generalized travel cost model and water quality benefits a reconsideration with federal agencies required to conduct benefit cost analyses for each new major regulation analyses of water quality changes are likely to be an increasingly important part of the policymaking process a revised version of the travel cost demand model and illustrations show the importance of these revisions for the model s estimates although the magnitude of the difference in benefit estimates between the original and new versions of the model varies with the specific recreation site selected the findings indicate that the original model generally implied estimated benefits from three to over 30 times as large as the revised model this implies that judgment can play an important role in the definition and use of economic models as well as the need for better information on households recreation decisions and more complete description of recreation site characteristics 15 references 4 tables

consumer surplus from discrete choice models abstract the budget constrained random utility model rum gives utility consistent measures of welfare but requires the length of the planning period be specified an alternative is to treat the rum probabilities as behavioral and calculate consumer surplus this paper shows that such calculations lead to the same welfare measures as rum calculations the paper provides support and an alternative justification for the standard welfare measured

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

serial nonparticipation in repeated discrete choice models we consider alternative econometric strategies for addressing serial nonparticipation that is repeated choice of the same alternative or same type of alternative across a series of choice occasions in data typically analyzed within the repeated discrete choice framework single and double hurdle variants of the repeated discrete choice model are developed and applied to choice experiment and multisite seasonal recreation demand data our results suggest that hurdle models can generate significant improvements in statistical fit and qualitatively different policy implications particularly in choice experiment applications where the proper treatment of serial nonparticipation is relatively more ambiguous

on the firm level implications of the bank lending channel of monetary policy abstract standard models of the bank lending channel are unable to yield predictions on the differential impact of monetary policy shocks over heterogeneous borrowers this inability has made researchers doubt about the role played by bank credit as a transmission mechanism of monetary policy moreover it has made them reject those models in favor of the balance sheet channel as a transmission mechanism in this paper we show that an augmented version of the bank lending channel that allows for firm heterogeneity but without any role for firms balance sheets reproduces well the dynamics of firm level data our contribution is to show that it is not clear that the bank lending channel should be rejected in favor of alternative theories on the basis of its inability to reproduce firm level data thus there is additional room for econometric tests that can provide support to the bank lending channel

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

ageing and the welfare state securing sustainability over the next four decades increasing old age dependency ratios will exert an enormous upward pressure on welfare spending in most developed countries as this is mainly due to existing unfunded public pension schemes many countries have embarked on far reaching reforms in this area strengthening actuarial fairness modifying indexation rules adding elements of pre funding and last but not least attempting to extend the period of economic activity efforts to contain costs may also be relevant with regard to public expenditure on health and long term care but thus far no country has started to really deal with these issues still some countries have made substantial progress in securing the long term sustainability of their welfare systems what remains to be considered is re constructing the system of intergenerational transactions as a potential way of removing disincentives to raise children and invest in their human capital in the long run

annual fees and recreation choice models of recreation behavior have typically ignored the role of fixed annual fees such as the fee for a recreational license in determining choice and welfare we demonstrate how techniques from the literature on discrete continuous choice and two part tariffs can address a situation where fixed annual fees are essential to determining the choice of a recreation site we explore how accounting for value captured by fixed fees can influence the way resource changes are assessed

modeling recreation demand in a poisson system of equations an analysis of the impact of international exchange rates we extend count data travel cost modeling by developing a utility theoretic system of semilogarithmic recreation demand equations the restrictions required to make the system utility theoretic are applied during estimation the model is applied to individual wilderness recreation trips in a system of four canadian wilderness parks the resulting demand system is used to examine the impacts of changing u s canadian currency exchange rates on participation and welfare of u s recreationists

welfare estimation using aggregate and individual observation models a comparison using monte carlo techniques due to the weak behavioral foundations of aggregate demand models zonal travel cost models have been largely abandoned in favor of models based on individual observations however sample selection difficulties in individual observation models often require the use of distribution sensitive limited dependent variables estimators in this paper i use monte carlo simulations to investigate whether the bias from aggregation is worse than possible bias from these narrowly specified estimators somewhat surprisingly the results indicate that zonal models often outperform the individual observation models especially when using an aggregate model that incorporates intrazonal variance of the explanatory variables

welfare losses due to livestock grazing on public lands a count data systemwide treatment backcountry hikers willingness to pay for removing grazing from trails in the hoover wilderness is analyzed using a multinomial dirichlet negative binomial distribution this multivariate discrete distribution allows the direct calculation of seasonal welfare measures that are derived from an incomplete demand specification the welfare maximizing choice of activities is examined on a trail by trail basis using the results of the analysis our findings suggest that a mix of hiking and grazing activities provide the greatest social welfare

