assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

an experimental validation of hypothetical wtp for a recyclable product using a within subject experiment we compare hypothetical andreal willingness to pay wtp for an improvement in therecyclability of a product subjects are faced with a real paymentscenario after they have responded to a hypothetical question contrary to most of the results obtained in similar studies at apopulation level there are no significant median differencesbetween actual and hypothetical stated values of wtp however within subject comparisons between hypothetical and actual valuesindicate that subjects stating a low high hypothetical wtp tendto underestimate overestimate the value of their actualcontributions

accounting for the decline in afdc caseloads welfare reform or the economy we use state level monthly panel data to assess the relative contributions of the macroeconomy and welfare reform in accounting for the 1993 96 decline in aid to families with dependent children afdc caseloads our results suggest that the decline in per capita afdc caseloads is attributable largely to the economic conditions in states and not to waivers from federal welfare policies nationwide we attribute 66 percent of the decline to the macroeconomy however we do find substantial heterogeneity in the impact and timing of alternative waivers on afdc caseloads states with waivers impacting parental responsibilities experienced greater caseload declines than states with waivers that made work more attractive overall our model predicts that had it not been for the influence of economic factors welfare reform would not have led to any decrease in aggregate caseloads

willingness to pay to reduce mortality risks evidence from a three country contingent valuation study valuing a change in the risk of death is a key input into the calculation of the benefits of environmental policies that save lives typically such risks are monetized using the value of a statistical life vsl since the majority of the lives saved by environmental policies are those of older persons there has been much recent debate about whether the vsl should be lower for the elderly to reflect their fewer remaining life years we conducted a contingent valuation survey in the uk italy and france designed to answer this question the survey was administered in these three countries following a standardized protocol our results suggest that the vsl is 1 022 million or 2 264 million depending on whether we use median or mean wtp the vsl is not significantly lower for older persons but is higher for persons who have been admitted to a hospital or emergency room for cardiovascular and respiratory problems income is positively and significantly associated with wtp the income elasticities of the wtp increase gradually with income levels and are between 0 15 and 0 5 for current income levels in eu countries we use the responses to the wtp questions to estimate the value of an extension in remaining life expectancy the value of a loss of one year s life expectancy is 54 000 or 163 000

valuing tourism demand attributes to guide climate change adaptation measures efficiently the case of the spanish domestic travel market abstract climate change cc may have substantial impacts on the distribution of current tourist flows by changing patterns of seasonal volumes of tourist demand such impacts are of potential importance for the spanish coastal tourism destinations in a context where the implementation of adaptation measures becomes relevant to counteract the expected cc induced travel market share losses this paper examines the role of preference analysis in the design of cc adaptation policies using data from the 2005 familitur survey on summer domestic tourist flows a destination choice model is implemented to 1 highlight the role of temperature and its relationship with other destination specific attributes 2 estimate cc induced changes in travel market shares and 3 compute the economic value tourists assign to a set of destination assets as a way to better permit the recovery the expected market share losses by regional tourism authorities

precision of dichotomous choice contingent valuation welfare measures some simulation results the purpose of this research is to examine the roles of individuals heterogeneous economic factors and model misspecification in dichotomous choice contingent valuation welfare measurement willingness to pay for an improvement of environmental quality is studied simulation results indicate that the precision of welfare estimates increases with individuals income levels and decreases with the price of the quality related good the dependence of the consumption of the quality related good on the environmental quality also affects the reliability of welfare estimates

uncovering context induced status quo effects in choice experiments abstract in this study five design dimensions are varied systematically investigating context induced status quo effects in choice experiments additionally two structural complexity measures entropy and the number of attribute level changes are used to capture status quo effects from the similarity between alternatives and the number of trade offs a crucial finding is that the frequency of status quo choices is negatively associated with the number of alternatives indicating preference matching effects by contrast the probability of choosing the status quo increases with a higher number of choice tasks a wider level range and the similarity between alternatives status quo choices are further affected by the current environmental situation perceived by respondents we also find that marginal and non marginal welfare estimates are significantly affected by the choice design one key finding is that the most used choice task format in environmental economics i e two hypothetical and a status quo alternative is likely to increase the propensity to choose the status quo option

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

environment and development is there a kuznets curve for co2 emissions this article re examines the relationship between growth in per capita income and environmental degradation using econometric techniques appropriate for smooth transition regressions with panel data this is a more intuitive and flexible methodology than the polynomial models widely used in the literature and it can reconcile some of the mixed results found previously the methodology is applied to carbon dioxide emissions from nonoecd countries over the period 1971 to 1997 although there is no evidence of environmental kuznets curve we find two regimes namely a low income regime where emissions accelerate with economic growth and a middle to high income regime associated with a deceleration in environmental degradation

participatory environmental education and willingness to pay for river basin management empirical evidence from nigeria this paper examines the role of participation as a tool for improving individuals perceptions and environmental values using a test retest experiment conducted in south eastern nigeria two identical contingent valuation experiments were interspersed by participatory workshops designed to involve respondents in framing and forming the valuation scenario econometric analyses found that participatory education significantly developed individuals perceptions of pollution problems and increased the magnitude and precision of their wtp for a river basin management scheme the extent of changes in perceptions declined with increasing levels of formal education suggesting that less educated respondents are more likely to hold weakly formed preferences

