accounting for underutilization of trade preference programs the us generalized system of preferences the us generalized system of preferences gsp provides duty free market access to developing countries yet despite these preferences about 40 of imports qualifying for gsp enter the us without claiming the benefits this paper documents variations in gsp utilization rates and explains their determinants with a special emphasis on the production structure of beneficiary countries as captured by local content the findings suggest that higher local content shares in output lead to higher utilization rates in addition the utilization rate rises with the preference margin size of exports and regional cumulation in general and declines with degree ofprocessing resume expliquer la sous utilisation des programmes de preferences commerciales le systeme generalise de preferences des etats unis le systeme generalise de preferences sgp donne acces sans droits de douane au marche americain pour des pays en developpement mais malgre ce traitement de faveur a peu pres 40 des importations qui se qualifieraient entrent aux etats unis sans reclamer ces avantages ce memoire documente les variations dans le taux d utilisation du sgp et les facteurs qui peuvent expliquer ce phenomene en mettant l accent sur la structure de production des pays beneficiaires telle que saisie par le contenu local les resultats suggerent qu une portion elevee de contenu local dans le produit entraine un plus haut taux d utilisation du sgp de plus le taux d utilisation s accroit avec la marge de preference la taille des exportations et la cumulation d autres arrangements regionaux et diminue a proportion que le degre de transformation s accroit

social and political responses to ecological tax reform in europe an introduction to the special issue this paper introduces the special issue on the policies for ecological tax reform assessment of social responses petras project about responses to ecological tax reform etr in europe although etr is widely accepted to be a policy with desirable effects its implementation has been limited by problems of political acceptability the project aimed to address the question of how to make such a policy more acceptable it is the first study to examine in depth the thinking of members of the general public about the etr policies and is also the first international comparative study of the thinking of ordinary business people about etr policies the petras project methodology was based around the use of interviews and focus groups to inform the assessment of social responses to etr policies and the development of improved designs for them a number of issues emerged relating to awareness trust understanding of the purpose visibility incentives regressivity levels of taxation terminology communication about etr and the use of alternative instruments together with these similarities a pattern of differences between the countries can also be seen the final section of this paper introduces the national studies described in the following papers

custom hired tractor services and returns to scale in smallholder agriculture a production function approach historically agricultural transformation has often accompanied the increase in the returns to scale little direct evidence exists however on what actually causes such increase despite the knowledge of many factors that are associated with this increase we fill this knowledge gap by testing whether hiring in tractor services has raised returns to scale in agriculture at the household level in nepal terai that has undergone rapid growth in the tractor use through custom hiring services using switching regression and inverse probability weighted generalized method of moments we address two sources of endogeneity involved with the estimation of returns to scale 1 farmers self selection on whether to hire in tractor services and 2 use of inputs in the production function for both cobb douglas and translog production function specifications we find that hiring in tractor services significantly increased the returns to scale in agricultural production by about 0 2 0 3 among farm households not owning tractors for which suitable control groups are found findings are robust under various alternative specifications

using labels to investigate scope effects in stated preference methods insufficient sensitivity to scope variations in the scale of the environmental good on offer remains a major criticism of stated preference methods and many studies fail a scope test of some sort across a range of existing explanations for insensitivity to scope commodity mis specification embedding warm glows there seems to exist no clear conclusion on how to deal with the problem this paper provides an alternative explanation for insufficient sensitivity to scope based on re definition of the determinants of value for environmental goods within an attributes based choice model in the proposed framework respondents willingness to pay need depend not only on physical characteristics of a good but may also depend on the label under which the environmental good is sold in the hypothetical market to investigate this problem a choice experiment study of biodiversity was conducted we find that controlling for the effects of a label in this case national park designation leads to significant increase in the scope sensitivity of welfare measures

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

preferential market access design evidence and lessons from african apparel exports to the united states and the european union the least developed countries rely on preferential market access to benefit from these preferences proof of sufficient transformation must be provided to customs in importing countries by meeting the rules of origin requirements these rules of origin are complicated and burdensome to exporters in least developed countries since 2001 under the united states u s africa growth opportunity act agoa 22 african countries that export apparel to the u s have been able to use fabric of any origin single transformation and still meet the criterion for preferential access the so called special rule in contrast the european union eu has continued to require yarn to be woven into fabric and then made into apparel in the same country double transformation panel estimates for the 1996 2004 period exploit this quasi experimental change in the design of preferences estimates show that this simplification contributed to an increase in export volume of approximately 168 percent for the top seven beneficiaries or approximately four times as much as the 44 percent growth effect from the initial preferential access under the agoa without single transformation this change in design was also important for diversity in apparel exports because the number of export varieties grew more rapidly under the agoa special regime

