investigating preferences for dynamic electricity tariffs the effect of environmental and system benefit disclosure dynamic electricity pricing can produce efficiency gains in the electricity sector and help achieve energy policy goals such as increasing electric system reliability and supporting renewable energy deployment retail electric companies can offer dynamic pricing to residential electricity customers via smart meter enabled tariffs that proxy the cost to procure electricity on the wholesale market current investments in the smart metering necessary to implement dynamic tariffs show policy makers resolve for enabling responsive demand and realizing its benefits however despite these benefits and the potential bill savings these tariffs can offer adoption among residential customers remains at low levels using a choice experiment approach this paper seeks to determine whether disclosing the environmental and system benefits of dynamic tariffs to residential customers can increase adoption although sampling and design issues preclude wide generalization we found that our environmentally conscious respondents reduced their required discount to switch to dynamic tariffs around 10 in response to higher awareness of environmental and system benefits the perception that shifting usage is easy to do also had a significant impact indicating the potential importance of enabling technology perhaps the targeted communication strategy employed by this study is one way to increase adoption and achieve policy goals

green market expansion by reducing information asymmetries evidence for labeled organic food products abstract we investigate how the provision of objective information about the environmental and health impact of organic labels by policy makers can influence the willingness to pay of consumers for labeled organic apples in flanders belgium using a stated choice experiment we initially find that flemish consumers are willing to pay a positive price premium of some 33 eurocent per kilogram for labeled organic apples after the provision of information on the actual environmental and health effects of organic apple production this price premium becomes even more pronounced and increases to 57 eurocent per kilogram using a conditional logit model with covariates and a mixed logit model we find evidence of preference heterogeneity also the effect of information provision is more pronounced for certain groups of consumers such as non vegetarians infrequent buyers of organic products and members of a nature protection organization as such this paper illustrates that there is a role for policy makers and csr producers in providing more accurate and reliable information about socially responsible production processes moreover it is important to take the observed preference heterogeneity into account and tailor policies to specific consumer groups

is our everyday comfort for sale preferences for demand management on the electricity market in a european perspective the electricity markets have been experiencing major changes via deregulation new technologies and changes in the production mix together with the daily and seasonal peak hours on the demand side the changing markets put pressure on increased flexibility to handle and sustain balance in the grid systems this paper focuses on the demand side and analyzes preferences related to demand management of swedish households energy use in a web based choice experiment respondents were faced with three hypothetical electricity contracts the choices of preferred contracts revealed preferences for attributes related to external control of heating household electricity and information dissemination integrity the results show that people put a substantial value on not being controlled illustrated by compensations up to thousands of sek for accepting a contract characterized by external control of energy use in various dimensions in addition the results show that household composition age gender and income play a role for the perceived discomfort from the external control and information dissemination

a review of wta wtp studies abstract willingness to accept wta is usually substantially higher than willingness to pay wtp these constructs have been studied for roughly 30 years and with a wide variety of goods this paper reviews those studies we find that the less the good is like an ordinary market good the higher is the ratio the ratio is highest for non market goods next highest for ordinary private goods and lowest for experiments involving forms of money a generalization of this pattern holds even when we account for differences in survey design ordinary goods have lower ratios than non ordinary ones we also find that ratios in real experiments are not significantly different from hypothetical experiments and that incentive compatible elicitation yields higher ratios

assessment of public acceptance and willingness to pay for renewable energy sources in crete abstract the aim of this study is to analyse and to evaluate the citizens public acceptance and willingness to pay wtp for renewable energy sources res in crete for this purpose a contingent valuation study was conducted using a double bound dichotomous choice format to elicit people s wtp and factors affecting it residents of 1440 households all over crete were interviewed face to face major conclusions can be used as a basis for sustainable energy planning for policies and the formulation of awareness campaigns and for res investment programs and projects in order to prepare implementation conditions and enhance public acceptance of renewable energy investments and programmes mean wtp per household was found to be 16 33 to be paid quarterly as an additional charge on the electricity bill larger willingness to pay was reported by those with high family income and residence size those having a higher level of energy information and awareness concerning climatic change those who have invested in some energy saving measures and those who suffer from more electricity shortages than others

valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments increasing the proportion of power derived from renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important part of many countries s strategies to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions however renewable energy investments can often have external costs and benefits which need to be taken into account if socially optimal investments are to be made this paper attempts to estimate the magnitude of these external costs and benefits for the case of renewable technologies in scotland a country which has set particularly ambitious targets for expanding renewable energy the external effects we consider are those on landscape quality wildlife and air quality we also consider the welfare implications of different investment strategies for employment and electricity prices the methodology used to do this is the choice experiment technique renewable technologies considered include hydro on shore and off shore wind power and biomass welfare changes for different combinations of impacts associated with different investment strategies are estimated we also test for differences in preferences towards these impacts between urban and rural communities and between high and low income households

development and application of a cost benefit framework for energy reliability using probabilistic methods in network planning and regulation to enhance social welfare the n 1 rule although electricity is crucial to many activities in developed societies guaranteeing a maximum reliability of supply to end users is extremely costly this situation gives rise to a trade off between the costs and benefits of reliability the dutch government has responded to this trade off by changing the rule stipulating that electricity networks must be able to maintain supply even if one component fails known as the n 1 rule even in maintenance situations this rule was changed by adding the phrase unless the costs exceed the benefits we have developed a cost benefit framework for the implementation and application of this new rule the framework requires input on failure probability the cost of supply interruptions to end users and the cost of investments a case study of the dutch grid shows that the method is indeed practicable and that it is highly unlikely that n 1 during maintenance will enhance welfare in the netherlands therefore including the limitation unless the costs exceed the benefits in the rule has been a sensible policy for the netherlands and would also be a sensible policy for other countries

inflation and wage rigidity flexibility in the short run a recent literature uses accurate wage data from payroll records and provides compelling evidence against the conventional belief that nominal wages are downward sticky this paper provides a unique contribution to this literature by conducting a formal analysis of the role of inflation in cyclical wage rigidity flexibility analysis of payroll based wage data from the korean labor market for the period 1971 2014 finds that the degree of downward nominal wage flexibility is countercyclical and the countercyclicality becomes stronger during a deflationary relative to inflationary recession this serves as a counter example to the conventional theory of cyclical wage rigidity jel e24 e32 j30 j64

