design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

landlords versus tenants information asymmetry and mismatched preferences for home energy efficiency abstract new zealand homes are poorly insulated by international standards there are government subsidies available for people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes but uptake has been relatively low among owners of rental properties this paper presents the results of a choice experiment used to investigate the preferences of home owners and tenants for insulation and heating upgrades the responses indicate that landlords may underestimate how cold their rental properties are in winter considering the level of discomfort reported by tenants median willingness to pay wtp for improved insulation by landlords is only 50 70 of owner occupier values landlords are willing to pay more for a heating appliance than any other retrofit option in contrast tenants have a low wtp for the heating appliance and would prefer under floor insulation tenants express a willingness to pay higher rent in exchange for improved energy efficiency at a rate that would appear to make such upgrades economic for the landlord information asymmetry and lack of appropriate market signals may be a large part of the reason why many landlords are not willing to pay market prices for energy efficiency upgrades

the north american horticultural industry and the risk of plant invasion we develop a monopolistic competition model of the horticultural industry and estimate the resulting profit function with u s and canadian industry data combining the results with a hazard analysis of the characteristics of exotic plants introduced in north america we explore optimal tax simulations for internalizing the risk and costs of a potential plant invasion if the share of the exotic plant sales in final profits is large then the resulting annual fee will be high discouraging the expansion of the nursery industry however the annual revenues could fund efforts to mitigate the damages resulting from any accidental plant invasion

paired comparison and contingent valuation approaches to morbidity risk valuation abstract this research uses an experimental approach for eliciting consumer valuations of morbidity risk reductions associated with safter chemical products and introduces the paired comparison questions approach to non market valuation in four applications the paired comparisons approach yields higher morbidity valuations than the more familiar contingent valuation approach however both methodologies produce large values of morbidity reduction benefits in comparison to estimates derived from wage hedonic studies explanations for the difference in the estimates and their magnitudes are suggested along with the public policy implications

ordering effects and choice set awareness in repeat response stated preference studies we present an experiment designed to investigate the presence and nature of ordering effects within repeat response stated preference sp studies our experiment takes the form of a large sample full factorial discrete choice sp exercise investigating preferences for tap water quality improvements our study simultaneously investigates a variety of different forms of position dependent and precedent dependent ordering effect in preferences for attributes and options and in response randomness we also examine whether advanced disclosure of the choice tasks impacts on the probability of exhibiting ordering effects of those different types we analyze our data both non parametrically and parametrically and find robust evidence for ordering effects we also find that the patterns of order effect in respondents preferences are significantly changed but not eradicated by the advanced disclosure of choice tasks a finding that offers insights into the choice behaviors underpinning order effects

sexual orientation and labour supply this is the first study of the effects of sexual orientation on labour supply after discussing various reasons to expect that labour supply could differ by sexual orientation the 2001 current population survey is used to test for differences in both labour supply and labour market status part time full time and not employed it is found that gay men supply less labour than married and unmarried heterosexual men with regard to women it is found that lesbians supply more labour and are more likely to be employed full time than either married or unmarried heterosexual women extensive controls are used and links to the discrimination literature are found

protectionism trade and measures of damage from exotic species introductions unintentional introductions of nonindigenous plants animals and microbes cause significant ecological and agricultural crop damage worldwide trade in both manufactured and agricultural goods is a primary vector for such introductions fusing simple models of trade and biological introductions we explore the links between trade protectionism and damage arising from exotic species introductions we show that it is possible for freer trade to reduce damage arising from exotic species invasions we also show how current measures of damage heavily weighted toward agricultural damage serve as misleading indicators of how restrictions to trade affect total losses arising from exotic species

benefit estimates for landscape improvements sequential bayesian design and respondents rationality in a choice experiment a multi attribute stated preference approach is used to value low and high impact actions on four major landscape components addressed by the rural environment protection scheme in ireland several methodological issues are addressed the use of prior beliefs on the relative magnitudes of parameters standardized description of different levels of landscape improvements via image manipulation software adoption of efficiency increasing sequential experimental design and sensitivity of benefit estimates to inclusion of responses from irrational respondents results suggest that bayesian design updating delivers significant efficiency gains without loss in respondent efficiency and estimates are upward biased when irrational respondents are included

optimal design for multinomial choice experiments abstract the author derives d optimal designs for main effects multinomial choice experiments using attribute levels as design parameters the design solutions are similar to standard main effects designs except that one attribute is used to manipulate response probabilities the manipulator is key to implementing optimal designs in practice