prices technology and farm size in this paper we construct and empirically test a theory of the agricultural firm which explains the long term growth in farm size in the united states typically the u s farm unit is a family enterprise consequently the ratio of the opportunity cost of farm labor to the price of machinery services determines the size of the farm operation by influencing the machine labor ratio applying the model to u s data we explain virtually all of the growth in the machine labor ratio and in farm size over the 1930 70 period by changes in relative factor prices without reference to technological change or economies of scale

exchange rate and utilization of free trade agreements focus on rules of origin abstract tariff rates under a free trade agreement fta are not necessarily used in the majority of trade even among members of an fta one of the causes of this phenomenon is the presence of rules of origin roos which require exporters to comply with specific conditions when utilizing an fta scheme to consider how roos should be designed so that exporters can more robustly use an fta scheme this paper investigates the effect of exchange rates on fta scheme utilization with a focus on roos exchange rates affect exporters compliance with roos by changing the so called value added ratio which is defined as 1 price of imported inputs from non fta member countries export product price based on a model of pricing to market we propose that an unexpected depreciation of exporters currency against importers currency improves the value added ratio through a rise in the export product s price which in turn enhances exporters utilization of an fta scheme we also show strong empirical support for the proposition using the detailed product level data on fta scheme utilization in korea s imports from association of south east asian nations asean countries

earmarking conservation further inquiry on scope effects in stated preference methods applied to nature based tourism abstract the way people assign value to nature conservation policies has important implications for management choices economic valuation surveys are affected by individual behavioural patterns that are not exhaustively explained by traditional sources of bias such as embedding flagship species fixed budget commodity misspecification and warm glows through a contingent valuation study of alpine wildlife we use an external scope test to evaluate the difference in willingness to pay among tourists for conservation policies targeted either to the ibex alone or to the four ungulates populating the gran paradiso national park in northwest italy ibex red deer roe deer chamois we find that park users are willing to contribute significantly more to policies protecting one of the four ungulates than all four of them a result that we argue should be ascribed to pure aversion to less specific policy objectives i e to a preference for punctual earmarking of resources devoted to conservation

the asymmetric effects of reversible tariff changes under the united states gsp in a partial equilibrium textbook model of competitive international trade the volume and net value of imports always vary inversely with the tariff rate this result depends on assumptions that the tariff changes are substantial exogenous permanent and applied on a most favorednation mfn basis empirical applications of this theory however encounter different conditions generalequilibrium effects such as changes in prices exchange rates and income tend to be offsetting imperfect competition can make the incidence of the tariff indeterminate many tariff changes are small endogenous temporary and or discriminatory to illustrate how these differences in tariffs can alter their observed relation to imports we offer the following examples a tokyo round cuts in u s tariffs were staged generally over eight years and averaged only 0 3 percent per annum 6 as compared to 6 4 percent average annual changes in american import prices over the same 1980 87 period 18 if search and recontracting costs caused buyers to ignore relatively small price variations then many observed tariff changes would produce negligible effects b governments tend to lower tariffs when imports are low enough to obviate political problems and they raise them as a response to import surges observers who ignore this endogeneity might conclude that imports are positively related to tariff rates c while many tariff concessions are bound under the gatt some duties are temporarily altered to provide import relief for domestic producers or preferential access for certain trade partners importers may not respond if the temporary benefits of doing so are exceeded by the costs of finding substitutes d the importers response to a tariff change will also differ between cases where some or all imports of a given product are affected a discriminatory tariff change might shift the shares of suppliers while leaving total imports virtually unaltered empirical studies seldom test the relation between imports and tariffs directly time series estimates of import demand equations usually subsume the tariff in a gross price variable

part whole bias in contingent valuation will scope effects be detected with inexpensive survey methods the purpose of this paper is to test for scope effects with the contingent valuation method we use data from a telephone survey focusing on water quality improvements in the albemarle and pamlico sounds in north carolina we find that the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to the scope of the policy these results suggest that the use of inexpensive survey methods may not be the cause of the failure to detect scope effects in some recent contingent valuation studies