do reminders of substitutes and budget constraints influence contingent valuation estimates a test is performed of the recommendation by the noaa panel on contingent valuation that respondents be reminded about other substitute resources and their budget constraint prior to answering the willingness to pay wtp question the context for this experiment is a cvm study of the benefits from reducing fire hazards to old growth forests in oregon the test was performed using two mail surveys that were otherwise identical except for the inclusion of reminder statements prior to the wtp question the dichotomous choice logit equations were not statistically different between versions and the mean wtp results were identical

environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck abstract recent research has examined the hypothesis of an environmental kuznets curve ekc the notion that environmental impact increases in the early stages of development followed by declines in the later stages these studies have focused on the relationship between per capita income and a variety of environmental indicators results imply that ekcs may exist for a number of cases however the measures of environmental impact used generally focus on production processes and reflect environmental impacts that are local in nature and for which abatement is relatively inexpensive in terms of monetary costs and or lifestyle changes significantly more consumption based measures such co2 emissions and municipal waste for which impacts are relatively easy to externalize or costly to control show no tendency to decline with increasing per capita income by considering consumption and trade patterns the author re examines the concept of the ekc and proposes the use of alternative consumption based measures of environmental impact the author speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption

energy consumption financial development and economic growth in india new evidence from a nonlinear and asymmetric analysis this paper investigates the asymmetric relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating financial development capital and labour into a production function covering the indian economy from 1960q1 2015q4 the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach is applied to examine the asymmetric cointegration between the variables an asymmetric causality test is also employed to examine the causal association between the considered variables the results indicate cointegration between the variables in the presence of asymmetries the asymmetric causality results show that only negative shocks in energy consumption have impacts on economic growth in the same vein only negative shocks in financial development have impacts on economic growth by contrast symmetrically capital formation causes economic growth finally over the study period a neutral effect exists between the labour force and economic growth in india the implications of these results for growth policies in india are also discussed

the effect of fdi on environmental emissions evidence from a meta analysis one important and frequently raised issue about foreign direct investment fdi is the potentially negative consequences for the environment the potential environmental cost due to increased emissions may undermine the economic gains associated with increases in fdi inflow although the literature is dominated with this adverse view of fdi on the environment there is also a possibility that fdi can contribute to a cleaner environment especially if fdi comes with green technologies and this creates spillovers for domestic industries theoretically the effect of fdi on the environment can be negative or positive to deal with the theoretical ambiguity about the fdi environment nexus many empirical studies have been conducted but their results only reinforce the controversy as they produce contrasting results we conduct a meta analysis of the effect of fdi on environmental emissions using 65 primary studies that produce 1006 elasticities our results show that the underlying effect of fdi on environmental emissions is close to zero however after accounting for heterogeneity in the studies we find that fdi significantly reduces environmental emissions results remain robust after disaggregating the effect for countries at different levels of development as well as for different pollutants

nudging the poor and the rich a field study on the distributional effects of green electricity defaults abstract choice defaults are an increasingly popular public policy tool yet there is little knowledge of the distributional consequences of such nudges for different groups in society we report results from an elicitation study in the residential electricity market in switzerland in which we contrast consumers actual contract choices under an existing default regime with the same consumers active choices in a survey presenting the same choice set without any default we find that the default is successful at curbing greenhouse gas emissions but it leads poorer households to pay more for their electricity consumption than they would want to while leaving a significant willingness to pay for green electricity by richer households untapped

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

a new look at the fdi income energy environment nexus dynamic panel data analysis of asean abstract the main focus of this paper is to estimate the effects of foreign direct investment fdi inflows income and energy consumption on co 2 emissions using panel data of five asean countries over 1981 2010 the results based on the pooled mean group pmg estimator of dynamic panels show that fdi tends to increase co 2 emissions supporting evidence of the pollution haven hypothesis we also find that income and energy consumption have a detrimental impact on reducing co 2 emissions

combining revealed and stated preferences consistency tests and their interpretations this article models the recreation demand for iowa wetlands combining survey data on both actual usage patterns i e revealed preferences rps and anticipated changes to those patterns under hypothetical increases in trip costs i e stated preferences sps we formulate and test specific hypotheses concerning potential sources of bias in each approach and discuss what can be learned about the validity of the models from such tests

foreign investment and technology transfer a simple model abstract this paper develops a model in which international technology transfer through foreign direct investment emerges as an endogenized equilibrium phenomenon resulting from the strategic interaction between subsidiaries of multinational corporations and host country firms the model explicitly recognizes two types of costs the costs to the multinational of transferring technology to its subsidiaries and the learning costs of domestic firms the analysis points to the importance of the learning efforts of host country firms in increasing the rate at which mncs transfer technology the paper also explores some of the reasons why learning investment in host country firms may be suboptimal

