choice modeling at the market stall individual versus collective interest in environmental valuation the market stall or valuation workshop has recently been proposed as a way of addressing some of the limitations of conventional stated preference analysis in this paper we attempt to combine a participatory technique similar to the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly being applied in environmental economics our focus is on how changes in the context of decision making between choices made in isolation and those made in a group setting and between choices made on individual well being versus collective criteria produce differences in estimated welfare measures the empirical context used is that of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a valuation workshop and that moving from individual to collective choice produces in this instance a rather interesting change in both values and preferences which depends on the respondent s interests

the choice between market failures and corruption because government intervention transfers resources from one party to another it creates room for corruption as corruption often undermines the purpose of the intervention governments will try to prevent it they may create rents for bureaucrats induce a misallocation of resources and increase the size of the bureaucracy since preventing all corruption is excessively costly second best intervention may involve a certain fraction of bureaucrats accepting bribes when corruption is harder to prevent there may be both more bureaucrats and higher public sector wages also the optimal degree of government intervention may be nonmonotonic in the level of income

the generalized multinomial logit model accounting for scale and coefficient heterogeneity the mixed or heterogeneous multinomial logit mixl model has become popular in a number of fields especially marketing health economics and industrial organization in most applications of the model the vector of consumer utility weights on product attributes is assumed to have a multivariate normal mvn distribution in the population thus some consumers care more about some attributes than others and the iia property of multinomial logit mnl is avoided i e segments of consumers will tend to switch among the subset of brands that possess their most valued attributes the mixl model is also appealing because it is relatively easy to estimate recently however some researchers have argued that the mvn is a poor choice for modelling taste heterogeneity they argue that much of the heterogeneity in attribute weights is accounted for by a pure scale effect i e across consumers all attribute weights are scaled up or down in tandem this implies that choice behaviour is simply more random for some consumers than others i e holding attribute coefficients fixed the scale of their error term is greater this leads to a scale heterogeneity mnl model s mnl here we develop a generalized multinomial logit model g mnl that nests s mnl and mixl by estimating the s mnl mixl and g mnl models on 10 data sets we provide evidence on their relative performance we find that models that account for scale heterogeneity i e g mnl or s mnl are preferred to mixl by the bayes and consistent akaike information criteria in all 10 data sets accounting for scale heterogeneity enables one to account for extreme consumers who exhibit nearly lexicographic preferences as well as consumers who exhibit very random behaviour in a sense we formalize below

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

improving the process of valuing non market benefits combining citizens juries with choice modelling we attempt a first combination of the participatory technique known as the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly favored by environmental economists our application is conducted in the context of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we compare results with those of a conventional choice experiment we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a jury setting and that moving from an individual to a collective choice setting produces a change in both values and preferences

deliberative monetary valuation dmv issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change abstract this paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights fairness and equity deliberative monetary valuation dmv in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward however there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values the expected outcomes and their role moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value although this does not seem to have been widely recognised a new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes values associated with the individual may be exchange values charitable contributions or fair prices while social values can be speculative expressive or arbitrated the use of dmv is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation

corruption manufacturing plant growth and the asian paradox indonesian evidence summary using panel data from the indonesian manufacturing industry during the suharto era 1975 95 we assess the impact of plant level corruption on output and productivity growth in support of the grease the wheels hypothesis and the view of an asian paradox we find that corruption measured as bribes and indirect tax payments has a positive and statistically significant effect on individual plant growth this effect persists over the entire period which suggests improvements in the efficacy of the bribe system and a strengthening of the long term contract between firms and the government

corruption a review as is increasingly recognised in academic literature and by international organisations corruption acts as a major deterrent to growth and development the aim of this survey is to organise and summarise existing theoretical and empirical work on corruption with a view to identifying opportunities for further research the paper begins with a brief overview of key definitions of corruption and then turns to a review of the factors that favour or deter the growth of corruption together with a brief look at related models this is followed by an examination of the consequences of corruption for society and the consideration of measures that might help to reduce corruption the paper ends with suggestions for future research and includes summaries of data sources and key variables for use in this research

