option value empirical evidence from a case study of recreation and water quality a procedure for measuring option value and other preservation values of water quality is developed and applied to a case study area in the south platte river basin colorado benefits from water based recreation activities are the focus of the study the results provide an empirical test and confirmation of weisbrod s proposal that option value and other preservation values represent important social benefits and should be added to the aggregate consumer surplus of recreation activities to determine the total benefit of environmental amenities to society in the absence of such an estimate insufficient resources would be allocated by society to preservation of unique environments such as pristine mountain streams where mineral and energy development may irreversibly degrade water quality

modeling aggregate manufactured exports for some asian newly industrialized economies a central question in studies of the asian newly industrialised economies has been whether the extremely rapid export growth of these countries can be viewed as primarily a phenomenon of income elastic export demand or of fast expanding export supply in the face of highly price elastic demand this paper provides evidence to show that while high income elasticities of export demand are detected using a conventional simultaneous model this may conceal the presence of important product differentiation and product innovation effects on export demand these are then captured using a measure of the total resource base copyright 1995 by mit press

agents evaluations and the disparity in measures of economic loss abstract recent studies have revealed a large and unexpected disparity between willingness to pay and compensation demanded measures of economic loss further evidence of this difference is presented here together with the results of a series of survey and real money exchange experiments which indicate that when advisors evaluate entitlements on behalf of third parties the variation between the measures is far less than is shown by individuals acting on their own behalf given the wide dependence on agents a finding that they may weigh losses differently from people they act for suggests that agents choices may compromise welfare positions

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

interpreting measures of economic loss evidence from contingent valuation and experimental studies abstract from the standpoint of conventional welfare theory it is surprising that responses to contingent valuation studies of environmental goods have shown a consistent difference between willingness to pay and compensation demanded measures of economic loss this paper examines these results in light of four reasons most often given as grounds for their dismissal new experimental evidence supports an interpretation of the observed disparity in payment and compensation based measures as both real and psychologically meaningful an alternative conceptual framework suggested by prospect theory is outlined and its relevance for economic assessments of potential environmental change is discussed briefly

valuing option existence and bequest demands for wilderness to assess the relative importance of current costs and future benefits of nuclear waste storage we develop a simple model of bequest value the basic model of nonparternalistic altruism is extended to account for the uncertain nature of the externality

ex ante consumer welfare evaluation in cost benefit analysis abstract public projects and policies are normally evaluated ex ante i e while consumers may still be uncertain about future prices income levels interest rates and preferences this paper extends the theory of ex ante consumer welfare evaluation by developing a 2 period model with multiple sources of uncertainty it provides insights into the influence of temporal uncertainty on the empirical measurement of ex ante willingness to pay

the price elasticity of mass preferences i compare the price elasticity of economic and political preferences my central hypothesis is that willingness to pay whether expressed verbally or through cash transactions is more price elastic for economic consumption goods than for public goods i find that increases in price greatly diminish the proportion of people willing to pay for consumer goods such as housing or hardback books whereas the proportion willing to pay more in taxes to support a public good such as environmental protection or shelter for the homeless is much less responsive to changes in price i conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of willingness to pay for public and private goods

the political obstacles to greater exchange rate flexibility in china summary an undervalued currency has arguably helped china pursue an east asian style export led model of development spurring economic growth and job creation recently however the undervalued exchange rate has exposed china to a raft of growing major financial and economic vulnerabilities including an overheating of the domestic economy and renewed financial sector difficulties despite these risks chinese leaders have refused to significantly revalue the renminbi suggesting that political objectives are taking precedence over economic optimality i aim to glean insight into such political explanations by building upon present theories in political economy

valuing non market goods using contingent valuation abstract contingent valuation is a technique being developed by economists for the valuation of environmental commodities not traded in markets this paper discusses the major problem areas associated with this method of value estimation these comprise bias strategic hypothetical and design biases the discrepancy between willingness to pay and compensation demanded the aggregation procedure the choice of question format and non use values some evidence from comparative studies is reported and comments made on the accuracy of contingent valuation answers finally the conditions under which contingent valuation seems to operate best are set out

