valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

willingness to pay for borivli national park evidence from a contingent valuation a study was conducted to survey the residents of bombay and elicit their willingness to pay for the maintainance and preservation of borivli national park bnp using the contingent valuation cv method the cv method has come under considerable criticism on account of biases that are either inherent to or generated by the survey process the present study acknowledges those and adopts techniques to either circumvent or then minimise them the authors pay special attention to hypothetical bias starting point bias embedding effects and part whole biases the authors argue that indeed it is possible to improve the quality of a cv by using special survey as well as statistical techniques so that cv results can be used for the purposes of realistic decision making this validation of the cv becomes an important objective of the study despite india being a developing country with medium to low income levels the evidence suggested that people are willing to pay for preserving environmental amenities having statistically adjusted for embedding and anchoring effects households are willing to pay exclusively for bnp on average rs 7 5 per month for the next five years extrapolating to the city of bombay this amounts to a substantial rs 20 million each month for the next five years or a present discounted value of in excess of rs 1 billion suggesting a strong interest in environmental conservation

modeling individual preferences for energy sources the case of iv generation nuclear energy in italy the planned re introduction of nuclear energy in italy was abandoned in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear accident twenty years earlier soon after the chernobyl accident italians had also voted against nuclear energy however a new nuclear energy technology i e fourth generation is under research and development this paper investigates its social acceptance by means of a robust methodology employing 1 choice experiments 2 structural equation modeling and 3 information treatments within an online nation wide survey results show a great deal of preference heterogeneity the majority of the sampled respondents oppose new nuclear plants in italy with some not willing to accept any monetary compensation at all however another segment of respondents more confident that fourth generation nuclear energy goals will be achieved show a modest support towards the implementation of new nuclear projects additional variables were found to affect opposition

a target group specific approach to green power retailing students as consumers of renewable energy an extensive body of literature exists on the obstacles that have to be overcome in green power retailing in this article target group specific marketing is evaluated as a strategy to increase the share of residential customers of green power a sample of students in the city of freiburg germany was interviewed in order to assess their awareness of environmental issues their willingness to change to green power products and to better understand individual hindrances in changing the power supplier the analysis shows that students are highly positive towards green power products but for several reasons difficult to reach in marketing campaigns aspects to be considered in addressing this consumer group include the students particular expectations towards green products their living conditions price sensitivity and their perception of the relative effort involved in changing the power provider

measuring the energy security implications of fossil fuel resource concentration abstract economic assessments of the welfare effects of energy insecurity are typically uncertain and fail to provide clear guidance to policy makers as a result governments have had little analytical support to complement expert judgment in the assessment of energy security this is likely to be inadequate when considering multiple policy goals and in particular the intersections between energy security and climate change mitigation policies this paper presents an alternative approach which focuses on gauging the causes of energy insecurity as a way to assist policy making the paper focuses on the energy security implications of fossil fuel resource concentration and distinguishes between the price and physical availability components of energy insecurity it defines two separate indexes the energy security price index espi based on the measure of market concentration in competitive fossil fuel markets and the energy security physical availability index espai based on the measure of supply flexibility in regulated markets the paper illustrates the application of espi and espai with two case studies france and the united kingdom looking at the evolution of both indexes to 2030

assessing the validity and reliability of contingent values a comparison of on site users off site users and non users abstract imperfect information in contingent markets can affect the validity and reliability of contingent values willingness to pay wtp for changes in natural resource allocations survey respondents can acquire information about the natural resource to be valued from behavior such as on site use of the resource off site use of the resource and or from the survey itself in this paper we compare the validity and reliability of wtp from respondents who obtained information in these different ways using theoretical validity tests based on relative prices as well as income we find that wtp is valid for respondents with information from on site and or off site use willingness to pay is less valid for respondents who had no information about the natural resource before they participated in the survey using an alternative form reliability test we find that wtp is in the technical sense reliable for all respondents and somewhat more reliable for on site users

labor supply responses and welfare effects of tax reforms during the late 1 980s and early 1 990s taxation of wage income has undergone a change towards a proportional tax regime in many countries our analysis shows that gradual tax reforms in norway may have removed some of the distortions on worker behavior moreover we find that proportional taxes may reduce the inequality in the distribution of disposable household income yet when the distributional consequences are related to changes in individual welfare we find that rich households may benefit far more than households at the other tail of the income distribution because they earn more without any significant increase in effort

testing for the survey mode effect on contingent valuation data quality a case study of web based versus in person interviews this paper addresses the lack of empirical evaluation of the use of web based surveys in the context of contingent valuation surveys we compare using a case study in person interviews with web based surveys regarding response rate information additivity effects and respondents attitudes towards paying the web based survey had a much lower response 5 1 than the in person interviewing 84 we find the web based contingent valuation surveys to be neither more susceptible to information additivity effects nor more prone to zero protest responses we conclude in favor of the use of web based surveys namely in portugal where the number of internet users is rapidly increasing although further research efforts are required on their use