are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth firm level evidence exploiting a unique data set containing information about the estimated bribe payments of ugandan firms the authors study the relationship between bribe payments taxes and firm growth in uganda for the period 1995 97 using industry location averages to circumvent the potential problem of endogeneity and to deal with issues of measurement error they find that both the rate of taxation and the rate of bribery are negatively correlated with firm growth for the full data set a one percentage point increase in the bribery rate is associated with three percentage point reduction in firm growth an effect about three times that of taxation moreover after excluding outliers the authors find that bribery has a much greater negative impact on growth and taxation a considerably smaller one this provides some validation of firm level theories of corruption which posit that corruption retards development even more than taxation does

how deliberation affects stated willingness to pay for mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions an experiment respondents reported willingness to pay wtp for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions after structured group discussion or without this deliberation deliberation did not affect mean or median wtp but it increased the number of issues respondents considered with some issues becoming more frequently considered and others less survey only respondents considered issues relevant for responding to a request for a charitable contribution group mode participants considered issues relevant for a public policy assessment findings suggest that ordinary citizens can offer valid input to environmental policy decisions but that framing effects in ordinary wtp surveys may prevent them from providing such input

preference anomalies preference elicitation and the discovered preference hypothesis there is wide ranging evidence much of it deriving from economics experiments of anomalies in behaviour that challenge standard preference theories this paper explores the implications of these anomalies for preference elicitation methods because methods that are used to inform public policy such as contingent valuation are based on standard preference theories their validity may be called into question by the anomaly data however on a new interpretation these anomalies do not contradict standard theory but are errors in stated preference that can be expected to disappear as people become more experienced in relevant decision environments we explore the evidence for this interpretation and what implications follow for preference elicitation methodology

a model of financial crises in emerging markets recent events in mexico asia russia and brazil have underscored that a satisfactory explanation of financial crises in emerging markets remains elusive not too long ago the prevailing view was that crises were the inevitable outcome of ongoing fiscal imbalances coupled with fixed exchange rates but this first generation view pioneered by krugman 1979 has fallen out of fashion because in many crises the crucial fiscal disequilibria were absent and as obstfeld 1994 has argued currency crises have sometimes occurred even though central banks had more than enough resources to prevent them witness much of europe in the early 1990s obstfeld put forward a second generation view in which central banks may decide to abandon an exchange rate peg when the unemployment costs of defending it become too large this new perspective implied that crises could be driven by self fulfilling expectations since the costs of defending the peg may themselves depend on anticipations that the peg will be maintained but obstfeld s emphasis on mounting unemployment and domestic recession while appropriate for the erm 1992 crisis was at odds with the facts in mexico in 1994 and east asia in 1997 asian

an equilibrium queuing model of bribery it is sometimes argued that bribery is inefficient because bureaucrats may cause delays for attracting more bribes this hypothesis is examined in the context of a queue where customers having different values of time are ranked by their bribe payments to the queue s server the nash equilibrium strategies of the customers are derived it is shown that the server is unlikely to slow down the allocation process when bribery is allowed the model does not have stringent informational requirements and the equilibrium outcome minimizes the average value of time costs of the queue it also suggests a useful auctioning procedure

the value of familiarity effects of knowledge and objective signals on willingness to pay for a public good we design and conduct a field experiment in which treated subjects receive a precise and objective signal regarding their knowledge about a public good before estimating their wtp for it we find that the causal effect of objective signals about the accuracy of a subject s knowledge for a public good can dramatically affect their valuation for it treatment caused a significant increase of 85 129 in wtp for well informed individuals we find no such effect for less informed subjects our results imply that wtp estimates for public goods are not only a function of true information states of the respondents but beliefs about those information states

is corruption grease grit or a gamble corruption increases variance of productivity across countries the effect of corruption on economic growth has attracted interest in empirical development economics the conventional view of corruption as impediment for growth has been challenged by the grease on the wheels hypothesis we take a new perspective on the issue and suggest corruption as macro risk referred to as a gamble hypothesis using cross country data and two alternative indicators of corruption we find corruption to be a significant driver of heteroscedasticity in total productivity this supports the new gamble hypothesis we also note some misleading interpretations in the previously published frontier applications to avoid these shortcomings we apply a flexible semi nonparametric estimator