the intercountry agricultural production function and productivity differences among countries comment abstract kawagoe hayami and ruttan 1985 find using an intercountry agricultural production function that scale economies explain 15 of the difference in labour productivity between developed and less developed countries in this note their finding of large scale economies in developed countries is contrasted with the commoner finding of approximately constant returns to scale in studies using farm level data and is likened to other studies employing grouped data which also find large scale economies it is suggested that the latter finding may be due to statistical artefact arising from the grouped nature of the data

estimating the use and preservation values of national parks tourism resources using a contingent valuation method abstract the korean national parks authority has questioned whether natural resources have enough economic value to justify an increase in admission fee in the case of inadequate assistance from the government alternatively they also question whether the national parks have sufficient value to contribute to citizens welfare in order to receive continuing support from the government hence the purpose of this research is to estimate the use and preservation values of natural and or cultural resources in five distinctive national parks using a dichotomous choice contingent valuation method the empirical results show that natural and or cultural resources of the sample national parks possessed considerable use and preservation values outweighing current admission fees and maintenance costs per visitor thus these values provide enough justification for the national park authority to increase admission fees to maintain the quality of natural environment and avoid degrading natural resources in the event of no assistance by the government the findings may provide guidance to national park managers and practitioners who establish pricing policies the results also show that values of natural and or cultural resources were different across five distinctive national parks indicating the possibility of employing differential admission fees according to park characteristics

eu economic partnership agreements and wto negotiations a quantitative assessment of trade preference granting and erosion in the banana market the paper provides a quantitative assessment of the impact on the banana market of the expansion of trade preferences the european union granted africa caribbean and pacific acp countries with the economic partnership agreements epa and of the possible erosion of these preferences as a result of different possible conclusions if any of on going wto negotiations the results of the simulations performed suggest that the impact of the epa on production and consumption of bananas in the eu will be limited while benefits for acp countries will be significant at the expense of most favoured nation mfn exporters an agreement between the eu and mfn countries to end the outstanding wto disputes on bananas and or the conclusion of the wto doha round may bring an erosion of the preferential margins currently enjoyed by acp countries of such an order of magnitude as to cancel out most of these benefits

some empirical evidence on embedding effects in contingent valuation of forest protection abstract we test for an embedding effect on a geographically distributed public good and the extent to which improvements in the cvm design reduce the occurrence and magnitude of embedding effects in valuation using both open ended and dichotomous choice cvm for protection of forests in all of southeastern australia and two smaller portions of that area we find the occurrence of embedding effects in only one of the two levels when embedding effects were present there was a reduction in value much smaller than that found by kahneman and knetsch

the peasant in economic modernization peasants self employed tillers of soil whose farm production is based mainly on family labor as an integral part of household activities have been for thousands of years and still are today the majority of mankind their production mode represents a sharp contrast with the large internal organization of modern corporate firms characterized by a hierarchy of employees an apparently archaic style of peasant farming relative to modern corporate activities has often led to a presumption that the peasantry is a remnant of feudal society and bound to disappear as modernization proceeds as a corollary it has been argued that consolidation of peasants into large farm enterprises is desirable or necessary for promoting agricultural productivity growth consistent with modern economic development this perspective has been waning recently partly because of the disastrous experience of collective farming in former socialist economies as well as repeated failures in the attempt to develop large farms as both state and private enterprises in developing economies eicher and baker johnson and ruttan concurrently the high potential of peasants to achieve productivity growth has been recognized with the successful diffusion of modern high yielding varieties and related inputs the so called green revolution in asia yet pessimism about peasant agriculture persists and tends to distort the development strategy of the third world toward favoring large farm estates binswanger deininger and feder eicher and rukuni more ambiguous is the role of peasants in industrial and commercial development the traditional view from karl marx to w arthur

the impact of eu preferential trade agreements on foreign direct investment although north south preferential trade agreements ptas are expected to affect foreign direct investment fdi there is not much evidence to date on the impact of eu ptas on the pattern of fdi the aim of this study is to assess the impact of eu ptas on the outward stocks of fdi of the eu we estimate a model based on the knowledge capital theory of the multinational enterprise over the period 1995 2005 using a sample of 173 host countries explanatory variables include measures of the level of bilateral protection and a dummy to capture the impact of deep integration provisions of ptas a dynamic panel model with fixed effects is used in order to take into account the dynamic behaviour of fdi and the heterogeneity bias results show that eu fdi is both horizontal and vertical the level of eu protection affects fdi negatively while the impact of the tariffs applied by host countries varies across groups of partner countries deep integration provisions affect eu fdi positively

