did the bank of japan have a target zone for the inflation rate abstract piecewise linear policy reaction functions are estimated to examine the bank of japan s monetary policy during the period 1975 1995 the results indicate that the bank of japan implemented an implicit inflation zone targeting policy

interpreting measures of economic loss evidence from contingent valuation and experimental studies abstract from the standpoint of conventional welfare theory it is surprising that responses to contingent valuation studies of environmental goods have shown a consistent difference between willingness to pay and compensation demanded measures of economic loss this paper examines these results in light of four reasons most often given as grounds for their dismissal new experimental evidence supports an interpretation of the observed disparity in payment and compensation based measures as both real and psychologically meaningful an alternative conceptual framework suggested by prospect theory is outlined and its relevance for economic assessments of potential environmental change is discussed briefly

a note on environmental risk and the rate of discount abstract this paper examines the use of risk adjusted discount rates to evaluate future environmental risks it is determined that the risk adjusted discount rate should be lower not higher than the risk free rate if evaluation of future environmental risks is to point toward optimality

discounting in a world of limited growth this paper explores the consequences fordiscounting of assuming limits to growth one of the main determinants of the discount rate is the rate of economic growth if growth rates decline in the future then the discount rate should not be constant but also decline over time in fact we would then need not a single discount rate but rather a variable discount schedule this would imply higher present values for the distant future the paper analyses how discount rates would vary with different assumptions about the patterns of growth and the pure rate of time preference

a note on environmental risk and the rate of discount comment abstract the sign of the adjustment to the riskless discount rate for environmental risk depends on whether the price of avoiding the consequences of the externality is seen as reducing expected net benefits or increasing expected costs the conclusion is that the risk adjustment is positive when the externality is defined as reducing expected net benefits

academic research underlying industrial innovations there has been no systematic study of the characteristics of the universities and academic researchers that seem to have contributed most to industrial innovation nor do we know how such academic research has been funded this paper based on data obtained from sixty six firms in seven major manufacturing industries and from over two hundred academic researchers sheds new light on the sources characteristics and financing of academic research underlying industrial innovation the findings should be of interest to economists concerned with technological change and to policymakers attempting to increase the economic payoff from the nation s academic research copyright 1995 by mit press

valuing option existence and bequest demands for wilderness to assess the relative importance of current costs and future benefits of nuclear waste storage we develop a simple model of bequest value the basic model of nonparternalistic altruism is extended to account for the uncertain nature of the externality

when do long run identifying restrictions give reliable results many recent articles have identified behavioral disturbances in vector autoregressions by imposing restrictions on the long run effects of shocks this article demonstrates that this approach will be unreliable unless the underlying economy satisfies three types of strong restrictions although many aspects of these issues have been raised before this article draws out and illustrates the implications for inferences under the long run scheme furthermore it provides strategies for dealing with the problems

international evidence on the sources of macroeconomic fluctuations abstract this paper examines the causes of macroeconomic fluctuations in five economies germany japan sweden the united kingdom and the united states using a bivariate var model for output and inflation the results demonstrate that both demand and supply shocks are important sources of business cycle fluctuations moreover at the business cycle frequency there are strong similarities between germany the united kingdom and the united states where more than 50 percent of the forecast error variance in both output and inflation are due to supply shocks on the other hand in japan and sweden over 90 percent of the error variance in output and less than 20 percent of the error variance of inflation are due to supply shocks

valuing non market goods using contingent valuation abstract contingent valuation is a technique being developed by economists for the valuation of environmental commodities not traded in markets this paper discusses the major problem areas associated with this method of value estimation these comprise bias strategic hypothetical and design biases the discrepancy between willingness to pay and compensation demanded the aggregation procedure the choice of question format and non use values some evidence from comparative studies is reported and comments made on the accuracy of contingent valuation answers finally the conditions under which contingent valuation seems to operate best are set out

evaluation of nature conservation recent literature shows a lively debate on how tocapture ecological and environmental aspects indifferent evaluation methods and the closely relatedissue of the im possibilities of monetization ofthese aspects although economists in general tend tofavour cost benefit analysis cba abovemulti criteria analysis mca part of the literaturesuggests that cba falls short of being the onlydecision making device for environmental problems both for theoretical and practical reasons this paperdiscusses both evaluation methods and the main resultsof a major publicly financed nature conservationproject in the netherlands