hypothetical bias cheap talk and stated willingness to pay for health care subjects with rheumatoid arthritis ra enrolled in an online panel were asked to evaluate pairs of treatment alternatives with different attributes half of the sample saw a cheap talk text preference parameters were estimated using random parameters logit models to account for unobserved taste heterogeneity the models also were estimated in willingness to pay wtp space instead of conventional utility space cheap talk not only affected the coefficient on the cost attribute but also preferences for other attributes wtp estimates were generally lower in cheap talk sample except for the most important attribute and a 2 level attribute subjects who were presented with cheap talk discriminated between the adjoning attribute levels better than the subjects in the control sample

dynamic sanitary and phytosanitary trade policy this paper characterizes the optimal use of sanitary and phytosanitary standards to prevent the introduction of harmful pests and diseases through international trade because established pest and disease infestations grow and spread over time their introduction has intertemporal consequences in a dynamic economic model an efficient trade policy balances the costs of sps measures against the discounted stream of the costs of control and social damages that are avoided by using sps measures where future growth of any established infestation is accounted for we examine when phytosanitary trade policy makes good economic sense when it is efficient to provide full protection against pests and diseases and when restrictive but not fully protective trade policy is efficient

labor supply differences between married heterosexual women and partnered lesbians a semi parametric decomposition approach i introduction partnered lesbian women have substantially higher labor supply than married women leppel 2008 tebaldi and elmslie 2006 what might account for the sexual orientation gap in partnered female labor supply everyday conversation and casual empiricism suggests that partnered lesbian women have a stronger attachment to the labor market relative to married women because of their choice to have fewer children than their married counterparts yet this has not been formally analyzed the primary goal of this study is to determine the role observable characteristics particularly children play in explaining the differences in labor supply between partnered lesbian women and married women while empirical research on the determinants of partnered lesbian women s labor supply is limited 1 the determinants of married women s labor supply have been studied in great detail see blundell and macurdy 1999 for a survey of the literature in general married women s labor supply is found to be positively related to own wages negatively related to spouse wages and nonlabor income and negatively related to the presence of children particularly young children in the household 2 importantly the same control variables are not found to have the same effect on married men s labor supply in particular men are not responsive to their wife s earnings and tend to have higher labor supply because of the presence of children these findings are consistent with a traditional division of labor into market and household work which results in married men being viewed as the primary earners and married women being viewed as the secondary earners 3 in particular becker 1981 argues that increasing returns from investments in specific human capital encourages a division of labor in market work and household work among household members the sexual division of labor however arises from intrinsically different comparative advantages of men and women e g in the production of children which would determine the direction of the division of tasks by gender this in turn leads to differences in specific human capital accumulation which reinforces the intrinsically different comparative advantages of men and women even in the face of rising female labor force participation increased divorce rates and lower fertility male and female earnings would not be equalized becker 1985 specifically becker argues that married women with household responsibilities e g child care and food preparation would expend less energy on market work make lower investments in market oriented human capital face lower hourly earnings and choose less demanding jobs occupations than married men even when they work the same number of hours because household responsibilities are time and effort intensive relative to leisure and other nonmarket uses of time by men moreover married women would have lower labor force participation than their husbands because of the lower earnings they would face because of less energy expended on market work and lower investments in market oriented human capital and a full equilibrium could involve complete specialization by married women in household production although married men have increased their time spent on child care production there is strong evidence that married women continue to spend more time on child care production than their spouses bianchi robinson and milkie 2006 drago and lee 2008a 2008b kalenkoski ribar and stratton 2005 2007 lundberg pabilonia and ward batts 2007 in addition the sociology literature argues that married women are more likely to identify themselves in the context of family and market work while married men are more likely to identify themselves in the context of market work alone see e g bielby and bielby 1989 finally there is a large literature that tests the specialization hypothesis bardasi and taylor 2008 daniel 1992 gray 1997 hersch and stratton 2000 kenny 1983 loh 1996 stratton 2002

the impact of utility balance and endogeneity in conjoint analysis adaptive metric utility balance is at the heart of one of the most widely used and studied methods for conjoint analysis we use formal models simulations and empirical data to suggest that adaptive metric utility balance leads to partworth estimates that are relatively biased smaller partworths are upwardly biased relative to larger partworths such relative biases could lead to erroneous managerial decisions metric utility balanced questions are also more likely to be inefficient and in one empirical example contrary to popular wisdom lead to response errors that are at least as large as nonadaptive orthogonal questions we demonstrate that this bias is because of endogeneity caused by a winner s curse shrinkage estimates do not mitigate these biases combined with adaptive metric utility balance shrinkage estimates of heterogeneous partworths are biased downward relative to homogeneous partworths although biases can affect managerial decisions our data suggest that empirically biases and inefficiencies are of the order of response errors we examine viable alternatives to metric utility balance that researchers can use without biases or inefficiencies to retain the desired properties of 1 individual level adaptation and 2 challenging questions