estimating a wage curve for britain 1973 90 following a w phillips s 1958 original work on the united kingdom applied research on unemployment and wages has been dominated by the analysis of highly aggregated time series data sets however it has proved difficult with such methods to uncover statistically reliable models this paper adopts a different approach it uses macroeconomic data on 175 000 british workers from 1973 to 1990 to provide evidence for the existence of a negatively sloped relationship linking the level of pay to the local rate of unemployment the paper casts doubt on standard ideas in macroeconomics regional economics and labor economics copyright 1994 by royal economic society

modelling heterogeneity in response behaviour towards a sequence of discrete choice questions a probabilistic decision process model there is a growing body of evidence in the non market valuation literature suggesting that responses to a sequence of discrete choice questions tend to violate the assumptions typically made by analysts regarding independence of responses and stability of preferences decision processes or heuristics such as value learning and strategic misrepresentation have been offered as explanations for these results while a few studies have tested these heuristics as competing hypotheses none has investigated the possibility that each explains the response behaviour of a subgroup of the population in this paper we make a contribution towards addressing this research gap by presenting a probabilistic decision process model designed to estimate the proportion of respondents employing defined heuristics we demonstrate the model on binary and multinomial choice data sources and find three distinct types of response behaviour the results suggest that accounting for heterogeneity in response behaviour may be a better way forward than attempting to identify a single heuristic to explain the behaviour of all respondents

monetary policy and real wage cyclicality this article points to the potential role of monetary policy in affecting the degree of real wage cyclicality we show that the degree and direction of real wage cyclicality is determined by the interaction of i the returns to scale in production ii the nature of aggregate shocks and iii monetary policy given that production technology is fairly constant in the short run we suggest that variations in the real wage output covariance depend largely on the combination of the latter two identifying well documented monetary policy phases in six major organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries and accounting for both aggregate demand and supply shocks we provide empirical evidence to support our main theoretical claim

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

electricity outages in ghana are contingent valuation estimates valid african countries experience persistent and serious energy outages but while multiple valuation studies provide estimates of the costs of electricity outages in high income countries evidence is scarce for lower and middle income countries the few studies that assess the value of reliable energy supply rely on the contingent valuation method that is under wide scrutiny this paper aims to provide new estimates of households willingness to pay to reduce electricity outages for ghana and contributes to the debate on the validity of contingent valuation results for energy reliability our results suggest that households are willing to pay ghs 67 17 per month for reliable electricity supply equivalent to 7 of respondents income the results of tests for hypothetical bias wtp wta disparity and income effects suggest that the contingent valuation estimates from this study are robust and can support decision makers in prioritizing energy policies and investments

estimation of the inconvenience cost of a rolling blackout in the residential sector the case of south korea abstract south korea is experiencing a serious imbalance in electricity supply and demand which caused a blackout in 2011 the korean government has planned to perform a rolling blackout to prevent large scale blackouts when the electricity supply reserve margin reaches less than 1 million kw this study attempts to estimate the inconvenience cost of household customers from a rolling blackout by using survey data to this end we apply a contingent valuation method cvm to measure their willingness to pay wtp in order to avoid a rolling blackout i e the suspension of electricity supply in this study we estimate the inconvenience costs stemming from both an unannounced and an announced rolling blackout as a result we find that the inconvenience cost of a sudden rolling blackout is estimated at 3900 67 krw 3 56 usd per month per household while that of an announced rolling blackout stands at 3102 95 krw 2 83 usd this difference in costs shows that people place value in receiving prior notice of a blackout and that inconvenience costs of between 166 0 billion krw 151 6 million usd and 174 3 billion krw 159 2 million usd per year can be reduced nationwide by giving households advance notice of a planned rolling blackout

witchcraft beliefs as a cultural legacy of the atlantic slave trade evidence from two continents abstract this paper argues that the historical slave trade contributed to the propagation of persistent witchcraft beliefs on both sides of the atlantic ocean and establishes two key empirical patterns first it shows that in sub saharan africa representatives of ethnic groups which were more heavily exposed to the atlantic slave trade in the past are more likely to believe in witchcraft today thus establishing a link between historical trauma and contemporary culture second exploring the role of the slave trade in cultural transmission across continents this paper finds that afro descendants in modern latin america are substantially more likely to believe in witchcraft relative to other ancestral groups moreover accounting for ancestry and other relevant factors people residing in regions historically more reliant on african slave labor are also more likely to be witchcraft believers these findings support ethnographic narratives on the connection between slave trade slavery and the entrenchment of witchcraft beliefs and shed light on the nature of these beliefs and related practices as a cultural framework for interpreting misfortune and a mechanism of enslavement in local communities

contingent valuation and actual behavior predicting connections to new water systems in the state of kerala india in 1988 families in kerala state in india were surveyed to ascertain their willingness to pay for household connections to a piped water supply system in 1991 the families in these communities were surveyed again and their actual decisions recorded this article explores the validity of the findings of the 1988 study on the basis of actual behavior it looks at the question of benefit revelation did people behave as they said they would and it looks at the question of benefit transfer did people in one site behave as they were predicted to behave on the basis of the predictions of a behavioral model for a different site the data were also used to analyze the policy relevance of behavioral modeling coauthors are john briscoe bhanwar singh radhika ramasubban and ramesh bhatia copyright 1995 by oxford university press

the importance of incorporating reliability of supply criteria in a regulatory system of electricity distribution an empirical analysis for austria abstract grid tariffs are the main source of income for distribution system operators dsos reductions of tariffs increase the cost pressure on dsos assuming they work efficiently tariff reductions potentially lead to a decrease of the electricity system s quality if no reliability of supply criteria are incorporated in the regulatory system our statistical analysis shows that the correlation between grid tariffs and electricity supply interruptions in a regulatory regime neglecting this incorporation is significant and that furthermore decreasing tariffs harm the reliability of supply even in the short run our econometric analysis of the influence of tariffs on reliability of supply shows a significant correlation between the grid tariffs and the duration of power outages in the austrian electricity grid an annual average interruption duration per installed capacity of a specific grid increases ceteris paribus by 1 36 min if the grid tariff of this specific grid is decreased in the previous year by 1 mwh

