combining intended demand and yes no responses in the estimation of contingent valuation models abstract the contingent valuation method cvm has limitations arising from the lack of a direct link between estimated willingness to pay and consumer behavior regarding the use of the good being evaluated to estimate the total value of a resource under a capacity constraint information on intended use is introduced as an integral part of the cvm this combined approach allows use and non use values to be distinguished for a sample of users and non users the econometric specification is applied to estimate the benefits of reducing water pollution on beaches located near an important metropolitan area of south america

the era of electoral authoritarianism in recent years scholarly attention has shifted from the study of democratization to the phenomenon of electoral authoritarianism in these regimes regular elections are held for national legislatures and chief executives yet they fail to live up to democratic standards of freedom and fairness a range of new research has investigated these regimes and especially the capacity of elections to either dislodge or reinvigorate authoritarian incumbents this article reviews some of the current work on electoral authoritarianism and attempts to find ways to achieve synthesis and better theoretical development it notes the need for greater conceptual consensus attention to context and better evaluation of what electoral competiveness means under authoritarian conditions it argues that the next stage for research should be smaller and contextual comparison that can allow for greater attention to concepts while allowing for strong midrange theory

beyond the racial census the political salience of ethnolinguistic cleavages in south africa careful attention to social demographics can be valuable in understanding how patterns of interethnic competition vary between countries but social demographics can also vary across different levels of social aggregation within the same polity it may be improper to draw conclusions about the political importance of a particular cleavage based on data from only one level of social aggregation in south africa race is considered to be the primary cleavage around which political competition is organized intraracial ethnolinguistic cleavages are often dismissed as unimportant especially at the national level by focusing the analysis on the local level this article demonstrates that ethnolinguistic identities are in fact broadly salient in south africa these subracial identities appear to influence aggregate political outcomes and individual vote choices the article thereby offers substantive lessons for students of south african politics and methodological lessons for students of ethnic politics more

efficient adaptation in long term contracts take or pay provisions for natural gas to mitigate the inflexibility of long term contracting for natural gas parties will look for terms that minimize the need for costly adjudication while maintaining incentives for appropriate adaptation the authors examine the incident of take or pay provisions in contracts between natural gas producers and pipelines from this perspective they argue that take obligations can be viewed as a mechanism for effecting appropriate incentives for contractual performance and show that efficient breach considerations define an optimal take percentage as a function of characteristics of the transaction these incentives are distorted by regulated price ceilings which cause the adoption of take obligations in excess of optimal levels the findings refute the common perception that take or pay provisions are just an artifact of wellhead price regulation and serve no useful purpose in the absence of regulation 20 references 1 figure 1 table

contractual responses to the common pool prorationing of crude oil production this paper examines bargaining among firms to mitigate rent dissipation following the major oil discoveries of 1926 35 because of high bargaining costs firms chose prorationing instead of consolidation and unitization and success varied the analysis also shows that prorationing took the form it did because concession such as per well quotas were required to draw in small operations and the quotas led to predictable responses regarding rent dissipation prorationing despite its costs controlled total field production and costs conserved natural reservoir energies and lengthened field life when private agreements failed the parties successfully appealed for state enforcement since similar heterogeneities influnce regulations elsewhere in the economy detailed analysis of bargaining among firms is essential for insight into the emergence of various institutional forms 33 references 3 tables

representing the valuation of take or pay provisions in gas markets with limited liquidity long term contracting is the traditional governance mechanism to deal with the transaction costs associated with the specificity of gas industry assets long term contracts have been often used to allocate risks among players and to that end they often include take or pay provisions these clauses specify that buyers take the volume risk as they are obliged to pay for a minimum amount of gas consumption in exchange buyers pay a predefined price supposedly lower than the risk neutral expectation of short term gas prices in that view if the buyer is able to resell that gas in the short term the contract is an effective hedge against short term volatility otherwise the contract does not act as a hedge but it becomes a sunk cost the corresponding power producers behavior involves not only output decisions but also financial decisions to analyze that situation this paper develops a new quantitative methodology that allows comparing risk neutral valuations of gas and power markets decisions we test the model in a real size system and show the additional cost of the power system associated with a possible illiquidity of the short term gas market

pricing flexible natural gas supply contracts under uncertainty in hydrothermal markets the worldwide development of the natural gas industry resulted in an integration process between electrical and gas sectors in several countries in brazil this process has been taking place in a consistent manner especially on account of the increase in gas consumption for industrial use and of the installation of thermoelectric plants due to the predominance of hydro plants in electric power generation thermoelectric energy production is basically dependent on hydrology and as a result presents a wide annual variability consequently the investment applied to gas production and transportation infrastructure may become under utilized during a large part of the time thus it is important to find mechanisms apt to improve its utilization in this respect the present work investigates the creation of a flexible market for gas where contracts for flexible gas supply would be offered to industrial users who would receive the gas assigned to thermal power plants when the latter are not dispatched and would resort to an alternate fuel when these plants are dispatched the attractiveness of such a contract would depend of course on its price the purpose of this work is to develop a stochastic model for pricing flexible gas supply contracts taking into account the uncertainty associated to the supply dependent on the dispatch of the thermal power plants which have the priority of use of the gas and the risk profile of potential consumers