does the federal reserve affect asset prices abstract the federal reserve is probably one of the institutions most closely monitored by investors this indicates that investors believe the actions of the fed have implications for asset prices to this date the trading activities of the fed in the financial markets have not been examined to see how the fed influences asset prices using daily data on open market operations omos and asset prices this study fills this void one finding of the paper is that omos granger cause both short and long term interest rates furthermore the sign of the relationship confirms the existence of the liquidity effect given that its trades represent a small portion of the market volume how the fed influences bond prices is a puzzle the only reasonable explanation is that the fed s trades have high information content judging by the impulse response paths the reaction of interest rates to open market operations is fast additionally it appears that monetary policy has a lasting impact on interest rates

interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts the effects of monetary policy existing theory and evidence on the effects of monetary policy are reviewed substantial room for disagreement among economists remains new evidence based on multivariate time series studies of several countries is presented while certain patterns in the data consistent with effective monetary policy are strikingly similar across countries others particularly the tendency of interest rate increases to predict high inflation are harder to reconcile with effective monetary policy

intergenerational transfers and the social discount rate this paper investigates the relationship between intergenerational asset transfers and the choice of the discount rate for use in cost benefit analysis in a model of a competitive overlapping generations economy constrained by a socially managed exhaustible resource provided that there are no distortions in capital markets and that all agents hold perfect foresight cost benefit techniques will result in a pareto efficient resource allocation if the discount rate is set equal to the market rate of interest but since the path of the interest rate depends on the level of intergenerational transfers cost benefit techniques do not ensure a socially desirable distribution of welfare between generations a social optimum will result only if intergenerational transfers are properly chosen and enforced decentralized private altruism may result in intergenerational transfers that both present and future individuals would agree are too small if members of the present generation attach positive weight to the general welfare of future generations not simply their personal descendants in a world where intergenerational transfers are non optimal second best policy making may imply a constrained optimum that is inefficient together these findings suggest that cost benefit analysis is at best a partial criterion to policy formulation that should be used only in conjunction with ethical principles that define the proper distribution of welfare between present and future generations

the grace period in international patent law and its effect on the timing of disclosure abstract the paper applies a novel methodology to us and epo patent data to assess how often the general grace period exception is used in the usa and the likely impact of international patent regulations that almost invariably deny such use on the pace of new disclosures in academia comparisons of average publication delays of european academic inventors show that the grace period accelerates knowledge communication and that variations are likely to depend on a lack of harmonisation of international legal systems transaction costs and the presence of a firm among patent assignees

a new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the business cycle abstract this paper introduces a general procedure for decomposition of non stationary time series into a permanent and transitory component allowing both components to be stochastic the permanent component is shown to be a random walk with drift and the transitory or cyclical component is a stationary process with mean zero the decomposition methodology which depends only on past data and therefore is computable in real time is applied to the problem of measuring and dating business cycles in the portwar u s economy we find that measured expansions and contractions are of roughly equivalent duration and that our dating of cyclical episodes tends to lead the traditional nber dating and to a lesser extent the growth cycle chronology of zarnowitz and boschan 1977

the new approach to wilderness preservation through benefit cost analysis over the last 15 years economists of resources for the future led by john krutilla have been developing a new approach to wilderness preservation this paper offers a concise exposition of their approach and adds a few new steps the basic ingredient of the new approach is a perception of declining net benefits of wilderness development and rising net benefits of wilderness preservation over time these alter the entire shape of the benefit cost analysis of potential development the new steps involve reversibility postponability and recognition of multiple interest rates

environmental valuation to use or not to use a comparative study of the united states and europe valuation methods have been used for five main purposes in environmental decision making cost benefit analysis cba of projects cba of new regulations natural resource damage assessment environmental costing and environmental accounting the relatively lower importance attached to economic efficiency in environmental decision making in most european countries compared to the u s a both legally and in practice might account for our general finding that there are very few valuation studies in europe which have served as a decisive basis for environmental policy and regulations however with eu s goal to establish environmentally adjusted national accounts and to apply cba to environmental policy and regulations time seems ripe for an increased use of valuation techniques in europe