evaluating the public perceptions of nuclear power in china evidence from a contingent valuation survey national natural science foundation of china 71303199 71373218 ministry of education foundation of china 13yjc790123 11jbgp006 13jzd010 fundamental research funds for the central universities 201122g008 2014221001 national social science foundation of china 13zd167

trends in female labor force participation in sweden labor force participation of married women increased from 49 1 to 83 5 during the past 2 decades by cross section estimates on micro data of the probability of labor force participation in 1967 1973 and 1980 and by using these estimates for predicting changes in labor force participation we have found that increases in own wage has been by far the most important explanatory factor women s real wages have increased relative to husband s after tax earnings both as an effect of the introduction of compulsory separate taxation in 1971 and as an effect of dramatically decreased sex differentials in pay partly associated with increased female education

is the glass steagall act justified a study of the u s experience with universal banking before the glass steagall act of 1933 removed commercial banks from the securities underwriting business we evaluate the argument for the separation of commercial and investment banking that conflicts of interest induce commercial banks to fool the public into investing in securities which turn out to be of low quality a comparison of the performance of securities underwritten by commercial and investment banks prior to the act shows no evidence of this instead the public appears to have rationally accounted for the possibility of conflicts of interest and this appears to have constrained the banks to underwrite high quality securities jel g21 g24 n22

the contribution of product mix versus efficiency and technical change in us banking abstract similar to a du pont analysis this paper divides the changes in returns on assets of us commercial banks for the period from 2000 to 2005 into conventional measures of bank performance the contribution of product mix is significant and offsets losses from technical change and operating efficiency banks respond to changes in the business environment by switching towards more lucrative traditional and nontraditional products large banks are found to benefit more than community banks from the switch to an optimal output portfolio mix including new products spawned by recent financial innovations and deregulation

energy security policies in eu 25 the expected cost of oil supply disruptions a framework for analyzing the impact on the expected cost of oil disruption by energy policies in eu 25 is developed the framework takes into account how energy policies affect the oil market the expected oil price increase and the disruption costs opec s strategic behaviour is modelled as a dominant firm and the model includes price interdependence between different energy commodities to better estimate the cost of an oil disruption it is found that substituting pellets for oil in households and using imported sugar cane ethanol are cost efficient policies if greenhouse gas benefits are included domestically produced wheat ethanol is not found to be cost efficient even if both the expected cost of oil disruption and greenhouse gas benefits are included the same also holds for hybrid vehicles the gross expected economic gain of the policies is found to be between 9 and 22 bbl oil replaced

female income and the divorce decision evidence from micro data escalating divorce rates during the 1960s and 1970s led to large numbers of academic investigations into the causes of divorce most of these studies concentrated on a significant increase in female income that resulted from rising female labour force participation rates the difficulty with quantifying these arguments is that it is possible to observe the income of married females or it is possible to observe the income of divorced females but it is not possible to observe both outcomes simultaneously this research attempts to resolve these difficulties by using sample selection techniques to correct for possible bias from simple observation of the income of married and divorced females

willingness to pay for renewable energy primary and discretionary choice of british households for micro generation technologies this paper documents the policy context of renewable energy production in the european union the research adopts a choice experiment approach to investigate households wtp for these renewable energy technologies in the uk the micro generation technologies comprise solar photovoltaic micro wind solar thermal heat pumps and biomass boilers and pellet stoves the study compares the results from conditional and mixed logit models which estimate the distribution of utility coefficients and then derives wtp values as a ratio of the attribute coefficient to the price coefficient with a model in which the wtp distribution is estimated directly from utility in the money space the results suggest that whilst renewable energy adoption is significantly valued by households this value is not sufficiently large for the vast majority of households to cover the higher capital costs of micro generation energy technologies

public support for reducing us reliance on fossil fuels investigating household willingness to pay for energy research and development abstract in order to reduce future dependence on foreign oil and emissions of co2 how much would us households be willing to pay annually to support increased energy research and development r d activities designed to replace fossil fuels does it matter whether the r d includes nuclear energy options we explore these questions using data from a unique set of national telephone and internet surveys using a national advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us household support of a national energy research and development fund erdf for investments in energy sources not reliant on fossil fuels while accounting for the level of un certainty in voting responses the wtp modeling includes a comparison of both classic maximum likelihood estimation mle and bayesian analysis evidence indicates that mle and bayesian analysis achieve similar statistical inference while the bayesian analysis provides a narrower confidence interval around estimated wtp

analyzing korean consumers latent preferences for electricity generation sources with a hierarchical bayesian logit model in a discrete choice experiment generally consumers use electricity without considering the source the electricity was generated from since different energy sources exert varying effects on society it is necessary to analyze consumers latent preference for electricity generation sources the present study estimates korean consumers marginal utility and an appropriate generation mix is derived using the hierarchical bayesian logit model in a discrete choice experiment the results show that consumers consider the danger posed by the source of electricity as the most important factor among the effects of electricity generation sources additionally korean consumers wish to reduce the contribution of nuclear power from the existing 32 11 and increase that of renewable energy from the existing 4 32