waiting or acting now the effect on willingness to pay of delivering inherent uncertainty information in choice experiments abstract this paper analyzes the effect of inherent uncertainty on the willingness to pay wtp for a policy aimed at reducing expected climate change impacts to do this it relates outcome uncertainty to the probability of occurrence of one of these impacts within a given time horizon unlike the existing studies this paper links outcome uncertainty to the uncontrollable component of environmental uncertainty derived from the stochastic nature of an ecosystem s behavior results show that the wtp for the policy in the presence of uncertainty does not decrease compared to the scenario where climate change impacts are assumed to occur with certainty this suggests individuals are adopting a precautionary attitude when stating their wtp thus the paper provides economic justification for preventive measures in highly uncertain contexts however findings are not conclusive with respect to the influence of the degree of uncertainty on the support for such measures

do respondents adjust their expected utility in the presence of an outcome certainty attribute in a choice experiment in a stated preference valuation survey the expected benefits of environmental policies are generally presented to respondents without reference to the fact that the predicted outcomes are rarely known with certainty this omission may reduce the credibility of the valuation scenario and contribute to hypothetical bias in the study outlined in this paper a choice experiment was conducted to elicit values for environmental improvements in the great barrier reef australia with outcome certainty included as a separate attribute different specifications of the utility functions which imply different behavioural assumptions about the way choices have been made generate variations in value estimates results showed that respondents incorporate outcome certainty into their decisions but that an expected utility formulation represented by the interaction between environmental protection and likelihood of occurrence underestimated environmental values some environmental protection values appear to be independent of outcome certainty which may be consistent with existence values and other non use categories a partial expected utility model is cautiously recommended

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

a new paradigm for valuing non market goods using referendum data maximum likelihood estimation by censored logistic regression abstract this paper challenges the w m hanemann amer j agr econom 66 332 341 1984 and c sellar j p chavas and j r stoll j environ econom management 13 382 390 1986 utilizations of logit models to estimate the value of non market resources from referendum survey data these data are more informative than conventional choice data the random utility interpretation of logit models is therefore too restrictive bypassing the utility function entirely it will be shown that parameters and standard errors for utility theoretic inverse hicksian demand functions can be extracted directly and much more simply estimated demand functions need not be limited to those corresponding to the linear in parameters utility difference specifications which can be handled by packaged logit programs

environmental kuznets curve among brics countries spot lightening finance transport energy and growth factors abstract the environmental sustainability reforms considered the highly successful factor for the countries that devoted for green investment in transportation financial activities energy demand and growth factors this challenging task is monetized by fair environmental policies that integrated with the countries action plans brics countries is no exception that wider accepted this environmental task and provoked the need of healthy investment for sustainable growth this study reviewed finance transport energy and growth factors under environmental kuznets curve ekc framework in a panel of brics countries by utilizing a consistent time series data from 1990 to 2015 the study employed panel fixed effect regression to observe unmodeled heterogeneity among the cross section identifiers that vary over a period of time the results show that transport services and industry value added indvad both escalate fossil fuel ffuel energy consumption while financial factors environmental prices and renewable energy consumption rec decreases fossil energy in a region bank capital broad money supply domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad considerably increases nitrous oxide emissions n 2 o whereas rec significantly decreases n 2 o emissions in a panel of countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions affected by domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad there is a monotonic decreasing relationships between i per capita income and ffuel energy ii railways passenger carried and n 2 o emissions iii rec and ghg emissions and iv income and n 2 o emissions whereas there is an inverted u shaped relationship between broad money supply and n 2 o emissions and u shaped relationships between per capita income and ghg emissions the panel causality tests confirmed the bidirectional relationship between financial indicators and railways transportation while bank capital granger cause ffuel energy per capita income indvad and rec but not other way around in a panel of brics countries the inter temporal relationships show that bank capital indvad and price level will largely affect ffuel energy n 2 o emissions and ghg emissions respectively for the next 10 years period the results of the study emphasized the need of green policy instruments that should be connected with the country s policies and program for sustained growth

the development and estimation of a latent choice multinomial logit model with application to contingent valuation we offer a new approach to investigate hypothetical bias in contingent valuation using a latent choice multinomial logit model to develop this model we extend dempster laird and rubin s 1977 work on the expectations maximization algorithm to the estimation of a multinomial logit model with missing information on category membership our model can be used to determine within choice heterogeneity using data on the preservation of saginaw wetlands in michigan we find evidence for two types of yes responders in the data we suggest that one set of yes responders consists of yea sayers who answer yes to the hypothetical question but are less likely to pay the bid amount if it were real we suggest that the second group of respondents does not suffer from hypothetical bias and are more likely to pay the bid amount if it were real even if the connection to hypothetical bias cannot be made our method can be used in sensitivity analyses of willingness to pay estimates