god insures those who pay formal insurance and religious offerings in ghana this article provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations we randomize enrollment of members of a pentecostal church in ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy then church members allocate money between themselves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with significant stakes members enrolled in insurance give significantly less money to their own church compared with members who only receive information about the insurance enrollment also reduces giving toward other spiritual goods we set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance the implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist god survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel

valuing the reliability of the electrical power infrastructure a two stage hedonic approach the reliability of electrical power supply is amongst the conditions that inform house purchase decisions in all urban areas reliability depends in part on the conditions of the power generation and distribution infrastructures involved and in part on environmental conditions its value to homeowners may be capitalised into the value of the house in this paper a hedonic pricing approach is used to estimate the capitalised value of the reliability offered by distribution infrastructures and the environmental conditions with which they interact in phoenix arizona a first stage estimates the impact of infrastructure and environmental conditions on reliability in a second stage the capitalised value of reliability from the marginal willingness to pay for reliability revealed by house purchase decisions is estimated and used to infer the value of both infrastructural characteristics and environmental conditions

determinants and policy implications for household electricity saving behaviour evidence from beijing china this research sets out to explore the possibilities for further saving in household electricity consumption through a study of the residents willingness and behavioural characteristics in electricity saving as applied within a chinese context based on an extensive literature review the authors argue that economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience may have a positive correlation with household electricity saving behaviour while the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities may exert a negative effect on it through a sample of 816 randomly selected residents in beijing the propositions are examined using logit regression analysis the conclusions support the ideas concerning both the positive influence of economic benefits policy and social norms and past experience as they affect broader electricity saving behaviour and the negative influence of the discomfort caused by electricity saving activities finally some inferences are drawn and suggestions are offered for policy makers and further studies

real wages over the business cycle evidence from panel data one topic on which keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages keynes 1936 as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically quoting the general theory p 17 in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages thus i am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have rightly asserted as indefeasible this prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short run capital stock increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and through diminishing product lower real wages for this reason evidence by dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical both dunlop and tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages which given the procyclical movement of money wages implies a positive correlation between

business cycle models aggregation and real wage cyclicality a substantial literature has developed to estimate the true cyclicality of real wages that is composition bias free two major issues are addressed in this article aggregation of heterogeneous workers and potential bias in the measurement of the labor input a general analysis of the biases is presented and alternative approaches in the literature are nested in a single framework estimates based on an efficiency units concept that avoids the usual aggregation problems are presented composition bias underestimates the usual parameters of interest unless both the price and the quantity of the labor input are adjusted appropriately

does hazardous waste matter evidence from the housing market and the superfund program this paper uses the housing market to develop estimates of the local welfare impacts of superfund sponsored cleanups of hazardous waste sites we show that if consumers value the cleanups then the hedonic model predicts that they will lead to increases in local housing prices and new home construction as well as the migration of individuals that place a high value on environmental quality to the areas near the improved sites we compare housing market outcomes in the areas surrounding the first 400 hazardous waste sites chosen for superfund cleanups to the areas surrounding the 290 sites that narrowly missed qualifying for these cleanups we find that superfund cleanups are associated with economically small and statistically insignificant changes in residential property values property rental rates housing supply total population and types of individuals living near the sites these findings are robust to a series of specification checks including the application of a regression discontinuity design based on knowledge of the selection rule overall the preferred estimates suggest that the local benefits of superfund cleanups are small and appear to be substantially lower than the 43 million mean cost of superfund cleanups

wage adjustment in the great recession and other downturns evidence from the united states and great britain using 1979 2012 cps data for the united states and 1975 2012 nes data for great britain we study wage behavior in both countries with particular attention to the great recession real wages are procyclical in both countries but the procyclicality of real wages varies across recessions and does so differently between the two countries in ways that defy simple explanations we devote particular attention to the hypothesis that downward nominal wage rigidity plays an important role in cyclical employment and unemployment fluctuations we conclude that downward wage rigidity may be less binding and have lesser allocative consequences than is often supposed

are small firms willing to pay for improved power supply evidence from a contingent valuation study in india abstract this paper provides new estimates on indian small scale manufacturing firms willingness to pay wtp for reliable power supply almost half of indian manufacturing lies in the small scale sector and its productivity is severely affected by power outages however there is a surprising paucity of research on small firms wtp for avoiding outages we conduct a double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation experiment with a random sample of 260 small scale firms in the region around hyderabad we find that on average firms are willing to pay approximately 20 more for uninterrupted power supply the wtp estimates and the explanatory factors for the firms decisions were tested for robustness using both probit and bivariate probit models in addition a two step heckman correction was used to control for selection bias induced by protest responses our results are vital to understand behavior of small firms which are crucial to india s economic growth further the government s continued emphasis on power sector reforms makes the paper even more important as it provides realistic estimates for designing tariffs while keeping in mind the preferences of the small scale industry

valuing smart meters abstract this paper assesses to what extent consumers are willing to make use of the features and capabilities offered by smart meters via a choice experiment households are offered the choice between a set of smart meters described by six attributes impact on the comfort and privacy level functionality visibility cost savings and investment outlay we estimate a main effects conditional logit model and a main effects random parameter logit model including interactions with socio demographic characteristics the results show that households have heterogeneous preferences for some attributes but not for others the estimates are used to assess marginal willingness to pay values from a policy perspective our findings suggest that sufficient effort should be devoted to designing the smart metering devices and to informing households without careful preparation a mandatory or voluntary roll out of smart meters risks to be unsuccessful because device characteristics do not meet consumer needs

consumer rationality and the status quo received microeconomic theory presumes rational consumers maximize utility over all commodity bundles recent analysis however suggests that a consumer s status quo may limit economic rationality bias consumer decisions and induce serious errors in survey based valuations of public and private goods using regression and choice theoretic frameworks we investigate the existence of status quo effects in the consumer valuation of a particular unpriced product the reliability of residential electrical service such valuations have become important in electric utility resource planning and rate making we find substantial status quo effects which must be addressed in welfare comparisons regarding electric service reliability

