a utility consistent combined discrete choice and count data model assessing recreational use losses due to natural resource damage abstract a two stage budgeting approach can often be taken when analyzing consumer choice situations in this paper we examine the particular situation where a consumer makes purchases of a discrete commodity of which there are a number of brands in the first stage the consumer decides how many purchases to make in the second stage the consumer decides how to allocate these purchases across brands our econometric approach to this type of situation uses a utility consistent combined discrete choice and count data model the second stage which is specified as a multinomial choice model produces a price index for the commodity which is used to estimate the first stage which is specified as a count data model we apply the model to recreational demand behavior in alaska in order to estimate the welfare losses suffered by recreational users due to the exxon valdez oil spill these results may provide useful input to government agencies attempting to estimate the appropriate level of taxes fines or regulations for deterring damage to the environment

nonlinear income effects in random utility models random utility models rums are used in the literature to model consumer choices from among a discrete set of alternatives and they typically impose a constant marginal utility of income on individual preferences this assumption is driven partially by the difficulty of constructing welfare estimates in models with nonlinear income effects recently mcfadden 1995 developed an algorithm for computing these welfare impacts using a monte carlo markov chain simulator for generalized extreme value variates this paper investigates the empirical consequences of nonlinear rums in the case of sportfishing modal choice while refining and contrasting the available methods for welfare estimation

site aggregation in a random utility model of recreation random utility models are commonly used to model the choice among a set of alternatives often due to data or computational constraints the analyst must use aggregated alternatives to estimate the model these aggregates are defined by averaging characteristics of alternatives over prespecified groups in this analysis we demonstrate that unless some very restrictive conditions hold the use of aggregated alternatives will lead to biased results then using a data set of recreational fishing in wisconsin we show the effects that this bias can have on the results estimated from the model

an empirical model of discrete and continuous choice in family labor supply because of the interdependent nature of family labor supply decisions the nonnegativity constrai nt on women s hours of work will spill over into other consumption an d labor supply decisions of the family here the author develops an e conometric model of family labor supply that captures this spillove r while addressing the usual censoring issues as well the model i s based on a flexible direct utility function and permits unobservabl e differences in tastes the model is estimated by the maximum likeli hood method on a sample of about 1 200 families from the panel study of income dynamics copyright 1987 by mit press

an analysis of the impact of ceta programs on participants earnings this paper provides estimates of the impact of ceta programs on participants postprogram earnings using matched comparison groups developed from a nearestneighbor matching technique our basic results indicate that ceta has a negative and statistically significant earnings impact for adult men and a modest but not statistically significant positive earnings impact for adult women this pattern however is quite sensitive to whether individuals without recent labor market attachment are included in the comparison group and to how close to the date of enrollment preprogram earnings are measured

demand systems estimation with microdata a censored regression approach demand systems estimation increasingly makes use of household level microdata mainly to measure the effects of demographic variables data based on these household expenditure surveys present a major estimation problem for any given household many of the goods have zero consumption implying a censored dependent variable techniques which do not take this censored dependent variable into account will yield biased results we utilize a censored regression approach that is computationally simple consistent and asymptotically efficient the results are then presented and compared with those obtained using an uncensored technique

the theory and measurement of producer response under quotas tobin and houthakker s work on consumer behavior under quantity rationing has been extended by many authors especial ly through the use of duality theory this paper uses duality theory to extend the work on demand theory under rationing to the case of producer behavior under quotas these results permit estimation of otherwise unobservable market supply and demand structures the structure of the farm economy operating under a tobacco quota system is estimated and the theory is utilized to infer that the supply elasticity of tobacco would be about 7 0 if the quotas were removed estimates such as this are not normally attainable without the theor y outlined here even though they are essential for the evaluation of policy changes copyright 1993 by mit press

economic response to a guaranteed annual income experience from canada and the united states this article reviews research from the five income maintenance experiments in canada and the united states after sketching the historical and political context of the experiments we compare their designs and discuss some important analytic difficulties our primary focus is the work incentive issue both nonstructural estimates of the experimental effects and elasticity estimates of structural labor supply functions we provide initial estimates of nonstructural and structural models for the canadian experiment we discuss more briefly some non work response findings associated with a guaranteed annual income and offer some personal comments on social experimentation and the policy process