the trend in the male female wage gap in the united states despite the rise in the feminist movement the enactment of equal opportunity legislation and the rapid increase in women s labor force participation a substantial sex differential in wages has persisted in the united states for at least 4 decades measured by hourly earnings of year round workers this wage gap was 31 in 1955 widened to a 35 37 range by the 1960s and early 1970s and then narrowed to 33 by 1982 this paper examines the extent to which changes in the characteristics of men and women in the labor force and other factors can account for the observed pattern the main finding is that increases in women s labor force participation were initially associated with a declining skill level of employed women relative to employed men where skill is measured by years of schooling and job tenure more recently the work experience of employed women has been increasing which helps account for the recent narrowing trend in the wage gap during the 1970s the wage gap probably woul have narrowed m

taxing family size and subsidizing child specific commodities abstract the effects and optimal choice of policy instruments directly affecting the welfare of parents and children are examined within the context of a household economics model if fertility were exogenous and households differed in number of children only a first best could be implement through a grant conditional on family size outside this very special case public intervention is either not justifiable on distributional grounds or involves taxing child specific commodities less than adult specific commodities if fertility is endogenous family size must be taxed or subsidized according to whether household expenditure on children is decreasing or increasing in the mother s wage rate

post fukushima public acceptance on resuming the nuclear power program in china abstract this study investigates social perceptions electricity preference management instruments towards nuclear power in china and evaluates the extent of opposing nuclear power by estimating public willingness to pay wtp to prevent a nuclear power plant from being constructed in their local cities and the neighboring cities it is pretty important to understand the public sentiment towards recommencement of nuclear programs since public acceptance of nuclear energy is one of the determinants for government establishment of a new nuclear project especially the chinese government has resumed the approval of new nuclear power plants and planned to expand this industry in the post fukushima world the findings show that most of the respondents care about the development of nuclear power in china the publics are a bit skeptical about the security of nuclear power since they are worried about nuclear accidents in addition the government is requested to improve policy transparency which is seen as an essential way of alleviating the public nuclear anxieties in china

residential willingness to pay for deep decarbonization of electricity supply contingent valuation evidence from hong kong abstract motivated by the government s proposed target of reducing co2 emissions by 30 of the 2005 level in the year 2020 we estimate the residential willingness to pay wtp for deep decarbonization of hong kong s electricity supply which is heavily dependent on coal fired generation our contingent valuation survey conducted in 2016 of 1460 households yields dichotomous choice data based on the respondents answers to a series of closed ended questions such data are less susceptible to the strategic bias that often plagues self stated wtp data obtained by direct elicitation via open ended questions using binary choice models we find that average wtp is 48 51 relative to current bills if the decarbonization target is achieved via natural gas generation and renewable energy however estimated wtp declines to 32 42 when decarbonization entails additional nuclear imports from china as the projected bill increase caused by the target s implementation is 40 our wtp estimates support the government s fuel mix policy of using natural gas and renewable energy to displace hong kong s coal generation

an analysis of women s labor force participation in france cross section estimates and time series evidence this paper examines labor force participation of women in france and its evolution over time cross section estimates of a logit model measure the effects on participation of wives wages husbands earnings families unearned income and number of children they are found to be in accordance with theory applied to historical data these estimates overpredict actual changes a new specification of the participation model using as endogenous variable the fraction of lifetime after leaving school spent in the labor force shows that the effect of the main explanatory variable education changed over time this model gives accurate predictions

inflation and other aggregate determinants of the trend in us divorce rates since the 1960s this article extends empirical research on the determinants of divorce in two ways first i examine the effect of inflation on divorce second the use of a structural time series modelling approach attributes unobservables and omitted variables to an unobserved component which allows for the model s parameters to be estimated consistently inflation is statistically significant positive and persistent i show that the effects of inflation are robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables and various trend specifications the long run implications of inflation are also substantial i conclude that price stability has the potential to reduce divorce rates

intercountry comparisons of labor force trends and of related developments an overview this paper is a survey of analyses of women s labor force growth in 12 industrialized countries originally presented at a conference in sussex england in june 1983 the main focus of the conference papers and of the current survey is on growth of the labor force of married women in the years 1960 80 trends in fertility wages and family instability also receive attention as related developments married women s labor force growth is observed in all countries except for the ussr after 1970 where labor force rates of women reached the level of men growth rates differ among countries they apparently respond to growth in real wages and to growth in education but response elasticities differ among countries estimates of these elasticities contained in the country papers were helpful in predicting the trends other findings include ubiquitous declines in fertility and growth of divorce in the 1970s both developments are related to long run labor force growth in all countries wages of women were lo