if star scientists do not patent the effect of productivity basicness and impact on the decision to patent in the academic world abstract we run an event history analysis on a sample of italian researchers in the field of materials science aiming at understanding how the characteristics of the research trajectories followed by scientists in academia affect their opportunities to do development of industrial applications results of our estimates suggest that all measures of academic performances have a dual effect although different in magnitude scientists that are moving along applied research trajectories find it easier to produce industrial applications than their colleagues engaged in the quest for very fundamental understanding we interpret our results by suggesting that for the former more academic research results in more exploitable results hence in more chances to patent for the latter more academic research makes it just more unlikely that they will find the time to produce industrial applications similar results apply for the low versus high research impact

wilderness development decisions and the krutilla fisher model the case of scotland s flow country this paper reports some results from an empirical study of wilderness management in the flow country of northern scotland the flow country is an area of extensive blanket bog characterized by extensive populations of internationally rare breeding birds and by a very distinctive landscape the principle threat to the area at present comes from large scale afforestation this activity is subsidized by the state through the forestry commission and yet seems likely to create irreversible external cost flows the economic efficiency of continued planting in the area is tested for using the krutilla fisher model preservation benefits accruing to both users and non users are estimated using contingent valuation

on the intergenerational allocation of natural resources it is known hartwick and others that under standard assumptions a society that invests in reproducible capital the competitive rents on its current extraction of exhaustible resources will enjoy a consumption stream constant in time it is shown here that this result can be interpreted as saying that an appropriately defined stock of capital including the initial endowment of resources is being maintained intact and that consumption can be interpreted as the interest on that patrimony this seems like a useful rule of thumb for policy

signals or noise explaining the variation in recreation benefit estimates this paper uses meta analysis to summarize the benefit estimates derived from travel cost recreation demand models after reviewing approximately 200 published and unpublished studies prepared from 1970 to 1986 77 were found to report either consumer surplus estimates or sufficient information to derive them using these estimates of the consumer surplus per unit of use from each study it was possible to evaluate the influence of variables describing the site characteristics the activities undertaken at each site the behavioral assumptions and the specification decisions the findings provide clear support for using econometric methods to summarize results from diverse empirical studies they highlight the important research issues in model development and offer a consistency check to the procedures used in benefit transfer analyses for policy evaluations

inflation forecast targeting implementing and monitoring inflation targets abstract inflation targeting is shown to imply inflation forecast targeting the central bank s inflation forecast becomes an explicit intermediate target inflation forecast targeting simplifies both implementation and monitoring of monetary policy the weight on output stabilization determines how quickly the inflation forecast is adjusted towards the inflation target money growth or exchange rate targeting is generally inferior than inflation targeting and leads to higher inflation variability commitment to target rules may be better than commitment to instrument rules

research productivity over the life cycle evidence for academic scientists the relationship between age and the publishing productivity of ph d scientists is analyzed using data from the survey of doctorate recipients national research council and the science citation index the longitudinal nature of the data allows for the identification of pure aging effects in five of the six areas studied life cycle aging effects are present only in particle physics where scientists often speak of being on a religious quest is the indication that scientific productivity is not investment motivated vintage effects are also considered the expectation that the latest educated are the most productive is not generally supported by the data copyright 1991 by american economic association

the case for methodological pluralism abstract ecology and economics share the same greek root both address complex systems ecology consists of numerous approaches to understanding natural systems energetics population biology food web models hierarchy theory to mention just a few within ecology field knowledge and the reporting of new observations are well respected economics on the other hand is dominated by one pattern of thinking and standard of proof the market model and econometrics within economics field knowledge and observations per se are little valued agreement on a correct method is frequently taken as an indication of the maturity of a science the argument is developed in this paper that all the aspects of complex systems can only be understood through multiple methodologies the agreement on method within economics however seems to reflect stronger pressures within the discipline for conformity than for truth relative to ecology since ecological economics seeks to understand a larger system than either economics or ecology seeks to understand a diversity of methodologies is appropriate and pressures to eliminate methodologies for the sake of conformity should be avoided

the dynamic impacts of monetary policy an exercise in tentative identification it is currently popular to identify monetary policy shocks with innovations in some measure of reserves or in the federal funds rate these assumptions about the interest elasticity of the supply of or demand for reserves imply monetary policy shocks that produce dynamic responses of macroeconomic variables that are anomalous relative to traditional monetary analyses this paper tentatively identifies supply and demand shocks in the markets for reserves and m2 for the 1980s and contrasts them with results for the 1970s in the later period identified monetary policy shocks have dynamic impacts that are fully consistent with traditional analyses

