with the two step model which does not account for unobserved variability of time values predicting significantly higher values a monte carlo simulation illustrates how ignoring the stochastic nature of shadow value of time in discrete choice recreation demand models can bias model parameters and hence welfare estimates

time and the recreational demand model in this paper a theoretically consistent approach to including time costs in recreational demand models is developed the demand model is conditional on the recreationist s labor market situation for individuals at corner solutions in the labor market utility maximization is subject to two constraints leading to a demand function with travel costs and travel time as independent variables with interior solutions in the labor market time is valued at the wage rate and combined with travel costs to produce one full cost variable in an illustration welfare measures based on the new model are estimated for a sample of sportfishermen

searching for the opportunity cost of an individual s time a traditional assumption made in the literature is that the value of an individual s time spent in any activity is equal to his or her wage rate this result stems from the derivation of the value of leisure time in the context of the standard labor supply model this paper pre sents some reasons why the relationship be tween the wage rate and the value of time does not hold suggestions for what to do when the relationship breaks down and the investigator needs some value to impute to the individual are given in the final section of the paper

location location location the davis hinich model of electoral competition the davis hinich multidimensional model of electoral competition is the foundation for a very broad set of models in economics political science public choice and political economy this essay reviews some of these models and how they build on and extend the original davis hinich model it also presents a new extension that makes individual preferences endogenous to the electoral process the essay concludes with a discussion of the positive and normative implications of endogenous preferences and then returns to the basic theme of the central importance of the early davis hinich papers

theory and estimation of the household production function for wildlife recreation abstract the household production function is an intuitively appealing way to model man s interaction with nature this paper models the interaction between the household s behavior and publicly provided inputs into wildlife recreation the paper shows how to compute benefits assuming that the household production function is known the household production function approach collapses to the simple travel cost approach when households are unable to substitute their own inputs for publicly provided inputs in addition the paper demonstrates the conditions under which the parameters of cost and preference functions can be identified the conditions for identification are quite restrictive when several choices are endogenous

centripetal and centrifugal incentives in electoral systems this paper investigates how electoral laws affect the position taking incentives of parties and candidates it seeks to extend the finding presented in the classical median voter theorem to a wide class of electoral systems or to show the limits of such extension the factors examined are the district magnitude the electoral formula the number of votes each voter is allowed to cast whether voters can cumulate their votes and whether voters can partially abstain i suggest a crude division of electoral systems into those producing predominantly centripetal incentives and those producing predominantly centrifugal incentives among the factors found to produce centripetal incentives at least in noncumulative systems are the following increases in the number of votes per voter outlawry of partial abstention and decreases in the district magnitude in systems allowing the cumulation of votes matters are a bit different

specification bias in contingent valuation from omission of relative price variables the specification bias from omission of relative price variables in contingent valuation functions is investigated omitted variable bias will cause the determinants of willingness to pay wtp to assume zero the omission of relative price variables constitute policy implications forecast values of wtp values will be biased when empirical wtp functions are used the effects of relative prices in empirical valuation functions should be included in future studies of contingent valuation

empirical specification requirements for two constraint models of recreation choice two constraint models are common in recreation demand analysis because of the important role time can play in consumer choices two versions of roy s identity hold for these models and imply coefficient restrictions on empirical demand functions the two constraint restrictions are fully observable and can be expressed in a form analogous to the slutsky hicks equations in single constraint consumer models empirical specifications that use full prices and full budgets can be consistent with the two constraint models when the marginal value of time is either exogenous or endogenous but models with full prices and money income alone are not copyright 2001 oxford university press

spatial voting in the 2004 presidential election the theory of spatial voting has played a large role in the development of important results across many areas of political science directly testing the foundational assumptions of spatial voting theory however has not been possible with existing data using a novel survey design this article obtains estimates of voter ideology on the same scale as candidate positions the results of this scaling demonstrate that voters possess meaningful ideologies and furthermore that these beliefs are strongly related to the sorts of policy proposals considered in congress these ideology estimates are then used to uncover the actual relationships between ideology and vote choice for citizens of various types in the 2004 presidential election although the choices of independent voters are shown to be largely consistent with the assumptions of spatial voting theory the decision rules used by partisans differ strongly from what unbiased spatial voting would imply although partisans do converge toward the behavior of independents and hence toward the assumptions of spatial voting theory as information levels increase we see that even highly informed partisans show significant differences from what would be implied by unbiased spatial voting theory

the median voter hypothesis evidence from general purpose local governments the median voter hypothesis mvh represents a much used as well as much criticized tool in the hands of public finance economists to evaluate the mvh this paper applies the cox specification test using data from general purpose municipal governments the cox test allows for possible simultaneous rejection of the mvh and all tested models thus providing stricter criteria than applied to date in empirical mvh analyses the test results reveal that the mvh is appropriate for explaining the aggregate behavior of municipal governments but not specific services further the single service and single tax base assumptions are not critical to the empirical mvh performance