the effects of sons and daughters on men s labor supply and wages in this paper we estimate the effects of children and the differential effects of sons and daughters on men s labor supply and hourly wage rates the responses to fatherhood of two cohorts of men from the psid sample are examined separately and we use fixed effects estimation to control for unobserved heterogeneity we find that fatherhood significantly increases the hourly wage rates and annual hours of work for men from both cohorts most notably men s labor supply and wage rates increase more in response to the births of sons than to the births of daughters

avoiding invasives trade related policies for controlling unintentional exotic species introductions abstract international commodity trade serves as the primary conduit for unintentional introductions of damaging exotic species we use a simple model of contaminated goods trade to analyze the optimal mix of tariffs and inspections as means of controlling damage from this negative externality among other policy relevant results we find that 1 while it is always optimal to employ tariffs there are non trivial cases in which inspections should optimally be set to zero 2 a higher infection rate requires a higher tariff but beyond a point optimal inspections decrease in the infection rate and finally 3 taking a dynamic view and considering future effects of current introductions leads unambiguously to more stringent inspections but may give rise to higher or lower tariffs

the influence of gay and lesbian coupled households on house prices in conservative and liberal neighborhoods abstract gays and lesbians perceive themselves to be targets of discrimination in the housing market previous research has found that the presence of gays and lesbians is associated with increased housing values we reconcile the perceived discrimination and research results by classifying neighborhoods as more conservative or liberal according to voting outcomes of the defense of marriage act using a data set comprised of over 20 000 house sale observations we show that an increase in the number of same sex coupled households is associated with an increase in house prices in more liberal neighborhoods and a decrease in house prices in more conservative neighborhoods this suggests that gay and lesbian coupled households do experience prejudice in conservative neighborhoods

the impact of psychological and human capital on wages historically economists have taken the position that psychological capital is either unobservable or immeasurable thus heretofore little evidence has been available on the contribution of psychological capital to wages using data drawn from two different waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth we offer evidence that psychological capital has both a direct effect via self esteem and an indirect effect through locus of control on an individual s real wage we find a person s wage is more sensitive to changes in self esteem than to comparable alterations in human capital both relative wages and human capital contribute to self esteem

the transition of punjab agriculture a choice of technique approach the introduction of modern crop varieties in punjab india led to rapid income growth adoption rate and level of the new varieties is examined using a choice of technique approach in which techniques of production are identified by crop variety season of growth and method of production modeling the dynamic effects of technology resource availability and incentives reveals a consistent picture of the transition process the results show the importance of incentives and availability of quasi fixed inputs such as irrigation fertilizers and roads by the late 1970s the long run aggregate supply elasticity was between 1 3 1 5

using choice experiments to estimate consumer valuation the role of experimental design and attribute information loads with fixed dimensionality of choice experiments ces previous simulation results show that d optimal design with correct a priori information generates more accurate valuation in the absence of a priori information random designs and designs incorporate attribute interactions result in more precise valuation estimates in this article monte carlo simulations demonstrate that the performances of different design strategies are affected by attribute information loads in ces consumer valuation estimates in simulation settings vary with the number of attributes

argentine agricultural policy in a multiple input multiple output framework argentine agricultural output grew at a rate of about 1 4 per year between 1940 and 1972 cavallo and mundlak p 13 which is a very sluggish growth rate given earlier rates of 1 8 for 1908 20 and 2 2 1920 40 schultz it also is sluggish relative to growth in u s agricultural output of 1 9 during the same period adjusting for factor use total factor productivity in argentine agriculture grew at a rate of only 0 6 during this period compared to 1 2 in the rest of the argentine economy cavallo and mundlak and compared to about 1 9 in u s agriculture usda a number of hypotheses have been offered to