an analysis of trends in female labor force participation in japan until recently the aggregate female labor force participation rate in japan has shown a secular declining trend throughout the postwar period of economic development participation of paid female employees alone exhibits a steadily rising trend more or less comparable to that in the united states and european countries although the fertility rate dropped drastically shortly after world war ii in the subsequent period increases in female education and a relative improvement of female wages appear to have promoted a substantial increase in paid female employment labor supply equations for paid employees estimated from time series data provide negative income and positive wage elasticities cross sectional analysis gives reasonable results particularly for middle age wives absolute values of estimated wage elasticity notably have almost always been smaller than income elasticity unlike many research findings in the united states

participation and hours of work two stages in the life cycle of married women abstract a 1979 cross section of dutch households is used to estimate an integrated labor force participation and hours of work labor supply model for women young women and older women are found to behave differently wage and income elasticities are always higher for older than for younger women in absolute terms and the relative importance of participation and hours elasticities is reversed as the average woman grows older thereby implying that younger women tend to be more preoccupied with the participation decision whereas older women are more concerned with the hours decision econometrically the paper builds on heckman s 1974 participation cum hours model by adapting the estimation method to allow for the fact that hours worked are only observed in intervals a maximum likelihood model in which we integrate over parts of the hours distribution is used this technique though computationally involved gave satisfying results we compare the results with estimates of a similar but much simpler probit model to identify the possible biases in the simpler approach

banking scope and financial innovation we explore the implications of financial system design for financial innovation we begin with assumptions about the investment opportunities of firms their observable attributes and the roles of commercial banks investment banks and the financial market we examine the borrower s choice between bank and financial market funding the commercial bank s choice of monitoring capacity and the investment bank s choice of whether to invest in financial innovation our main result is that financial innovation in a universal banking system is stochastically lower than innovation in a financial system in which commercial and investment banks are functionally separated article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

unstable bandwagon and habit effects on labor supply abstract this paper develops a dynamic labor supply model based on unstable bandwagon and habit effects it possesses multiple long run equilibria and exhibits hysteresis and transitions between home and market time dependent on the wage rate these properties are robust the model provides an explanation of the long run increase in labor supply by married women in the netherlands the usa and other oecd countries

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

family structure home time demands and the employment patterns of japanese married women a recent 1990 national survey is used in an econometric analysis of japanese women s hourly pay and employment patterns it confirms many results from western industrial countries but also indicates the important influence of japan s unique family structure the persistence of multigenerational households on married women s employment patterns younger married women are more likely to take paid employment in such households particularly on a full time basis than in nuclear family households this appears to reflect in part the child care role played by the woman s parents or parents in law

financial system architecture this article builds a theory of financial system architecture we ask what is a financial market what is a bank and what determines the economic role of each starting with basic assumptions about primitives the types of agents and the nature of the informational asymmetries we provide a theory that explains which agents coalesce to form banks and which trade in the capital market it is shown that borrowers of higher observable qualities access the financial market moreover a financial system in its infancy will be bank dominated and increased financial market sophistication diminishes bank lending article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the labour market costs of community care this paper reports an empirical investigation into the influence of informal care responsibilities on the labour supply of women the objective is to examine the argument that the uk policy of caring for the chronic sick in the community involves a nontrivial opportunity cost in the form of the forgone labour supply of the informal carers upon which it relies we find that informal carers who care for less than 20 h per week are in fact more likely to participate in the labour market but tend to work for fewer hours per week than otherwise similar noncarers informal carers who care for 20 h or more a week are less likely to participate but only slightly however when they do undertake formal employment they tend to earn less per hour and work for fewer hours per week

valuing a wind farm construction a contingent valuation study in greece abstract our analysis is based on data from a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation study implemented to elicit public attitudes towards renewable energy generation and their willingness to pay for the construction of a wind farm in the area of messanagros in the island of rhodes greece results indicate that there are significant positive values deriving from the proposed project respondents report a mean willingness to pay a premium in their bi monthly electric bills of 8 86 for the sole purpose of the construction of the wind farm the estimated economic benefits to the local population are weighed against the investment cost in a cost benefit analysis to inform policy making and implications for eu energy policy are provided

ocupational segregation labour force participation and the relative earnings of men and women a model of the labour market is developed in which particiaption rates of men and women wages rates of men and women and occupational segregation are determined simultaneously the model is estimated using cross sectional data from australia the most important empirical results are that a particiaption rates wage rates and occupational segregation should be viewed as being simultaneously determined b differences in male and female labour force attactment and human capital attainment are important determinants of the gender composition of occupations and c there is little direct evidence in this study to support discrimination based theories of occupational segregation

work and family roles of soviet women historical trends and cross section analysis over the last two generations women in soviet russia reached the highest labor force participation rate in the world as everywhere else the process was accompanied by a sharp rise in their educational attainment and a similarly sharp decline in fertility on the basis of data about families of soviet emigrants during the early 1970s it is shown that soviet women respond to the same economic variables that create similar trends in market economies socialist ideology and soviet growth strategy help on the one hand to expedite the process but on the other amplify the contradiction between women s family and labor market roles and result in relatively low wages for women

