willingness of rural communities to adopt biogas systems in pakistan critical factors and policy implications abstract biogas is a methane rich gas that is produced by the anaerobic fermentation of organic material such as animal dung pakistan has the sixth largest livestock based economy in the world and thus demonstrates great potential for biogas production the government has already started the biogas support program bsp in a few selected areas of the country with that in mind this study was designed to determine a household s predicted willingness to adopt a biogas system in khyber pakhtunkhwa kp province the study is based on primary data collected from four districts peshawar nowshera charsadda and mardan data was collected from 200 livestock farming households selected through an equal allocation technique probit analysis was used to identify those factors influencing the willingness of a household to adopt a biogas system the results of the probit model reveal that the education level of the respondents total daily electric shortfall the effect of electric shortfall on childrens education and female drudgery and respondents awareness regarding the pros and cons of using biogas were statistically significant factors on the basis of p

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

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

possibilities for including the opportunity cost of time in recreation demand systems recreation demand modelers have attempted to identify and incorporate the opportunity cost of an individual s time in travel and on site in the model larson 1993b focused on the value of leisure time in a model where individuals face a fixed work week in this paper we examine the connection between labor supply and recreation demands and focus on conditional demand systems we illustrate that corner solution models are not needed to explain several interesting time related recreation issues

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

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

government growth in the twenty first century public choice explanations of government growth fall into three main categories budget maximization theories rational choice models and path dependent models like the ratchet hypothesis the strengths and weaknesses of these theories as explanations for government growth are considered along with some facts about the actual growth of government to conjecture about its trajectory in the twenty first century government size seems to have been constrained in the past primarily by its ability to raise revenue growth rates in the new century thus appear to depend on factors constraining government s ability to continue to expand the tax base

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

estimating the cost of leisure time for recreation demand models abstract in this paper we propose a method of determining the opportunity cost of leisure time with an empirical recreation demand application typically the opportunity cost of leisure time is assumed to be some fraction of the wage rate this practice has limitations first it assumes that individuals can trade time for money at their wage second it offers no guidance about how to value the time of an individual who is not in the labor force this paper proposes a method of determining this cost that does not suffer from these drawbacks an empirical example is provided which demonstrates the proposed approach and contrasts it with commonly applied approaches

willingness to pay for environmental protection in germany coping with the regional dimension in this paper a two step procedure is applied to estimate an indicator of environmental willingness to pay for germany in considerable regional disaggregation the first step is the estimation of an ordered probit model based on individual data from a representative survey in the second step this model is applied to aggregate nuts iii level data to produce an indicator of regional willingness to pay which is useful for the design of an efficient environmental policy it turns out that the regional distribution of willingness to pay is dominated by the distribution of income in this data set a partir d une approcheadeux etapes cet article cherche a estimer sur le plan regional un indicateur de la volonte de payer la protection de l environnement en allemagne dans un premier temps on estime un modele du type probit ordonne sur la base des donnees individuelles provenant d une enquete representative dans un deuxieme temps le modele se voit appliquer a des donnees globales du type nuts iii afin de pr

testing benefits transfer of forest recreation values over a twenty year time horizon we conduct a functional benefit transfer over 20 years of total willingness to pay based on carborne forest recreation in 52 forests using a mixed logit specification of a random utility model and geographic information systems to allow heterogeneous preferences across the population and for heterogeneity over space results show that preferences for some forest attributes such as species diversity and age as well as transport mode have changed significantly over the period updating the transfer model with present total demand for recreation improves the error margins by an average of 282 average errors of the best transfer model remain 25