measuring the cost of time in recreation demand analysis an application to sportfishing since the work of cesario and knetsch economists have recognized that the opportunity cost of time plays an important role in determining the demand for outdoor recreation the opportunities one has for spare time are more significant for consumption of time intensive outdoor recreation activities than for other commodities especially nondurables bishop and heberlein illustrate the overwhelming importance of time costs to final recreational values total consumer surplus is nearly four times as large when time costs are added at half the income rate as when time costs were set at zero p 21 despite the recognition economists have neither successfully integrated the costs of time with the methods of recreational demand analysis nor reached a consensus on how it should be measured brown charbonneau and hay state finally the apparently crucial importance of how opportunity cost of time is handled needs further work while we are convinced it is an appropriate concept exactly how it should be included and measured s remains to be determined p 24 several approaches have been taken to include it in the travel cost method one approach brown and nawas gum and martin suggests that time in transit be considered as a separate independent variable another approach bishop and heberlein brown charbonneau hay nicols bowes dwyer cesario and knetsch measures the cost of time and adds it to other costs several approaches have been suggested to measure time costs one approach is simply to choose an hourly wage e g 2 00 per hour or perhaps the minimum wage rate a more flexible but still ad hoc approach is to use some proportion of the individual s wage rate as the opportunity cost of time nichols bowes dwyer the proportion is usually taken from independent studies and used to value the travel time this approach is better than using a constant opportunity cost of time because it allows variation across individuals it suffers because the choice of the percentage of the wage rate is arbitrary independent of the sampled population cesario has discussed the consequences of ignoring time costs and the differences in values arising from alternative measurement approaches in this paper we argue that the opportunity cost of time is some proportion of the individual s market wage rate or income per hour and that this proportion can be determined from sample data this method permits the proportion to vary from one study to another rather than imposing either an arbitrary estimate or one from a sample different from the study s sample

the length of stay in the demand for tourism abstract one of the main characteristics of current tourism is the reduction in the length of stay at a destination nevertheless this variable has received little attention in literature this paper examines the microeconomic determinants of the length of stay at one of the mediterranean s leading sun and sand destinations the estimation of a conditional demand function model highlights the explanatory power of the tourist s sociodemographic profile and of holiday characteristics as well as the sensitivity of the length of stay to price changes

modeling overnight recreation trip choice application of a repeated nested multinomial logit model in this paper we apply the repeated nested multinomial logit model a version of a random utility model rum to estimate the choice of an overnight versus single day recreation trip along with the other usual choice of which of the sites to visit and less typically the choice of whether to participate in our application to fish at all we also find statistically significant income effects in the empirical results the application is to atlantic salmon fishing and the data set is for maine resident angler s fishing trips to rivers in maine and canada

the determinants of intra european trade in manufactured goods abstract the determinants of intra european trade in manufactured goods are examined using three models the first model tests whether inter industry specialization between pairs of countries can be explained in terms of inter industry differences in factor intensities and inter country differences in factor endowments the second model tests the effects of country and industry characteristics in the extent of intra industry specialization the third model combines the first two to analyse the determinants of bilateral gross trade in individual industries the empirical results support the specific hypotheses put forward to specify the models

eec integration towards 1992 some distributional aspects gains and losses from 1992 damien j neven this paper examines how the benefits and costs of the internal market programme will be shared across member states the main conclusion is that the northern european countries stand to gain little from 1992 the only exception is the uk which will benefit from integration because initially it is less integrated than its northern neighbours the main beneficiaries will be the southern european countries they will benefit both from a better exploitation of their comparative advantage in labour intensive commodities and from the gains from unexploited scale economies which have already been substantially exploited in northern europe although northern countries have a comparative advantage in goods which are intensive in human capital southern markets for these goods are relatively small that is why it is the southern countries which stand to gain most even if in addition ec trade with the rest of the world is liberalized at the same pace as within the ec labour intensive production especially clothing and footwear in the south could increase by as much as 14 after 1992 areas in the north where such industries are concentrated may be the largest losers from 1992

on the commodity value of travel time in recreational activities the allocation of individual time can have a commodity value if the use of time is enjoyable this paper investigates the commodity value of travel time in recreational activities the study focuses on recreational boating in east texas after specifying a model of multisite recreational demand for boating the commodity value of travel time to each site is estimated implications of the results for the analysis of outdoor recreation are discussed

estimation of a labour supply model with censoring due to unemployment and underemployment this study proposes and implements a method of labour supply estimation which is appropriate when the sample contains unemployed and underemployed workers the estimation method consists of excluding unemployed and underemployed workers from the sample and then using to avoid selection bias an extension of heckman s approach to the case where two correlated selection rules generate the sample hausman s specification test is then used to determine whether ignoring constrained workers has led to biases in traditional labour supply estimates and the empirical results suggest that previous estimates of several important parameters are biased since the biases go in the direction that would be predicted by the hypothesis that the unemployed and underemployed are constrained the results support this hypothesis