the emergence of the working wife in holland the rate of participation in the labor force by married women is lower in the netherlands than in similar industrialized countries however since the end of the second world war the participation rate increased from almost zero to almost one fourth in less than 35 years using estimation results obtained with a probit model on a 1979 nationwide cross section this paper tries to reconstruct the postwar growth in this participation rate it is found in particular that the increase in the real wage for female workers contributes substantially to the explanation of the observed long run change given the relatively high own wage elasticity one would also expect dutch wives to catch up in the future with the level of participation observed in neighboring countries

measuring the social value of nuclear energy using contingent valuation methodology abstract as one of the promising energy sources for the next few decades nuclear energy receives more attention than before as environmental issues become more important and the supply of fossil fuels becomes unstable one of the reasons for this attention is based on the rapid innovation of nuclear technology which solves many of its technological constraints and safety issues however regardless of these rapid innovations social acceptance for nuclear energy has been relatively low and unchanged consequently the social perception has often been an obstacle to the development and execution of nuclear policy requiring enormous subsidies which are not based on the social value of nuclear energy therefore in this study we estimate the social value of nuclear energy consumers willingness to pay for nuclear energy using the contingent valuation method cvm and suggest that the social value of nuclear energy increases approximately 68 5 with the provision of adequate information about nuclear energy to the public consequently we suggest that the social acceptance management in nuclear policy development is important along with nuclear technology innovation

optimal designs for discrete choice contingent valuation surveys single bound double bound and bivariate models this paper finds the designs for discrete choice contingent valuation surveys which maximize the precision of a statistic of interest about the public s willingness to pay wtp for a change in the environmental quality such as median wtp an optimization problem is set up in which the efficiency of the estimate of median wtp or a related concept is the objective function to optimize with respect to the survey design i e the set of bids offered to the respondents in deriving the optimal designs we consider alternative econometric models such as the basic single bound model that uses the responses to the first payment question the traditional interval data or double bound model for surveys with a follow up payment question and the recently proposed bivariate binary response model simulations are carried out to compare the alternative design principles and assess their performances with respect to the statistic of primary interest median wtp and other welfare measures such as mean wtp other designs that are constructed ad hoc are also examined

popular support for climate change mitigation evidence from a general population mail survey using a sample of 1 651 us households we explore some determinants of willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation programs our mail survey had a relatively low response rate so we first use several additional data sources to build a detailed sample selection model this model uses features of the survey instrument measures of geographic vulnerability to climate change seasonality the political mix in the county attributes of the address or addressee and a set of factor scores from an extensive factor analysis of all census tracts in the us we estimate this model jointly with a model to explain climate policy preferences as a function of the domestic and international distribution of policy costs as well as the climate change impacts that each respondent believes will occur under a policy of business as usual despite statistically significant patterns of nonresponse selectivity effects are minimal in this case wtp for climate change mitigation is greater when the domestic incidence of mitigation costs is borne mostly through higher energy taxes it is also greater when costs are understood to be shared internationally with other groups of countries rather than being borne mostly by a country group including the us people are generally more willing to pay for climate change mitigation if they believe that the harm caused by climate change impacts will be substantial rather than just moderate

a general model of starting point bias in double bounded dichotomous contingent valuation surveys abstract this paper develops a general model that addresses the starting point bias in the dichotomous choice evaluation data by incorporating both the anchoring effect and yea saying bias the model is applied to a contingent valuation study that evaluated the health benefits of air quality improvement in three major metropolitan areas in taiwan the empirical evidence shows a strong anchoring effect but an insignificant yea saying bias the results show a serious understated willingness to pay if the biases in anchoring and yea saying are not controlled

a theory of banking structure abstract this paper proposes a theory to analyze the specialization of banking activities based upon the different functions that banks perform when rendering a variety of financial services the functional difference in the services performed by banks is based upon two dimensions the degree of information asymmetry involved in providing the service and the degree of verifiability of the value of the service rendered this has implications for the length of banking relationships and also determines whether banks develop the right degree of skill specialization and resource intensity for the existing task mix costly overspecialization occurs in certain deal type transactions and underspecialization occurs in relationship type transactions the paper examines how bank client relationships are structured and proposes an explanation for phenomena such as bank syndication first mover advantages and monopoly skills are also shown to be natural outcomes of the model the analysis has implications for banking regulation such as for the glass steagall act in the sense that it analyzes the effects of this specialization first enacted within the spirit of the act

the long term default performance of bank underwritten security issues abstract the glass steagall act of 1933 barred commercial banks and their affiliates from underwriting and dealing in securities activities amidst concerns that banks abused the trust of their depositors and clientele by systematically underwriting poor quality security issues this paper examines if these concerns were justified by studying the long term default performance of bank underwritten issues as compared to non bank underwritten issues the evidence shows that contrary to conventional wisdom bank underwritten issues defaulted less than non bank underwritten issues over a seven year period from the issue date and had a significantly lower mortality rate