co2 emissions and financial development in an emerging economy an augmented var approach abstract this paper explores the influence of economic and financial development on carbon emissions in a small emerging economy the study employs ardl approach to investigate the long run relationship between carbon emissions and a set of economic and financial variables an error correction model ecm to capture the short run dynamics granger causality in an augmented var framework to check the causality direction and variance decomposition based on an estimated vector error correction model vecm to determine the relative contributions of economic and financial variables to the evolution of per capita carbon emissions the periods considered were the full sample 1971 2011 and a reduced sample sub period 1988 2011 that corresponded to greater liberalization and financial sector development the financial variables played a role in emission mitigation only in the latter period where greater degree of liberalization and financial sector development occurred even then the relative magnitude of emissions mitigation attributable to financial variables was much smaller compared to the emissions raising impact of rising per capita incomes this underscores the need for adopting other mitigation policies for reducing carbon footprints in those emerging economies where a sufficient degree of financial deepening and financial sector development has not yet taken place

gender specific starting point bias in choice experiments evidence from an empirical study abstract in this paper we test whether preferences and willingness to pay estimates obtained in a choice experiment study are susceptible to starting point bias as is often the case in dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies on the basis of a multinomial probit model we find that preferences are indeed susceptible to starting point bias in a split sample design our results suggest that varying the price levels displayed in a so called instructional choice set presented prior to the actual preference eliciting choice sets significantly impacts respondents preferences and willingness to pay for protecting danish nature areas from new motorway development in particular our results show that the bias is gender specific only female respondents are significantly affected results further reveal that the impact of the starting point bias decays as respondents evaluate more and more choice sets this supports the discovered preference hypothesis and on the basis of this we suggest a number of ways to potentially mitigate the starting point bias

the impact of growth energy and financial development on the environment in china a cointegration analysis this article aims to investigate the impact of financial development economic growth and energy consumption on environmental pollution in china from 1953 to 2006 using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing procedure the main objective is to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between financial development and environmental pollution the results of the analysis reveal a negative sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development in china has not taken place at the expense of environmental pollution on the contrary it is found that financial development has led to a decrease in environmental pollution it is concluded that carbon emissions are mainly determined by income energy consumption and trade openness in the long run moreover the findings confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in the case of china

environment and development theory and international evidence the environmental effects of economic development have significant implications for a wide array of policy questions facing both low and high income countries today internationally agricultural research centers are considering how to incorporate sustainability issues into their research agendas while international lending institutions are taking a close look at the environmental consequences of industrial projects domestically the north american free trade agreement has brought the relationship between economic development and environmental quality to the forefront of u s public policy debate it is surprising that despite the postwar growth of development economics the genesis of environmental economics and the fusion of ideas from both fields into the theme of sustainable development economists have not made much progress in describing the impacts of long term economic growth on environmental quality yet a vigorous public debate has arisen between individuals who maintain that environmental degradation is a necessary outcome of economic growth and those who believe that economic growth and environmental quality go hand in hand this debate was highlighted at the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development in rio de janeiro in part this debate hinges on the properties of the aggregate demand for and supply of environmental quality if the income elasticity of demand for environmental quality or amenities is high then the increased prosperity engendered by economic growth could lead to significantly higher demand for environmental quality proponents of economic growth believe this demand will translate into a higher realized level of quality as both public and private institutions and organi

effect of corporate economic performance on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy this paper analyzes the effect of corporate economic performance as measured by value added on firm level environmental performance in a transition economy in particular it analyzes this economic performance effect using an unbalanced panel of czech firms for the years 1995 1998 it assesses whether successful economic performance begets or undermines good environmental performance this connection seems especially important in transition economies since firms are dramatically restructuring their economic management approaches during transitional periods a majority of the analytical results indicate that successful economic performance undermines good environmental performance possibly indicating that more focused managerial efforts to improve economic outcomes may distract efforts to manage environmental matters better

carbon intensity and economic development 1962 1991 a brief exploration of the environmental kuznets curve the relationship between national carbon dioxide emissions intensity co2 emitted per unit of gross domestic product and level of economic development has changed from essentially linear in 1962 to strongly curvilinear in 1991 the inverted u curve reached statistical significance briefly in the early 1970s and increasingly since 1982 this is the result not of groups of countries passing through stages of development but of efficiency improvements in a small number of wealthy countries combined with worse performance in poor and middle income countries the curvilinear relation is deepening and is likely to persist due to constraints on poorer countries in the world economy

economic growth energy consumption financial development international trade and co2 emissions in indonesia this study examines the linkages among economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions over the period of 1975q1 2011q4 in the case of indonesia the stationary analysis is performed by using zivot andrews structural break unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach for a long run relationship between the series in the presence of structural breaks the causal relation between the concerned variable is examined by the vecm granger causality technique and robustness of causal analysis is tested by innovative accounting approach iaa our results confirm that the variables are cointegrated it means that the long run relationship exists in the presence of structural break stemming in the series the empirical findings indicate that economic growth and energy consumption increases co2 emissions while financial development and trade openness compact it the vecm causality analysis has shown the feedback hypothesis between energy consumption and co2 emissions economic growth and co2 emissions are also interrelated i e bidirectional causality financial development granger causes co2 emissions the study opens up a new policy insights to control the environment from degradation by using energy efficient technologies financial development and trade openness can also play their role in improving the environmental quality

