the role of benefit transfer in ecosystem service valuation the demand for timely monetary estimates of the economic value of nonmarket ecosystem goods and services has steadily increased over the last few decades this article describes the use of benefit transfer to generate monetary value estimates of ecosystem services specifically the article provides guidance for conducting such benefit transfers and summarizes advancements in benefit transfer methods databases and analysis tools designed to facilitate its application

paired comparison and contingent valuation approaches to morbidity risk valuation abstract this research uses an experimental approach for eliciting consumer valuations of morbidity risk reductions associated with safter chemical products and introduces the paired comparison questions approach to non market valuation in four applications the paired comparisons approach yields higher morbidity valuations than the more familiar contingent valuation approach however both methodologies produce large values of morbidity reduction benefits in comparison to estimates derived from wage hedonic studies explanations for the difference in the estimates and their magnitudes are suggested along with the public policy implications

the effect of urbanization on energy use in india and china in the ipets model abstract urbanization is one of the major demographic and economic trends occurring in developing countries with important consequences for development energy use and well being yet it is only beginning to be explicitly incorporated in long term scenario analyses of energy and emissions we assess the implications of a plausible range of urbanization pathways for energy use and carbon emissions in india and china using the integrated population economy technology science ipets model a computable general equilibrium cge model of the global economy that captures heterogeneity in household types within world regions and into which we have introduced income effects on household consumption preferences we find that changes in urbanization have a somewhat less than proportional effect on aggregate emissions and energy use a decomposition analysis demonstrates that this effect is due primarily to an economic growth effect driven by the increased labor supply associated with faster urbanization the influence of income on household consumption is strong and indicates a potentially rapid transition away from traditional fuel use and toward modern fuels such as electricity and natural gas results also indicate important directions for future work including the implications of alternative types and driving forces of urbanization over time a better understanding of possible changes in consumption preferences associated with income growth and the urbanization process and modeling strategies that can produce disaggregated household consumption outcomes within a cge framework

strategic responses to resource management pressures in agriculture institutional gender and location effects sustainable management of natural resources by farmers is under increasing public scrutiny in australia the case of water unsustainably used and stored by agricultural businesses has gained attention with communities in catchments potentially deprived of water and placed at downstream risk yet sustainable water management institutional policy mechanisms remain disjointed around the country the study reported here applies a strategic response typology to a survey of 404 farmers in four different institutional environments in australia to explore their responses to institutional pressures findings demonstrate a convergence in typologies that relate to farmers organising each other and communities influencing and networking for the benefit of agricultural resource management thereby questioning the traditional continuum of resistance furthermore the mid range typology avoidance emerges as a highly problematic typology for sustainable water management policymakers especially those in weaker institutional environments where there is a need to develop policy instruments that retain farmer water management decision making power and encourage networks the paper also extends the strategic response typology to enable understanding of how gender and location affect strategic responses to institutional pressures findings provide insight for policy design in times of increasing catastrophic flood and drought conditions exacerbated by poor water management practice

what have we learned since hotelling s letter a meta analysis abstract this paper reports the results of a meta analysis of the estimates of the price elasticity of demand for recreation sites using the travel cost method by using econometric methods to summarize empirical literature meta analysis assists in identifying research conclusions despite the non experimental nature of most empirical research in economics in this application the results suggest that modeling decisions based on theory as well as those relying on fitting criteria were important influences to the estimated price elasticities across studies

explaining the choice of organic produce cosmetic defects prices and consumer preferences the choice between organic and conventional produce was estimated empirically using a two equation probit model data were collected in store on cosmetic defects produce prices and consumers demographic and economic traits store choice displayed a significant impact on the probability of purchasing organic produce shoppers at the specialty grocer were sensitive to price differences between organic and conventional items households with children under eighteen were more likely to purchase organic produce while shoppers with graduate or professional degrees were less likely to do so differences in cosmetic defects had statistically significant albeit small effects on the probability of purchasing organics

recent advances in the valuation of ecosystem services and biodiversity recent interest in the economics of biodiversity and wider ecosystem services has been given empirical expression through a focus upon economic valuation this emphasis has been prompted by a growing recognition that the benefits and opportunity costs associated with such services are frequently given cursory consideration in policy analyses or even completely ignored the valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is therefore increasingly seen as a crucial element of robust decision making and this has been reflected in a growing body of related research we provide a critical review of some of this research considering the valuation methods applied to date and focussing upon their limitations in respect to certain categories of ecosystem services particularly cultural services and the applicability of the extant literature to new settings substantial questions also remain at the interface of natural science and economics and we consider the potential contribution of the conceptualization of ecosystems as assets as a response to this challenge as part of this review we also highlight the role which large scale ecosystem assessments have played as an impetus to extending the valuation evidence base and the way in which frameworks and assessments of how ecosystems contribute to human wellbeing might be translated into policy thinking and decision analyses