testing willingness to pay models of discrete choice contingent valuation survey data this paper considers models of willingness to pay wtp based on dichotomous choice contingent valuation survey data and examines the effect of the survey design on tests of goodness of fit simulations show that eliciting single binary responses result in tests that have low power in detecting departures from the maintained distribution of wtp unless the sample size is truly large the power of the tests improves if a follow up question and a moderate number of sets of bid values are used and if the bids are not placed on the extreme tails of the wtp distribution

credit and efficiency in centralized and decentralized economies we study a credit model where because of adverse selection unprofitable projects may nevertheless be financed indeed they may continue to be financed even when shown to be low quality if sunk costs have already been incurred we show that credit decentralization offers a way for creditors to commit not to refinance such projects thereby discouraging entrepreneurs from undertaking them initially thus decentralization provides financial discipline nevertheless we argue that it puts too high a premium on short term returns the model seems pertinent to two issues soft budget constraint problems in centralized economies and differences between anglo saxon and german japanese financing practices

equal employment opportunity in japan a view from the west the japanese equal employment opportunity law of 1985 effective in april 1986 prohibits gender discrimination with respect to recruitment hiring promotion training and job assignment the author describes the law and assesses its probable impact on the economic opportunities of japanese women she argues that two aspects of japan s socioeconomic environment the lifetime employment system used by large japanese private firms and the labor supply pattern of japanese women make it unlikely that the law will have a large impact on the economic status of women in japan

willingness to pay for energy saving measures in residential buildings this paper uses a choice experiment to evaluate the consumers willingness to pay for energy saving measures in switzerland s residential buildings these measures include air renewal ventilation systems and insulation of windows and facades two groups of respondents consisting respectively of 163 apartment tenants and 142 house owners were asked to choose between their housing status quo and each one of the several hypothetical situations with different attributes and prices the estimation method is based on a fixed effects logit model the results suggest that the benefits of the energy saving attributes are significantly valued by the consumers these benefits include both individual energy savings and environmental benefits as well as comfort benefits namely thermal comfort air quality and noise protection

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

addressing negative willingness to pay in dichotomous choice contingent valuation this paper has four purposes first we outline the controversy surroundingthe issue of negative willingness to pay wtp in contingent valuation cv studies second we use monte carlo simulation to examine theperformance of alternative distributionalassumptions in estimating wtp in the presenceof varying proportions of the populationholding negative wtp values we focus ondichotomous choice cv dc cv where negativewtp values may be especially difficult todetect third we extend the simulation toinvestigate the performance of the mixturemodels that have recently been proposed forhandling identifying non positive wtp values fourth we extend the simulation to investigatethe performance of the nonparametric lowerbound turnbull approach results indicate thatthe relative performance of the dc cv modelingalternatives evaluated here which assumepositive wtp varies across the simulationsetting e g proportion of negative wtp butnone can be said to reasonably solve theproblem ex post this underscores theimportance of ex ante efforts to identify ifnegative wtp is likely to be prominent in agiven valuation setting in such cases appropriately handling negative wtp must beaddressed through ex ante survey design andmodeling choices that allow negative wtp

landscape externalities from onshore wind power the expansion of renewable energy is a central element of the german federal government s climate and energy policy the target for 2020 is to produce 30 of the electricity from renewable energies wind power has been selected to be a major contributor to this change replacing old wind turbines by modern ones and building new turbines on land will be crucial in meeting this target however the expansion of onshore wind power is not universally accepted in several regions of germany residents are protesting against setting up new wind turbines to determine the negative effects two choice experiments were applied in westsachsen and nordhessen germany in both regions the externalities of wind power generation until 2020 based on today s state of technology were measured the results show that negative landscape externalities would result from expanding wind power generation using latent class models three different groups of respondents experiencing different degrees of externalities were identified

children and household economic behavior this paper looks at some of the methodological issues that arise in modeling the effects of children on household behavior and presents some estimates for selected areas for our purposes household behavior will be taken to refer to household decisions on labor supply the allocation of expenditure to different periods and the decision as to what to do with the difference between income and expenditure i shall be concerned mainly with the effects of dependent children and i restrict attention largely to western societies excerpt

internet job search and unemployment durations after decades of stability the technologies used by workers to locate new jobs began to change rapidly with the diffusion of internet access in the late 1990 s which types of persons incorporated the internet into their job search strategy and did searching for work on line help these workers find new jobs faster we address these questions using measures of internet job search derived from the december 1998 and august 2000 cps computer and internet supplements matched with job search outcomes from subsequent cps files we find that internet searchers are positively selected on observables but negatively selected on unobservables a beneficial unemployment duration reducing causal effect of internet job search is consistent with our estimates only if negative selection on unobservables is especially strong in other words only if the population of on line resumes is strongly adversely selected