trade and the environment with pre existing subsidies a dynamic general equilibrium analysis abstract countries that wish to erect trade barriers have a variety of instruments at their disposal in addition to tariffs and quotas countries can offer tax relief low interest financing reduced regulation and other subsidies to domestic industries facing foreign competition in a trade agreement countries typically agree to reduce not only tariffs but also subsidies we consider the effect of a free trade agreement on pollution emissions we show that while reducing tariffs may indeed increase output and pollution reductions in some subsides required by the trade agreement reduce pollution in general equilibrium for reasonable parameter values reducing subsidies has three effects on pollution 1 reducing subsidies to firms reduces pollution causing capital accumulation 2 if subsidized firms are more pollution intensive then reducing subsides moves capital and labor from more to less pollution intensive firms and 3 reducing subsidies concentrates production in more productive firms increasing output and thus pollution we derive straightforward conditions for which 1 and 2 outweigh 3 we then calibrate the model to china in 1997 and find that pollution has a more elastic response to reducing subsidies than to reducing tariffs while a 5 reduction in tariffs increases all pollutants by approximately 1 a 5 reduction in subsidies reduces pollution by 1 8 11 6 depending on the pollutant the reductions in pollution occur without any environmental side agreements or abatement policy changes

does the private sector help or hurt the environment evidence from carbon dioxide pollution in developing countries abstract how does the nature of enterprise ownership affect the environment in an economy conventional wisdom and theoretical conjectures are split on this important question in this paper we estimate a reduced form random effects model using data from 44 developing countries over nine years 1987 95 to study for any systematic empirical relationship between the relative level of private sector involvement in an economy and the environmental performance of the economy in terms of its emission of industrial carbon dioxide we control for both observed and unobserved crosscountry heterogeneity along various institutional and structural dimensions such as the scope of financial market industrial sector composition and level of foreign direct investment the regression results indicate that the higher the degree of private sector involvement in a developing economy the lower is its environmental degradation in addition its environmental degradation is likely to be further reduced in presence of a well functioning domestic capital market and through increased participation by developed economies in its private sector development

the effects of changing cost vectors on choices and scale heterogeneity choice experiments ce are widely used to estimate the values of changes in non market goods and services a cost attribute is typically included in a ce questionnaire to enable the estimation of monetary values for changes in the non market attributes presented notwithstanding the central importance of the cost attribute relatively little research has been undertaken on the impacts of varying cost attribute levels on value estimates or on individual heterogeneity in this paper i present results from mixed logit and generalised mixed logit models that account for unobserved idiosyncratic preference and scale heterogeneity respondents are found to anchor their choices on the relative cost levels presented in the survey with results suggesting that people are more sensitive to relative rather than absolute cost vectors however the higher cost levels do not lead to significantly higher value estimates partly because of observed preference heterogeneity towards the environmental attributes an important observation is that scale heterogeneity is important accounting for scale as well as preference heterogeneity in the generalised mixed logit model leads to significantly improved model fit the results indicate significant unobserved error variance across respondents unrelated to whether a high or low cost vector is used

how do respondents process stated choice experiments attribute consideration under varying information load the popularity of stated choice sc experiments has produced many design strategies in which researchers use increasingly more complex choice settings to study choice behaviour when the amount of information to assess increases we wonder how an individual handles such information in making a choice defining the amount of information as the number of attributes associated with each choice set we investigate how this information is processed as we vary its complexity four ordered heterogeneous logit models are developed each for an sc design based on a fixed number of attributes in which the dependent variable defines the number of attributes that are ignored we find that the degree to which individuals ignore attributes is influenced by the dimensionality of the sc experiment the deviation of attribute levels from an experienced reference alternative the use of adding up attributes where feasible the number of choice sets evaluated and the personal income of the respondent the empirical evidence supports the view that individuals appear to adopt a range of coping strategies that are consistent with how they process information in real markets and that aligning choice complexity with the amount of information to process is potentially misleading relevancy is what matters copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

industrial ownership and environmental performance evidence from china the authors explore the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership in china state owned soe collectively or community owned coe privately owned poe companies with foreign direct investment fdi and joint ventures about 1 000 industrial firms in three provinces of china were surveyed and detailed 1999 firm level information was obtained the authors analyzed the differences between firms in receiving and reacting to environmental regulatory enforcement community pressure environmental services as well as in the firm s internal environmental management among the different types of ownership the authors also conducted econometric analyses on the determinants of pollution discharge performance the results show that foreign direct investment and collectively owned enterprises have better environmental performances in terms of water pollution discharge intensity while state owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises in china are the worst performers the results also suggest that collectively owned enterprises in china do internalize environmental externalities

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

effects of cheap talk on consumer willingness to pay for golden rice a large body of literature suggests willingness to pay is overstated in hypothetical valuation questions as compared to when actual payment is required recently cheap talk has been proposed to eliminate the potential bias in hypothetical valuation questions cheap talk refers to process of explaining hypothetical bias to individuals prior to asking a valuation question this study explores the effect of cheap talk in a mass mail survey using a conventional value elicitation technique results indicate that cheap talk was effective at reducing willingness to pay for most survey participants however consistent with previous research cheap talk did not reduce willingness to pay for knowledgeable consumers