an economic evaluation of the environmental benefits from pesticide reduction abstract previous studies on the environmental impacts of pesticide use have tended to focus either on measuring damages through changes in relative risks to various environmental categories or examining the trade off between pesticide use levels and abatement costs this study uses the physical risk assessment approach combined with contingent valuation survey results on consumers willingness to reduce pesticide risk the reduction in external costs associated with the changes in pesticide use in ontario agriculture between 1983 and 1998 is us 188 per household the environmental benefits are largely due to the reduction in the level of high and moderate risk pesticides

cross context benefit transfer a bayesian search for information pools commodity equivalence and population similarity are two widely accepted paradigms for the valid transfer of welfare estimates across resource valuation contexts we argue that strict adherence to these rules may leave relevant information untapped and propose a bayesian model search algorithm that examines the probabilities with which two or more sub sets of meta data each corresponding to a different combination of commodity and population share common value distributions using a large meta data set of willingness to pay for diverse outdoor activities across various regions of the united states as an example we find strong potential for contexts that would not traditionally be considered as transfer candidates to form information pools exploiting these commonalities leads to substantial efficiency gains for benefit estimates

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

unilateral climate policy design efficiency and equity implications of alternative instruments to reduce carbon leakage abstract global cost effectiveness of unilateral emission abatement can be seriously hampered by carbon leakage we assess three widely discussed proposals for leakage reduction carbon motivated border tax adjustments industry exemptions from carbon regulation and output based allocation of emission allowances we find that none of these measures amounts to a magic bullet when both efficiency and equity criteria matter compared to unilateral emission pricing alone border carbon adjustments are most effective in leakage reduction and promotion of global cost effectiveness but can markedly exacerbate regional inequality exemptions and output based allocation tend to avoid distributional pitfalls but are less effective in leakage reduction and global cost savings exemptions may even decrease global cost effectiveness of unilateral emission abatement

testing benefits transfer of forest recreation values over a twenty year time horizon we conduct a functional benefit transfer over 20 years of total willingness to pay based on carborne forest recreation in 52 forests using a mixed logit specification of a random utility model and geographic information systems to allow heterogeneous preferences across the population and for heterogeneity over space results show that preferences for some forest attributes such as species diversity and age as well as transport mode have changed significantly over the period updating the transfer model with present total demand for recreation improves the error margins by an average of 282 average errors of the best transfer model remain 25

towards a knowledge based theory of the geographical cluster co located firms within related industries enhance the ability to create knowledge by variation and a deepened division of labour the interdependent development between economic activities and local institutions make the cluster attractive to some industries and hostile to others the very reasons why cognitive distance might be small within the cluster tend to make cognitive distance great between clusters and make interfirm co operation across bodies of knowledge more costly the additional value created when clustering may justify the additional cost copyright 2001 by oxford university press

a developing asia emission trading scheme asia ets abstract this paper provides a model assessment of the role of developing asia in the context of climate change policies we diagnose the potential response of asian economies to the imposition of various climate policies showing that if we were to equally price carbon across the world roughly half of the abatement would occur in developing asia we show that such autarkic measures would be consistent with the policy targets put forward by the major economies forum but would not necessarily be equitable we thus propose a fragmented cap and trade scheme with a specific regional market for developing asia the asian emission trading scheme asia ets we assess the role of the asia ets on the macro economy and international transfers vis a vis the standard case of global trading our results indicate that creating two large trading markets would result in small global efficiency losses while at the same time generating more reasonable regional incentives and transfers

do contingent valuation estimates pass a scope test a meta analysis abstract this paper considers the scope test proposed to judge the internal consistency of contingent valuation estimates the test is shown to be quite sensitive to the maintained hypotheses required to derive fairly precise expectations for the properties of wtp functions and therefore a different approach may be needed in gauging the reliability of cv this paper describes an approach that relies on a weight of the evidence criterion and uses meta analysis to develop a systematic appraisal of what the economic values of changes in amenity resources are the approach is illustrated for the case of estimating people s willingness to pay for improving or maintaining visibility at the national parks

characterizing the effects of valuation methodology in function based benefits transfer abstract meta analyses have demonstrated that willingness to pay wtp estimates vary systematically according to methodological factors the benefits transfer literature provides little guidance with regard to the treatment of such effects transfers are typically conducted by ignoring such effects using ad hoc adjustments or otherwise suppressing information regarding the sensitivity of wtp to methodological attributes this paper illustrates a means to characterize methodological effects within benefits transfer based on an application of the common bootstrap drawing from meta analysis the approach characterizes the sampling distribution of wtp with respect to patterns of methodological variation present in underlying studies results provide a means to characterize the extent of variation associated with predefined groups of methodological attributes providing transparent information on the sensitivity of wtp not typically available in benefits transfer