environmental damage costs in iran by the energy sector on the basis of the energy supply and demand this paper assesses the environmental damage from air pollution in iran using the extern e study that has extended over 10 years and is still in progress in the european union eu commission damage costs were transferred from western european practice to the conditions of iran by scaling according to gdp per capital measured in ppp terms using this approach the total health damage from air pollution in 2001 is assessed at about 7 billion equivalent to 8 4 of nominal gdp in the absence of price reform and control policies it is estimated that damage in iran will grow to 9 billion by 2019 in the money of 2001 this is equivalent to 10 9 of nominal gdp i e a larger percentage of a larger gdp of this total 8 4 billion comes from the transport sector the damage cost to the global environment from the flaring of natural gas assessed on the basis of a carbon price of 10 ton co2 and found to be approximately 600 million per year this is equal to a little less than 1 of current gdp there are larger costs associated with recovery and use of such gas but equally there are large potential benefits

aggregation and linearity in the provision of intertemporal incentives we consider the problem of providing incentives over time for an agent with constant absolute risk aversion the optimal compensation scheme is found to be a linear function of a vector of n accounts which count the number of times that each of the n kinds of observable events occurs the number n is independent of the number of time periods so the accounts may entail substantial aggregation in a continuous time version of the problem the agent controls the drift rate of a vector of accounts that is subject to frequent small random fluctuations the solution is as if the problem were the static one in which the agent controls only the mean of a multivariate normal distribution and the principal is constrained to use a linear compensation rule if the principal can observe only coarser linear aggregates such as revenues costs or profits the optimal compensation scheme is then a linear function of those aggregates the combination of exponential utility normal distributions and linear compensation schemes makes computations and comparative statics easy to do as we illustrate we interpret our linearity results as deriving in part from the richness of the agent s strategy space which makes it possible for the agent to undermine and exploit complicated nonlinear functions of the accounting aggregates

for love or money or both this paper explores the implications for economic analysis societal well being and public policy of the movement of care services such as child and elder care from home to market a broad empirical overview sets the stage for the argument that this process cannot be properly evaluated using only a priori judgments about the suitability of marketization the context in which markets operate is crucial and while the growth of market provision poses some risks it also offers some potential benefits

heterogeneous preferences regarding global climate change we examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today because no market data exist for such distant markets a statedpreference approach is used the analysis is based on the random parameters logit model and the results indicate substantial heterogeneity in respondent preferences that mean willingness to pay is a significant and increasing function of the scope of the impact and provocatively that respondents have the same preferences over the two very different time horizons that we consider e examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today studies using current market data have estimated the potential costs of climate change on agriculture mendelsohn nordhaus shaw 1994 and on other aspects of measured production nordhaus 1994 but market data can not reveal the willingness of those currently alive to pay for measures to mitigate impacts that may not happen for 100 years or more there is serious public discussion involving diplomats at the highest levels about measures to mitigate emissions that would cost the united states alone 100 to 200 billion dollars annually therefore estimating the willingness of those currently alive to pay for mitigation measures is not a fanciful exercise but rather a crucial effort to determine how much mitigation should be undertaken it is the preferences of those alive today regarding acceptable levels of climate impacts and not the unknowable preferences of those who do not yet exist that will ultimately determine how much mitigation we pursue in the next quarter century as this question cannot be answered with market data we use the stated preference sp approach and elicit preferences for preventing climate change induced impacts a host of climate change impacts have been enumerated this study focuses on one type of impact that may be important but has received little attention from economists scientists have predicted that widespread ecosystem shifts may accompany changes in climate vemap 1995 ecosys tem shifts are likely to evolve slowly indicating that lost use values are likely to be small for those alive today yet the public may still be willing and asked to pay for mitigation measures that are designed to slow the transformation of ecosystems the current debate over climate change demon strates two things the first is that some people do care about long term changes that will never affect them or perhaps even their children the second is that preferences regarding the impacts of climate change are very heterogeneous as other members of the public appear much less concerned long term horizons combined with heterogeneous prefer ences makes ecosystem shifts a useful place to begin analyzing preferences for mitigating climate change im pacts a stated preference survey was designed that asked respondents to choose their most preferred program to reduce ecological impacts from a set menu of five or six different programs the programs varied in terms of costs the degree of ecosystem change and in the mitigation method four different menus provided to each respondent yielded four distinct valuation responses section ii de scribes the random parameters logit model for repeated choices that allows for a flexible correlation structure based on heterogeneous preferences the ecosystem change and the stated preference survey are discussed in section iii in section iv we estimate the random parameters model and estimate the willingness to pay to prevent various levels of ecosystem change section v concludes with a discussion of how the scope of the impact preference heterogeneity and the time horizon affect willingness to pay

option wealth and bequest values the value of protecting future generations from the health risks of nuclear waste storage to assess the relative importance of current costs and future benefits of nuclear waste storage we develop a simple model of bequest value the basic model of nonparternalistic altruism is extended to account for the uncertain nature of the externality the model is applied estimating the social costs of storing high level nuclear waste at a central repository at yucca mountain nevada we find that the total ex ante social cost per household associated with health and safety risks is 17 128 annually over half is attributed to a desire to protect future generations from the risk of nuclear waste storage