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

pollution intensity of gdp and trade policy can the world bank be wrong abstract what are the environmental implications of open trade policies in developing countries economic theory and environmental critics suggest they worsen environmental quality this conventional wisdom has been challenged by several studies which suggest that outward oriented trade policies are likely to be win win enhance economic growth and environmental quality this paper challenges revised conventional wisdom rcw by demonstrating that developing countries with outward oriented trade policies have higher pollution intensities of gdp than those following inward oriented policies the paper examines why the evidence reported here differs so sharply from rcw studies considers the policy implications of these results and identifies reasons why despite them it may not make sense to totally discount future potential win win opportunities

willingness to pay for emissions reduction application of choice modeling under uncertainty and different management options abstract this paper presents the results of a choice modeling survey of households in queensland australia to assess values for reductions in national greenhouse emissions by 2020 the study is novel in two main ways first labeled alternatives were used to assess whether the types of management options for reducing net emissions green power energy efficient technologies or carbon capture are significant in understanding preferences for reducing emissions second the importance of the level and type of uncertainty involved in reductions is tested the types of uncertainty include 1 the uncertainty of achieving emissions reduction and 2 the uncertainty of international participation as the percentage of total global emissions covered by international agreements the results of this survey identified how choice responses vary when the level of uncertainty associated with emissions reduction options is included within choice alternatives

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

directional heterogeneity in wtp models for environmental valuation many studies in the stated preference literature on environmental valuation do not include the effects of substitutes and distance in willingness to pay wtp models in spite of the relevance of these effects in aggregation and benefit transfer heterogeneity in the availability of substitutes over space may cause multidirectional distance effects in wtp as a result disregarding this spatial heterogeneity may lead to biased estimators of the distance effect and associated wtp values cameron 2006 in this paper we demonstrate that distance decay is subject to significant directional effects which tend to be related to differences in the availability of substitutes across the study area we apply a straightforward methodology to account for such spatial heterogeneity in choice experiments and assess the effect on wtp for improvements in ecosystem services in a lake district we model distance decay effects whilst controlling for heterogeneity between users and non users and non use related wtp reasons the directional effects result in significantly different wtp estimates different market sizes reflecting the population with positive wtp and differences in total wtp up to 32

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

choke price bias in choice experiments this paper reports on the results from a split sample choice experiment where the effect of changing the maximum level of the cost attribute is investigated the hypothesis was that changing the maximum price level would either give rise to an income effect or have no effect on consumers preferences this was tested in the framework of a valuation study of different quality characteristics of minced pork the data was analysed using a mixed logit error component model which accounts for correlation in the unobserved part of the utility results suggest that the size of the maximum price level does matter and that changing the maximum price level has a statistically significant effect on both the general preferences structure and the wtp estimates hence researchers should be very careful when defining not only the range of the price attribute but also the maximum level of the price attribute

incorporating outcome uncertainty and prior outcome beliefs in stated preferences stated preference studies tell respondents that policies create environmental changes with varying levels of uncertainty however respondents may include their own a priori assessments of uncertainty when making choices among policy options using a choice experiment eliciting respondents preferences for conservation policies under climate change we find that higher outcome uncertainty reduces utility when accounting for endogeneity we find that prior beliefs play a significant role in this cost of uncertainty thus merely stating objective levels of outcome uncertainty will not necessarily solve the problem of people valuing something differently from originally intended respondents prior beliefs must be accounted for

the labor market effects of welfare reform a major goal of the 1996 federal welfare reform was to increase the labor market participation of welfare recipients some analysts have speculated that if the reform is successful this increase in labor supply may exert downward pressure on wages and reduce the employment rate of other low skilled workers in the labor market the magnitude of these hypothetical labor market effects is uncertain because there have not been large changes in eligibility for federal welfare programs from which to draw inferences this study treats the 1991 elimination of the general assistance program in michigan as a rough analog to the 1996 federal reform in all about 82 000 able bodied adults lost benefits comparisons with other states indicate that employment in michigan increased by two to four percentage points among high school dropouts which corresponds to 25 50 of the original ga caseload there is little evidence of wage or employment declines

further tests of entreaties to avoid hypothetical bias in referendum contingent valuation abstract over estimation of willingness to pay in contingent markets has been attributed largely to hypothetical bias one promising approach for avoiding hypothetical bias is to tell respondents enough about such bias that they self correct for it a script designed for this purpose by cummings and taylor was used in hypothetical referenda that differed in payment amount in comparisons with behavior observed in otherwise identical real payment referenda the script worked remarkably well at higher payment levels dropping the likelihood of a yes vote to the level obtained in separate sample real referenda but less well at a lower payment level the repeated success of the script at higher payment amounts is a clear sign that additional research is warranted research that will bring us a more complete understanding of how the entreaty works this research may need to explore its workings at the individual respondent level