wind power externalities a meta analysis this study presents the first quantitative meta analysis of the non market valuation literature on the external effects associated with wind power production a data set of 60 observations drawn from 32 studies is constructed the relative economic values of different types of externalities as well as the impact of various methodological and sample characteristics on welfare estimates are examined the results indicate a significant effect of visual externalities on welfare estimates in both directions i e a positive effect of visual improvements and a negative effect of deteriorations this finding corresponds to predictions of the importance of visual impacts in the social science literature external effects of wind power on biodiversity mainly birds do not affect welfare estimates indirect externalities caused by conventional sources of electricity that can be avoided by wind power such as a the reduction of air pollution do neither have a significant impact on welfare measures methodologically we find substantial but inelastic income effects and for choice experiments clear evidence of sensitivity to scope from a policy point of view our results suggest that a policy mix combining a promotion of wind turbines with another green policy facilitates expansion of wind energy

consumers willingness to pay for green electricity a meta analysis of the literature at present electricity generated from power plants using renewable sources costs more than electricity generated from power plants using conventional fuels consumers bear these expenses directly or indirectly through higher prices for renewable energy or taxes the number of studies published over the last few years focusing on people s preferences for renewables has increased steadily making it more and more difficult to identify key explanatory factors that determine people s willingness to pay wtp for renewables we present results of a meta regression on valuation of consumer preferences for a larger share of renewable energy in their electricity mix our meta regression results reveal a number of important factors that explain the differences in wtp values for renewable energy different valuation methods show widely different values with choice experiments producing the highest estimates our results further indicate that consumers wtp for green electricity differs by source with hydropower being the least valued variables that are often omitted from primary valuation studies are important in explaining differences in values these variables describe individual and household characteristics as well as information on the type of power plant that will be replaced by renewables further the marginal effect of a survey conducted in the us is pronounced we also assess the potential for using the results for out of sample value transfer and find a median error of 21 c 2015 elsevier b v all rights reserved

dynamically estimating the distributional impacts of u s climate policy with nems a case study of the climate protection act of 2013 we present a new method that enables users of the federal government s flagship energy policy model nems to dynamically estimate the direct energy expenditure impacts of climate policy across u s household incomes and census regions our approach combines nems output with detailed household expenditure data from the consumer expenditure survey improving on static methods that assess policy impacts by assuming household energy demand remains unchanged under emissions pricing scenarios to illustrate our method we evaluate a recent carbon fee and dividend proposal introduced in the u s senate the climate protection act of 2013 s 332 our analysis indicates this bill if enacted would have cut co2 emissions from energy by 17 below 2005 levels by 2020 at a gross cost of less than 0 5 of gdp while offering rebates sufficient to offset increased direct energy expenditures for typical households making less than 120 000 per year and average households in all regions of the united states

methods for including income distribution in global cge models for long term climate change research abstract the consequences of climate policy and the impacts of climate change vary among different types of households depending on their income level expenditure pattern and other socioeconomic characteristics global economy environment models that are used to assess climate change issues traditionally do not distinguish households by income or other attributes to facilitate progress in this area we review and assess literature on methods to include household heterogeneity in global long term computable general equilibrium cge models we distinguish among three categories of approaches 1 the explicit modeling of multiple household types within the cge framework 2 micro simulation modeling and 3 direct modeling of income distribution for each of these approaches we describe the method key assumptions limitations and several prominent examples from the literature moreover we discuss data needs including the contents of household survey data their availability and processing we conclude with an overview of what each method could provide for global long term climate related research

how reliable are meta analyses for international benefit transfers meta analysis has increasingly been used to synthesise the environmental valuation literature but only a few test the use of these analyses for benefit transfer these are typically based on national studies only however meta analyses of valuation studies across countries are a potentially powerful tool for benefit transfer especially for environmental goods where the domestic literature is scarce we test the reliability of such international meta analytic transfers and find that even under conditions of homogeneity in valuation methods cultural and institutional conditions across countries and a meta analysis with large explanatory power the transfer errors could still be large further international meta analytic transfers do not on average perform better than simple value transfers averaging over domestic studies thus we question whether the use of meta analysis for practical benefit transfer achieves reliability gains justifying the increased effort however more meta analytic benefit transfer tests should be performed for other environmental goods and other countries before discarding international meta analysis as a tool for benefit transfer

distributional implications of climate change in rural india a general equilibrium approach we develop a general equilibrium framework based on a specific factors trade model to quantify the medium term household welfare impacts of global warming in rural india using an hedonic approach grounded in the theory combined with detailed microdata we estimate that three decades of warming will reduce agricultural productivity in the range of 7 13 with the arid northwest of india especially hard hit our analysis shows that the proportional welfare cost of climate change is likely to be both modest and evenly distributed across percentiles of the per capita income distribution but this latter conclusion emerges only when the flexibility of rural wages is taken into account

testing choice experiment for benefit transfer with preference heterogeneity benefit transfer is a cost effective method for estimating the value of environmental goods that relies on information obtained in previous studies the multiattribute approach of choice experiments should provide advantages in terms of benefit transfer allowing differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socioeconomic and attitude characteristics between respondent populations this article investigates the capability of choice experiment method to be used in environmental benefit transfer when a random parameters approach is used to allow for preference heterogeneity we find that the inclusion of respondents taste heterogeneity reduces the magnitude of the transfer error