an investigation of part whole biases in contingent valuation studies abstract part whole bias is a possible explanation for nonuse contingent valuation estimates that are insensitive to marginal changes in environmental commodities our empirical analyses reveal no statistically significant differences in willingness to pay of independent samples of nonusers to prevent 2000 20 000 or 200 000 migratory waterfowl deaths in the central flyway all numbers less than 2 of the waterfowl population five alternative propositions for explaining this empirical findings do not provide a completely satisfactory explanation more research is necessary to investigate appropriate commodity metrics sample sizes for small changes in environmental commodities and consider how respondents evaluate small changes in environmental commodities

farm mechanization scale economies and polarization the japanese experience abstract whether economies of scale are the major factor underlying concentration of agricultural land in large farms has long been under debate the case study of japanese agriculture for the past three decades confirmed the tendency observed from international comparison that increasing returns in agricultural production emerge when economic development reaches a stage at which real wage rates begin to rise sharply it was found that the effect of scale economies was highly significant even though the intersectoral labor market effect was greater on land concentration the results imply that developing countries need not worry about mechanization to cause more unequal land distribution if factor markets are not unduly distorted

the meta production function approach to technological change in world agriculture abstract an alternative meta production function for agriculture is estimated with the cross section data for 43 countries and three years 1960 1970 and 1980 constructed and used by kawagoe hayami and ruttan and hayami and ruttan in their studies by allowing for country specific efficiency factors and using a flexible functional form the transcendental logarithmic production function strikingly different results from those of kawagoe hayami and ruttan are obtained in particular it is found that elasticity of output with respect to machinery is variable and the degree of local returns to scale is not constant and increases with the usage of machinery

the us generalised system of preferences in principle and practice in principle the us generalised system of preferences gsp offers uniform market access to exports from eligible developing countries for a broad set of gsp eligible products in practice realised gsp tariff exemptions demonstrate marked variation across countries industries and years in this paper we identify the sources of discretionary and non discretionary gsp exclusions and quantify the extent to which competitive needs limitations cnls waivers and additional annual product country and country product exclusions drive a wedge between the generalised principle of gsp and its implementation in practice

sequencing and nesting in contingent valuation surveys abstract the term embedding is ill defined and has been applied to distinct phenomena some predicted by economic theory and others not this paper lays out a theoretical framework for looking at these phenomena and provides a set of well defined terms included is a discussion of survey design problems which may induce spurious evidence in favor of the hypothesis that respondents are insensitive to the scope of the good being valued an empirical example of the component sensitivity is provided this test rejects the hypothesis that respondents are insensitive to the scope of the good being valued

the intercountry agricultural production function and productivity differences among countries abstract the sources of differences in labor productivity in agriculture between developed countries dc s and less developed countries ldc s are identified by estimating an aggregate agricultural production function based on cross county data for 1960 1970 and 1980 the production function was found to be stable over the entire period agriculture in the dc s was characterized by increasing returns and in the ldc s by constant returns to scale the results imply that unfavorable man land ratios do not represent an immediate barrier to rapid agricultural development in the low income ldc s but they may create a serious agricultural adjustment problem as those countries advance into the middle income range

the structure of motivation for contingent values a case study of lake water quality improvement abstract critics of the contingent valuation cv method have argued that individuals apply noneconomic motives in responding to cv questions implying that elicited values are not valid measures of the economic benefit of environmental improvement this study examines the role of such motives by using measures of attitude and motive strength to interpret willingness to pay wtp values for a set of nested environmental goods with potential use and nonuse benefits motivational structure is found to be more complex than suggested by the simple distinction between valid economic theoretic and noneconomic motives social motivations possibly associated with the benefit of contributing to a public good rather than the benefits of the good itself are potentially relevant to the wtp decision but do not give rise to separable values the strength of perceived personal responsibility for provision of the good is significantly associated with wtp but also with the theoretically desirable property of enhanced scope sensitivity wtp is not found to be associated with the extent to which the individual feels under some general moral obligation to contribute to good causes motives arising from ethical concerns for the environment and altruism are also potentially relevant to wtp but are closely related to underlying motives associated with existence and personal use values respectively it is suggested that the cv debate should be informed by further empirical investigation of the extent to which motives for wtp can be treated as separable