does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation evidence from bric countries abstract a vast number of studies addressed the environmental degradation and economic development but not financial development moreover as argued by stern 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 1419 1439 they present important econometric weaknesses using standard reduced form modeling approach and controlling for country specific unobserved heterogeneity we investigate the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also the financial development panel data over period 1992 2004 is used we find that both economic and financial development are determinants of the environmental quality in bric economies we show that higher degree of economic and financial development decreases the environmental degradation our analysis suggests that financial liberalization and openness are essential factors for the co 2 reduction the adoption of policies directed to financial openness and liberalization to attract higher levels of r d related foreign direct investment might reduce the environmental degradation in countries under consideration in addition the robustness check trough the inclusion of us and japan does not alter our main findings

environmental regulation and mnes location does csr matter abstract we investigate whether firms with relatively low environmental standards are more often located in countries that are poor corrupt or have weak environmental regulations we find new empirical evidence in favor of the pollution haven hypothesis which states that mnes are transferring their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation our findings suggest that these are not necessarily the poorest or most corrupt countries we establish that mnes with strong social responsibility avoid locating their operations in countries with weak environmental regulation

assessing holistic economic value for multifunctional agriculture in the us abstract this study used contingent valuation method to shed light on public preferences on the multifunctional roles of the us agriculture and to present a holistic estimate of the economic value of the nonmarket goods and services of us agriculture contingent valuation survey instrument was administered to a sample composed from the ipsos web based panel fishbein s model of reasoned behavior and mediation hypothesis were combined to model the relationship between wtp behavioral intentions and sets of explanatory variables including attitudes perceived attributes about family farms farmland preservation programs government involvement in agricultural markets and ecological state of our world and socio demographic profiles results show that while exerting a highly significant impact on wtp attitudes mediate the effects of the attribute variables on wtp i e the attributes influence wtp directly as well as indirectly through attitudes the estimated mean wtp was 515 per taxpayer annually aggregating individual wtps across the us taxpayers above 20 years old produces 105 billion representing a crude estimate of the economic value that the us consumers place on the multifunctional roles of us agriculture

the economics of immigration this literature review concerns the impact of immigration on the economy of the host country focusing on the experience of the united states the emphasis is on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s the author shows that research earlier in this period generally concluded that the economic effects of immigration were positive but that more recent research on later migrations have generally concluded that immigration may be having an adverse effect on the earnings of native unskilled workers and be placing an increased burden on welfare programs the importance of such economic analysis for the formulation of appropriate migration policies is stressed

richer and cleaner a study on carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries abstract the climate change debate has drawn attention to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere one of the most important issues in the policy debate is the role that should be played by developing countries in joining the commitment of developed countries to reduce ghg emissions and particularly co2 emissions this debate calls into play the relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic development in this paper we use a panel data model for 110 world countries to estimate the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and to produce emission forecast the paper contains three major results i the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide and income is well described by non linear gamma and weibull specifications as opposed to more usual linear and log linear functional forms ii our single equation reduced form model is comparable in terms of forecasted emissions with other more complex less data driven models iii despite the decreasing marginal propensity to pollute our forecasts show that future global emissions will rise the average world growth of co2 emissions between 2000 and 2020 is about 2 2 yr while that of non annex 1 countries is posted at 3 3 yr

controlling for the effects of information in a public goods discrete choice model this paper develops a reduced form method of controlling for differences in information sets of subjects in public good discrete choice models using stated preference data the main contribution of our method comes from accounting for the effect of information provided during a survey on the mean and the variance of individual specific scale parameters in this way we incorporate both scale heterogeneity as well as observed and unobserved preference heterogeneity to investigate differences across and within information treatments our approach will also be useful to researchers who want to combine stated preference data sets while controlling for scale differences we illustrate our approach using the data from a discrete choice experiment study of a biodiversity conservation program and find that the mean of individual specific scale parameters and its variance in the sample is sensitive to the information set provided to the respondents

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

contingent valuation and the budget constraint abstract one of the most vehemently debated techniques for the valuation of environmental goods is the contingent valuation method critics of this method question its validity and reliability in many respects however at the moment the contingent valuation method is the only technique at hand for the assessment of non use values of environmental goods therefore it seems worthwhile to have a closer look at some of the criticism raised in this debate this paper deals with the so called budget constraint bias which is suspected of distorting the results of contingent valuation studies according to the critics of the contingent valuation method the stated willingness to pay for an environmental good as assessed by contingent valuation studies is systematically biased upwards because participants of such surveys do not properly observe their personal budget constraints it is maintained that respondents when asked about their willingness to pay for an environmental good do not regard the amount stated by them as reducing their budget left for the purchase of private goods in this paper it is shown that from a theoretical point of view respondents intuitively do the right thing when ignoring the seeming relationship between their willingness to pay for an environmental good and their capacity to buy private goods it is elucidated that contingent valuation surveys should focus on the assessment of the shadow price of an environmental good rather than of the respective willingness to pay therefore it seems that the budget constraint bias is meaningless with respect to the validity of the contingent valuation method