there is no silver bullet the value of diversification in planning invasive species surveillance abstract in this study we demonstrate how the notion of diversification can be used in broad scale resource allocation for surveillance of invasive species we consider the problem of short term surveillance for an invasive species in a geographical environment we find the optimal allocation of surveillance resources among multiple geographical subdivisions via application of a classical portfolio framework which allocates investments among multiple financial asset types with uncertain returns in a portfolio that maximizes the performance and by meeting the desired diversification targets protects against errors in estimating the portfolio s performance we illustrate the approach with a case study that applies a spatial transmission model to assess the risk of spread of the emerald ash borer eab a significant pest in north america with infested firewood that may be carried by visitors to campground facilities in central canada adding the diversification objective yields an expected survey performance that is comparable with undiversified optimal allocation but more importantly makes the geographical distribution of survey priorities less subject to possible errors in the spread rate estimates overall diversification of pest surveillance can be viewed as a viable short term strategy for hedging against uncertainty in expert and model based assessments of pest invasion risk

optimal border policies for invasive species under asymmetric information this paper analyzes the problem faced by a border protection agency if endogenous exporter abatement activities affect invasive species risk allowing for unobservable differences in abatement cost we show how the optimal inspection penalty regime differs from the symmetric information case departing from previous literature we allow for technical assistance a policy instrument specifically permitted and commonly employed under article 9 of the world trade organization sanitary and phytosanitary agreement we find the information asymmetry can make it optimal for the importing country to provide technical assistance grants for exporter risk abatement even if it would otherwise be inefficient further we show that fungibility of technical assistance with inputs in other sectors of the exporting economy affects the qualitative nature of optimal policy if technical assistance has no outside value in the exporter s country optimal policy is characterized by a menu of contracts balancing higher tariffs with lower penalties for being caught with an invasive if technical assistance can be used in other sectors of the exporter s economy it can introduce countervailing incentives making a uniform tariff penalty combination optimal

tariff escalation and invasive species damages we investigate the interface between trade and damages from invasive species is focusing on escalation in tariffs between raw input and processed good markets and its implication for is based damages the current tariff escalation in processed agro forestry products motivates our analysis tariff escalation exacerbates the likelihood of is introduction by biasing trade flows towards increased trade of primary commodity flows and against processed product trade we show that a reduction of tariff escalation by lowering the tariff on processed goods increases allocative efficiency and reduces is based damages a win win situation we also identify policy menus for trade reforms involving tariffs on both raw input and processed goods leading to win win situations

estimating willingness to pay do health and environmental researchers have different methodological standards health and environmental economists have been employing stated preference sp methods such as conjoint analysis or contingent valuation to estimate the monetary value of public health interventions and environmental goods and services however the quality of data and the validity of results are sensitive to a number of decisions researchers make the aim of this study is to compare the degree of the current consensus among active researchers in the rapidly evolving area of sp methods in health and environmental valuation we surveyed researchers who have published manuscripts on sp methods in the last 10 years researchers were presented with hypothetical sp studies with different attributes they were first asked which study they would recommend to use to inform policy decisions and then asked which study has better quality our results show that good practice sp methods vary among study features and among researchers with different amounts and kinds of research experience although health researchers

optimal experimental design for double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the double bounded dichotomous choice model is becoming popular in the contingent valuation literature this technique considers the responses to two bids the second one being determined according to the response to the first and it has been shown to be statistically more efficient than the standard single bounded model in this paper the issue of the optimal choice of bid values for the double bounded logit model is addressed these designs are derived to satisfy the d optimal c optimal and fiducial method criteria

optimal designs for discrete choice contingent valuation surveys single bound double bound and bivariate models this paper finds the designs for discrete choice contingent valuation surveys which maximize the precision of a statistic of interest about the public s willingness to pay wtp for a change in the environmental quality such as median wtp an optimization problem is set up in which the efficiency of the estimate of median wtp or a related concept is the objective function to optimize with respect to the survey design i e the set of bids offered to the respondents in deriving the optimal designs we consider alternative econometric models such as the basic single bound model that uses the responses to the first payment question the traditional interval data or double bound model for surveys with a follow up payment question and the recently proposed bivariate binary response model simulations are carried out to compare the alternative design principles and assess their performances with respect to the statistic of primary interest median wtp and other welfare measures such as mean wtp other designs that are constructed ad hoc are also examined

designing conjoint choice experiments using managers prior beliefs abstract the authors provide more efficient designs for conjoint choice experiments based on prior information elicited from managers about the parameters and their associated uncertainty the authors use a bayesian design procedure that assumes a prior distribution of likely parameter values and optimizes the design over that distribution the authors propose a way to elicit prior information from managers and show in monte carlo studies that the procedure provides more efficient designs than the current procedures the authors provide an empirical application in which they elicit prior information on the parameter values and the associated uncertainty from managers here the bayesian design provides 30 50 lower standard errors of the estimates and an expected predictive validity that is approximately 20 higher