pricing policies and antlerless elk hunting permits one of the effects of increasing emphasis on leisure time in the u s has been a growth in demand for hunting privileges an example of such growth is the rapidly increasing demand for the opportunity to hunt elk in various western states potter 1982 from 1960 1979 the number of licensed elk hunters more than doubled in north america while average elk hunter success steadily declined from 25 to 14 over the same period even though total elk harvests are increasing elk populations are not growing at a rate anywhere near that of current demand growth thus state fish and wildlife departments must utilize methods to allocate elk resources such allocation procedures include split seasons waiting lines drawings and fee increases each with distinct efficiency and equity implications meyer 1979 peek pederson and thomas 1982 the problem of allocating rocky mountain antlerless elk hunting privileges in eastern oregon is instructive in this regard oregon s department of fish and wildlife controls the hunt of antlerless cow and calf elk by controlling the numbers of hunting tags annually issued for each designated geographic area the numbers of tags issued are determined by estimating the quantity of hunters needed to achieve the target harvest level of antlerless elk in each area for a one dollar processing fee prospective hunters may indicate a first and a second choice hunting area from

valuing environmental commodities some recent experiments a general model of consumer behavior is proposed to assess six recent experiments that have attempted to reveal preferences for environmental goals each experiment used a mix of both the techniques and the theory of demand for non market commodities and each was designed to estimate a non market attitude associated with the environment and to analyze potential biases in the techniques the six cases show some consistency in results the linkage within the contingent market between the environmental attribute institutional setting and the bidding instrument must be realistic and accepted by the respondent to avoid biased results possibly the most important result is the replication of results using a traditional property value study and a contingent bidding approach all evidence obtained to date suggests that hedonic studies of property values or wages travel costs and survey techniques all yield values well one order of magnitude in accuracy 41 references 2 tables

the behavioralist visits the factory increasing productivity using simple framing manipulations recent discoveries in behavioral economics have led to important new insights concerning what can happen in markets such gains in knowledge have come primarily via laboratory experiments a missing piece of the puzzle in many cases is parallel evidence drawn from naturally occurring field counterparts we provide a small movement in this direction by taking advantage of a unique opportunity to work with a chinese high tech manufacturing facility our study revolves around using insights gained from one of the most influential lines of behavioral research framing manipulations in an attempt to increase worker productivity in the facility using a natural field experiment we report several insights for example conditional incentives framed as both losses and gains increase productivity for both individuals and teams in addition teams more acutely respond to bonuses posed as losses than as comparable bonuses posed as gains the magnitude of this framing effect is roughly 1 that is total team productivity is enhanced by 1 purely due to the framing manipulation importantly we find that neither the framing nor the incentive effect lose their significance over time rather the effects are observed over the entire sample period moreover we learn that repeated interaction with workers and conditionality of the bonus contract are substitutes for sustenance of incentive effects in the long run this paper was accepted by gerard p cachon decision analysis

information effects in contingent markets information bias in contingent markets is poorly understood in this paper testable hypotheses concerning beneficial contingent market information effects are developed conceptually perspective information and relative expenditure information were expected to increase comprehension and increase bids provision cost information was expected to counteract free riding behavior and also increase bids hypothesis tests using experimental markets suggested that each information type induced small statistically insignificant bid increases however the combined effect of the three information types induced a desirable statistically significant increase in bids this result supports the contention that not all contingent market information effects are biases

specification of the logit model the case of valuation of nonmarket goods abstract we address the proper specification of the logit model for estimation of nonmarket commodity demand economic theory is used to show the conditions which must be met by the logit functional form if it is to yield valid estimates of welfare change measures and demand relationships an empirical example is used to illustrate the argument recreational boating data were collected using the contingent valuation method cvm in texas in one instance the demand curve is positively sloped due to the specific functional form chosen the estimated demand curve for the theoretically preferred functional form has the expected negative slope