reducing barriers in future benefit transfers needed improvements in primary study design and reporting abstract original research provides many social benefits including additions to our stock of knowledge benefit transfer is a formal process whereby our stock of knowledge rather than original research is used to inform decisions any shortcoming in this stock directly affects our ability to conduct valid and reliable benefit transfers this paper discusses three general criteria that are necessary for valid benefit transfers and how original research designs and reporting of results unnecessarily constrain the potential of benefit transfers we make several suggestions regarding how original research through improved design and reporting might increase the validity and reliability of benefit transfers we also recommend that repositories for original research surveys and data be developed to insure long term availability of study information

in search of excellence fads success stories and adaptive emulation1 the faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion we combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption even if innovations are entirely worthless faddish cycles are most robust across alternative treatments of managerial decision making where innovations have modest positive effects on outcomes these results have broad implications for the faddishness of a business community increasingly marked by media driven accounts of success and for the properties of organizational practices that are hot one day and cold the next

meta analysis benefit transfer and methodological covariates implications for transfer error meta regression models in the valuation literature demonstrate that willingness to pay estimates vary according to methodological factors neither theory nor characteristics of policy sites dictate the treatment of associated covariates within benefit transfer however and the literature provides few insights into potential impacts of common empirical treatments this paper introduces a method to systematically characterize the impact of methodological variables on transfer error using a repeated leave one out convergent validity framework the analysis contrasts errors for a hypothetical ideal case in which correct methodological covariate treatments are known to the realistic case in which the correct treatment is unknown results indicate that the common assumption of mean values for methodological covariates leads to only a modest increase in mean transfer error relative to that found in the hypothetical ideal case

valuing environmental and health risk in agriculture a choice experiment approach to pesticides in italy abstract the widespread use of pesticides in agriculture shows a complex ramification of multiple negative externalities ranging from food safety related effects to the deterioration of farmland ecosystems recent research has demonstrated that the assessment of the economic implications of such negative processes is fraught with many uncertainties this paper presents the results of an empirical study recently conducted in northern italy aimed at estimating the economic value of reducing the wide ranging impacts of pesticide use by deploying a choice experiment approach the experimental design provides a meaningful tool to assign monetary values to the negative environmental effects associated with agrochemicals use in this connection the paper addresses in particular the reduction of farmland biodiversity groundwater contamination and harm to human health the resulting estimates confirm that on average respondents demonstrate a substantial willingness to pay a premium for agricultural goods in particular foodstuffs produced in environmentally benign ways

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

modeling energy and development an evaluation of models and concepts most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries evaluation of the results for asia of the ipcc sres models shows that broad concepts of energy and development the energy ladder and the environmental kuznets curve can be observed in the results of the models however improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts like traditional fuels electrification economic structural change income distribution and informal economies given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development

evaluating the performance of benefit transfer an empirical inquiry abstract benefit transfers are used by public agencies needing information on costs and benefits of policy decisions although scientific debate regarding the validity of benefit transfer is ongoing this article develops a methodology to evaluate the performance of direct benefit transfer and benefit function transfer and applies the methodology to two pairs of similar non market amenities empirical results indicate that benefit function transfer is more robust than transfer of average site benefits our results suggest that the circumstances under which benefit function transfer provides valid policy relevant information may be limited and that errors from applying benefit transfer can be quite large even across seemingly similar amenities

the drivers of climate change innovations evidence from the australian wine industry this study examined the drivers of climate change innovations and the effects of these innovations on firm outcomes in a sample of 203 firms in the south australian wine cluster the results of structural equation modeling analysis suggest that absorptive capacity has a direct effect on climate change innovations and stimulates knowledge exchanges kes between firms in the cluster kes between firms in the cluster in turn directly affect the climate change innovations the findings suggest a perhaps counterintuitive interrelationship between firm and cluster level impacts in which kes between firms in the cluster play a partial mediating role in the innovation process the study further finds that climate change innovations are related to firm performance fp and reductions in greenhouse gases ghgs mitigative innovations lead to greater ghg reductions while adaptive innovations impact on fp contributions of the findings are discussed as are future research directions

downscaling heterogeneous household outcomes in dynamic cge models for energy economic analysis abstract downscaling methods for dynamic computable general equilibrium models are developed and analyzed the methods produce outcomes for a variety of different household types by downscaling the aggregate quantities from an economic growth model with a representative household this approach uses household survey data and long term population projections for different household types to compare the performance of the downscaling methods vs a general equilibrium model with multiple household groups under a variety of conditions including demographic change technological change and a carbon tax both recursive dynamic and forward looking downscaling methods produce results that approximate well a multiple household model run the recursive dynamic downscaling method is applied to an illustrative example estimating impacts of a carbon tax on aggregate co 2 emissions and the energy demand of different household groups for a middle of the road development scenario

competitiveness and legitimation the logic of companies going green in geographical clusters this study analyzes the logic behind the development of environmental responsiveness in companies that are located in geographical clusters drawing on previous research we contend that competitiveness and legitimation are important sources of variation in these companies environmental responses in particular the companies perceived rivalry competition tracking capabilities interaction with industry associations and network embeddedness influence their competitiveness and legitimation motivations for environmental responsiveness we used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses on a sample of 251 clustered agricultural firms in spain the results support the hypotheses and provide a number of insights about the underlying motivations behind going green in geographical clusters