reassessing the government s discount rate policy in light of new theory and data in a world economy with a high degree of capital mobility abstract the paper reexamines the government s discount rate policy in the context of new evidence on international capital mobility the relationship between deficits and interest rates the relationship between consumer interest rates and the consumer s rate of time preference and intergenerational compensation it concludes that the approximate discount rate for government decisions will differ depending on the policy problem and that the government s borrowing rate is appropriate in some cases and in others the private rate should be used for long term policies the benefit cost rationale for discounting breaks down and must be reestablished on principles incorporating intergenerational equity

nonuse values in benefit cost analysis benefit cost analysis bca is a pragmatic realization of the theory of welfare economics much of the research associated with bca has sought to expand the types of benefits that can be measured in dollar terms with this research there has been a progressive movement of goods and services from the set without measures usually designated as intangibles in bca terminology to the set with for example the recreational services provided by projects associated with dams for hydroelectric power or flood control were regarded as intangible until the development of the travel cost model for estimating the demand for outdoor recreation sites one of the current frontiers in bca research is associated with modeling and measuring nonuse benefits in contrast to the past efforts with intangibles research on this topic has remained controversial with few direct effects on the practice of applied welfare economics there are two principal reasons for this outcome first there has not been an accepted set of definitions for nonuse benefits and second applied studies with empirical estimates of nonuse benefits have until recently been non existent clearly these problems are related a consistent set of definitions is a necessary prerequisite for empirical implementation i will argue that consistent definitions for nonuse benefits have been elusive because the conceptual frameworks used in the literature to describe its primary components option value and existence values are not mutually consistent in the process of demonstrating this result i will describe the elements of a consistent framework for treating both use and nonuse benefits and apply it in explaining some of the problems with the available empirical estimates of nonuse benefits

monetary valuation of ecosystem services it matters to get the timeline right in the abundant literature dealing with the monetary valuation or monetization of ecosystem services mes with very few exceptions the concept is presented as having emerged in 1997 in fact there is a long history starting in the late fifties but largely ignored of sustained attempts to assign monetary values to nature s services these early efforts encountered many conceptual and methodological roadblocks which could not be resolved and led a number of researchers to argue that monetary valuation was not a fruitful approach it is in that context that mes was hailed by some in 1997 as a promising way to integrate environmental goods and services into the logic of economic markets knowledge of the full timeline casts a very different light in particular on the difficulties currently encountered in the practice of mes far from being the expected growing pains of a young discipline these difficulties turn out to be long standing problems that have eluded solution over the last half century and appear intrinsically unresolvable this perspective suggests that at this point it is advisable to look at alternatives to mes for the integration of nature into economic decisions

structural models of the liquidity effect in this paper we examine a number of recent studies that claim to have obtained a well defined liquidity effect using structural var models based on broad measures of money these studies can be distinguished in terms of the identifying restrictions sample periods and frequency of data used we show that estimation of the structural coefficients of all these models can be achieved by instrumental variable methods where the instruments are predetermined variables and the estimated structural errors from other equations in the system overall our judgment is that the evidence for a liquidity effect from these studies is much less certain than suggested in the original papers primarily because of the poor quality of the instruments used in estimation and the sensitivity of the estimates to the sample period used

using contingent valuation to value environmental improvements alternative methods available to economists for valuing non market goods are outlined contingent valuation is then used to value a ban on straw burning