on the choice of funtional form for hedonic price functions this study examines how errors in measuring marginal attribute pric es vary with the form of the hedonic price function in simulations consumers with known utility functions bid for houses with given attributes various forms of the hedonic function are estimated using equilibrium housing prices errors in estimating marginal attribute prices are calculated by comparing each consumer s equilibrium marginal bid vector with the gradient of the hedonic function when all attributes are observed linear and quadratic box cox forms produce lowest mean percentage errors however when some attributes are unobserved or are replaced by proxies linear and linear box cox functions perform best copyright 1988 by mit press

the cost of electric power interruptions in the industrial sector estimates derived from interruptible service programs the electric power industry has become increasingly interested in the value customers place upon service reliability with the demand for reliability couched in terms of outage or shortage costs the survey based method of eliciting these costs dominates the literature this paper explores and demonstrates a method for estimating outage and shortage costs based upon behavioral data a discrete choice model is developed for estimating shortage costs using observed decisions of industrial customers regarding participation in interruptible service programs the resulting shortage cost estimates of 4 per kwh unserved for a one hour interruption are consistent with previous survey based estimates

the evolution of wages in the united kingdom evidence from micro data we use data on male employees from the u k family expenditure survey for the years 1968 86 to investigate the behavior of wages over time and across cohorts we find that differentials between manual workers and professional managerial ones are lower at labor market entry for younger cohorts but increasing faster with age in the 1980s than in the past the returns to experience appear to be very low in the united kingdom particularly for manual and clerical workers although the improved education of younger workers may partly explain this finally we show that individual wages in the united kingdom are highly procyclical

households willingness to pay for safeguarding security of natural gas supply in electricity generation abstract security of energy supply is a major issue for all eu member states due to europe s increasing dependence on imported fossil fuel sources and the continuous rise in energy demand the latter is of particular importance in electricity sector given the continuously increasing use of gas for electricity generation in order to properly tackle with the problem concerted actions are required by the eu member states in several levels i e legislative political etc nevertheless these actions will come at an additional cost paid by the society either through increased electricity bills or through public financing for energy security investments thus such policies should be justified on the basis of cost benefit analysis towards this direction it may be necessary to take into account non market costs and benefits i e the value that consumers place on interruptions avoided in order to explore households perceptions and willingness to pay for securing gas supply for electricity production an empirical study was conducted by means of the contingent valuation method the results indicate that consumers are willing to pay a premium on their electricity bills in order to internalize the external costs of electricity production in terms of energy security which are caused from imported fuels

keynesian controversies on wages in the general theory keynes advanced two hypotheses about movements in wages and urged their empirical investigation john dunlop lorie tarshis and henry richardson responded to this call with articles published in the economic journal in the late 1930s in turn keynes replied to their findings this exchange is described and the subsequent literature on the cyclical movement of real wages and the rigidity of money wages is outlined

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

the value of continuous power supply for flemish households abstract this paper estimates the willingness to pay accept wtp wta of flemish households for continuous power supply based on a stated preference approach the data were collected via a choice experiment and were then used to estimate a main effects conditional logit model and a random parameter logit model with interaction effects and correlated preferences power outages are characterized by 6 attributes annual frequency duration peak or off peak announced or unannounced winter or summer and invoice impact all estimates have the expected sign the results are used to assess the marginal wtp wta for each of these attributes overall the outcome suggests that flemish households have heterogeneous preferences regarding power outage attributes and that due to a status quo bias only a relatively small share of them is willing to switch to a lower reliability level if this would be compensated by a bill discount

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

us consumers willingness to pay for green electricity abstract we analyze us consumers demand for environmental attributes of deregulated residential electricity services using results from a survey designed to elicit consumers willingness to pay for such attributes and using results from a hedonic analysis of actual price premiums charged for green electricity in several deregulated markets survey results suggest that many population segments are willing to pay for decreased air emissions even if there is no alteration in fuel source furthermore several groups are willing to pay significantly more when emissions reductions stem from increased reliance upon renewable fuels the hedonic analysis suggests that several product features not considered in the survey help explain real price premiums including fuel mix from newly created renewable generation capacity green e certification brand name and state of offer while survey and hedonic results are not easily compared due to limitations of the survey both point to similar values for key environmental attributes though the survey results are likely to overstate actual willingness to pay in sum the results suggest that consumer driven purchases can in part support the future of renewable generation capacity in the united states though reliance upon other policy alternatives may be needed if energy prices spike

what do customers want from improved residential electricity services evidence from a choice experiment abstract improvements in customer satisfaction as well as product service quality represent a common objective of all businesses and electricity services are no exception using choice experiments and a mixed logit model this study quantitatively analyzes customers preferences and their marginal willingness to pay for improved residential electricity services the study provides an ex ante evaluation of customers acceptance of hypothetical electricity services according to the results customers consider the electricity bill and the electricity mix as the two most important attributes when choosing their electricity services customers are willing to pay 2 2 more in the average electricity bill an additional monthly electricity bill of krw 1 064 usd 0 96 for a significant increase in the share of renewable energy which is far less than the actual cost of achieving this renewable target therefore it is better to maintain the current electricity mix in principle and the renewable share should be gradually expanded instead of making a sudden change in the electricity mix in addition customers are willing to pay krw 6 793 usd 6 15 more to reduce blackouts once in a year and krw 64 year usd 0 06 year to reduce a minute of each blackout

the international transmission of economic fluctuations abstract this paper suggests that for a wide class of international real business cycle models including models with imperfect competition the traditional channels of international transmission of business cycles through world interest rate and terms of trade variations cannot explain the cyclical response of the canadian economy to innovations in u s output empirically testable quantitative models of the effects on canadian economic activity of shocks to the u s economy are developed and their empirical relevance is tested by comparing impulse responses estimated from vector autoregressions to the quantitative predictions of the theoretical models