think large and act small toward a new paradigm for ngo scaling up abstract scaling up is about expanding impact and not about becoming large the latter being only one possible way to achieve the former the experiences of five indian nongovernment organizations ngos suggest the emergence of a new paradigm of scaling up in which ngos become catalysts of policy innovations and social capital creators of programmatic knowledge that can be spun off and integrated into government and market institutions and builders of vibrant and diverse civil societies we detail the mechanisms by which ngo impact can be scaled up without drastically increasing the size of the organization

effect of distance on the preservation value of water quality in the past dozen years an extensive body of literature has developed on the willingness to pay for water quality in particular its recreation use and nonuse preservation values this paper illustrates a procedure for estimating the effect of distance on the preservation value of environmental quality using the contingent valuation approach the case considered is the potential degradation of water quality due to coal mining activity in the flathead river drainage system montana the analysis supports a negative association for this particular study area the effect of distance on preservation value was considered both directly and indirectly through its effect on visits 36 references 2 tables

measuring the benefits of environmental change using a duality approach the case of ozone and illinois cash grain farms abstract the measurement of the economic effects of a changing environment can be complex and costly this study uses a duality approach to quantify the relationship between ambient levels of ozone and economic damage on illinois cash grain farms econometric estimates from producers profit functions indicate a significant negative relationship between ozone and the levels of profit and output these findings are consistent with results from more traditional ecosystem assessment procedures given the data and experimentation costs associated with traditional approaches this study s results point to duality as a potentially powerful tool for assessing the economic effects of various environmental phenomena

estimates of the option values for water quality improvements abstract this paper presents estimates of the option values associated with increased oppurtunities for outdoor recreation resulting from improved water quality the estimates are based on a 1981 survey of 301 households in the pennsylvania monongahela river basin

validation of empirical measures of welfare change a comparison of nonmarket techniques since the passing of the flood control act of 1936 the attention of many resource economists has been directed towards measuring the benefits and costs of alternative uses of natural resources increasingly it has been recognized that the value of some of these uses is not explicitly determined through market transactions this has led to the focus of much attention upon the development of nonmarket methods to estimate the value of these uses in the 1940s the groundwork for the travel cost method was established by hotelling prewitt 1949 following this in the 1960s davis initiated the basic foundation for bidding methods davis 1963 which were later to be subsumed under the heading of contingent valuation methods brookshire randall and stoll 1980 schulze d arge and brookshire 1981 thayer 1981 both of these methods will be further discussed below in addition to these two methods a third approach the unit day value method has been recognized as acceptable but not preferred for the valuation of recreational uses of water and related land resources dwyer kelley and bowes 1977 u s water resources council 1979 given the existence of alternative methods of estimating the value of resource uses several obvious questions arise one of the first of these is under what circumstances is each method most appropriate existing literature has focussed sufficiently on this question and pointed out limitations of each especially the travel cost method and unit day value methods brookshire ives and schulze 1976 dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 freeman 1979 mcconnell 1975 randall ives and eastman 1977 schulze d arge and brook

derived demand estimation with survey experiments commercial electric vehicles in this paper the author examines the demand for a hypothetical input electric over the road vehicles in the commercial sector using data from a survey experiment this experiment is designed to allow the estimation of theoretically plausible derived demand functions from either the translog or the ces production functions a heteroscedasticity corrected two limit tobit model is developed and estimated the results provide evidence of considerable adaptability to new technologies and price structures on the part of firms they evidently would be willing to cope with the limited traveling range of electric vehicles if these vehicles were able to provide a less costly means of doing business copyright 1987 by mit press

on errors in variable biases in estimates of export price elasticities abstract the literature has long suggested that estimates of export price elasticities are biased toward 1 this paper demonstrates that they are either unbiased or biased towards zero depending on estimation method