unique equilibrium in a model of self fulfilling currency attacks even though self fulfilling currency attacks lead to multiple equilibria when fundamentals are common knowledge we demonstrate the uniqueness of equilibrium when speculators face a small amount of noise in their signals about the fundamentals this unique equilibrium depends not only on the fundamentals but also on financial variables such as the quantity of hot money in circulation and the costs of speculative trading in contrast to multiple equilibrium models our model allows analysis of policy proposals directed at curtailing currency attacks

discourse based valuation of ecosystem services establishing fair outcomes through group deliberation discourse based methods involving small groups of citizens have yet to be thoroughly engaged in the practice of ecosystem valuation this remains true despite the fact that many ecosystem goods and services such as clean air biodiversity and unpolluted lakes and rivers are considered to be public goods the conventional application of ecosystem valuation relies heavily on methodologies such as contingent valuation in which individuals are asked to express the value they attach to ecosystem goods and services in social isolation the difference between the public nature of ecosystem services and their valuation through individual expression has thus recently led to calls for more deliberative forms of environmental valuation because the allocation of ecosystem services directly affects many people and raises normative questions about social equity it is argued that carefully designed discursive methods will help ensure the achievement of social equity goals in this paper we examine the theoretical and normative assumptions that rest beneath the proposed turn towards discourse based methods and identify procedures for testing their application in the field 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

choice certainty and consistency in repeated choice experiments the main objective of this study is to examine how repeated choice affects preference learning in stated preference experiments we test different hypotheses related to preference learning by analyzing response patterns and asking respondents in a choice experiment to report their experienced certainty when going through the choice tasks in a split sample test we show that follow up choice certainty questions are procedural invariant the self reported certainty results indicate that learning occurs but econometric testing procedures do not identify any significant impact of learning effects on parameter estimates or variance across choice tasks additional tests of choice consistency suggest that preferences in the choice experiment are stable and coherent

endogenous inflows of speculative capital and the optimal currency appreciation path this paper examines the optimal appreciation path of an undervalued currency in the presence of speculative capital inflows that are endogenously affected by the appreciation path a central bank decides its appreciation policy based on three costs i misalignment costs associated with the gap between the actual and long run equilibrium exchange rates ii short term adjustment costs due to resource reallocation and iii capital losses due to speculative capital inflows our model finds 1 when speculators face no liquidity shocks the central bank tends to appreciate the currency quickly to discourage speculative capital 2 when speculators face liquidity shocks the central bank optimally pre commits to a slower appreciation path and the appreciation takes the longest time when the probability of liquidity shocks takes intermediate values 3 the central bank tends to appreciate the currency more quickly when it conducts discretionary policy ce memoire examine le sentier optimal d appreciation d une monnaie sous evaluee quand il y a des flux de capitaux speculatifs qui sont affectes de maniere endogene par la nature du sentier une banque centrale decide de sa politique d appreciation a partir de la prise en compte de trois couts i les couts de desalignement associes a l ecart entre les taux de change actuels et ceux qui correspondent a l equilibre de long terme ii les couts d ajustement attribuables a la reallocation des ressources et iii les pertes de capital attribuables aux flux de capitaux speculatifs on decouvre que 1 quand les speculateurs ne font pas face a des chocs de liquidite la banque centrale tend a apprecier la monnaie rapidement pour decourager le capital speculatif 2 quand les speculateurs font face a des chocs de liquidite la banque centrale se pre engage optimalement a suivre un sentier d appreciation plus lent et l appreciation prend le plus de temps quand la probabilite de chocs d appreciation a des valeurs intermediaires 3 la banque centrale tend a faire s apprecier la monnaie plus rapidement quand elle mene une politique discretionnaire