korean public s preference for supply security of oil and gas and the impact of protest bidders abstract the korean governmental support for supply security of oil and gas via overseas exploration and production e p projects are publicly criticized because of some poor projects lacking of economic feasibility even though it should be expanded from a long term perspective applying the contingent valuation this study investigates the korean public s preferences for governmental support for overseas oil and gas e p projects the result shows that the governmental support for overseas e p projects rather decreases public utility the primary reason behind this utility decrease is that some respondents protested to bid because of their resistance toward tax increase without guaranteeing the efficient government support this result implies that simple tax increases for expansion of the governmental support may bring about public s strong opposition in order to overcome this public opposition this study suggests that it is necessary to arouse public understanding of the necessity of overseas oil and gas e p projects

an estimate of the value of lost load for ireland this paper estimates the value of short term lost load in the all island electricity market which includes the republic of ireland and northern ireland the value of lost load voll is the average willingness of electricity consumers to pay to avoid an additional period without power voll is also known as the value of security of electricity supply and is inferred using a production function approach detailed electricity use data for the republic of ireland allows us to estimate the value of lost load by time of day time of week and type of user we find that the value of lost load is highest in the residential sector in both the republic of ireland and northern ireland our results can be used to advise policy decisions in the case of supply outages and to encourage optimum supply security in the context of this study short term is taken to be a matter of hours rather than days or weeks

preference heterogeneity in energy discrete choice experiments a review on methods for model selection abstract discrete choice experiments are increasingly utilized to inform policy makers in various fields in energy on consumer preferences and willingness to pay values when translating the results into policy recommendations it is often difficult for non experts to understand the underlying implications of different models and associated behavioral assumptions in this paper i review proposed methods to compare the two most frequently applied models the random parameters logit model and the latent class logit model and investigate the challenges in and implications of model choice for policy makers and practitioners as an example application i use data from a discrete choice experiment on private households preferences for electricity supply quality in hyderabad india the procedures used in the comparative analysis measures of fit tests for non nested models kernel density estimates of conditional willingness to pay values and choice probabilities emphasize the difficulties in finding the correct model the methods presented here can be readily used by other researchers to better understand model performance which ultimately contributes to improving model choice in applied energy research

using conjoint analysis to quantify public preferences over the environmental impacts of wind farms an example from spain this paper focuses on the effect on people s utility of the potential environmental impacts of wind farm developments we report on research designed to provide insight into their preferences and we show how two alternative choice modelling techniques can be used to estimate them our results show that significant social costs in the form of environmental impacts can be associated with wind farm developments as relative environmental values are revealed by these methods it would be possible to develop wind farms in such a way that minimises the total social costs of the investment and which maximises its net benefits

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

methodological and empirical issues in real business cycle theory abstract in this paper we argue that the major impact of the rbc literature has been to propose a new methodology for macroeconomics this methodology is distinguished first by the importance it attributes to the empirical description of the phenomena to be explained and second by the use of this description in conjunction with quantitative theorizing i e the construction of computable general equilibrium models whose characteristic statistics match those of the data in accordance with this approach we first report on the current state of knowledge concerning business cycle regularities and conclude that additional empirical effort is called for in order to arrive at the appropriate basis for theorizing we then examine the performance of existing models and evaluate the case for integrating monetary factors and demand shocks into them lastly we review the recent efforts to explain the employment variability puzzle and argue that the search for a solution naturally leads to the incorporation of significant non walrasian features into the rbc framework

exploring the link between products and services in low income markets evidence from solar home systems one of the key challenges of energy access in emerging markets and developing countries is how to reach households and communities that are unlikely to get a grid connection in the long term or those that are connected to the grid but suffer from regular blackouts or low voltage by surveying entrepreneurs selling solar home systems shss on a commercial basis in emerging and developing countries this study is one of the first attempts to quantify the key elements of four potential product service systems psss cash credit leasing and fee for service whereas the fee for service approach was found to be suitable only under certain conditions all psss share two key elements for successful market deployment one or more years of maintenance and customer support in financing these customers new asset moreover it appears that private sector companies are in principle able to deliver shss to households with incomes greater than usd 1000 per year the implications for policy makers and development aid agencies are first to include maintenance services into public programmes or public private partnerships and second to explicitly consider financial risks for entrepreneurs e g customer commitment and repayment conditions

does it matter when a power outage occurs a choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to avoid power outages using a choice experiment survey the marginal willingness to pay wtp among swedish households for reductions in power outages is estimated the results from the random parameter logit estimation indicate that the marginal wtp increases with the duration of the outages and is higher if the outages occur during weekends and during winter months moreover the random parameter logit model allows us to estimate a sample distribution of wtp and we find a significant unobserved heterogeneity in some of the outage attributes given that households have negative welfare effects from outages it is important that policy makers consider these negative impacts on household utility when regulating the swedish electricity market

the willingness to pay by households for improved reliability of electricity service in north cyprus abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households wtp is estimated using the payment ladder contingent valuation cv data from 350 in person interviews in north cyprus in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 13 8 increase in their monthly electricity bill a cost benefit analysis cba indicates that the annualized economic benefits of improved reliability of the electricity service would be approximately usd 35 6 million for the residential sector this figure is more than enough to finance the investments needed to completely eradicate any electricity outages in addition the fuel savings from substituting the generation of the new plants for the old plants would yield about usd 32 9 million per year in fuel savings hence a change from the current low reliability policy to one of providing a high quality service would yield an economic net present value to the residents of north cyprus of twice the investment costs or usd 173 3 million within five years

willingness to pay for renewable energy evidence from a contingent valuation survey in kenya a modern form of energy in particular electricity for household use is an important vehicle in alleviating poverty in developing countries however access and costs of connecting to this service for most poor in these countries is inconceivable policies promoting electricity connection in rural areas are known to be beneficial in improving the socio economic and health well being for households this paper examines willingness to pay wtp for rural electrification connection in kisumu district kenya using the contingent valuation method cvm a nonparametric and a parametric model are employed to estimate wtp values for two electricity products grid electricity ge and photovoltaic pv electricity the results indicate that respondents are willing to pay more for ge services than pv and households favoured monthly connection payments over a lump sum amount some of the policies suggested in this paper include subsidizing the connection costs for both sources of electricity adjusting the payment periods and restructuring the market ownership of providing rural electricity services