valuing public goods a comparison of survey and hedonic approaches although the theory of public goods has progressed rapidly since paul samuelson s seminal article the empirical measurement of the value of demand for public goods only recently has received increased attention perhaps the best known and most widely accepted empirical approach has been the use of hedonic prices wherein for example it is assumed that either wages or housing values reflect spatial variation in public good characteristics of different communities this indirect approach based on theoretical work of charles tiebout kelvin lancaster sherwin rosen and others has proven quite successful among public goods or bads which have been valued using the hedonic approach are climate i hoch air pollution robert anderson and thomas crocker d harrison and d rubinfeld social infrastructure r cummings et al and other community characteristics such as noise level j nelson and ethnic composition ann schnare an alternative approach is to directly ask households or individuals to state their willingness to pay for public goods using survey techniques despite arguments that strategic bias will invalidate survey results there exists the need for an alternative to the hedonic approach as an example consider the case of a remote and unique scenic vista valuable to recreators which is threatened by air pollution from a proposed coal fired plant a typical situation in the western united states although it is possible in principle to impute the value of clean air and visibility from the relative decline in local visitation which might follow construction of a power plant information on the value of visibility at the site is needed prior to construction for socially optimal decision making on plant location and pollution control equipment the hedonic approach is unavailable both because the scarcity of local population as opposed to recreators makes use of wage or property value data impossible and because scenic vistas may themselves be unique for these reasons a randall et al first applied survey methods for valuing visibility and other environmental effects of large coal fired power plants in the four corners region of new mexico since this initial application the survey approach has been widely used to value environmental commodities where market data for hedonic analysis is difficult to acquire see for example brookshire ives and schulze rowe et al brookshire et al other early attempts to value public goods using the survey approach include r davis peter bohm and j hammack and g brown although results of using the survey approach for estimating the value of public goods appear to be internally consistent replicable and consistent with demand theory see schulze et al little work on external validation has been reported thus the purpose of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to validate the survey approach by direct comparison to a hedonic property value study the los angeles metropolitan area was chosen for the experiment because of the well defined air pollution problem and be assistant professor university of wyoming assistant professor university of missouri rolla associate professor university of wyoming and professor university of wyoming respectively the research reported here was funded under a grant methods development for assessing air pollution control benefits from the u s environmental protection agency we would like to give special thanks to alan carlin and shelby gerking for their helpful suggestions and contributions additional helpful comments were received from a myrick freeman iii john tschirhart and james murdoch all conclusions are of course our sole responsibility

the effects of monetary policy in japan this article interprets time series facts regarding the sources of business fluctuations in japan and attempts to uncover possible characteristics of the effects of monetary policy over the last two decades it argues that given the institutional features of the bank of japan s operating procedures a simple recursive vector autoregressive var model that consists of interest rates money stock prices and output all in first differences may serve as a useful benchmark for japan the main finding is that monetary policy shocks in fact have a persistent effect on real output especially in the rise and fall of japan s bubble economy in the late 1980s

one thousand points of light seeking a number a case study of cbo s search for a discount rate policy abstract several years ago the congressional budget office cbo published several studies in quick succession each of which employed a discount rate to convert future values into present ones each study used a different discount rate no rationale was given for the choices and it did not seem sensible to let dealer s choice be the regime for cbo discount rate policy this paper describes how cbo established a provisional policy how that policy confronted subsequent demands for analysis and where we now stand

how well does the is lm model fit postwar u s data postwar u s time series for money interest rates prices and gnp are characterized by a multivariate process driven by four exogenous disturbances those disturbances are identified so that they can be interpreted as the four main sources of fluctuations found in the is lm phillips curve model money supply money demand is and aggregate supply shocks the dynamic properties of the estimated model are analyzed and shown to match most of the stylized predictions of the model the estimated decomposition is also used to measure the relative importance of each shock to interpret some macroeconomic episodes and to study sources of permanent shocks to nominal variables

problems in valuing the benefits of biodiversity protection this paper considers two problems in valuing the benefits of biodiversity protection these are firstly that preferences for biodiversity protection may be lexicographic rather than utilitarian the more individuals for whom this is true the less is cost benefit analysis validated as a means of decision making for biodiversity protection since lexicographic preferences are incompatible with the kaldor hicks compensation test secondly people may be poorly informed about the meaning of biodiversity complicating the use of contingent valuation as a means of measuring preservation benefits this paper first discusses the meaning of biodiversity and trends in diversity over time we offer some empirical evidence with regard to lexicographic preferences consider the implications of having poorly informed consumers and then report the results of a contingent valuation study of biodiversity protection with varying levels of information we find that willingness to pay for biodiversity protection increases with the level of information provided