real effective exchange rate and the constant elasticity of substitution assumption abstract the real effective exchange rate reer is an aggregation of several bilateral real exchange rates assuming constant elasticity of substitution ces between goods from different countries we investigate the validity of the ces assumption by estimating manufacturing export equations for 56 countries over 26 years under the ces assumption splitting the reer into two components should not increase the fit in an export equation and the coefficients on the two reers should be equal we reject both these implications and find that the export equations with two reers vs oecd and vs nonoecd countries perform better than the traditional ones

different approaches of modelling reaction lags how do chilean manufacturing exports react to movements of the real exchange rate this study examines the relationship between export supply and the real exchange rate using annual chilean data for the period 1960 1996 the hypotheses to be tested are first that the real exchange rate does matter for the supply of exports contrary to studies relying on quarterly data and second that the impact of a real depreciation only ceases to be positive and significant after about two three years four different distributed lag models were considered as potentially adequate and useful to depict the impact of the real exchange rate over time even though all four models assumed different underlying lag structures they all point to the importance of maintaining a competitive real exchange rate over time the transfer function model is particularly well suited in shaping any lag structure in that it is not presumptive in form

contingent valuation experiments for strategic behavior abstract the existence and extent of strategic disclosures in field contingent valuation surveys have been debated but few empirical studies are available this paper summarizes the results of an experiment to identify strategic behavior using alternative disclosure mechanisms with closed ended and open ended formats in addition the experiment examined the effect of mechanism design on respondent s ability and willingness to disclose their personal valuation statistical results using censored discrete regression analysis and nonparameteric means tests provide some evidence of systematic differences due to strategic behavior but the comparisons are inconclusive due to the significant influence of sample selection on valuation results using closed ended formats and the inherent limitations of comparative means test procedures evidence from this analysis cannot refute the hypothesis that respondents try to the best of their ability to provide truthful information but the procedures used to interpret this information can have a significant effect on aggregate valuation results

an assessment of the empirical magnitude of option values for environment goods this paper provides an empirical assessment of the magnitude of option values relative to expected surplus using a model presented by larson and flacco 1992 option values and option prices are computed for both simulated data sets and actual estimates of recreation demands results indicate that option values engendered by price and income uncertainty are generally quite a small percent of expected surplus

successfully creating and scaling a sustainable social enterprise model under uncertainty the case of viavia travellers cafes while the literature on social scaling adopts a linear perspective in which a social enterprise first tests and validates its business model and then scales it up to other settings this study argues that in uncertain and volatile environments a more iterative approach may be appropriate we develop an in depth case study of viavia travellers cafes a social enterprise that has successfully scaled its operations to 16 locations covering four continents through document analyses and twelve interviews with internal and external stakeholders we are able to map and analyze the development process of the viavia travellers cafes with information covering a period of more than 25 years we find that under uncertainty the social business model does not need to be proven before scaling it up in fact viavia travellers had not yet developed a replicable model when scaling activities were undertaken it regarded each new expansion as an experiment and developed the business model s economic and social elements by learning from the portfolio of its previous experiments overcoming uncertainty hence involved simultaneously developing and scaling the business model our study introduces insights from the literature on business model development under uncertainty to the research on sustainable business models and social scaling while contributing relevant insights for social entrepreneurs trying to scale

a natural experiment for identifying the impact of natural trade barriers on exports abstract the paper investigates the relative importance of trade policy and natural sources of export taxation in malawi a landlocked african economy these sources of export taxation are in turn used to explore how export supply would respond to trade liberalisation as opposed to measures which lower other international trade costs the findings indicate that trade policy barriers are now only a limited source of true export taxation and that trade policy reform needs to be complemented with reforms to reduce international trade including transport costs

using contingent valuation to value environmental improvements alternative methods available to economists for valuing non market goods are outlined contingent valuation is then used to value a ban on straw burning