robust inference concerning recent trends in us environmental quality understanding trends in environmental quality is important for individuals and policymakers typically trends in environmental quality are determined solely through comparisons of unconditional or conditional mean pollution levels however reaching unambiguous conclusions on the basis of only the first moment of the unconditional or conditional distribution is problematic since it ignores what is occurring in different regions of the distribution even relying on indices that incorporate both mean and variance is suspect to the extent that relative rankings are not typically robust to index choice addressing these concerns we adapt recent developments in the stochastic dominance literature to test for unambiguous relations between current and past distributions of toxic releases using epa data from 1988 1999 we find statistically significant evidence that the unconditional 1999 distributions of air land underground and total toxic releases dominate in a first degree sense their respective 1988 distributions while some of this improvement is explained by economic growth pollution net of income improved over the sample period as well finally we document robust differences in the distribution of pollution across regions in the us copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

estimating a system of recreation demand functions using a seemingly unrelated poisson regression approach in this article a seemingly unrelated poisson regression model is presented as an alternative to using zellner s seemingly unrelated regression model for estimating a system of recreation demand functions the seemingly unrelated poisson regression model provides estimates that are asymptotically more efficient than equation by equation poisson estimates and circumvents the bias and inconsistency problems that result when using a zellner s seemingly unrelated regression model additionally the seemingly unrelated poisson regression model is applied to an empirical problem dealing with the value of recreational boating and the findings indicate that the seemingly unrelated regression model consumer surplus estimates are substantially different from those of the seemingly unrelated poisson regression model copyright 1994 by mit press

using neoclassical consumer choice theory to produce a market map from purchase data this article presents a new model for estimating the spatial representation of objects and preference vectors from actual choice behavior of individuals or households it is based on neoclassical economic theory of consumer choice the model integrates both decisions of which good s to buy and the quantity of purchase overall preference is decomposed into price effects and intrinsic preference for the good a maximum likelihood method for estimating the model parameters is described and illustrated using choice data of ketchup brands collected by the use of electronic supermarket scanners

sample selection bias in the estimation of recreation demand functions an application to sportfishing estimating the value of public actions through behavior implied by the demand for recreation has proved valuable in many settings early applications were based on grouped data however the sharpening of tools of welfare analysis has led economists to exploit individual rather than grouped data the appropriate use of individual observations in estimating recreational demand models is not obvious and depends on the economic theory and its behavioral implications and the statistical characteristics of models the difficulty in exploiting individual observations in estimating recreational demand functions is that a large portion of a randomly sampled population in a given geographical region is likely to be non participants in the recreational activity of interest that is they are observed to demand zero trips the qualitative implications of such samples seem to be recognized bockstael hanemann and strand 1986 mullahy 1987 but there are few smith 1988 shaw 1988 published comparisons of the implications of alternative models

labour supply tax evasion and the marginal cost of public funds an empirical investigation abstract in this paper we extend the concept of marginal cost of public funds itmcf to incorporate tax evasion in the labour market mcf values are also computed from various tax reforms applied to the province of quebec canada 1985 for this purpose a utility based labour supply model that allows for both regular and irregular work activities is used at the benchmark situation the mcf associated with an increase in marginal income tax rates ranges between 1 39 and 1 53 depending upon whether we consider rationing or not moreover the presence of the irregular sector accounts for between 0 02 and 0 05 of this mcf although small in magnitude the impact of the irregular sector increases rapidly with the level of marginal tax rates

estimating social welfare using count data models an application to long run recreation demand under conditions of endogenous stratification and truncation this paper develops a negative binomial model of recreation demand that corrects for both truncation and endogenous stratification this approach recovers the demand associated with the general population not just the users of the site this model demonstrates the importance of the joint nature of the population s latent demand for trips and the consumer surplus associated with those trips the empirical results provide an estimate of the willingness to pay by washington state residents for hiking opportunities in the cascade mountain range these results are used to forecast total trips and willingness to pay over the next forty years copyright 1995 by mit press

a discrete choice model of recreational participation site choice and activity valuation when complete trip data are not available abstract a discrete choice model of the demand for site specific recreational activities is developed and estimated it simultaneously predicts both how many trips the individual will take and which site will be chosen on each trip the model is formulated to estimate demand when the data set reports the total number of trips in a given time period but the actual destinations for only a subset of the total the model also includes a correction for sample selectivity bias the application is marine recreational fishing the consumer s surplus associated with any change in supply conditions is derived and used to assess the impact of changes in species availability