pollution tax heuristics an empirical study of willingness to pay higher gasoline taxes economists widely agree that in concept pollution taxes are the most cost effective means of reducing pollution with the advent of monitoring and enforcement technologies the case for pollution taxation is generally getting stronger on the merits despite widespread agreement among economists however pollution taxes remain unpopular especially in north america some oppose pollution taxes because of a suspicion that government would misspend the tax proceeds while others oppose pollution taxes because they would impose economic hardships upon certain individuals groups or industries and there is no pollution tax more pathologically hated as the gasoline tax this is unfortunate from an economic perspective as a gasoline tax is easy to implement and is a reasonable pigouvian tax scaling proportionately with the harms of consumption surprisingly there is a dearth of theory explaining this cleave between economists and virtually everybody else drawing on behavioralist literatures this paper introduces several theories as to why people and governments so vehemently oppose pollution taxes using the example of gasoline taxes we provide some empirical evidence for these theories we also show that revenue recycling the use of tax proceeds to reduce other taxes is an effective means of reducing opposition to gasoline taxes

measuring birdwatchers preferences a case for using online networks and mixed mode surveys abstract this paper reports findings derived from a study of birdwatchers in the azores the subject was birdwatchers preferences for given management actions designed to improve the attractiveness of bird watching sites in the absence of official statistics on this market segment use was made of a mixed mode survey incorporating both on site and off site surveys and the use of on line social networks and communications tools the variable willingness to stay more time at the site was used as a welfare measure it has the advantage that it can be used to demonstrate the significant returns of eco tourism to local communities two findings emerge first tourists practicing wildlife viewing and nature based activities are less worried about infrastructures and care more about biodiversity and habitat quality and second the research technique appears to be successful when surveying seasonal recreation communities that are small and socially cohesive

growth by destination the role of trade in africa s recent growth episode summary over the period 1990 2009 africa has experienced a distinct and favorable reversal in its growth fortunes in stark contrast to its performance in the preceding decades leading to a variety of hypotheses seeking to explain the phenomenon this paper presents both cross country and panel data evidence on the causal factors driving the recent turnaround in africa s growth and takes the unique approach of disaggregating the separate growth impacts of africa s bilateral trade with china europe and america the empirical analysis presented in this paper suggests that the primary and most robust causal factors driving africa s recent growth turnaround are private sector and foreign direct investment although empirical evidence of the role of bilateral trade openness in africa s recent growth emerges within a fixed effect estimation setting these results are not as robust when endogeneity and other issues are fully accounted for among the three major bilateral partners africa s bilateral trade with china has been a relatively important factor spurring growth on the continent and especially so in resource rich oil producing and non landlocked countries the econometric results are not as supportive of growth inducing effects of foreign aid these findings emerge after applying a variety of panel data specifications to the data including the recent fixed effects filtered fef estimator introduced by pesaran and zhou 2014 and the dynamic panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator which allows for endogeneity between trade and growth

contingent valuation of ecotourism in annapurna conservation area nepal implications for sustainable park finance and local development abstract to determine willingness to pay wtp for candidate entry fees contingent valuation surveys were administered to 315 foreign visitors to the annapurna conservation area nepal during april and may of 2006 the results of logit regression showed that the bid amount family size visitors satisfaction the use of a guide and group size were the most significant predictors of wtp results suggest that most visitors would be willing to pay an entry fee considerably higher than the current fee of 27 u s dollars usd the mean and median wtp were 69 2 and 74 3 usd respectively the most common explanation for wtp by respondents was a desire to better protect the environment the most common explanation for unwillingness to pay was that the bid was simply too expensive two models were developed based upon different predictions of visitor numbers an optimistic case and pessimistic case to calculate the expected revenue production and likely gross local economic impact of candidate entry fees based on this analysis we recommend an increase in the entry fee to usd 50 in the optimistic scenario this higher entry fee leaves a budget surplus in the pessimistic scenario it would reduce current budget deficits

scope effects in contingent valuation does the assumed statistical distribution of wtp matter abstract economic theory assumes that willingness to pay wtp increases with the quantity of the consumed good this implies that there should be a scope effect in contingent valuation studies however in previous issues of ecological economics several authors criticized the contingent valuation cv method for the absence of such effect or its inadequacy in this paper we contribute to this ongoing debate by proposing to systematically apply several wtp statistical distribution assumptions to test for scope effects and check its plausibility following whitehead s 2016 recent recommendations we perform this approach using data from a swiss case study assessing the wtp for an increased surface of forest reserves we find that both mean wtp and scope effects are sensitive to the statistical distribution assumption regarding plausibility scope elasticities provide mixed result and also depend on the assumed statistical distribution of wtp for small sample size cv studies a non parametric analysis a spike model or an open ended format can thus be better suited to reveal scope effects than the classical parametric dichotomous choice analysis we thus recommend to systematically apply several statistical distribution assumptions of wtp to test for scope effects and their plausibility