empirical age earnings profiles the human capital earnings function in which earnings are expressed as a quadratic in potential experience is probably the most widely accepted empirical specification in economics in spite of its widespread acceptance the human capital earnings function provides a very poor approximation of the true empirical relationship between earnings and experience the standard formulation understates early career earnings growth by about 30 50 and overstates midcareer growth by 20 50 however simple alternative specifications that fit the data are available

evaluating impacts from noxious facilities including public preferences in current siting mechanisms abstract this paper describes an approach to facility siting that ranks potential sites in terms of their social impacts a contingent choice survey based on paired comparisons is used to construct a utility index to rank sites consistent with predicting results of a hypothetical referendum based on the attributes of the sites the method is likely to be acceptable to public decision makers since it is analogous to site scoring methods that have been commonly used indeed our approach is currently being employed as part of a larger landfill site selection process in the state of rhode island

an investigation into sexual orientation discrimination as an explanation for wage differences this study explores the effects of sexual orientation on earnings it is found that ceteris paribus men living with male partners tend to earn less than other men and women living with female partners tend to earn more than other women these earnings differentials tend to vary by region they also vary by education and occupation for men and with the presence of minor children for women in addition the age earnings profiles of women living with female partners tend to be higher flatter and less concave than those of other women

monetary valuation of insurance against flood risk under climate change climate change is projected to increase the risk of natural disasters such as floods and storms in certain regions this is likely to raise the demand for natural disaster insurance we present a stated preference survey using choice modeling with mixed logit estimation methods in order to examine the effects of climate change and the availability of government compensation on the demand for flood insurance by dutch homeowners currently no private insurance against flood damage is offered in the netherlands the results indicate that there are opportunities for the development of a flood insurance market 2012 by the economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

labor supply taxes and government spending a microeconometric analysis the effect of government spending on labor supply behavior is critical to predicting the balanced budget effect of income taxes and to estimating the marginal social cost of public funds yet its very existence not to mention direction and magnitude has not been empirically investigated this research estimates a labor supply function that incorporates income taxation and government spending using microeconomic data for men and women the empirical results suggest that public sector spending may have a significant effect on labor supply thereby leading to estimates of the marginal social cost of public funds that differ from those typically calculated

pay differences among the highly paid the male female earnings gap in lawyers salaries this article uses very detailed information on graduates of the university of michigan law school to examine male female pay differences in that population men and women in this population have virtually identical human capital on graduation from law school allowing us to examine carefully the different impact of children and work history on men s and women s careers and earnings taking time from work in order to care for children reduces wages significantly but a rich set of controls including childcare work history school performance and job setting measures still leave one fourth to one third of the earnings gap unexplained

research note on managerially efficient experimental designs in most marketing experiments managerial decisions are not based directly on the estimates of the parameters but rather on functions of these estimates for example many managerial decisions are driven by whether or not a feature is valued more than the price the consumer will be asked to pay in other cases some managerial decisions are weighed more heavily than others the standard measures used to evaluate experimental designs e g a efficiency or d efficiency do not accommodate these phenomena we propose alternative managerial efficiency criteria m errors that are relatively easy to implement we explore their properties suggest practical algorithms to decrease errors and provide illustrative examples realistic examples suggest improvements of as much as 30 in managerial efficiency we close by considering approximations for nonlinear criteria and extensions to choice based experiments

preferences for public lands management under competing uses the case of yellowstone national park we examine snowmobile use conflict in yellowstone national park to assess the effect of different winter management policies on heterogeneous visitors welfare using a stated preference choice experiment we quantify welfare changes for snowmobile riders and non riders under different snowmobile restrictions a key determinant of welfare change is visitors willingness to trade off reduced snowmobile access for improved ambient conditions in the park our findings support the notion that welfare losses to snowmobile riders could be offset by welfare gains to non riders but net benefits will depend on the number of riders and non riders and the specifics of the policy

marital status and full time part time work status in child care choices using recent sipp data this study estimates two econometric models to study the differences in the effect of child care costs on employment status and differences in the mode of child care used controlling for employment status for both married and single women full time employment is more elastic with respect to changes in the price of child care than part time employment and employment elasticities are larger for single than married mothers in the model of child care modal choice we find that an increased probability of full time employment is associated with an increase in the use of centre care for both married and single mothers and that price elasticities of modal choice are larger for single than married mothers