the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan a panel cointegration analysis abstract this paper examines the dynamics of electricity demand in pakistan at the aggregate and sectoral levels over the period 1978 2012 panel cointegration test and fully modified ordinary least squares method is employed to determine the long run relationship between electricity consumption real income real price of electricity and domestic price of non energy products the results reveal that electricity demand is more responsive to changes in income than changes in prices at the aggregate and disaggregate levels short run and long run income elasticities are positive and statistically significant supporting the conservation hypothesis it appears from the results that long run price elasticities are negative and significant at the aggregate level and for the agriculture commercial residential sectors and public utilities the short run price elasticities are significant but low in magnitude which implies that changes in electricity price exert minimal effect on the electricity consumption in pakistan the domestic price of non energy products is positive and significant for aggregate sample in the short run the domestic price of non energy products exert significant negative positive impact on electricity demand in the agriculture industrial sectors the results thus provide important information to the agents operating in the electricity market regarding the income and pricing policies and helps in planning the future strategy of electricity demand management

overcoming electricity crisis in pakistan a review of sustainable electricity options abstract pakistan is facing severe electricity supply shortages causing forced power outages over the last decade ranging from 8 to 12 h a day in urban areas and up to 18 h in rural areas the major causes behind the increasing gap between supply and demand are mainly increases in electricity demand on one hand and depleting energy resources and financial constraints on the other in this context the government has been taking various measures including a partial restructuring of the electricity sector under guidelines from international financing institutes at present the country is therefore not only facing a serious challenge of meeting the electricity demand but is also facing the challenge of ensuring energy security in the context of globally important climate change issues the role of policy makers at this stage is crucial for not only assessing and reviewing the current strategies to minimize the electricity supply and demand gap but also the need to develop future strategies ensuring affordable electricity with efficient generation transmission and distribution towards sustainable development in the country this paper provides a review of the current energy situation discussion on policy drivers and plans analysis of the issues of the power sector as well as recommendations for narrowing the electricity supply demand gap towards sustainable electricity for the country

structural innovation and efficiency effects of environmental regulation evidence from china s carbon emissions trading pilot conventional wisdom argues that environmental regulation can trigger both structural adjustments and enhanced innovation we test this conjecture by using a difference in differences approach to analyze the impacts of china s carbon emission trading cet pilot policy on energy consumption we find that compliance with the cet regulation has triggered statistically significant adjustments in energy structure industrial structure and technological innovation adjustments in industrial structure also contribute to enhanced total factor energy efficiency whereas increased technological innovation has mixed effects on energy efficiency we show that in the short run government led innovation does not immediately contribute to improvement in energy efficiency whereas enterprise led innovation has a negative impact it indicates that cet regulation can affect energy efficiency through industrial structure and technological innovation overall our results provide new evidence for the strong version of the porter hypothesis our results also provide strong scientific support for china s recent transition towards market based carbon mitigation strategies

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

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

testing choice experiment for benefit transfer with preference heterogeneity benefit transfer is a cost effective method for estimating the value of environmental goods that relies on information obtained in previous studies the multiattribute approach of choice experiments should provide advantages in terms of benefit transfer allowing differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socioeconomic and attitude characteristics between respondent populations this article investigates the capability of choice experiment method to be used in environmental benefit transfer when a random parameters approach is used to allow for preference heterogeneity we find that the inclusion of respondents taste heterogeneity reduces the magnitude of the transfer error

estimation and welfare analysis with large demand systems we develop an approach for estimating individual or household level preferences for a large set of quality differentiated goods and for constructing hicksian welfare measures within the demand system framework our approach uses a maximum simulated likelihood procedure to recover estimates of the structural parameters and a multistage monte carlo markov chain algorithm for constructing hicksian consumer surplus estimates we illustrate our approach with a recreation dataset consisting of day trips to 62 mid atlantic beaches

a review of energy and power planning and policies of pakistan pakistan is facing multiple challenges for harnessing the indigenous energy resources and devise rational energy policies the country is believed to have abundant energy resources however coping substantial electricity supply gap of over 5000 mw this paper analyses country s energy and power planning studies conducted since its independence in 1947 and policies announced so far it is found that water resources management attained more emphasis in early decades of post independence rather than energy concerns the first energy and power planning study was conducted in late 1960s and since then various studies were undertaken to supplement five yearly medium term development plans of government however it is pertinent to mention that formal energy and power policies were only announced from 1994 onwards owing to growing electricity demand and progressing industrialization beside this the focus of these policies is not only varied but were conceived without undertaking integrated energy planning using energy modeling tools e g markal times leap enpep balance message and energyplan it is despite the fact that these tools are successfully applied globally for devising the energy policies and address the complexities of energy system by assisting effective policy formulation this study recommends that integrated energy planning using energy modeling tools will be helpful to develop sustainable energy policies in pakistan to eradicate electricity crises