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

printing and protestants an empirical test of the role of printing in the reformation the causes of the protestant reformation have long been debated this paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press i test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the reformation at the city level an econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city s distance from mainz the birthplace of printing suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be protestant by 1600

a theory of corporate capital structure and investment this article uses a general equilibrium framework to explore the origins and limitations of financial intermediaries in the model investors have a generic lending technology that they can improve at a cost those who upgrade become intermediaries to exploit their advantage however conflicts with depositors will limit the banks market presence and they will only lend to moderately endowed firms while bondholders will finance cash rich corporations the article also analyzes the extent to which investors adopt the superior lending technique the nature of bank competition and how corporate and bank conditions affect interest rates and investment copyright 2004 oxford university press

the effect of protestantism on education before the industrialization evidence from 1816 prussia across prussian counties and towns protestantism led to more schooling already in 1816 before the industrial revolution this supports a human capital theory of protestant economic history and rules out a weberian explanation of protestant education just resulting from industrialization

das human kapital a theory of the demise of the class structure this paper suggests that the demise of the capitalists workers class structure was a socio economic transformation orchestrated by the capitalists in reaction to the increasing importance of human capital in sustaining their profit rates physical capital accumulation in the process of industrialization enhanced the importance of human capital in production and generated incentives for capitalists to support the provision of public education for the masses triggering the demise of the existing class structure the implications of the theory are consistent with the voting patterns on england s education reform of 1902

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 comparison of welfare estimates from four models for linking seasonal recreational trips to multinomial logit models of site choice we compare four methods of linking a site choice random utility model to a seasonal trip model the four approaches are those proposed by morey et al 1993 am j agric econom 75 578 592 hausman et al 1995 j public econom 56 1 30 parsons and kealy 1995 j environ econom management29 357 367 and feather et al 1995 j environ econom management29 214 227 we estimate the alternative models using a common data set and calculate a change in welfare for two policy scenarios across the models we find that there is little practical difference between the approaches of morey et al and hausman et al they are nearly the same mathematically and the welfare estimates in our empirical example are quite close the approaches of parsons and kealy and feather et al generated welfare estimates that were substantially different from the previous two approaches as well as from each other they also generated results that reveal the inconsistencies between their site choice and season trip models

protestantism and education reading the bible and other skills during industrialization protestants were more literate than catholics this paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of protestants to read the bible and to what extent other education motives might have been involved as well we employ a historical data set from switzerland which allows us to differentiate between different cognitive skills reading numeracy essay writing and swiss history we develop an estimation strategy to examine whether the impact of religious denomination was particularly large with respect to reading capabilities we find support for this hypothesis however we also find evidence which is consistent with the view that protestants education motives went beyond acquiring reading skills jel i20

financial contracting and the choice between private placement and publicly offered bonds the financial contracting in private placement bonds and publicly offered bonds are different our data show that private placement bonds are more likely to have restrictive covenants than public bonds private placement bonds are also more likely to be issued by smaller and riskier firms for investment grade firms that issue bonds in both markets our analysis shows that firms select the bond type to minimize financing costs we find significant differences in the pricing of private placement and publicly offered bonds and some of these differences appear to be related to the different institutional features between the two markets

steady state growth and the elasticity of substitution in a neoclassical economy with endogenous capital and labor augmenting technical change the steady state growth rate of output per worker is shown to increase in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor this confirms the assessment of klump and de la grandville 2000 that the elasticity of substitution is a powerful engine of economic growth however unlike their findings my result applies to the steady state growth rate moreover it does not hinge on particular assumptions on how aggregate savings come about it holds for any household sector allowing savings to grow at the same rate as aggregate output

count data models and the problem of zeros in recreation demand analysis in this paper we develop a count data model for consumer demand which explicitly allows for a large number of zero observations for the dependent variable and separation of the participation versus quantity decisions the advantages of the model over traditional censored and count demand models are brought out and the appropriate consumer surplus measures are derived by introducing a random error term into the traditional count model demand function the appropriate measure of expected consumer surplus for count models is derived the model is illustrated using a recreational survey of the general population

what s the use welfare estimates from revealed preference models when weak complementarity does not hold abstract in this paper we consider the theoretical and empirical ramifications of welfare measurement in revealed preference models when weak complementarity does not hold in the context of a kuhn tucker model of recreation demand we show that while it is possible to estimate preferences that do not appear to exhibit weak complementarity the calculation of welfare measurements from these models requires a cardinal interpretation of preferences that cannot be tested furthermore we reiterate the under appreciated fact that even traditional use value estimates require a cardinal restriction on preferences that while often intuitive also cannot be tested we demonstrate empirically that the choice of restrictions can have significant ramifications as use value estimates can vary based on the assumed preference structure