response bias in a conjoint analysis of power outages abstract a methodology is proposed for estimating status quo effects resistance to change and loss aversion willingness to pay is less than willingness to accept from consumer survey data conjoint data on israeli households attitudes to electricity outages reveal that both of these effects are pronounced and that they depend on the interviewees characteristics ordered conditional logit estimation indicates that while the estimates are rank sensitive the suggested methodology continues to be applicable finally the conjoint estimates are compared with those obtained by applying the method of contingent valuation

using contingent behavior analysis to measure benefits from rural electrification in developing countries an example from rwanda hundreds of millions of people in sub saharan africa do not have access to electricity and will not receive it from national grids in the next few decades electricity makes up an important component of rural development and so increasing access can have positive socioeconomic benefits in this study we use contingent behavior analysis to quantify the potential benefits of electricity in rural rwandan villages which currently do not have electricity the proposed method allows for calculation of net benefits as well as electricity bills we find that even relatively poor isolated households would pay for electricity though amounts vary across households and this affects the financial viability of electrification common uses for electricity include lighting battery charging and agricultural processing despite heterogeneity opportunities exist to improve rural economic welfare through increased electricity access

model selection and misspecification in discrete choice welfare analysis this study extends the work by herriges and kling 1997 to further evaluate the impact of discrete choice modelling techniques on welfare measures particularly we evaluate the performance of the increasingly popular mixed logit model and the computational strategy for deriving discrete choice welfare measures our simulation results show that model misspecification can have profound effects on welfare measures in general the flexible mixed logit model performs relatively well in the presence of misspecification however when the nesting structure can be appropriately identified via statistical tests and a priori knowledge experience the nested logit model provides more reliable welfare measures than the mixed logit model

the responsiveness of industry wages to low frequency shocks in canada the first objective of this paper is to examine the empirical relationship between low frequency shocks to labour demand and average wages on an industrial basis using a canadian longitudinal data set we estimate a fixed effects model that controls for workers unobservable attributes the second major objective is to extend the existing industry based literature by estimating a specification allowing for a comparison between the degree of wage responsiveness of within firm stayers and between firm movers the findings indicate that average wages by industry tend to respond positively to low frequency changes in employment and that there is some degree of wage flexibility within firm worker matches jel classification j3 j62 la reponse des salaires industriels a des chocs peu frequents au canada le premier objectif de ce memoire est d examiner la relation empirique entre des chocs peu frequents dans la demande de travail et les salaires moyens au niveau de l industrie a l aide d une base de donnees longitudinales pour le canada on calibre un modele a effets fixes qui tient compte des attributs non observables de travailleurs le second objectif est d enrichir la litterature au niveau de l industrie en calibrant une specification du modele qui permet une comparaison entre le degre de reaction des salaires pour ceux qui restent dans leur entreprise et ceux qui se deplacent entre entreprises les resultats indiquent que les salaires moyens par industrie tendent a repondre positivement a des changements peu frequents dans l emploi et qu il y a un certain degre de flexibilite des salaires pour les travailleurs

the employment real wage relationship an international study the neoclassical and keynesian theories of employment both predict an inverse relationship between employment and real wages in the short run the observed correlation between employment and real wages however has usually failed to conform to this prediction dunlop 1938 and tarshis 1939 reported a positive correlation between real and money wages which given procyclical movement of money wages was interpreted as evidence against the theoretical prediction the statistical significance of these results was however challenged by ruggles 1940 and tobin 1948 more recent studies by kuh 1966 and bodkin 1969 failed to detect a significant relationship between real wages and employment these findings stimulated a series of contributions by solow and stiglitz 1968 barro and grossman 1971 1976 and others developing alternative models not apparently refuted by the evidence barro and grossman recast macro theory under the assumption that markets did not clear modigliani 1977 argued that the observed relationship between employment and real wages could be accounted for in an oligopolistic model of firm behavior thus both the competitive and equilibrium assumptions of the classical model were diagnosed as the sources of its apparent empirical refutation

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

households willingness to pay for water service attributes water consumption and disposal are often taken for granted as essential services with required levels of service quality yet little is known about how much consumers are willing to pay for specific service levels as customers in many countries face changing levels of water availability especially shortages linked possibly to climate change and limited catchment capacity the need to assess the value and hence benefit to society of varying service levels and prices in an effort to secure the provision of and disposal of water has risen on public agendas in an attempt to establish how much customers are willing to pay for specific levels of service we use a series of stated choice experiments and mixed logit models to establish the willingness to pay to avoid interruptions in water service and overflows of wastewater differentiated by the frequency timing and duration of these events the empirical evidence is an important input into the regulatory process for establishing service levels and tariffs as well as useful planning information for agencies charged with finding cost effective ways of delivering services at prices that customers deem to be value for money

modeling the choice to switch from fuelwood to electricity implications for giant panda habitat conservation despite its status as a nature reserve wolong nature reserve china has experienced continued loss of giant panda habitat due to human activities such as fuelwood collection electricity though available throughout wolong has not replaced fuelwood as an energy source we used stated preference data obtained from in person interviews to estimate a random utility model of the choice of adopting electricity for cooking and heating willingness to switch to electricity was explained by demographic and electricity factors price voltage and outage frequency in addition to price nonprice factors such as voltage and outage frequency significantly affect the demand thus lowering electricity prices and increasing electricity quality would encourage local residents to switch from fuelwood to electricity and should be considered in the mix of policies to promote conservation of panda habitat 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

indigenous community preferences for electricity services evidence from a choice experiment in sarawak malaysia providing indigenous communities with electricity services requires an understanding of preferences to ensure that electrification schemes are congruent with the communities specific development pathways we contribute to the literature by using a choice experiment to rank and quantify household preferences for electricity services in two indigenous villages in sarawak malaysia specifically we disaggregated electricity services into five attributes private use for household appliances and lighting public use for community facilities productive use for income generation the operator model and the monthly tariff we found that the most value was placed on the operator model underpinning the provision of electricity services and that there was a strong preference for a community based model over a utility based model interestingly our results suggest that the preference for a community based operator model may be related to the experience of using electricity for productive uses we contend that our results demonstrate the importance of social and institutional challenges to providing electricity services to indigenous communities in sarawak and highlight the need for the state utility to engage with indigenous communities to overcome these challenges