what are the consequences of ignoring attributes in choice experiments implications for ecosystem service valuation this paper investigates the sensitivity of choice experiment values 3al for ecosystem services to attribute non attendance we consider three cases of attendance namely that people may always sometimes or never pay attention to a given attribute in making their choices this allows a series of models to be estimated which addresses the following questions to what extent do respondents ignore attributes in choice experiments what is the impact of alternative strategies for dealing with attribute non attendance can respondents reliably self report non attendance do respondents partially attend to attributes and what are the implications of this our results show that allowing for the instance of sometimes attending to attributes in making choices offers advantages over methods employed thus far in the literature

a note on competitive bribery games abstract within a competitive bribery game in which each player has incomplete information we show that there exists a unique nash equilibrium which is symmetric similar results hold for another bribery game form that prevails in the literature implications for corrupt practices in relation to economic development are also discussed

valuing the non market benefits of wild goose conservation a comparison of interview and group based approaches wild geese graze on improved pastures and young cereal crops and hence can cause considerable damage to agriculture particularly in areas close to roosting sites this study uses contingent valuation cv to establish whether government compensation payments currently made to farmers represent value for money by estimating the value placed on goose conservation by the general public benefit estimates from a conventional interview approach are compared with a group based approach called the market stall ms this involves two 1 h meetings held 1 week apart and differs from conventional interviews in that participants are given more time to consider their preferences and to discuss their wtp question with other household members we argue that this type of group based approach to environmental valuation offers important advantages over individual interview approaches especially for unfamiliar and or complex environmental goods

does corruption boost or harm firms performance in developing and emerging economies a firm level study in the last decade a growing number of studies have addressed the ongoing debate about whether corruption sands or greases the wheels of business at the firm level this study revisits this debate and proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework to test whether corruption harms or boosts firm performance as well as the extent to which this relationship is mediated by the countries institutional settings the size and strategic behaviour of the firms and market competition based on a sample of 21 250 firms located in 117 emerging and developing countries and resorting to instrumental variable iv estimations three main results were found a regardless of the proxy used for corruption and firm performance the former clearly harms the latter b corruption greases the wheels of business for african firms but it sands the wheels for firms in latin america the caribbean eastern europe central asia and southern asia and c the negative impact of corruption on performance is mitigated for larger and exporting firms

response strategies and learning in discrete choice experiments this study explores ordering effects and response strategies in repeated binary discrete choice experiments mechanism design theory and empirical evidence suggest that repeated choice tasks per respondent induce strategic behaviour we find evidence that strategic opportunities provided by the order in which choice sets are presented to respondents affect choice decisions strategic response the results suggest however that respondents may solely respond to high cost rather than low cost inconsistencies that is respondents are more cost sensitive and thus have a lower willingness to pay wtp if the same or a similar level of provision was offered in a previous choice set at a lower cost than if it was not yet the cost sensitivity and thus wtp remains unaffected if the same or a similar level of provision was offered in a previous choice set at a higher cost our findings further indicate that cost sensitivity increases and thus wtp decreases when respondents progress through the choice task with this increase decrease lessening as more choice questions are answered possible explanations are value learning and strategic learning

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

corruption and entrepreneurship evidence from brazilian municipalities we estimate the effect of corruption on business activity in brazilian municipalities we employ a new measure of corruption based on data from random audits of municipal governments our results suggest that higher levels of corruption are generally associated with reductions in the number of business establishments furthermore we find that these effects become larger over time suggesting that corruption is particularly detrimental over the long run however we also find that the effect of corruption on business activity can be insignificant or even positive conditional on institutional quality being very poor this is consistent with the grease the wheels hypothesis which argues that corruption provides entrepreneurs with means to avoid burdensome regulations and taxes

an institutional analysis of methods for environmental appraisal abstract this paper focuses on a set of issues when choosing between methods for environmental appraisal approaches like cost benefit analysis contingent valuation multicriteria analysis and deliberative methods are based on very different assumptions concerning the characteristics of environmental resources the capacities of the individuals involved and the role the methods play in framing the process the present paper views environmental appraisal methods as institutional structures they are seen as rules concerning a who should participate and in which capacity b what is considered data and which form data should take and c rules about how a conclusion is reached specifically the choice of method defines the logic of the appraisal process and next influences the output while cost benefit analysis is based on the assumption of individual rationality deliberative methods assume that individuals can act according to social rationality the first part of the paper is devoted to clarifying what institutions are and their role in the valuation process second the main features of environmental or ecosystem services and the demands they raise for decision making are described a general framework for evaluating appraisal methods is then developed finally this structure is elaborated in more detail as a basis for deciding over the choices of methods in the case of evaluating ecosystem services a set of unresolved issues are identified especially related to how the choice of appraisal methods themselves should be instituted