an empirical analysis of homosexual heterosexual male earnings differentials unmarried and unequal using data from the 1990 u s census pums 5 the authors present the first large scale study of wage differentials between heterosexual and homosexual men the homosexual sample consisting of gay men in unmarried partnered relationships are estimated to have earned 15 6 less than similarly qualified married heterosexual men and 2 4 less than similarly qualified unmarried partnered heterosexual men the authors interpret these two figures as upper and lower bound estimates of the differential between homosexual and heterosexual men the dual comparison enables the authors to disentangle the penalty to being unmarried from other determinants of the wage differential estimated at 14 1 this variable appears to be the main source of the wage gap

the influence of individuals in forming collective household preferences for water quality preference for water quality and its nonmarket valuation can be used to inform the development of pricing policies and long term supply strategies tap water quality is a household concern the objective status quo of water provision varies between households and not between individuals within households while charges are levied on households not individuals individual preferences differ from collective preferences in households where there are two adults we examine the preferences of each separately and then as a couple in collective decisions we show the level of influence each has in developing the collective decision process we use discrete choice experiments to model preference heterogeneity across three experiments on women men and on both we propose a random utility model which decomposes the error structure in the utility of alternatives so as to identify the individual influence in collective decisions this approach to choice data analysis is new to environmental economics

part time versus full time work and child care costs evidence for married mothers this paper contributes to the analysis of female labour supply by accounting for both child care costs and differences in part time and full time work an ordered probit model is used to examine the impact of child care costs on the work status of married mothers data are drawn from the canadian national child care survey and the labour market activity survey the results from this paper show the degree to which child care subsidies may have differential impacts on part time and full time work decisions by mothers the child care cost elasticities for part time and full time employment are reported to be 0 21 and 0 71 respectively

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

supplier choice and wtp for electricity attributes in an emerging market the role of perceived past experience environmental concern and energy saving behavior abstract this study analyzes customers preferences and their willingness to pay wtp for certain service attributes in an electricity supplier choice context specifically a stated preference choice experiment is conducted in the canary islands residential market where limited competition exists preferences for different electricity suppliers and three level of service attributes are investigated namely supply reliability share of renewable energies and availability of a complementary energy audit service the results might be interpreted as an indication of different aspects new firms need to consider if they plan to enter in the market there is an opportunity for new companies to establish in the market though evidence of brand loyalty to the current company and or significant switching costs are also found especially in the case of older people regarding the estimated wtp several results should be highlighted first customers who have experienced more serious outages in the past tend to show a higher wtp to reduce the outage frequency second highly educated respondents those who state a great concern for the greenhouse gases ghg emissions and those who carry out energy saving actions in their homes exhibit a larger wtp for renewable energies this empirical evidence provides useful information for authorities responsible for energy policy design

random coefficient models for stated preference surveys abstract this paper combines the use of random coefficient discrete choice models that allow for correlated errors in the form of unobserved preference heterogeneity with an investigation of the reliability and usefulness of rankings data for the data we examine we find significant unobserved preference heterogeneity in the rankings which violates the underlying assumptions of the rank ordered logit model further directly modeling unobserved preference heterogeneity results in significant improvement in the precision of the parameter estimates and in estimated willingness to pay wtp the reliability and usefulness of rankings data should be re examined with econometric models not subject to the independence of irrelevant alternatives iia

willingness to pay estimation with choice based conjoint analysis addressing extreme response behavior with individually adapted designs the increasing consideration of behavioral aspects in operations management models has prompted greater use of choice based conjoint cbc studies in operations research such studies can elicit consumers willingness to pay wtp a core input for many optimization models however optimization models can yield valid results only if consumers wtp is estimated accurately a simulation study and two field studies show that extreme response behavior in cbc studies such that consumers always or never choose the no purchase option harms the validity of wtp estimates reporting the share of consumers who always and never select the no purchase option allows for detecting extreme response behavior this study suggests an individually adapted design that avoids extreme response behavior and thus significantly improves wtp estimation accuracy

tariffs and the risk of invasive pest introductions in commodity imports theory and empirical evidence abstract we investigate using tariffs as corrective taxes to reduce risks from biological invasions due to expanded world trade a theoretical analysis indicates that higher tariffs have ambiguous effects on invasive pest introductions an econometric analysis using data from us department of agriculture surveillance screening indicates that tariff rates exert a negligible influence on expected invasive pest introductions from commodities currently facing positive tariffs removal of duty free status would decrease expected pest intercepts but undermine other goals of us trade policy and lower consumer welfare consumer welfare loss is on the order of 38 million per expected intercept avoided