valuing public goods a comparison of survey and hedonic approaches although the theory of public goods has progressed rapidly since paul samuelson s seminal article the empirical measurement of the value of demand for public goods only recently has received increased attention perhaps the best known and most widely accepted empirical approach has been the use of hedonic prices wherein for example it is assumed that either wages or housing values reflect spatial variation in public good characteristics of different communities this indirect approach based on theoretical work of charles tiebout kelvin lancaster sherwin rosen and others has proven quite successful among public goods or bads which have been valued using the hedonic approach are climate i hoch air pollution robert anderson and thomas crocker d harrison and d rubinfeld social infrastructure r cummings et al and other community characteristics such as noise level j nelson and ethnic composition ann schnare an alternative approach is to directly ask households or individuals to state their willingness to pay for public goods using survey techniques despite arguments that strategic bias will invalidate survey results there exists the need for an alternative to the hedonic approach as an example consider the case of a remote and unique scenic vista valuable to recreators which is threatened by air pollution from a proposed coal fired plant a typical situation in the western united states although it is possible in principle to impute the value of clean air and visibility from the relative decline in local visitation which might follow construction of a power plant information on the value of visibility at the site is needed prior to construction for socially optimal decision making on plant location and pollution control equipment the hedonic approach is unavailable both because the scarcity of local population as opposed to recreators makes use of wage or property value data impossible and because scenic vistas may themselves be unique for these reasons a randall et al first applied survey methods for valuing visibility and other environmental effects of large coal fired power plants in the four corners region of new mexico since this initial application the survey approach has been widely used to value environmental commodities where market data for hedonic analysis is difficult to acquire see for example brookshire ives and schulze rowe et al brookshire et al other early attempts to value public goods using the survey approach include r davis peter bohm and j hammack and g brown although results of using the survey approach for estimating the value of public goods appear to be internally consistent replicable and consistent with demand theory see schulze et al little work on external validation has been reported thus the purpose of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to validate the survey approach by direct comparison to a hedonic property value study the los angeles metropolitan area was chosen for the experiment because of the well defined air pollution problem and be assistant professor university of wyoming assistant professor university of missouri rolla associate professor university of wyoming and professor university of wyoming respectively the research reported here was funded under a grant methods development for assessing air pollution control benefits from the u s environmental protection agency we would like to give special thanks to alan carlin and shelby gerking for their helpful suggestions and contributions additional helpful comments were received from a myrick freeman iii john tschirhart and james murdoch all conclusions are of course our sole responsibility

an econometric and cultural analysis of rent control in kumasi ghana an empirical analysis of rent control in kumasi ghana is presented based upon a consumer demand model for housing controlled rent to income ratios are exceptionally low for a developing country moreover the asante housing market exhibits unusual cultural attributes and problems in estimating the without rent control situation benefits and costs of rent control are presented by housing types and income levels and distributional impacts assessed

valuing environmental damage the purpose of this paper is to review the most important parts of the economic theory and measurement of environmental damage the paper is structured as follows section 2 introduces the willingness to pay concept and money measures such as the compensating variation and the equivalent variation this section also offers an interpretation of money measures in terms of the outcome of a referendum section 3 defines the total value of an environmental asset in order to give the reader an idea of the complexity of the money measures used in recent empirical studies section 4 and 5 introduce risk or uncertainty and discuss the choice of money measure in a risky world in section 6 three frequently employed methods for the estimation of money measures are introduced the paper ends with some remarks regarding the limitations of these approaches to decision making copyright 1990 by oxford university press

income and price elasticities for exports of developing countries income and price elasticities for non oil exports of non opec developing countries play an imp ortant role in the development of policy responses to the debt crisis these elasticities are estimated for the major standard internation al trade classification commodity groups based on two stage least sq uares and quarterly data for 1973 to 1984 the income elasticity for non oil exports ranges between 1 4 and 1 9 the analysis also tests t he properties of the error term the dynamic specification and para metric stability the sensitivity of the results is assessed using sh iller s lags and band spectrum estimation copyright 1988 by mit press