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

snapshots of the future darfur katrina and maple sugar climate change the less well off and business ethics climate change represents a significant challenge to the entire planet and its inhabitants while few if any will be able to escape totally the effects of climate change it will fall most heavily at least initially on the poor regardless of where they reside we may observe already possible scenarios the tragic situation in darfur may be less an ethnic conflict and more a clash between marginal farmers and herdsmen in an increasingly more arid local climate more powerful storms on the scale of hurricane katrina which affected the poor more than other economic groups may become commonplace the alteration of the maple sugar cycle may be a harbinger of stress on the world s flora and fauna that humanity depends upon mainstream climatologists have concluded that human behavior primarily the effects of industrialization causes human induced climate change left unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for humanity especially the poor business the primary agent of industrialization is both the problem and the solution this paper will apply the ethics of philosophers john rawls the difference principle robert nozick the lockean proviso climate is a natural resource and aristotle along with the work of strategist michael porter understanding how climate change management fits into a firm s strategic opportunity will contribute to the ability of business to develop the technologies and business processes necessary to cope with climate change the paper will conclude with a brief discussion of ge s ecomagination program as an example of a promising moral response to climate change

macroeconomic impacts of climate change mitigation in latin america a cross model comparison abstract in this paper we analyse macroeconomic consequences of greenhouse gas emission mitigation in latin america up to 2050 through a multi model comparison approach undertaken in the context of the climacap lamp research project we compare two carbon tax scenarios with a business as usual scenario of anticipated future energy demand in the short term with carbon prices reaching around 15 tco 2 by 2030 most models agree that the reduction in consumer spending as a proxy for welfare is limited to about 0 3 by 2050 at carbon prices of 165 tco 2 there is much more divergence in the estimated impact on consumer spending as well as gdp across models and regions which reflects uncertainties about technology costs and substitution opportunities between technologies we observe that the consequences of increasingly higher carbon prices in terms of reduced consumer spending and gdp tend to be fairly linear with the carbon price in our cge models however the consequences are divergent and nonlinear in our econometric model that is linked to an energy system model that simulates step changes in technology substitution the results of one model show that climate policy measures can have positive effects on consumer spending and gdp which results from an investment stimulus and the redistribution of carbon price revenues to consumers

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

accounting for household heterogeneity in general equilibrium economic growth models abstract we describe and evaluate a new method of aggregating heterogeneous households that allows for the representation of changing demographic composition in a multi sector economic growth model the method is based on a utility and labor supply calibration that takes into account time variations in demographic characteristics of the population we test the method using the population environment technology pet model by comparing energy and emissions projections employing the aggregate representation of households to projections representing different household types explicitly results show that the difference between the two approaches in terms of total demand for energy and consumption goods is negligible for a wide range of model parameters our approach allows the effects of population aging urbanization and other forms of compositional change on energy demand and co 2 emissions to be estimated and compared in a computationally manageable manner using a representative household under assumptions and functional forms that are standard in economic growth models

perspective absorbing the concept of absorptive capacity how to realize its potential in the organization field the purpose of this perspective paper is to advance understanding of absorptive capacity its underlying dimensions its multilevel antecedents its impact on firm performance and the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity twenty years after the cohen and levinthal 1990 paper the field is characterized by a wide array of theoretical perspectives and a wealth of empirical evidence in this paper we first review these underlying theories and empirical studies of absorptive capacity given the size and diversity of the absorptive capacity literature we subsequently map the existing terrain of research through a bibliometric analysis the resulting bibliometric cartography shows the major discrepancies in the organization field namely that 1 most attention so far has been focused on the tangible outcomes of absorptive capacity 2 organizational design and individual level antecedents have been relatively neglected in the absorptive capacity literature and 3 the emergence of absorptive capacity from the actions and interactions of individual organizational and interorganizational antecedents remains unclear building on the bibliometric analysis we develop an integrative model that identifies the multilevel antecedents process dimensions and outcomes of absorptive capacity as well as the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity we argue that realizing the potential of the absorptive capacity concept requires more research that shows how micro antecedents and macro antecedents influence future outcomes such as competitive advantage innovation and firm performance in particular we identify conceptual gaps that may guide future research to fully exploit the absorptive capacity concept in the organization field and to explore future fruitful extensions of the concept