are risk regulators rational evidence from hazardous waste cleanup decisions a large literature in economics and social science focuses on how people reason about risks reactions of individuals to risk frequently depart from behavior predicted by full information variants of expected utility theory risk regulators are human and are subject to political pressures that are reflective of people s attitudes toward risk as a result the public policies they espouse may reflect errors in judgment about risk many biases stem from misperceptions of risk individuals overestimate small probabilities overestimate the risks associated with highly publicized dangers and have preferences over the manner not just the magnitude in which risks arise environmental risks associated with hazardous waste sites may be particularly prone to such errors since they involve small risks that are highly publicized indeed the general public ranks hazardous waste sites as the leading environmental risk a growing literature also analyzes how the decisions of risk regulators depart from choices predicted in a standard benefit cost framework as roger g noll and james e krier 1990 point out since regulators are both human and political their decisions may reflect risk biases regulators may exhibit these biases as individuals and because their constituents will express regulatory demands based on risk perceptions risk regulators may take into account the identity of the parties exposed to risk the level of scrutiny by interest groups the nature of congressional representation of affected constituents and the degree of political activity by potentially exposed individuals 3 errors in risk perceptions and risk decisions cause individuals to diverge from expected utility maximization similar errors by policy makers and the influence of risk politics cause regulators to diverge from social welfare maximization this paper examines decisions made by federal and state regulators at hazardous waste sites addressed by the superfund program to determine how their decisions diverge from those predicted by expected utility theory and benefitcost analysis we analyze whether risk perceptions and politics influence two decisions central to the how clean is clean debate at superfund sites the selection of chemical cleanup targets and the expenditure of remediation funds at these contaminated sites we also explore the interactive influence of risk perception factors and political demands previous research on the regulation of chemical risks in standard setting indicates that decisions reflect evidence of risk biases and responsiveness to political factors in assessing the determinants of the epa s decision to cancel pesticide registration maureen l cropper et al 1992 found that the epa was more likely to cancel a pesticide in instances featuring higher risks to the maximally exposed individual user lower benefits associated with continued use of the pesticide higher values of intervention by environmental groups mea viscusi harvard law school harvard university cambridge ma 02138 hamilton sanford institute of public policy duke university durham nc 27708 we have benefited from the comments from two referees and the excellent research assistance of jason bell kristen blann jahn hakes and robert malme research support was provided under cooperative agreement no cr 823604 01 from the u s environmental protection agency office of policy planning and evaluation dr alan carlin and dr suzanne giannini spohn served as contract officers all views and errors expressed are our own l see u s environmental protection agency epa 1987 for a report on this survey evidence 2 this theme is also articulated in richard j zeckhauser and viscusi 1990 noll 1989 provides a more general assessment of the interaction between political concerns and regulatory policy which is a central theme of this paper 3political factors have long played a prominent role in local hazardous waste policies see among others linda cohen 1981 howard kunreuther and douglas easterling 1990 1992 and kunreuther and rajeev gowda 1990

evidence of the effects of water quality on residential land prices we use hedonic techniques to show that water quality has a significant effect on property values along the chesapeake bay we calculate the potential benefits from an illustrative but limited water quality improvement and we calculate an upper bound to the benefits from a more widespread improvement many environmental hedonic studies have almost entirely ignored the potential for omitted variables bias the possibility that pollution sources in addition to emitting undesirable substances are likely to be unpleasant neighbors we discuss the implications of this oversight and we provide an application that addresses this potential problem o 2000 acadcmic prcss

social acceptance of renewable energy sources a review of contingent valuation applications abstract this paper presents a literature review addressing the public acceptance of renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels in electricity production this review was motivated by the global tendency for a substitution of conventional fuels by renewable energy sources res during the global financial crisis it studies research on the preferences and attitudes of local communities towards investments in renewable energy projects and their perception of the use of new energy technologies in their daily lives through various case studies worldwide an effort is made to identify the parameters that influence consumers energy behaviour together with their interest or lack thereof in the environmental impact of using fossil fuels to produce energy and their willingness to reduce it applications of contingent valuation are examined which are employed to analyse public attitudes towards the use of res for electricity production willingness to pay is observed to be correlated to socioeconomic characteristics including education interest in environmental issues and knowledge of res finally the profile of a typical green energy consumer and appropriate policy paths for the penetration of res into the energy market are outlined

estimating the economic impacts of power supply interruptions abstract the cost of power system rationing which is a crucial parameter for determining optimal resilience investments is usually estimated using reduced form linear models or ordinary input output analysis however such methods do not properly address either consumers rational reactions to rationing policy or policy design nonlinearities to solve this problem this paper estimates the effects of power system rationing using a general equilibrium model the model solution shows that the power cut distribution among industries is a critical variable for quantifying policy effects and provides insights into optimal policy design

quality frontier of electricity distribution supply security best practices and underground cabling in finland electricity distribution is a prime example of local monopoly in most countries the costs of electricity distribution operators are regulated by the government however the cost regulation may create adverse incentives to compromise the quality of service to avoid this cost regulation is often amended with quality incentives this study applies theory and methods of productivity analysis to model the frontier of service quality a semi nonparametric estimation method is developed which does not assume any particular functional form for the quality frontier but can accommodate stochastic noise and heteroscedasticity the empirical part of our paper examines how underground cabling and location affect the interruption costs as expected higher proportion of underground cabling decreases the level of interruption costs the effects of cabling and location on the variance of performance are also considered especially the location is found to be a significant source of heteroscedasticity in the interruption costs finally the proposed quality frontier benchmark is compared to the current practice of finnish regulation system the proposed quality frontier is found to provide more meaningful and stable basis for setting quality targets than the average practice benchmarks currently in use

why being wrong can be right magical warfare technologies and the persistence of false beliefs across human societies one sees many examples of deeply rooted and widely held beliefs that are almost certainly untrue examples include beliefs about witchcraft magic ordeals and superstitions why are such incorrect beliefs so prevalent and how do they persist we consider this question through an examination of superstitions and magic associated with conflict in the eastern democratic republic of the congo focusing on superstitions related to bulletproofing we provide theory and case study evidence showing how these incorrect beliefs persist although harmful at the individual level we show that they generate pareto efficient outcomes that have group level benefits