electoral institutions ethnopolitical cleavages and party systems in africa s emerging democracies do electoral institutions and ethnopolitical cleavages shape the structure the fragmentation or concentration of party systems separately or jointly if they shape the structure of party systems jointly how can this joint effect be theoretically specified and empirically tested if ethnopolitical groups and associated ethnopolitical cleavages are not primordially fixed but constructed in the course of social economic and political interactions as the accumulated findings of over three decades of comparative research on ethnopolitics attest how can constructed ethnopolitical groups be specified and associated eth

a semi parametric estimator for revealed and stated preference data an application to recreational beach visitation abstract we present a semi parametric approach for jointly estimating revealed and stated preference recreation demand models the discrete factor method dfm allows for correlation across demand equations and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity our model is a generalized negative binomial with random effects the random effect is composed of a discrete representation of unobserved heterogeneity and a factor loading that translates the heterogeneity measure into a demand effect our empirical application is to beach recreation demand in north carolina statistical evidence supports our dfm specification which imposes less restriction on model dispersion and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity in a flexible manner elasticity estimates are smaller than those derived from models with parametric specifications for unobserved heterogeneity and welfare estimates are slightly larger and less precise while parametric models clearly dominate if the specification of unobserved heterogeneity is correct the semi parametric dfm provides a flexible alternative in cases where mis specification is a potential problem

improving environmental valuation estimates through consistent use of revealed and stated preference information abstract environmental valuation data from stated and revealed preference methods are integrated into a unified model of preferences for environmental quality improvement that identifies the use and nonuse components of the total value estimate this articulates clearly what parts of the total value estimate come from each type of data and permits tests of whether estimated preferences satisfy weak complementarity between the environmental good of interest and related private goods the statistical advantages of using more information for the valuation problem are exploited while retaining flexibility to identify value estimates from any individual method of analysis

combining revealed and stated preference data to estimate the nonmarket value of ecological services an assessment of the state of the science this paper reviews the marketing transportation and environmental economics literature on the joint estimation of revealed preference rp and stated preference sp data the rp and sp approaches are first described with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each recognizing these strengths and weaknesses the potential gains from combining data are described a classification system for combined data that emphasizes the type of data combination and the econometric models used is proposed a methodological review of the literature is pursued based on this classification system examples from the environmental economics literature are highlighted a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of jointly estimated model is then presented suggestions for future research in particular opportunities for application of these models to environmental quality valuation are presented

what do facilitating practices facilitate an empirical investigation of most favored nation clauses in natural gas contracts long term contracts often include most favored nation clauses mfns which are nondiscrimination guarantees that obligate a buyer or seller to treat all trading partners symmetrically in pricing decisions recent theoretical work has shown that such clauses can facilitate tacit collusion by increasing the cost of selective price changes aimed at attracting new business an alternative view is that mfns serve to facilitate efficient price adjustment in extended exchange relationships we test these competing hypotheses using data from long term natural gas contracts many of which employ mfns our conclusion is that the pattern of mfn adoption in conjunction with the structure of the nondiscrimination regions and the parallels with other nonstrategic price escalation provisions lends strong support to the efficiency rationale

when do votes count regime type electoral conduct and political competition in africa the effects of electoral systems have been tested recently in africa raising several questions are the systematic effects of electoral rules the same across regime types does the conduct of elec

social cleavages and the number of parties how the measures you choose affect the answers you get this article explores the issues surrounding the operationalization and measurement of social cleavages in a large n context from the perspective of the party systems literature it first highlights the difficulty of measuring the concept which it argues has impeded hypothesis testing and suggests strategies for improving upon existing measures it then demonstrates that the conclusions we draw about well known hypotheses linking social cleavages to the number of electoral parties in legislative elections depend upon the measure we employ hence the article makes the case that how we measure social cleavages matters

social divisions and institutions assessing institutional parameter variation this paper investigates the hypothesis that the association between property rights institutions and income is weaker in countries with high social divisions it argues that social divisions should have a negative effect on perceived institutional inclusiveness which in turn should depress institutional payoffs absent a property rights indicator that captures the perceived inclusiveness of institutions social divisions should then weaken the observed association between property rights institutions and income the empirical results support this hypothesis and highlight the importance of evaluating whether the institutions measure used captures the institutional framework applying to the population at large

willingness to pay for quality improvements should revealed and stated preference data be combined abstract in this article we propose theoretically consistent welfare measurement of use and nonuse values for an improvement in environmental quality with revealed and stated preference data an analytical model based on the comparative static analysis of the variation function that describes the relationship between recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation models is estimated our results show that revealed and stated data should not be combined under the same assumed preference structure unless the two decisions imply the same change in behavior induced by the quality change in addition our results indicate scope effects in willingness to pay measures estimated with stated preference data