monetary policy overlapping generations and patterns of growth this paper investigates the role of monetary policy in economic growth using an infinitely lived overlapping generations model with a simple convex technology that can yield endo genous growth we show that money supply behaviour of the government may have significant effects on the long run economic growth in addition to the effect on the long term growth rate of the economy the policy may determine whether the economy stays in the exogenous growth process restricted by the growth rate of labour supply or realizes the endogenous growth that sustains continuous growth of pep capita income and consumption effect of inflation on capital accumulation has been one of the central topics in macroeconomics using an ad hoc model tobin shows that a rise in the rate of inflation deepens capital formation whereas sidrauski presents an opti mizing model in which money is superneutral that is inflation has no effect on capital formation in the long run these studies have been extended by a number of studies such as dornbusch and frenkel 1973 and wang and yip 1992 however the concern of these studies is restricted to the analysis of the level effect of inflation on capital accumulation recent developments in endogenous growth theory present a useful analytical framework for re examin ing the effect of inflation on capital accumulation and economic growth in contrast to the strong emphasis on the importance of fiscal policy for long run economic growth seen in mino 1989 barro 1990 and king and rebelo 1990 the role of monetary policy has been mostly ignored in the endogenous growth literature recalling that the effect of money growth on capital formation has been the central issue in money and growth literature it is rather curious that recent studies on endogenous economic growth focus exclusively on the real side of the economy there is however a small number of authors investigating the role of money in endogenously growing economies marquis and reffet 1991 and mino 1991 introduce money into two sector models involving human capital accumulation via a cash in advance constraint they conclude that an increase in the rate of nominal money supply generally depresses the long term economic growth as long as the cash in advance con straint applies to investment demand for either physical or human capital wang and yip 1991 extend the uzawa lucas model of endogenous growth by assuming that households allocate their available time between production transaction and human capital formation the transaction time is assumed to be a decreasing function of real money balances and therefore a reduction in real balances arising from an increase in the monetary expansion rate increases c the london school of economics and political science 1995

inflation zone targeting abstract we study optimal monetary policy design in a simple model that deviates from the linear quadratic paradigm and provides a rationale for the practice of inflation zone targeting we show that the presence of either zone quadratic preferences or a zone linear relationship between inflation and economic activity provides strong incentives to deviate from conventional linear policies we calibrate the model based on parameters for the united states and the euro area and employ a numerical dynamic programming algorithm to derive the optimal policies with this algorithm we examine the role of uncertainty model structure and relative preference towards economic stability in determining the width of the implied targeted inflation zone

comparing welfare estimates of environmental quality changes from recreation demand models abstract this paper presents a procedure for examining the reliability of welfare estimates resulting from the estimation of multiple site recreation demand models a simulation approach is suggested where a utility function is combined with observations on individual and site characteristics to generate simulated data sets welfare measures associated with an improvement in site quality are calculated recreation demand models are estimated using the simulated data sets estimated welfare measures resulting from the recreation demand models are then compared to the true welfare measures calculated from the simulated data the procedure is demonstrated using two commonly employed recreation demand models

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

empirical measures of factors affecting social rates of discount economists have long considered possible divergences between private and social rates of time preferences in this paper we investigate factors hypothesized to affect this potential divergence results indicate that time preferences of individuals may be influenced by 1 whether the resource in question is publicly or privately managed respondents tend to have lower rates of time prefernce for publicly managed resources and 2 the type of good being managed respondents tend to have lower rates of time preference for income derived from a forest than for income derived from a portfolio of stocks and bonds additional factors which may influence the revealed rate of time preference include the pattern of benefits derived over time and various personal characteristics of the respondent although numerous methodological problems cloud the issues our results suggest that capital markets may fail to aggregate utility over individuals and between goods and that it may therefore be appropriate for governments to consider using lower rates of discount than the private sector and to vary the rate used according to the type of good being evaluated

valuing amenity resources under uncertainty a skeptical view of recent resolutions abstract this paper questions colby and cory s recent characterization 1987 1988 1989 of the appropriate benefit measures to be used to value improvements in the quantity quality or conditions of access to environmental resources under uncertainty the paper uses graham s 1981 analysis of individual and aggregate welfare measurement under uncertainty to demonstrate the problems with colby and cory s recommendations it evaluates their classification of important research issues and summarizes in general terms the difficulties that arise in the practical implementation of the conceptual measures for benefits under uncertainty