does external funding of academic research crowd out institutional support abstract nonprofit organizations receive revenues from a variety of sources the amount of support provided by each source is often dependent on the level supplied by the other s empirical evidence regarding crowding out among alternative sources of revenue in nonprofit organizations is mixed but most studies find that an increase in funding from one of the sources tends to decrease contributions from the other s this paper investigates the relationship between internal and external funding of academic research i find evidence that there is not crowding out in this case instead additional funding from each of these sources enhances the amount provided by the other over time this is consistent with the hypothesis that external sponsors wish to allocate funding to those universities that do the highest quality research and that funding from either source provides information about quality the results of this study also imply that a one time change in funding from one source has a multiplier effect on subsequent levels of both sources the potential for feedback effects is usually ignored in studies of this type meaning that the total impact of funding changes may often be understated this suggests that relatively small decreases in academic research funding can have a larger than anticipated effect that may persist for many years the presence of feedback effects also indicates that existing models of nonprofit behavior which are primarily static need to be modified to incorporate a dynamic structure

does the government crowd out private donations new evidence from a sample of non profit firms abstract during the 1980s government grants to non profit organizations declined dramatically and the price of private donations increased given there are different costs associated with government grants and private donations to non profits it is important to study the relationship between these two sources and determine whether government grants crowd out private donations i take a fresh look at the issue of crowd out and improve upon the literature by exploiting a panel data set that links private donations to non profit firms with the government grants they received i study 430 non profit shelter human services and other similar types of organizations that were in operation between 1982 and 1992 i find private donations to these non profits effectively do not change with changes in government grants after controlling for firm heterogeneity and political and economic factors under an ols specification in a 2sls specification after controlling for possible endogeneity of the government grants the estimated crowd out is significantly different from zero and one dollar on average the estimated crowd out is 50 cents

reducing barriers in future benefit transfers needed improvements in primary study design and reporting abstract original research provides many social benefits including additions to our stock of knowledge benefit transfer is a formal process whereby our stock of knowledge rather than original research is used to inform decisions any shortcoming in this stock directly affects our ability to conduct valid and reliable benefit transfers this paper discusses three general criteria that are necessary for valid benefit transfers and how original research designs and reporting of results unnecessarily constrain the potential of benefit transfers we make several suggestions regarding how original research through improved design and reporting might increase the validity and reliability of benefit transfers we also recommend that repositories for original research surveys and data be developed to insure long term availability of study information

benefit incidence of public recreation areas have the winners taken almost all this study presents a framework for investigating the benefit incidence of provision of public recreation opportunities the proportion of individuals who use outdoor recreation services increases with income and frequency of use differs by the users gender and life situation e g depending on whether they are students or older citizens the decomposition of distributive incidence shows that a bias in favor of high income groups may be accentuated when the perceived value of these services is taken into account in monetary terms we compare alternative strategies in terms of equity for improving recreation opportunities e g reduced distance to or increased acreage of recreation sites our results indicate that although these strategies improve the welfare distribution among the income groups a considerable proportion of benefits nevertheless accrue to high income groups

meta analytic benefit transfer of outdoor recreation economic values testing out of sample convergent validity a benefit transfer approach to recreationeconomic valuation using meta analysis isexamined since the meta regression modeltakes into account some of the study specificeffects on willingness to pay wtp estimates benefit transfer using meta analysis couldyield a valid wtp estimate of unstudiedrecreation resources the convergent validityof the meta analytic benefit transfer is testedusing out of sample original studies from theu s the analyses are performed usingpercentage difference paired t test regression and correlation tests the testsreveal mixed results on convergence betweenestimated wtp using meta analytic benefittransfer function btf and out of sampleoriginal wtp values there is a fairly highpercentage difference between the estimated andoriginal wtp values 80 88 and the meandifferences are statistically significant asshown by paired t tests however correlationand regression results consistently showsignificant positive relationships betweennational btf estimated and original wtp valuesindicating some level of convergence theresults show that the national btf outperformthe regional btf indicating a potential of thenational btf for recreation benefit transferwhen a first best primary valuation study isnot affordable