using ex ante approaches to obtain credible signals for value in contingent markets evidence from the field while contingent valuation remains the only option available for measurement of total economic value of nonmarketed goods the method has been criticized due to its hypothetical nature we analyze field experimental data to evaluate two ex ante approaches to attenuating hypothetical bias directly comparing value statements across four distinct referenda hypothetical cheap talk consequential and real our empirical evidence suggests two major findings hypothetical responses are significantly different from real responses and responses in the consequential and cheap talk treatments are statistically indistinguishable from real responses we review the potential for each method to produce reliable results in the field

commodity specification and the framing of contingent valuation questions contingent valuation studies comprise a process of information transfer a researcher through a survey instrument conveys information about the item being valued and repondents in turn provide information about the value they place on this item considering contingent valuation from this perspective nearly all of the research evaluating the validity of this valuation method is in a general sense focused on examining the effects of information structures on value estimates a comparison of various questioning techniques represents such an examination boyle and bishop 1988 randall hoehn and tolley 1981 smith desvousges and fisher 1986 on a more specific level the selection of a payment vehicle also forms part of the information set and may affect statements of value greenley walsh and young 1982 1985 mitchell and carson 1985 these examples suggest that the validity of estimated contingent values relies heavily on the information conveyed to survey respondents since varying information structures can affect the magnitude of estimated values

contingent valuation and the activation of environmental norms abstract this paper uses contingent valuation cvm as the context in which to explore the implications of a model of altruistic norm activation a model is presented which provides a framework for thinking about the factors that individuals consider when formulating their responses to cvm questions and the processes by which they bring such factors together the activation of personal environmental norms and hence positive willingness to pay depends on four main categories of belief awareness and acceptance of environmental need consequences of personal action responsibility for personal action and acceptance of policy initiatives the model is illustrated with a qualitative case study and some of the implications for cvm are considered in light of these findings it is argued that whilst notions of fairness may not present problems from a demand prediction economic standpoint such notions may be more problematic for the cost benefit analysis use of results

valuing environmental policy options a case study comparison of multiattribute and contingent valuation survey methods this paper describes a promising new evaluation approach called a value integration survey that uses the objectives and tradeoffs expressed by participants to value environmental policy options this constructive technique which builds on the interactive elicitation process of decision analysts assists stakeholders in clarifying their values and in agreeing on a policy alternative the paper compares this multi attribute valuation method to contingent valuation surveys describes the sequence of respondents tasks and presents results from a case study comparison of contingent valuation and value integration survey methods in the context of valuing options for fire control in oregon s oldgrowth forests

framing decisions in uncertain scenarios an analysis of tourist preferences in the face of global warming abstract this paper presents the results of a choice experiment survey of tourists in mallorca spain to elicit preferences for designed policies aimed at addressing the attractiveness losses of the destination in the face of global warming the study is novel in two main ways first it introduces the uncertainty deriving from the stochastic nature of global warming not as a policy attribute but as an inherent feature of the valuation scenario for this reason the expected temperature change and its probability of occurrence were kept constant across alternatives but not across different choice tasks second it measures the willingness to pay for a set of pro environmental policies under different framings results show that the inclusion of uncertainty shapes individuals decisions

who was affected by new welfare reform strategies microdata estimates from canada abstracta heterogeneous mix of aggressive welfare reforms took effect in different provinces and years starting in the 1990s welfare participation rates subsequently declined previous investigations of these declines focused on cuts in benefits and stricter eligibility requirements this article focuses instead on work requirements diversion earning exemptions and time limits referred to jointly as new welfare reform strategies while controlling for benefit levels eligibility requirements province specific labour market conditions and gdp growth as well as individual level socio economic information province year specific variation in new reform strategies produce estimates implying that their presence is associated with a large decline in welfare participation of 1 3 percentage points 14 relative to the unconditional mean participation rate of 9 2 our coding scheme generates new measures of policy variation that distinguish reductions in benefit levels and tighter eligibility restriction

manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the impacts of changes in output industry structure and energy intensity this paper examines trends in manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the changes that occured between 1973 and 1987 into the effects of changes in aggregate manufacturing activity industry structure and energy intensities measured at the industry group level while manufacturing production grew in every country except the uk the rate of growth was variable from nation to nation structural change led to modest reductions in energy use in most countries although in norway structural change led to substantial growth in energy use the reduction in energy intensities was strikingly uniform across all nations ranging from 20 norway to 36 japan over the period of the analysis while other studies have used divisia decomposition techniques we use an alternative method based on laspeyres indices a comparison of the two techniques shows that they yield closely similar empirical results although the laspeyres approach is more easily interpreted while the interactions between changes in structure and intensity are arbitrarily assigned to the two factors by the divisia approach the lapeyres method yields interaction terms that explicitly account for such effects

a comparison of stated preference methods for environmental valuation this paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation cvm and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quality changes both of these methods require individuals to state their preferences for environmental qualities however choice experiments differ from cvm in that environmental attributes are varied in an experimental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices between bundles of attributes the empirical application involved the effect of environmental quality changes arising from forest management practices on recreational moose hunting values significant differences were found between the values derived from the two methods however detailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that respondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the cvm question restricting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied resulted in welfare estimates similar to the cvm model this highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than cvm in some cases