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

economic valuation of the environment how citizens make sense of contingent valuation questions this study adopts a qualitative approach in order to investigate how people make sense of contingent valuation cv questions of a global environmental amenity the objective is not only to capture people s motivations and considerations of willingness to pay wtp but also to determine if they adequately comprehend an economic valuation of such public goods the findings indicate that a large proportion of respondents do not interpret the valuation task as intended however this lack of understanding is not always expressed unless probed in relation to the elicitation question and some people have the tendency to provide monetary estimates anyway whatever meaning they attach to these

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

the effects of experience on preferences theory and empirics for environmental public goods this article develops a choice model for environmental public goods which allows for consumers to learn about their preferences through consumption experiences we develop a theoretical model of bayesian updating perform comparative statics over the model and show how the theoretical model can be consistently incorporated into a reduced form econometric model our main findings are that in a random utility model rum discrete choice model a subject s scale should increase and the variability of scale should decrease with experience if subjects are bayesians we then estimate the model using field data regarding preferences for one particular public good water quality we find strong evidence that additional experience increases scale thereby making consumer preferences more predictable from the econometrician s perspective we find supportive but less convincing evidence that experience decreases the variability of scale across subjects

stability of willingness to pay for coastal management a choice experiment across three time periods a key assumption of stated preference methods is that individuals have well formed preferences that are robust over time both the discovered and constructed preference perspectives imply this is not necessarily the case there can be a large situational component to expressed preferences that add to the uncertainty of sampling error most non market valuation studies only collect data from one point in time so the degree of temporal variability cannot be tested test retest studies that provide data from two points in time generally find significant differences in preference structure and willingness to pay wtp in this study we test stability of wtp for beach erosion management using a fully ranked discrete choice experiment survey with not one but two retests over a six month period we find that stability does not improve with the additional repetition as the preference discovery hypothesis implies it might wtp confidence intervals overlap but the models are significantly different at each point in time even after allowing for variation in choice error either the survey did not facilitate sufficient preference discovery or preferences were reconstructed however respondents with high scores of self reported certainty in their choices in the first survey had significantly more stable wtp estimates

beyond rationality towards reasonableness enriching the theoretical foundation of deliberative monetary valuation economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land use decisions stated preference sp methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods but they are also particularly controversial in response to accumulating criticism of sp deliberative monetary valuation dmv has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years however being a combination of elements from two theories neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy it lacks a convincing consistent theoretical foundation in our paper we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of amartya sen we find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of dmv s theoretical foundations e g meta rankings of preferences impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons

rational and self fulfilling balance of payments crises speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes occur ifasset price paths are to be free of abnormal profit opportunities suchattacks are fully rational as they reflect the market s response to aregime breakdown that is inevitable the authors shows that under someexpectations about policy balance of payments crises can also be purely self fulfilling events in such cases even a permanently viableregime may collapse and the economy will possess multiple equilibriacorresponding to different subjective assessments of the probability ofa crisis the behavior of the domestic interest rate will naturally reflect the possibility of a speculative attack copyright 1986 by american economic association

dynamic learning and context dependence in sequential attribute based stated preference valuation questions a hybrid stated preference model is presented that combines the referendum contingent valuation response format with an experimentally designed set of attributes a sequence of valuation questions is asked to a random sample in a mailout mail back format econometric analysis shows greater discrimination between alternatives in the final choice in the sequence and the vector of preference parameters shifts lead and lag choice sets have a structural influence on current choices and unobserved factors induce positive correlation across the responses these results indicate that people learn about their preferences for attributebased environmental goods by comparing attribute levels across choice sets