making eu trade agreements work the role of rules of origin a key element of the eu s free trade and preferential trade agreements is the extent to which they deliver improved market access and so contribute to the eu s foreign policy objectives towards developing countries and neighbouring countries in europe including the countries of the balkans previous preferential trade schemes have been ineffective in delivering improved access to the eu market since only a small proportion of the available preferences have actually been utilised the main reason for this is probably the very restrictive rules of origin that the eu imposes coupled with the costs of proving consistency with these rules if the eu wants the everything but arms agreement and free trade agreements with countries in the balkans to generate substantial improvements in access to the eu market for products from these countries then it will have to reconsider the current rules of origin and implement less restrictive rules backed up by a careful safeguards policy

the demand for earmarking results from a focus group study abstract environmental taxes might be efficient but plans to impose new taxes are often met with fierce public resistance in order to design environmental taxes that are both efficient and acceptable to the public so that they can be politically feasible it is important to understand public attitudes towards environmental taxes we conduct a focus group study in norway to extend the current knowledge on this issue we find less general resistance to taxation as a policy instrument and seemingly more trust in government than what has been reported in similar studies from other countries the participants are however very skeptical and do not see the point of using the revenues from an environmental tax to reduce other taxes such as the payroll tax instead they express a very strong preference for earmarking the revenues for environmental purposes they also call for more information about environmental taxes in particular on how the revenues are spent providing more information including what the revenues are spent on irrespective of whether they are earmarked or not would seem to provide a relatively cheap and possibly effective way to increase the public acceptability of new or increased environmental taxes

preference utilisation and tariff reduction in eu imports from acp countries textabstractdespite the long relationship between the eu and the african caribbean and pacific acp countries aimed at encouraging their exports while stimulating growth and investment the acp states still face difficulties in integrating into the world economy this paper examines the non least developed acp countries preferential trade with the eu the objective is to explain the determinants of preferential exports of acp countries towards the eu and to assess the impact of preferences on trade volumes we also investigate the existence of a threshold in the offered duty reduction under which traders have no incentives to ask for preferences

sweet and sour changes in trade regimes sugar is an important export for a number of developing countries especially in the african caribbean and pacific regions in many of these countries preferential access to the eu market has been a key factor to develop their sugar sectors the recent and proposed changes to the international sugar trade regimes particularly in the eu are threatening this preferential access we study the possible implications of such changes on acp countries sugar production and exports by using a spatial price equilibrium model specifically developed for the sugar market the results suggest that the effects of these changes are likely to vary according to the prevailing level of world sugar market price and according to whether acp countries are current exporters to the eu

efficiency gains afforded by improved bid design versus follow up valuation questions in discrete choice cv studies interval data analysis of cv dis crete choice responses delivers efficiency gains which must be weighed against the risk of intro ducing strategic response bias efficiency gains are also achievable by improved bid design we assess these gains on median wtp estimates first in an empirical application then by means of a monte carlo experiment comparing three differ ent bid designs improved but sub optimal bid design delivers comparable gains to those achieved by one and two follow up questions the first follow up captures more than 50 of the efficiency gain provided by a second follow up jel q26

food insecurity income inequality and the changing comparative advantage in world agriculture i would like to argue in this article that in the process of economic development in land poor countries in asia agriculture faces three distinctly different problems food insecurity sectoral income inequality and the declining food self sufficiency associated with the declining comparative advantage in agriculture at the high income stage massive imports of food grains to asia if they occur will aggravate the world food shortage which will have significant implications for the poverty incidence in the world i argue that in order to avoid such a tragedy asia should expand farm size to reduce labor cost by adopting large scale mechanization sub saharan africa should realize a green revolution in grain production and latin america should further expand its grain production capacity

rules of origin as commercial policy instruments this article examines the role of rules of origin as a commercial policy instrument that targets the input composition of imports using a three country partial equilibrium structure we demonstrate conditions under which the imposition of a binding rule will be welfare improving for an importer facing competitive export suppliers we further show that employing rules of origin in this way would be complementary to rather than a substitute for conventional optimal tariffs copyright economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association