applied welfare economics with discrete choice models economists have been paying increasing attention to the study of situations in which consumers face a discrete rather than a continuous set of choices such models are potentially very important in evaluating the impact of government programs upon consumer welfare but very little has been said in general regarding the tools of applied welfare economics indiscrete choice situations this paper shows how the conventional methods of applied welfare economics can be modified to handle such cases it focuses on the computation of the excess burden of taxation and the evaluation of quality change the results are applied to stochastic utility models including the popular cases of probit and logit analysis throughout the emphasis is on providing rigorous guidelines for carrying out applied work this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

recovering individual preferences for non market goods a collective travel cost model traditional recreation demand models do not make a distinction between a household and an individual as the reference decision making unit thus assuming that a family maximizes a single utility function even if the family consists of different individuals such models ignore the possibility of family members divergent preferences for non market goods this study proposes a novel approach the collective travel cost model ctcm to eliciting individual preferences for a non market good such as a recreation site by using revealed preference data this approach accounts for the intra household resource allocation and the role of each household member s preferences we show that the collective travel cost model can be applied to estimating a recreation demand model that yields individual welfare estimates appropriate for policy analysis of non market goods such as the willingness to pay to access a recreation site we find that how resources are distributed within the household reflects significant differences in welfare measures

working wives and food away from home the box cox double hurdle model household expenditures on food away from home are analyzed with the use of the bls 1989 consumer expenditure survey parameterization and distributional assumptions of cragg s double hurdle model are generalized for this purpose and the resulting model outperforms the more traditional ones results suggest households with working wives and those with higher income are more likely to consume food away from home and also to consume more than others wife s age and household size increase the conditional level of consumption education has conflicting effects on probability and conditional level of consumption

the net benefit of saving the asian elephant a policy and contingent valuation study reports results from a contingent valuation cv survey of willingness to pay wtp for the conservation of the asian elephant of a sample of urban residents living in three selected housing schemes in colombo the capital of sri lanka face to face surveys were conducted using an interview schedule is a non linear logit regression model is used to analyse the respondents responses for the payment principle questions and to identify the factors that influence their responses we investigate whether urban residents wtp for the conservation of elephants is sufficient to compensate farmers for the damage caused by elephants we find that the beneficiaries the urban residents could compensate losers the fanners in the areas affected by human elephant conflict hec and be better off than in the absence of elephants in sri lanka therefore there is a strong economic case for the conservation of the wild elephant population in sri lanka however we have insufficient data to determine the optimal level of this elephant population in the kaldor hicks sense nevertheless the current population of elephant in sri lanka is kaldor hicks preferable to having none c 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

measuring market power in the ready to eat cereal industry the ready to eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration high price cost margins large advertising to sales ratios and numerous introductions of new products previous researchers have concluded that the ready to eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with nearly collusive pricing behavior and intense nonprice competition this paper empirically examines this conclusion in particular i estimate price cost margins but more importantly i am able empirically to separate these margins into three sources i that which is due to product differentiation ii that which is due to multi product firm pricing and iii that due to potential price collusion the results suggest that given the demand for different brands of cereal the first two effects explain most of the observed price cost margins i conclude that prices in the industry are consistent with noncollusive pricing behavior despite the high price cost margins leading firms are able to maintain a portfolio of differentiated products and influence the perceived product quality it is these two factors that lead to high price cost margins