learning design contingent valuation ldcv noaa guidelines preference learning and coherent arbitrariness we extend the contingent valuation cv method to test three differing conceptions of individuals preferences as either i a priori well formed or readily divined and revealed through a single dichotomous choice question as per the noaa cv guidelines k arrow r solow p r portney e e leamer r radner h schuman report of the noaa panel on contingent valuation fed reg 58 1993 4601 4614 ii learned or discovered through a process of repetition and experience j a list does market experience eliminate market anomalies q j econ 2003 41 72 c r plott rational individual behaviour in markets and social choice processes the discovered preference hypothesis in k arrow e colombatto m perleman c schmidt eds rational foundations of economic behaviour macmillan london st martin s new york 1996 pp 225 250 iii internally coherent but strongly influenced by some initial arbitrary anchor d ariely g loewenstein d prelec coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences q j econ 118 1 2003 73 105 findings reject both the first and last of these conceptions in favour of a model in which preferences converge towards standard expectations through a process of repetition and learning in doing so we show that such a learning design cv method overturns the stylised facts of bias and anchoring within the double bound dichotomous choice elicitation format

democracy and valuation a reply to schlapfer 2016 abstract this paper is a critical appraisal of schlapfer s 2016 proposal of a democratic valuation dv methodology to value public goods while we appreciate attempts to address the shortcomings of conventional stated preference techniques we have some reservations regarding dv our paper critically reviews the following characteristics of the proposed methodology i referendum format as decision making mechanism ii single dimensionality in the description of the policy issue to be valued and iii preference formation through provision of detailed information finally we calibrate democratic valuation against another alternative to conventional stated preference approaches namely deliberative monetary valuation dmv we argue that dmv addresses many of schlapfer s concerns regarding stated preference techniques and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv

gps shifting agencies in choice of treatment earlier studies have shown that general practitioners gps prescription choices are influenced by effect patient costs and costs to society patient attitude and own experience this study builds on this knowledge and explores how prescription behaviour is affected when choices are made in different contexts where the conflicting roles as agents for the patient and agents for society are stressed a total of 309 danish gps were randomly allocated to one of three versions of a web based questionnaire which included a discrete choice experiment mixed logit models in willingness to pay wtp space were estimated with and without accounting for stated attribute non attendance results show that the gp s role as agent for his patients is clearly strengthened in the presence of national recommendations in contrast when recommendations are not present and when gps face a patient who is currently taking an expensive albeit effective medication the gp takes on his role as agent for society we find no evi

designing choice sets for stated preference methods the effects of complexity on choice consistency abstract we vary the complexity of choice sets used in stated preference methods to evaluate the impact on choice consistency we define five measures of complexity that capture either the amount of information or the correlational structure of information in a choice set using these measures as randomly assigned treatments in a large experiment we analyze the consistency of respondents choices using a heteroskedastic multinomial logit model we find that i all of our measures of choice set complexity affect choice consistency ii changes in the correlational structure of information have the largest impact on choice consistency and iii choice complexity significantly distorts welfare estimates our results confirm economists initial worry that moving from contingent valuation to conjoint methods will increase complexity induced choice inconsistency however our analysis also shows that these negative impacts may be mitigated if precautions are taken at the design and estimation stages of stated preference methods

collapsing exchange rate regimes some linear examples abstract we construct a pair of linear examples to study the collapse time of a fixed exchange rate regime the first example is a perfect foresight continuous time model which allows calculation of the exact collapse time and the tracking of reserves the second example is a discrete time stochastic model which yields an endogenous probability distribution over the collapse time and produces a forward discount of the exchange rate

test retest reliability of contingent valuation with independent sample pretest and posttest control groups test retest the standard method used to investigate reliability of contingent valuation is limited because when the time period between the two surveys is relatively short the study may exhibit testing recall conversely when the time between the two surveys increases there is an increased chance the true value will change the test retest design cannot isolate these effects independent pretest and posttest control groups allow testing of reliability even when recall occurs or the true value changes using this design we found ex post estimates of hicksian surplus are reliable regardless of whether respondents have direct experience with an activity