from formlessness to structure the institutionalization of competitive party systems in africa giovanni sartori once described african party systems as formless our contribution challenges this view in an era of resurgent multipartism that swept through the subcontinent in the early 1990s and continues until today the article brings together contemporary research on african party systems with the wider disciplinary literature on party system institutionalization using a data set including all continuous election sequences in africa from 1950 to 2008 we find that africa has some of the most volatile party systems ever recorded and yet tremendous diversity across regimes we test the relative impact of political institutions economic performance the history of party system development and social cleavage structure on party system institutionalization in africa we find that its party systems have been shaped by a set of factors unique to the subcontinent but some of the general global patterns of party system development hold true in africa as well

constructing forward price curves in electricity markets we present and analyze a method for constructing approximated high resolution forward price curves in electricity markets because a limited number of forward or futures contracts are traded in the market only a limited picture of the theoretical continuous forward price curve is available to the analyst our method combines the information contained in observed bid and ask prices with information from the forecasts generated by bottom up models as an example we use information concerning the shape of the seasonal variation from a bottom up model to improve the forward price curve quoted on the nordic power exchange

equilibrium institutions the federal proportional trade off durable democracies display a huge variety of combinations of basic institutional formulas a quantitative logical model shows that while there are multiple equilibrium sets of institutions each involves some trade off between the size of the country the territorial structure of government and the electoral system specifically the larger the country the more important is federalism in comparison to proportional representation electoral rules for the durability of democratic institutions the explanatory power of the model is positively tested on all current durable democratic countries it is also illustrated with a few both fitting and deviant cases a relevant implication is that the room for manipulation of the choice of institutions is large but not unlimited as the choices for a durable democracy are constrained by bounded trade offs between the values of major institutional variables

political parties and uncertainty in developing democracies this article lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of political uncertainty on party development and strategies of mobilization and competition defining uncertainty as the imprecision with which political actors are able to predict future interactions the authors identify three types of political uncertainty regime uncertainty economic uncertainty and institutional uncertainty they argue that political uncertainty is particularly high among developing democracies contributing to puzzling empirical patterns of party development and competition in these contexts taking into account the role of uncertainty in the strategic decision making of party elites will help scholars better understand the differences between parties in advanced and developing democracies but it can also help scholars understand the less dramatic differences between parties even within advanced democracies the authors theoretical framework can be applied broadly since uncertainty informs the strategic

spot price modeling and the valuation of electricity forward contracts the role of demand and capacity we propose a model where wholesale electricity prices are explained by two state variables demand and capacity we derive analytical expressions to price forward contracts and to calculate the forward premium we apply our model to the pjm england and wales and nord pool markets our empirical findings indicate that volatility of demand is seasonal and that the market price of demand risk is also seasonal and positive both of which exert an upward seasonal pressure on the price of forward contracts we assume that both volatility of capacity and the market price of capacity risk are constant and find that depending on the market and period under study it could either exert an upward or downward pressure on forward prices in all markets we find that the forward premium exhibits a seasonal pattern during the months of high volatility of demand forward contracts trade at a premium during months of low volatility of demand forwards can either trade at a relatively small premium or even in some cases at a discount i e they exhibit a negative forward premium

open access and the evolution of the u s spot market for natural gas federal regulations promoting open access transportation dramatically altered the organizational structure of the u s market for natural gas in the 1980s generally unbundling the merchant and transport functions of interstate pipelines an empirical analysis of wellhead spot prices is undertaken to examine the effect of open access on the geographic scope of the spot market using monthly spot price data from 1984 91 three statistical tests are applied and compared price correlations granger causality and cointegration we find that open access integrated the regional wellhead markets into a national competitive market for natural gas the effects of unbundling on contracts for natural gas are then investigated incentives for long term contracts between pipelines and producers are shown to be effectively removed by the introduction of competitive buying and selling of gas at the wellhead through open access

complementarity and evolution of contractual provisions an empirical study of it services contracts an increasing volume of business activity appears to be occurring via alliances or other interfirm arrangements in which complex contracts are featured yet there has been relatively little study of contract design in the strategy or management literatures the economics literature on contracting has been extensive but it has been less concerned with learning and evolution phenomena in which strategy and organization scholars are deeply interested in this paper we investigate the relationship between two types of contractual provisions that are important in high technology contracts or contracts for which environmental uncertainty or technological complexity are significant namely contingency planning and task description previous research suggests that contracts can vary significantly in the degree of detail with which such key provisions are written and that they are each subject to learning in this paper we find evidence from a sample of 386 contracts that contingency planning and task description behave as complements in contractual design we argue that this complementarity reflects patterns of learning to contract we also find that repeated exchange between two firms leads to greater effort at contingency planning in subsequent contracts a finding that is also consistent with learning effects but not with frequently made claims that contracts and trust are substitutes