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

an institutional framework for the development of sustainable and competitive power market in pakistan abstract pakistan is continuously striving for sustainable and competitive power market under the comprehensive power sector reform program pakistan shifted its power market from monopoly model to single buyer model by unbundling water and power development authority wapda and establishing national transmission and dispatch company ntdc current severe power situation in the country is triggering the government of pakistan gop to accelerate the implementation of intended reform program and to readily undertake next planned transformation i e from single buyer model to wholesale market model this research endeavors the future dynamics of power market after the structural spin off by pre assessment of upcoming wholesale power market market power of both public and private electricity generators has been computed using 8 largest firm concentration ratio herfindahl hirschman index hhi and residual supply index rsi the findings suggest that future power market will function with non existence of market power except in the periods of peak electricity demand and maximum hydro generation furthermore insufficient installed capacities and underutilization of public thermal units may enable some players to exercise market power for sustainable and competitive power market an empirically supported framework has been proposed based on the analysis the framework proposes utilization of huge available renewable energy potential for future which will protect the whole infrastructure from market power it recommends respective roles and responsibilities for the smooth transition among market models the framework will be supportive in terms of successful and smooth transition from single buyer model to wholesale market model and potential of wind solar biogas to be properly explored and utilized to reduce energy gap

calibrating benefit function transfer to assess the conservation reserve program benefit transfer offers an inexpensive alternative to conducting an original study to determine economic value unfortunately benefit transfers can also result in biased welfare estimates in this paper we suggest a method of calibrating the benefit transfer to reduce this bias an empirical example to determine the benefits of the conservation reserve program on water based recreation illustrates the potentially large biases that can result if the transfer is not calibrated

limiting environmental program contradictions a demand systems application to fishery management economically efficient natural resource policy requires the comprehensive management of environmental improvements over a system of sites use of multisite demand and benefit models can reduce the number and cost of environmental program contradictions in this paper we present a multisite demand model that incorporates several quality dimensions for a system of new mexico fishing sites use of the model permits managers to improve total welfare at lower cost by simultaneously distributing opportunity across all elements in resource users choice sets model results show that errors that result from independently adding values of interdependent program elements approach 50

rational ignorance rational voter expectations and public policy a discrete informational foundation for fiscal illusion this paper demonstrates that rational ignorance properly defined allows the possibility that fiscal illusion affects policies in a democracy the implications of rational ignorance are examined in a setting where voters are assumed to completely understand the fiscal environment and make perfect use of any information that they possess in this setting it is demonstrated that ignorance may be rational manipulated and generate biased expectations over fiscal parameters

an accurate measurement of the crowd out effect income effect and price effect for charitable contributions in the past empirical research on charitable contributions has focused on two issues estimating the income and price elasticities of contributions and estimating the extent to which government funding crowded out private contributions the two fundamental problems in all these studies are the differences in the underlying conceptual models and the use of imperfect data for empirical analysis this paper addresses both of these problems

charity donations in the uk new evidence based on panel data abstract this paper presents a set of panel data estimates for 159 of the most prominent uk charities for the period 1983 1990 in evaluating alternative specifications we settle on a fixed effects estimation social welfare charities are shown to fund raise short of the point at which net revenues are maximized whereas health and overseas charities are found to net revenue maximize religious charities maximize total revenues estimates of price and fund raising elasticities are presented for charities overall and for four cohorts for alternative income sources no evidence of crowding out is found

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

government growth and private contributions to charity we exploit the time series properties of charitable giving to provide additional insights into the relationship between charitable contributions and government spending cointegration tests reveal a significant long run relationship between several categories of charitable giving and government spending granger causality tests provide evidence on the short run giving and spending relationship evidence suggests that charitable contributions to education respond quite differently to state and local government education expenditures versus federal government expenditures we argue that the government spending and charitable giving relationship depends on the source of government revenue how this revenue is used and the rational ignorance of private donors

voluntary donations and public expenditures in a federal system proponents of the new federalism argue that nonprofit organizations and local governments will fully offset federal social service expenditure cutbacks the author analyzes this proposition as a competitive game in which donations are motivated by private and public good considerations the author characterizes the response of political economic equilibrium to exogenous changes in federal expenditures when local voters are cognizant of donor reactions partial replacement is the most likely outcome though others are possible copyright 1987 by american economic association