carbon dioxide and intergenerational choice depending on ethical beliefs different decisions emerge for resolving the carbon dioxide co sup 2 issue it is doubtful that an international consensus can be reached on a correct ethical criterion perhaps the best strategy would be to delay acceptance of either a particular set of beliefs or the existing scientific evidence and wait for more accurate and conclusive research to emerge if the scientific evidence is accepted as valid and all future generations that will exist are evaluated equally then the optimal current regulatory strategy is to restrict as much as possible current emissions of co sup 2 17 references 2 figure 1 table

positive time preference the case for positive time preference is absolutely compelling unless there is an infinite time horizon with the expectation of unending technological advance combined with what we call drastically diminishing marginal utility this finding holds both in the positive and normative senses a corollary is that savings are interest elastic

revealed preference tests of nonmarket goods valuation methods abstract revealed preference theory is used to test the theoretical consistency of nonmarket goods valuation methods choices of recreational travel in a sample of hunters are tested for consistency with the axioms of rational choice where prices of travel are computed using travel costs and different values of travel time contingent valuation is used to derive an implicit price for recreation this price is included in the consumption budget data to see if respondents could pay the stated value and maintain consistency with the axioms of revealed preference theory few violations of rationality are noted and when they do exist they are not far from rational choices

university industry relations and research group production is there a bidirectional relationship this study aims to analyze if there is a bidirectional relationship between university industry collaboration and scientific production the results from a sample of 137 research groups at a university in an ultra peripheral region reveal the existence of this bidirectional relationship scientific production has a positive influence on university industry relations thus when the articles published by the research groups increase the contracts between university and industry also increase moreover the results reflect a nonlinear relationship between contracts and scientific production university industry relations are complementary to scientific production up to a certain level and after that point there is a substitution effect the results also show the moderating effect of the knowledge area on this relationship because groups belonging to technology oriented areas have higher scientific production in response to university industry relations

individual versus social discount rates in allocating depletable natural resources over time abstract this paper demonstrates that individuals express different preferences with respect to intertemporal allocation of depletable natural resources those who obtain direct private control of these resources may be relatively less likely to conserve than society in general

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

are there environmental limits to cost benefit analysis this paper considers the problem areas found in applying cost benefit analysis cba to projects involving environmental costs or benefits this is particularly relevant given recent moves by the uk government to include environmental valuations in cba exercises and in other related appraisal activities following the publication of the pearce report the paper argues that a major problem lies in placing monetary values on non market goods the paper also addresses the problems of i differences between citizen and consumer values ii complexity of ecosystems iii irreversibility and uniqueness and iv intergenerational equity and discounting the extent to which cba is an institution open to capture is also discussed

choosing a government discount rate an alternative approach abstract this paper examines the choice of a government discount rate under the reasonable assumption that the level of government spending is determined in a top down fashion by macroeconomic and political considerations rather than in a bottom up fashion it is shown that setting the discount rate at the maximal internal rate of return available from unfunded government projects leads to an efficient portfolio choice under current and foreseeable conditions this implies a discount rate in the 10 or more real range rather than the 2 4 real discount rate recommended by second best theorists

what is ecological economics ecological economics addresses the relationships between ecosystems and economic systems in the broadest sense these relationships are the locus of many of our most pressing current problems i e sustainability acid rain global warming species extinction wealth distribution but they are not well covered by any existing discipline environmental and resource economics as it is currently practiced covers only the application of neoclassical economics to environmental and resource problems ecology as it is cur rently practiced sometimes deals with human impacts on ecosystems but the more common tendency is to stick to natural systems ecological economics aims to extend these modest areas of overlap it will include neoclassical environmental economics and ecological impact studies as sub sets but will also encourage new ways of thinking about the linkages between ecological and economic systems we have chosen the name ecological economics for this area of study because it implies a broad ecological interdisciplinary and holistic view of the problem of studying and managing our world the earth from space cover of the journal reflects this global holistic perspective we did not intend to imply with the ordering of the two words in the title that the journal is mainly an economics journal it is intended to be a new approach to both ecology and economics that recognizes the need to make economics more cognizant of ecological impacts and dependencies the need to make ecology more sensitive to economic forces incentives and constraints and the need to treat integrated economic ecologic systems with a common but diverse set of conceptual and analytical tools there was much discussion of other possible names such as economic ecology or ecology and economics or some conjoining of the two words that to me end up being confusing tongue twisters like ecolnomics or econology but ecological economics seemed to get closest to the mean ing we desired while still being evocative to the uninitiated