time series growth in the female labor force in this paper we investigate the reasons for the growth in the female labor force in america during the twentieth century in our research we study the longer term trends since 1900 and conduct a more intensive examination of developments after the second world war on the basis of our work we conclude that rising real wages accounted for 60 of the total growth in the female labor force half of this wage effect in expanding labor supply was the fertility reducing consequence of a higher female wage

women in the australian labor force trends causes and consequences since 1964 all the increase in female labor force participation in australia can be attributed to married women about 90 of the increase can be attributed to women employed part time the paper argues that aggregate female participation rate equations cannot be regarded as labor supply curves the female wage rate relative to that of males is exogenously determined by wage fixing authorities above market clearing rates and the excess supply of labor is not adequately measured by the unemployment rate married women and part time workers have a high propensity to bypass the unemployment pool when leaving or seeking a job participation equations are dominated by employment demand for sex segregated jobs

eliciting public preference for nuclear energy against the backdrop of global warming one of the most important issues related to sustainability is to reduce the use of fossil fuels due to the reduction in greenhouse gases ghg emission nuclear power results in low carbon emissions and is thus important to mitigating the adverse effects of global warming and climate change however the downside of nuclear power cannot be overlooked and consequently nuclear power is a controversial issue in many countries around the world thus an important question concerns how people should support nuclear power do the climate and energy security benefits of nuclear power outweigh its risks and costs therefore we use a modified double bounded contingent valuation model to explore the attitudes and the willingness to pay wtp of a country in order to demonstrate its implications for policy we confirm that supporters and opponents of nuclear power are balanced both in terms of their numbers and in terms of their wtp the policy implication is that people do not support any dramatic increase or reduction in nuclear power and that nuclear power should still be an important means of generating electricity in taiwan the current share of nuclear power in electricity generation of 20 should be maintained in the near future

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

would developing country commitments affect us households support for a modified kyoto protocol abstract would us households be willing to pay more to support a modified kyoto protocol mkp if developing countries had binding future limits on greenhouse gas production we explore this question using data from a unique set of national internet samples and web based surveys using an advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us senate ratification of the kyoto protocol for a split sample treatment the basic kyoto protocol bkp control group versus a mkp that includes limits on future greenhouse gas production for major developing countries treatment group the results indicate that the treatment significantly increases the probability of a yes vote on the advisory referendum econometric modeling results provide evidence that the mkp significantly increases us households median wtp to support the treaty

path shifting of the welfare state electoral competition and the expansion of work family policies in western europe what explains the surprising growth of work family policies in several west european countries much research on the welfare state emphasizes its institutional stickiness and immunity to major change yet over the past two decades governments in germany the netherlands and the united kingdom have introduced important reforms to their welfare regimes enacting paid leave schemes expanded rights to part time work and greater investments in child care a comparison of these countries reveals a similar sequence of political and policy change faced with growing electoral instability and the decline of core constituencies party leaders sought to attract dealigning voter groups such as women this led them to introduce feminizing reforms of their party structures and adopt policies to support mothers employment in all three cases women working within the parties played an important role in hatching or lobbying for these reforms after comparing three countries that moved in a path shifting direction this article engages in a brief traveling exercise examining whether a similar set of dynamics are lacking in two countries austria and italy that have moved more slowly in reforming these policies against the prevailing scholarly literature that emphasizes path dependence and slow moving change this article reveals the continued power of electoral politics in shaping redistributive policies

consequences of the rise in female labor force participation rates questions and probes this paper discusses three independent inquiries into consequences of the rise in women s labor force participation rate lfpr in the united states since 1946 1 the growth in women s lfpr is decomposed by decade age marital status presence of age specific children and years of schooling 2 evidence on the impact of the growth on the inequality in income among husband wife families is summarized and the impact on income inequality in other family structures is discussed the effect on the level of family real income is considered and money illusion in measuring the change in income is noted 3 bivariate autoregressive time series are estimated with annual data from 1950 to 1980 indicating that lagged values of women s lfpr are systematically correlated with measures of flow fertility marriage schooling and men s income while only fertility has a strong persistent lagged correlation with lfpr

the effect of risk characteristics on the willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions from electric power generation the objective of this study is to estimate willingness to pay wtp for the reduction of mortality risks caused by fossil fuel natural gas coal and oil versus nuclear electric power generation systems and to examine the influence of risk characteristics involved with electric power generation on wtp a choice experiment was conducted to achieve these objectives the attributes for nuclear risks in the experiment included the probability of disasters and the expected losses if a disaster occurs we find evidence of i a baseline effect where wtp is sensitive to hypothetical versus actual baseline expected mortality ii a labeling effect where surprisingly the term nuclear has no effect on wtp but the term fossil fueled power generation results in lower wtp and iii disaster aversion meaning that people focus on the conditional loss from a nuclear disaster not the probability we also find that the wtp for reducing deaths from a nuclear disaster is about 60 times the wtp for routine reducing fossil fuel generation related deaths