valuing food store access policy implications for the food stamp program food stamp recipients may lack access to larger stores reducing the availability of nutritious food reliance on smaller stores may have undesirable impacts policy alternatives include limiting food stamp redemption to larger stores and subsidizing store development i estimate that limiting redemption to supermarkets and grocery stores or supermarkets alone results in losses ranging from 499 2 million to 1 05 billion or 1 17 billion to 2 44 billion respectively annual loss in food stamp recipient welfare nationwide the impact of improving access is also significant ranging from 333 6 million to 931 2 million

assessment of present conventional and non conventional energy scenario of pakistan abstract it has become the universal fact that the energy is one of the key factors for the smooth and faster upgradation of the socio economic activities in any country in pakistan s history of over 60 years the country presently is facing possibly the worst energy crisis that has geared back the socio economic development below the level of critical sustainability and tolerance of the people every walk of life and industrial activities have declined due to long electricity shut down every day since last few years in view to access the current status of available energy resources the present research study has been carried out to review and assess the demography of the country versus energy sectors energy supplies consumptions status of fossil fuel resources oil gas coal conventional non conventional electricity generation and past present future energy demand supply during 2001 2011 the results of this assessment indicate that conventional resources in pakistan are and will not be enough to meet the ever growing energy demand and consequently highlight the importance of the renewable energy sources that are apparently encouraging in the country but have not been developed to any satisfaction priority is imperative to be given for the adequate development of renewable energy sectors in addition to the present energy mix

charitable giving in the german welfare state fiscal incentives and crowding out there are two ways that government activities influence private charitable giving 1 government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions and 2 tax incentives may boost private charitable giving from a sample of german income tax returns we estimate the elasticity of charitable giving relative to tax incentives income and government spending using censored quantile regression analysis we derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving evaluating overall treasury efficiency the tax deductibility of charitable donations fosters enough private giving to offset foregone tax revenues

national energy scenario of pakistan current status future alternatives and institutional infrastructure an overview abstract in this article the current energy consumption of pakistan is presented and the issue of security of electrical energy supply is discussed the power sector has been looked from variety of aspects such as demand and supply gap diminishing energy sources energy security and increasing energy costs furthermore the status of energy and potential of renewable sources of energy has been discussed as sustainable alternative in addition the roles of different sectors in the promotion and development of renewable energy technologies have been discussed the renewable energy future prospects are encouraging in pakistan with a total renewable energy potential of about 167 7 gw which is more than enough to meet the total electricity demand of the country this vast potential of renewable sources of energy could be utilized to overcome the energy shortage which has not been utilized properly due to lack of policies and infrastructure the diversification of existing energy resources and exploration of new sources is an important aspect to be considered in order to have a sustainable power development and its implementation in the country

education s gambling problem earmarked lottery revenues and charitable donations to education i examine the impact that lotteries introduced to support education have on voluntary contributions to education state lotteries and the causes they are introduced to support are highly publicized this provides the opportunity to assess whether donors are crowded out by government spending of which they are almost certainly aware using donor level survey data and nonprofits tax returns i find that donations to education related organizations fall with the introduction of a lottery this result is driven by donors response to the new highly publicized government revenue source rather than a decrease in nonprofit fundraising efforts jel d64 h3 h75

distinguishing between market participation and infrequency of purchase models of butter demand household butter expenditures are modeled by market participation and infrequency of purchase specifications the market participation model assumes that zero expenditures represent either traditional corner solutions or consumers who never use the product whereas the infrequency of purchase model assumes that zero expenditures represent either corner solutions or consumption out of storage we determine that the infrequency of purchase specification is preferred to the market participation model by applying a nonnested test based upon likelihood functions if household expenditure surveys contained information about participation and frequency of purchase a likelihood function which contained both models could be written and estimated