recreation nonparticipation as choice behavior rather than statistical outcome in recreation demand models nonparticipation is usually estimated as the probability mass on zero demand given a positive level of expected demand and a discrete distribution of demand outcomes researchers have attempted to improve predictions of nonparticipation by modifying the parameters of the demand distribution this study departs from previous approaches by explicitly incorporating nonparticipation into the behavioral model the choice to participate is described by a distribution of preferences combined with a choke price on individual demands to distinguish participants from nonparticipants the model is found to accurately predict nonparticipation and the size of the user group copyright 2008 oxford university press

competition between specialized candidates opposing candidates for a political office often differ in their professional backgrounds and previous political experience leading to both real and perceived differences in political capabilities we analyze a formal model in which candidates with different productivities in two policy areas compete for voters by choosing how much money or effort they would allocate to each area if elected the model has a unique equilibrium that differs substantially from the standard median voter model although candidates compete for the support of a moderate voter type this cutoff voter differs from the expected median voter moreover no voter type except the cutoff voter is indifferent between the candidates in equilibrium the model also predicts that candidates respond to changes in the preferences of voters in a very rigid way from a welfare perspective candidates are excessively moderate almost certainly a majority of voters would prefer that the winning candidate focus more on his or her strength

capital structure and debt structure using a novel dataset that records individual debt issues on the balance sheets of public firms we demonstrate that traditional capital structure studies that ignore debt heterogeneity miss substantial capital structure variation relative to high credit quality firms lowcredit quality firms are more likely to have a multi tiered capital structure consisting of both secured bank debt with tight covenants and subordinated non bank debt with loose covenants we discuss the extent to which these findings are consistent with existing theoretical models of debt structure in which firms simultaneously use multiple debt types to reduce incentive conflicts jel g32

estimating preferences for outdoor recreation a comparison of continuous and count data demand system frameworks abstract continuous and count data demand system models have emerged as attractive alternatives to the discrete choice random utility maximization models rums that currently dominate the seasonal multi site recreation demand literature this paper compares the frameworks conceptually and investigates their empirical performance with a common data set although the two modeling approaches employ substantially different behavioral and econometric assumptions results from a recreation application based on the 1997 iowa wetlands survey suggest that qualitatively similar policy inferences arise from the competing structures

selection and recreation demand increased use of on site and user group surveys to estimate travel cost demand models e g caulkins bishop and bowes smith and desvousges has raised inevitable questions about the significance of relying on demand estimates derived solely from surveys of users many of the questions relate to selection effects that is the potential for specification errors and bias caused by an inability to reflect the decisions of nonusers with these types of surveys this issue has received some attention in the recreation literature brown et al bockstael and mcconnell but specific empirical evidence on the implications of alternative approaches for estimating demand models from on site surveys does not exist this article reports the first such evidence using a data set based on a general population sample to compare five methods for estimating travel cost demand models with microdata the findings suggest that the differences in the demand and in the benefit estimates raised by treating the problem using models with either single heckman or double selection catsiapis and robinson ham poirier effects are small however the effects of using alternative estimators for site demands are not these findings are limited because they apply to only one site nonetheless they do highlight the importance of the assumptions used to consider the behavior of nonusers consequently they provide direct motivation for more detailed conceptual and empirical work on the choice processes underlying recreation decisions

landownership concentration and the expansion of education we study the relationship between large landownership concentration and the expansion of mass education in nineteenth century prussia cross sectional estimates show a negative association between landownership concentration and enrollment rates fixed effects panel estimates indicate that regions with an initially stronger landownership concentration exhibit increasing enrollment rates this relationship is not driven by differences in the supply of schooling we argue that the implementation of agricultural reforms including the stepwise abolition of serfdom is an important driver of the change in enrollment the results are consistent with the interpretation that emancipation from labor coercion increased the private demand for education

debt and communications technology diffusion retrospective evidence this study has evaluated the relationship between debt in the capital structure of firms and the dynamics of broadband and digital technology adoption in the united states based on a large dataset on local exchange carriers in the united states over a contemporary historical fourteen year period from 1988 to 2001 using treatment effects modeling the impact of debt in impacting the levels of firms broadband deployment has been found to be negative and significant the primary source of debt in the sector has been in the form of arm s length corporate bonds and the assumptions of the monitoring hypothesis associated with such debt that lenders in the face of information and collective actions problems might not be able to control managers and hence invest less in highly technology intensive situations are supported by the data additionally the data set has been split into separate sets for two periods one between 1988 and 1995 for the period before the telecommunications act of 1996 came into force and the other set between 1996 and 2001 and the results have stayed consistent a test of the coefficients between the two periods has shown that the negative impact of leverage on broadband deployment has become stronger after the introduction of competition in the sector and this has suggested that the change in the institutional logics between the two periods has been of material impact in influencing lenders perceptions

optimal debt structure and the number of creditors within an optimal contracting framework we analyze the optimal number of creditors a company borrows from we also analyze the optimal allocation of security interests among creditors and intercreditor voting rules that govern renegotiation of debt contracts the key to our analysis is the idea that these aspects of the debt structure affect the outcome of debt renegotiation following a default debt structures that lead to inefficient renegotiation are beneficial in that they deter default but they are also costly if default is beyond a manager s control the optimal debt structure balances these effects we characterize how the optimal debt structure depends on firm characteristics such as its technology its credit rating and the market for its assets