estimation and welfare calculations in a generalized corner solution model with an application to recreation demand the kuhn tucker model of wales and woodland 1983 provides a utility theoretic framework for estimating preferences over commodities for which individuals choose not to consume one or more of the goods due to the complexity of the model however there have been few applications in the literature and little attention has been paid to the problems of welfare analysis within the kuhn tucker framework this paper provides an application of the model to the problem of recreation demand in addition we develop and apply a methodology for estimating compensating variation relying on monte carlo integration to derive expected welfare changes

sample attrition and labor supply response in experimental panel data sample attrition is a potentially serious problem for analysis of panel data particularly experimental panel data in this article a variety of estimation procedures are used to assess the importance of attrition bias in labor supply response to the seattle and denver income maintenance experiments sime dime data from social security administration earnings records and the sime dime public use file are used to test various hypotheses concerning attrition bias the study differs from previous research in that data on both attriters and nonattriters are used to estimate the experimental labor supply response although not conclusive the analysis suggests that attrition bias is probably not a serious enough problem in the sime dime data to warrant extensive correction procedures the methodology used in this study could be applied to other panel data sets

the labor supply of married men a switching regressions model according to the family utility function approach the labor supply functions of married men should differ according to whether their wives also work in this paper i explicitly model the switching nature of labor supply while also accounting for the endogeneity of the labor force participation decision of the wife using an endogenous switching regressions model based on the quadratic family utility function the model is estimated from a cross section of 1 210 married couples from the panel study of income dynamics

utility based estimation of labour supply functions in the regular and irregular sectors recent theoretical work on labor supply has shown that the tax and transfer system can induce some individuals to work in the irregular labor market models designed to represent such behavior are unable to sign unambiguously the impact of the marginal tax rate as well as many key exogenous parameters on the hours supplied in the irregular market except under strong restrictions on preferences in this paper the authors estimate a simultaneous labor supply model that allows testing some of the more common assumptions found in the literature using a unique data set on the underground economy of the metropolitan area of quebec city canada estimates of elasticities with respect to predetermined variables are presented moreover they test and empirically reject the assumptions of perfect substitution between regular and irregular work activities as well as additive separability of the utility function copyright 1992 by royal economic society

sampling and aggregation issues in random utility model estimation measurement of nonmarket values often involves subjective judgments since these judgments may influence results they should be carefully considered i focus on an aspect of subjective choice relating to the estimation of random utility models such models require specification of each recreationalist s choice set whether an individual perceives his choice set as composed of all possible alternatives a few popular alternatives or collections of spatially aggregated alternatives is an important judgment affecting the conclusions

measuring the cost of time in recreation demand analysis an application to sportfishing since the work of cesario and knetsch economists have recognized that the opportunity cost of time plays an important role in determining the demand for outdoor recreation the opportunities one has for spare time are more significant for consumption of time intensive outdoor recreation activities than for other commodities especially nondurables bishop and heberlein illustrate the overwhelming importance of time costs to final recreational values total consumer surplus is nearly four times as large when time costs are added at half the income rate as when time costs were set at zero p 21 despite the recognition economists have neither successfully integrated the costs of time with the methods of recreational demand analysis nor reached a consensus on how it should be measured brown charbonneau and hay state finally the apparently crucial importance of how opportunity cost of time is handled needs further work while we are convinced it is an appropriate concept exactly how it should be included and measured s remains to be determined p 24 several approaches have been taken to include it in the travel cost method one approach brown and nawas gum and martin suggests that time in transit be considered as a separate independent variable another approach bishop and heberlein brown charbonneau hay nicols bowes dwyer cesario and knetsch measures the cost of time and adds it to other costs several approaches have been suggested to measure time costs one approach is simply to choose an hourly wage e g 2 00 per hour or perhaps the minimum wage rate a more flexible but still ad hoc approach is to use some proportion of the individual s wage rate as the opportunity cost of time nichols bowes dwyer the proportion is usually taken from independent studies and used to value the travel time this approach is better than using a constant opportunity cost of time because it allows variation across individuals it suffers because the choice of the percentage of the wage rate is arbitrary independent of the sampled population cesario has discussed the consequences of ignoring time costs and the differences in values arising from alternative measurement approaches in this paper we argue that the opportunity cost of time is some proportion of the individual s market wage rate or income per hour and that this proportion can be determined from sample data this method permits the proportion to vary from one study to another rather than imposing either an arbitrary estimate or one from a sample different from the study s sample