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

urban and rural energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in asia the process of urbanization has been shown to be important for economic development environmental impacts and human wellbeing particularly in developing countries in this paper we compare structure data sources and scenario results of four integrated assessment models that are capable of analyzing different aspects of urbanization the comparison focuses on residential sector energy use and related co2 emissions based on a set of urbanization scenarios for china and india important insights from this model comparison include that i total fossil fuel and industrial co2 emissions at the regional level are not very sensitive to alternative rates of urbanization and are largely dependent on the linkage between urbanization and economic growth via differentiated labor productivity in urban and rural areas ii alternative urbanization pathways may yield different results for the share of solid fuels in residential energy use thereby affecting the number of people relying on these fuels and the associated adverse health impacts and iii alternative economic growth scenarios can only be assessed for their welfare implications if urban and rural household are distinguished even though that distinction does not always strongly affect aggregate outcomes which is often due to two effects that compensate each other in total it can be concluded that urbanization and heterogeneity of households and consumers are clearly relevant for distributional effects and associated health and social impacts

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

pesticide taxation and multi objective policy making farm modelling to evaluate profit environment trade offs abstract many countries in western europe have introduced voluntary programmes to encourage farmers to adopt environmentally more benign practices such as integrated pest management but more policy action appears to be needed to meet the environmental quality levels now demanded input taxes could assist in meeting policy objectives the issue considered here is the identification of the most appropriate specification of a tax instrument to reduce the environmental problems of agricultural pesticide usage this paper takes a farm systems approach to evaluation a case study illustration is given for a specialist arable farm in the uk combining an economic model of land use and production with a set of environmental indicators for pesticides linking these two components allows the identification of the potential trade offs between achieving reductions in the environmental burden to a number of ecological dimensions and farm income different pesticide tax specifications vary in both the magnitude and the direction of their impacts the results of the model indicate that either compromises will have to be made in environmental policy or additional instruments will be required to counter act the negative side effects of some instruments

benefits transfer of willingness to pay estimates and functions for health risk reductions a cross country study this paper provides a first application of the techniques of benefits transfer to the health economics literature these techniques seek to transfer the value of some good from one survey context to a new policy context so avoiding the need for new valuation surveys each time a new policy question arises two approaches to benefits transfer are assessed the simple transfer of mean values and the transferral of value functions we develop a new methodology for the latter approach in which value functions are iteratively built up from theoretical principles with transfer errors being tested each time a new variable is added through a novel application of advanced statistical tests we show that this approach outperforms the transferral of statistically driven best fit functions the case study presented focuses upon the transfer of contingent valuation cv willingness to pay wtp estimates and associated value functions for reducing the health risks associated with solar ultraviolet uv exposure common format studies are conducted in four countries with transfers between all of these being undertaken by calculating errors in predicted versus actual values across countries we show that when transferring between similar contexts simple mean value transfers outperform more complex value function transfers with the magnitude of the former errors being encouragingly small however this result is reversed when transfers are undertaken across dissimilar contexts where value functions partially adjust for these differences in summary these findings provide support and guidance for future applications

farmer risk assessment for voluntary insecticide reduction abstract we develop a theoretical basis for voluntary reduction in insecticide use and quantify the subjective value farmers place on reducing environmental risk the indirect utility model is used to quantify the acceptable financial cost of eliminating one insecticide application in return for avoidance of moderate risk to the environment the mean valuation in illinois iowa nebraska and ohio usa is 8 25 per acre acceptable yield loss increases with importance of environmental goods with formal education and with farming experience valuation increases with total expenditure on insecticides up to 89 per acre decomposition of the tobit model used in estimation indicates that voluntary programs should target intensification rather than extensification of participation to maximize effectiveness

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 validity of environmental benefits transfer further empirical testing this paper provides further empirical evidence of the validity of environmental benefits transfer based on cv studies by expanding the analysis to include control factors which have not been accounted for in previous studies these factors refer to differences in respondent attitudes traditional population characteristics were taken into account but these variables do not explain why respondents from the same socio economic group may still hold different beliefs norms or values and hence have different attitudes and consequently state different wtp amounts the test results are mixed the function transfer approach is valid in one case but is rejected in the 3 other cases investigated in this paper we provide further evidence that in the case of statistically valid benefits transfer the function approach results in a more robust benefits transfer than the unit value approach we also show that the equality of coefficient estimates is a necessary but insufficient condition for valid benefit function transfer and discuss the implications for previous and future validity testing

pesticide residue risk and food safety valuation a random utility approach a new approach is developed for integrating consumers risk perceptions with stated purchase behavior when consumption decisions must be made with incomplete information the application involves health risks from exposure to pesticide residues on fresh produce unlike traditional food demand analysis the present approach treats produce choices as discrete outcomes resulting in a random utility model empirical results from a pilot survey suggest a clear linkage between perceptions and behavior in response to new risk information consumers stated preferences for safer produce were primarily influenced by price differences and perceived risks not by the technical risk information provided alone however the linkage between behavior and valuation was less clear cut the risk price tradeoffs entailed by contingent discrete choices indicate high price premia for small risk reductions and little variation in price premium across alternative risk reductions