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

the multidimensional effects of religion on socioeconomic development a review of the empirical literature religion plays a fundamental role in most people s lives with profound implications for socioeconomic development this survey provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the causal mechanisms between religion and development discussed and tested in the economics literature and reviews quantitative empirical evidence on the actual effects of religion on economic and social dimensions of development we start by disaggregating the concept of religion into four religious dimensions and propose a framework to conceptualize causal mechanisms numerous mechanisms are possible but only a few uncontested findings exist religion is ambivalent vis a vis development although religious ideas can foster certain forms of human capital acquisition and labor market participation scholars have found a negative relationship between religious dimensions and both income and gender equality as well as innovation activities religious identity is also a source of labor market discrimination and has ambivalent effects on economic growth and social cohesion methodological challenges refer to the availability of fine grained data especially for developing countries the use of concepts and definitions and the lack of causal inference

diffusing knowledge while spreading god s message protestantism and economic prosperity in china 1840 1920 we provide an account of how protestantism promoted economic prosperity in china a country in which protestant missionaries penetrated far and wide during 1840 1920 but only a tiny fraction of the population had converted to christianity by exploiting the spatial variation in the missionaries retreat due to the boxer uprising to identify the diusion of protestantism we

addressing aggregation bias in zonal recreation models abstract models of recreation demand are often based on zonal data results from such models are susceptible to aggregation bias we propose a zonal model of recreation that captures some of the underlying heterogeneity of individual visitors by incorporating distributional information on per capita income from census sources into the aggregate demand function this adjustment eliminates the unrealistic constraint of constant income across zonal residents and thus reduces the risk of aggregation bias in estimated parameters in addition the corrected aggregate specification reinstates the applicability of generalized maximum likelihood methods and increases model efficiency

an empirical analysis of prepackaged bankruptcies abstract we provide comprehensive data on the attributes and outcomes of the restructuring process for a sample of 49 financially distressed firms that restructured by means a prepackaged bankruptcy our findings complement previous research on out of court restructurings and traditional chapter 11 filings by most measures including the time spent in reorganization the direct fees as a percent of pre distress assets the recovery rates by creditors and the incidence of violation of absolute priority of claimholders we find that prepacks lie between out of court restructurings and traditional chapter 11 bankruptcies

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

collateral and the choice between bank debt and public debt this paper tests how collateral value affects a firm s choice between bank debt and public debt by considering the exogenous variation in the market value of a firm s real estate assets caused by fluctuations in local real estate prices using local land supply elasticities as an instrument for local real estate prices i estimate that a one standard deviation increase in collateral value causes bank debt as a fraction of total debt to increase by six percentage points this paper was accepted by wei jiang finance

a theoretical foundation for count data models the paper develops a theoretical foundation for using count data models in travel cost analysis two micro models are developed a restricted choice model and a repeated discrete choice model we show that both models lead to identical welfare measures

the benefits of lending relationships evidence from small business data this paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm we analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the small business administration the primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases we find smaller effects on the price of credit attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit in sum relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices

what determines outstanding corporate debt mix evidence from fractional multinomial logit estimation abstractthis study employs the fractional multinomial logit setting proposed by papke and wooldridge 1996 to examine factors driving the choice among nonbank private 144a debt bank loans and public debt made by 988 nonfinancial firms during 1993 2007 we document that the majority of firm level factors have persistent effects on corporate outstanding debt mix across economic conditions we also highlight the importance of macroeconomic variables on firms borrowing decisions as predicted by diamond 1991 finally we document a substitution effect among debt financing sources due to credit rating downgrades which is inconsistent with rauh and sufi 2010

how do firms choose their lenders an empirical investigation this article investigates which companies finance themselves through intermediaries and which borrow directly from arm s length investors our empirical results show that large companies with abundant cash and collateral tap credit markets directly these markets cater to safe and profitable industries and are most active when riskless rates or intermediary earnings are low we show that determinants of lender selection sharpen during investment downturns and that there are substantial asymmetries in the way firms enter and exit capital markets these results support a theoretical framework where intermediaries have better reorganizational skills but a higher opportunity cost of capital than bondholders