exploring group dynamics in deliberative choice experiments abstract deliberative monetary valuation has emerged as a promising alternative to conventional stated preference studies of ecosystem services it promises to give respondents a better basis for decision making by exposing them to a more diverse set of knowledge arguments and opinions through group discussion however under certain conditions small groups may fail to effectively pool the individual knowledge of their members this paper examines the impact of the initial distribution of individual preferences in discussion groups on the outcome of deliberative choice experiments drawing on a deliberative monetary valuation study of forest ecosystem services in west saxony germany it is shown that the initial preference distribution in groups influences both the diversity of arguments exchanged during group discussions and respondents consideration of the costs of environmental policies furthermore results indicate that respondents post discussion willingness to pay is affected by the initial preference distribution in groups though these changes were not statistically significant the choice certainty of respondents was found to remain largely unaffected overall the empirical findings of this study provide preliminary evidence about the need to conduct future deliberative monetary valuation studies with groups with heterogeneous initial preferences as this may provide respondents with a more complete set of decision relevant information

test retest reliability of the contingent valuation method a comparison of general population and visitor responses the reliability of the contingent valuation method is evaluated by resurveying the same general households and visitors nine months after their original survey test retest correlations on willingness to pay are statistically significant and ranged from 422 for the general population sample to 782 for the visitor sample using a paired t test there was no statistical difference between an individual s first and second reported willingness to pay chow tests comparing the original and resurvey willingness to pay functions showed no statistical difference at the 01 level reported willingness to pay is reasonably stable over the time period surveyed

preference refinement in deliberative choice experiments for ecosystem service valuation choice experiments have gained considerable popularity in ecosystem service valuation in a one shot survey respondents are faced with a strenuous task asking them to discover and monetize their preferences for often unfamiliar ecosystem services in a previously unknown hypothetical market situation we present a deliberative choice experiment that aims to generate well rationalized value estimates for policy advice two aspects of deliberation discussion and time to reflect are examined in terms of their effect on preference refinement we find more comprehensive choice motives after deliberation as well as indications for preference adjustment and a slight increase in choice certainty jel q51 q57

willingness to pay for unfamiliar public goods preserving cold water coral in norway the world s largest concentration of cold water coral cwc is found off the norwegian coast most cwc discoveries are recent posing new challenges for norwegian coastal and fishery authorities regarding the management of deep sea resources scientific knowledge of cwc is limited and many citizens have not even heard about them this creates problems for the application of the stated preference methods to capture their economic value and very few such studies have been conducted to fill this gap we designed a discrete choice experiment which was implemented in a valuation workshop setting in order to derive estimates of participants willingness to pay wtp for increasing the protection of cwc despite the fact that marine industries such as oil gas and fisheries could be adversely affected by cwc protection this did not reduce the respondents willingness to pay for further protection the possibility that cwcs play an important role as habitat for fish was the single most important variable to explain respondents wtp for cwc protection the survey revealed a high degree of preference heterogeneity while we found an average wtp for cwc protection in the range of eur 274 287

reducing protest responses by deliberative monetary valuation improving the validity of biodiversity valuation this paper focuses on examining the validity of biodiversity valuation methodologies the results of a group deliberation technique deliberative monetary valuation are compared to those derived from a contingent valuation cv survey using the same environmental topic evidence is here presented that dmv can address some of the limitations of cv namely a prevalence for lexicographic preference ordering due to psychological reasons and the lack of a priori or well formed preferences both of these methodological shortcomings can result in protest responses which decrease the external validity of results it is common environmental valuation methodology practice to exclude protest responses from the analysis on the grounds that they are illegitimate choices thus the sample and consequently the environmental valuation analysis may become less representative of the population an advantage of the dmv methodology is that it was found to significantly reduce the rate of protest responses to less than half from 29 to 13 furthermore dmv significantly increased the proportion of positive bids but not the amounts contributed in relation to preference formation issues we suggest rethinking the current practice of the dmv method and propose dedicating the entire initial discussion session to introducing the good outside of a valuation context