pesticides productivity and farmer health a philippine case study health is recognized as one of the most important components of the human capital of rural people in developing countries there is a growing body of literature showing the productivity effects of health associated with nutrition e g bliss and stern 1978 strauss 1986 deolalikar 1988 pitt rosenzweig and hassan 1990 in this literature the productivity effects of health are inferred either by correlating health indicators with wages or by including health indicators in an agricultural production function the human capital literature also has demonstrated that farmer education plays an important role in the allocative and technical efficiency of farmers welch 1970 schultz 1975

to what extent is business responding to climate change evidence from a global wine producer most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response by studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward ghg emissions the findings suggest that both inside out and outside in actions are taken in response to climate change while attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well the results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention structural controls and industry type

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

pesticide risk valuation in empirical economics a comparative approach abstract pesticide use in agriculture poses several risks to both human health and nontarget agro ecosystems due to lack of information on the monetary value of reducing pesticide risks it is difficult to perform an economic analysis that addresses social efficiency of policy and draws conclusions about the appropriate degree of regulation the aim of the current paper is to present a critical overview of the empirical literature on pesticide risk valuation that provides disaggregate willingness to pay estimates wtps of pesticide risks reduction recent multidimensional classification methods such as coined decision tree analysis are used in a comparative approach as tools for explaining the differences in empirical research findings the analysis shows that the order of magnitude of wtps is related to both the valuation technique and to the data available from biomedical and ecotoxicological literature it also shows that wtp estimates of pesticide risks cannot be simply averaged over several empirical studies the order of magnitude of a wtp estimate is in fact related to the specific type of risk and to the nature of the risk scenario considered as well to lay people s subjective perception of risks

do stated preference methods stand the test of time a test of the stability of contingent values and models for health risks when facing an extreme event abstract this paper focuses on the temporal stability of dichotomous choice dc contingent values and models and the implication of time related aspects for benefits transfer as a viable valuation method from a practical point of view time plays an important role in benefits transfer results are used from studies often carried out years ago and the obvious question is to what extent the estimated values and models stand the test of time in the case of value function transfer this implies testing the robustness of the estimated coefficient estimates over time the novelty of the temporal stability work presented here is that two identical dc contingent valuation cv studies of the health risks associated with bathing water quality were carried out before and during extreme weather conditions causing the closure of bathing locations for public health reasons differences in contingent values and models before and during the extreme event are tested the extreme event causes the seasonal good in question to become temporarily scarcer and marginal wtp is therefore expected to be higher during the extreme event than before but not that underlying preferences have changed hence basically two things are tested the effect of time on stated preferences for a seasonal good and the effect of the extreme event on these preferences wtp values before and during the event appear to be robust also when accounting for substitution effects the results before and during the extreme event remain transferable when accounting for theoretically expected factors in a simple multivariate transfer model however when introducing additional and contextual ad hoc factors in the model the estimated models and their random components become significantly different and hence not transferable suggesting that unobserved preferences may not have been randomly distributed across the two surveys after all

international benefit transfer methods and validity tests abstract the use of value estimates measured in one country to value policy changes in another country would seem to introduce some unique issues and challenges even when the good being valued is identical these issues include how should values be converted from one currency to another how to account for differences in measurable characteristics when those can vary markedly between countries especially income and how to account for differences between countries in culture and shared experiences that are difficult to quantify however these challenges in international benefit transfer are not that different from those encountered in transfers between regions within a country and transfer errors are comparable to those seen in intra country transfers

benefit transfer in europe how reliable are transfers between countries the benefits for specific health impacts related to air and water quality were measured in simultaneous contingent valuation surveys conducted in five different european countries consistent inter country differences in willingness to pay to avoid ill health episodes could not be explained by measurable differences in individual characteristics international transfer of unit values resulted in an average transfer error of 38 accounting for measurable differences among countries in health status income and other demographic measures either through ad hoc adjustments to the transferred values or through value function transfer did not improve transfer performance

benefit transfer via preference calibration prudential algebra for policy this paper proposes a new approach to benefit transfer the method assumes a specific form for preferences and uses available benefit information to identify and calibrate the preference parameters to match the existing benefit estimates this approach assures economic consistency of the transfers benefit measures can never be inconsistent with household income the logic also offers a series of potentially observable predictions that can be used to gauge the plausibility of benefit transfers when multiple benefit estimates from different methods are available such as hedonic property value travel cost demand and contingent valuation the framework uses the definition of the benefit concept from each method in a single preference function to reconcile differences it provides a specific way to take account of baseline conditions and scope effects i e the size of the proposed change consistently in the transfer the method is illustrated using estimates for benefit measure changes in water quality from three studies travel cost demand hedonic property value and contingent valuation analysis q26