structure and environmental impact of global energy consumption abstract this paper presents information on global energy consumption by fuel type liquid fuels coal natural gas renewables and nuclear and sectors buildings industrial transportation and electricity and environmental impact of global energy consumption sox nox and co2 emissions there is a strong relationship between energy consumption and economic growth the global financial crisis has affected the global economic growth violently the governments have recently adopted some effective measures to fight against the global financial crisis the structure of energy consumption and the conditions of sox nox and co2 emissions affect the global changes acid rain and greenhouse effect today considerable effort is being devoted to reduce co2 emissions because of the kyoto protocol on climate change this publication presents multidisciplinary perspectives on the interrelated topics of energy consumption energy security and energy policy additionally the present study examines the relationship between energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission

a dual approach to modeling corner solutions in recreation demand abstract the dual approach of lee and pitt to estimating demand systems for which individuals often choose not to consume one or more of the available goods provides a utility consistent framework for estimating preferences over visits to recreation sites because of the complexity of the model however this approach has not been applied in the recreation demand literature this paper provides the first application of the model to recreation demand and develops a methodology for conducting welfare analysis relying on monte carlo integration to derive estimates of compensating variation the methods are applied to the demand for fishing in the wisconsin great lakes region

volunteerism and crowding out canadian econometric evidence volunteers make an important contribution to canadian society the authors address what motivates people to volunteer and whether they respond to government expenditure decisions using a 1987 microdata set and find that while the level of government spending influences the decision to volunteer it has no effect on the number of hours donated furthermore the nature of this relationship depends upon the particular type of government expenditures for instance the number of volunteers contracts when expenditures on certain economy related activities fall while reductions in health care spending bring about an increased number of volunteers

a discrete count model of recreational demand abstract discrete choice models generate welfare measures resulting from environmental quality changes on a per trip basis instead of over a longer more policy relevant time period seasonal or annual welfare measures resulting from a quality change are often computed by multiplying each individual s per trip welfare measure by the number of trips the individual is forecasted to take at the new quality level these models are typically formulated so that increases in the quality of any site causes every individual to increase his or her participation this paper presents an alternative method of linking the discrete choice model to a demand model enabling welfare changes to be estimated in a conventional manner

on the aggregate value of recreational activities a nested price index approach using poisson demand systems an important consideration in the development ofregulations and policies that administer naturalresources in an area is the value of the non marketactivities supported by those lands little attentionhas been paid to the aggregate value of largegeographic areas this analysis builds autility theoretic price index and utilizes this indexto estimate an aggregate poisson demand to valuebackcountry recreational hiking opportunities innorthern california

a signaling explanation for charity this article examines a novel but plausible motive for charitable giving charitable donations which are observable can signal wealth or income the signaling equilibrium of charitable donations has attractive properties donations increase proportionally with population size governmental funding for public goods affects private charity only through an income effect crowding out need not be complete income redistribution is generically nonneutral increasing the spread between the poorest and richest person in a community tends to increase private donations our theory are based on the assumption that people are willing to make charitable donations even if they will not increase provision of the public good the data on charitable giving support the hypothesis that donors donate at least partly for signaling purposes rather than only to aid the recipient or to obtain satisfactions unrelated to status though charitable organizations usually report donations within categories thus not allowing perfect revelation for analytical tractability we shall consider an equilibrium with perfect revelation and a continuum of types as characterized in george j mailath 1987 and norman j ireland 1994

brand choice and purchase frequency revisited an application to recreation behavior the role that total purchases play in determining the choice among brands has been considered in microeconomic theory for quite some time but for traditional goods only consumption of outdoor recreation is an unusual good most often measured using an individual s recreational trip adding the trips made on a number of choice occasions seems the obvious way to aggregate this good but doing so leads to several problems in defining a meaningful price index the hicks leontief conditions for aggregation suggest that trips to destinations may be thought of as brand choices on consumption occasions andthe continuous analogue to total purchases may in fact be the individual s total travel an empirical example of the model is used to estimate welfare impacts for a group of anglers

a demand theory for number of trips in a random utility model of recreation we present a simple random utility model of recreation site choice that incorporates an aggregate demand function for number of trips during a season we derive the trip demand function using conventional demand theory and use it to calculate seasonal welfare changes due to improvements in site characteristics or addition of new sites the model is based on bockstael et al s participation function