households willingness to pay for overhead to underground conversion of electricity distribution networks underground low voltage electricity networks have several advantages over overhead networks including reliability of supply safety and improved visual amenity the economic viability of replacing existing overhead networks with new underground networks depends on the value of these benefits to households but no complete value estimates are available in the literature this paper represents a contribution towards addressing this research gap a stated choice survey is used to estimate willingness to pay for undergrounding in established residential areas in canberra australia average willingness to pay is at least a 6838 per household and there is significant variation in preferences over the population the results suggest that benefits would be highest in areas with higher household income and older residents where visual amenity safety tree trimming or restrictions on the use of yard space are of concern

households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana abstract access to reliable electricity is important in increasing the living standards of households and promoting sustainable development however ghanaian households have had to grapple with frequent power outages and poor quality electricity services in recent times this study examines the factors influencing households willingness to pay for reliable electricity services in ghana using data collected from 950 households in the cape coast metropolitan area and the tobit regression technique it was revealed that monthly income prior notice on power outages business ownership separate meter ownership household size and education significantly affect willingness to pay for reliable electricity services on the average households were prepared to pay 44 percent gh 6 80 us 3 42 more relative to the mean monthly electricity bill in the sample to improve electricity services it is envisaged that the findings would be used by policy makers and utility companies to make electricity generation and distribution more sustainable and efficient

a cross country comparison of the cyclicality of real wages this paper contains the first cross country comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real wages using microdata after controlling for changes in labour quality i find that real wages are strongly procyclical in canada the united kingdom and the united states in contrast the cyclicality of government published real aggregate hourly wages varies substantially across these three countries the disparity suggests that a direct comparison of the cyclical behaviour of real aggregate wages is misleading finally i show that variations in labour quality also bias the cross country correlation of several key labour market variables jel classification j3 e3 une comparaison transversale entre pays du caractere cyclique des salaires reels ce memoire presente la premiere comparaison entre pays du comportement cyclique des salaires reels a l aide de micro donnees apres normalisation pour tenir compte des changements dans la qualite du travail cette etude montre que les salaires reels sont pro cycliques au canada au royaume uni et aux etats unis au contraire le caractere cyclique des donnees sur les salaires horaires agreges varie substantiellement entre ces trois pays cette disparite suggere qu une comparaison directe du comportement cyclique des salaires reels agreges peut etre trompeuse finalement cette etude montre que les variations dans la qualite du travail biaisent aussi les correlations entre pays de plusieurs variables du marche du travail

determinants of the price premium for green energy evidence from an oecd cross section using data from a survey of households in 11 oecd countries this paper investigates the determinants of preferences for a completely green residential electricity system three important questions are addressed i how much are households willing to pay to use only renewable energy ii does willingness to pay wtp vary significantly across household groups and countries and iii what drives the decision to enter the hypothetical market for green energy and given entry what drives the level of wtp the analysis here differs from previous studies on green energy in two ways first data and analyses are comparable across countries and second a comprehensive attempt is made to understand 0 wtp and to accommodate using a censored quantile regression cqr framework unobserved heterogeneity the survey data indicate a low wtp at 11 12 of current electric bill this study also addresses a key question how important is income for understanding wtp relative to more attitudinal determinants the effect of income overall appears ambiguous with tobit like models indicating that income is not significant while the cqr indicates that income exerts a significant effect near the center of the distribution of wtp across all frameworks used a key determinant of wtp appears to be environmental attitudes particularly membership in an environmental organization

hedonic prices and implicit markets estimating demand and supply functions for differentiated products in choosing the level of quality to purchase the buyer of a differentiated product also chooses a point on the marginal price schedule for that product hence in general the demand functions for product characteristics cannot be consistently estimated by ordinary least squares market equilibrium results in a matching of characteristics of demanders and suppliers this matching restricts the use of buyer and seller characteristics as instruments when estimating demand and supply functions for product characteristics the paper develops these issues a stochastic structure for hedonic equilibrium models is then proposed identification results are presented and estimation procedures are outlined

estimating the willingness to pay for reliable electricity supply a choice experiment study abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households stated wtp is estimated using the choice experiment ce method the data used in the estimations come from 350 in person interviews conducted during the period 5 22 august 2008 in north cyprus compensating variation cv estimates for a zero outage scenario are calculated using the parameter estimates from the mixed logit ml model these are 6 65 ytl turkish lira per month 3 02 usd for summer and 25 83 ytl per month 11 74 usd for winter in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 3 6 and a 13 9 increase in their monthly electricity bill for summer and winter respectively the wtp per hour unserved is 0 28 ytl 0 13 usd for summer and 1 08 ytl 0 49 usd for winter a preliminary cost benefit analysis indicates that the annualized economic benefits are approximately 42 7 million ytl 19 4 million usd for the residential sector this would justify an investment in additional generation capacity of approximately 268 mw which is far more than that which is needed to eliminate the service reliability problem

paying for permanence an economic analysis of epa s cleanup decisions at superfund sites we analyze epa s cleanup decisions at over 100 superfund sites and examine whether and how epa trades off the cost against the permanence of cleanup epa s decisions reveal both a preference for permanent solutions and an aversion to cost for example epa prefers incinerating soils to isolating and containing them in place but not at any price at larger sites epa appears willing to accept additional costs of as much as 40 million to incinerate with regard to environmental equity we find little evidence that epa s cost permanence tradeoff is affected by socioeconomic characteristics in the communities surrounding the sites

choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services abstract modern forms of energy are an important vehicle towards poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries most developing countries households rely heavily on wood fuel which impacts on their health and socio economic status to ease such a dependency other modern forms of energy namely electricity need to be provided however the quality of the electricity service namely reliability is an important factor in reducing this dependency this paper discusses a choice experiment valuation study conducted among electrified rural households located in kisumu kenya in which the willingness to pay wtp to avoid power outages or blackouts was estimated a mixed logit estimation was applied to identify the various socio economic and demographic characteristics which determine preferences in reducing power outages among a household s users in conclusion several of the socio economic and demographic characteristics outlined in this paper were identified and can assist service differentiation to accommodate the diverse households preferences towards the improvement of the electricity service