the transferability of benefit transfer contingent valuation of water quality improvements in costa rica abstract identical contingent valuation studies of willingness to pay wtp for improvements in coastal water quality were conducted in the town of jaco and city of puntarenas on the pacific coast of costa rica several common hypotheses for benefit transfer reliability were tested for the transfer of wtp estimates between the two communities as well as between districts within puntarenas this study finds no basis for the claim that the reliability of benefit transfer increases with proximity between the study site where wtp estimates are taken from and the policy site estimates are transferred to the claim that transfer of wtp adjusted by the benefit function outperforms transfers of unadjusted or simple income adjusted wtp is rejected for this particular study results also show that census type socio economic site characteristics are necessary but not sufficient to explain site specific differences in wtp the trade offs in designing valid and reliable benefit transfer studies with transferable results are discussed

the effect of risk context on the value of a statistical life a bayesian meta model this paper presents the first value of statistical life vsl meta analysis that empirically estimates correction factors for out of context benefits transfer bt purposes in the field of mortality risk reductions elicited willingness to pay values in one risk context say road safety are frequently applied in other risk contexts like air pollution however differences in risk perception and the population at risk across contexts are likely to result in diverging vsl estimates in a meta analysis of 26 international stated preference studies a bayesian model is estimated regressing contingent values for mortality risk reductions originating from three different risk contexts on the characteristics of the risk reduction itself and additional variables characterizing the underlying studies a willingness to pay wtp premium for mortality risk reductions in the air pollution and general mortality risk context relative to improving road safety is observed evaluated at the mean road safety vsl estimates should be multiplied by a factor 1 8 before being applicable in the air pollution context moreover in an illustrative bt exercise we find limited overlap in the set of context specific predictive vsl distributions consequently out of context bt results in a substantial over or underestimation of the vsl

climate change policy s interactions with the tax system abstract this paper presents a range of insights from recent literature on how climate change policies and other environmental policies interact with the fiscal system it explores four issues associated with fiscal interactions first it examines how these interactions influence the prospects for a double dividend both an environmental improvement and a reduction in the costs of the tax system second it analyzes how the use of revenues from a carbon tax or from a cap and trade system involving auctioned emissions allowances influences these policies economic costs third it addresses the question whether carbon taxes or cap and trade programs represent more efficient sources of government revenue than other more traditional revenue sources such as income sales or payroll taxes finally it analyzes how fiscal interactions affect the choice between co 2 emissions pricing instruments carbon taxes and cap and trade and other climate policy instruments

testing the influence of substitute sites in nature valuation by using spatial discounting factors this paper investigates the effect of nearby nature substitute sites on preferences for nature restoration contrary to prior studies we use a respondent centric approach to control for substitute sites we assess each respondent specific spatial context by computing densities of nature substitute sites within various ranges from each respondent s home this approach considers the use and non use values of nature together data from three similar discrete choice experiments carried out in flanders belgium are compared different spatial discounting factors are tested to explore how the substitution effect behaves with regard to distance latent class analyses are performed to account for preference heterogeneity among respondents we observe divergent behaviours across groups of respondents the distance to substitutes affects how respondents gauge substitute sites we find a significant influence of the squared average buffer distance but this effect varies in sign across case studies and classes of respondents our results demonstrate that individual specific gis data can significantly improve the representation of the spatial context and the transferability of value functions however the roles played by preference heterogeneity and nature perception on respondents capacity to value nature still deserves further attention in future research

hedonic models and air pollution twenty five years and counting this paper reports a meta analysis of how effectively hedonic property models have detected the influence of air pollution on housing prices probit estimates are reported describing how data model specification and local property market conditions in cities represented in thirty seven studies influence the ability of hedonic models to uncover negative statistically significant relationships between housing prices and air pollution measures

principles of economics 8th ed there are few books that have been discussed as intensively as alfred marshall s seminal textbook on economics despite this however there continues to be intriguing debate and disagreement about

impact of bt cotton on pesticide poisoning in smallholder agriculture a panel data analysis while substantial research on the productivity and profit effects of bt cotton has been carried out recently the economic evaluation of positive and negative externalities has received much less attention here we focus on farmer health impacts resulting from bt related changes in chemical pesticide use previous studies have documented that bt cotton has reduced the problem of pesticide poisoning in developing countries but they have failed to account for unobserved heterogeneity between technology adopters and non adopters we use unique panel survey data from india to estimate unbiased effects and their developments over time bt cotton has reduced pesticide applications by 50 with the largest reductions of 70 occurring in the most toxic types of chemicals results of fixed effects poisson models confirm that bt has notably reduced the incidence of acute pesticide poisoning among cotton growers these effects have become more pronounced with increasing technology adoption rates bt cotton now helps to avoid several million cases of pesticide poisoning in india every year which also entails sizeable health cost savings