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

option value a conceptual overview the importance of nonuser benefits to the process of efficiently allocating natural environments was first emphasized by krutilla 15 a decade and a half ago one of the components of these nonuser benefits is option value originally introduced by weisbrod 23 as relevant for assets that might be difficult to reproduce option value has been the subject of considerable debate perhaps the simplest approach to explaining the meaning of option value is to use an example consider an individual who is uncertain whether he or she will consume the services of a particular asset in the future furthermore assume this individual is also uncertain whether the asset will be available in the future should he

demand and supply factors in the determination of nie exports a simultaneous error correction model for hong kong this paper considers the issue of whether a small developing economy such as hong kong faces a perfectly elastic demand for its exports of manufactured goods we construct a simultaneous demand and supply system which is estimated using full information maximum likelihood methods and which allows us to clearly identify demand and supply factors in determining export volumes and prices our empirical findings differ from previous studies conducted with this data set in that they suggest that even a small dynamic newly industrialized economy such as hong kong may not face infinitely elastic demand for its manufactured goods we also advance some reasons to explain why the small country assumption may not be applicable in the case of most industrialized economies

strategic behaviour some experimental evidence abstract a test to detect the presence of strategic bias in responses to direct willingness to pay questioning is developed and applied in an experimental setting involving three separate groups of individuals the smith auction a demand revealing process is also tested using the same format under direct questioning significant over stating behaviour was observed whilst the bids made in the smith auctions were predominantly under statements whilst the smith auction mean bids appear to be most suited to the task of numerical extrapolation the direct questioning process is cheaper to implement it is concluded that a combination of the two questioning techniques involving the adjustment of direct questioning bids on the basis of information generated by a smith auction carried out using a sub sample of respondents offers the most potential for estimating values in a real world case

okoboji experiment comparing non market valuation techniques in an unusually well defined market for water quality abstract three techniques to value the non market commodity of water quality are compared in a notably active and unusually well defined market the okoboji lakes region of northwest iowa the paper compares a a site valuation based on differing property values across lakes b a market valuation by soliciting realtors interpretations of observed price differentials and c a contingent valuation of willingness to pay for water quality changes the results obtained are similar in magnitude the value of water quality ranges from 13 to 23 of the total residence value per square foot of private residence

option value an exposition and extension this article examines the role of the discount rate in making decisions that will have significant implications for the environment the authors begin by providing a rationale for discounting in general and by describing the main factors that determine

exchange rate variability and the export demand for malaysia s semiconductors an empirical study this article examines the effects of exchange rate variability on export demand for semiconductors which is the largest sub sector of electronics industry in malaysia as reported by malaysian industrial development authority mida 2004 the empirical results which are estimated based on the johansen s multivariate cointegration tests and error correction model suggest that there is a unique long run relationship among quantities of export relative price real foreign income and real exchange rate variability the major finding of this article is that the variability of real exchange rate has some effect on semiconductor exports in both the long run and the short run in the light of rapid advances in technology in the global markets for electronics products the findings are useful to policy makers for the design and target of appropriate exchange rate and industrial policies to enhance the export competitiveness of semiconductor industry

drivers of export demand a focus on the giips countries this study investigates the drivers of export demand in the peripheral economies of the euro area namely greece ireland italy portugal and spain giips for the period between 1980 and 2012 recently several authors have pointed out that changes in trade export shares are not associated with major terms of trade disturbances rather they are the result of other underlying factors commonly defined as non price competitiveness starting from this premise the study extends the traditional imperfect substitute trade model to include a measure of non price competitiveness real capital stock the latter is a measure of a country s total resource base and captures the presence of product differentiation and product innovation the results show a significant link between export demand and cumulative investments in the short term giips exports are dominated by the movements of worldwide real income while changes in price and non competitiveness take longer to affect export performance in the long run all three variables play a significant role in pushing exports

hedonic prices property values and measuring environmental benefits a survey of the issues this paper provides a review of the theoretical basis and the assumptions required in order to use hedonic price equations derived from property value data to obtain measures of the prices and the inverse demand functions for environmental amenities such as air quality it also includes a review and assessment of existing empirical applications of the technique to problems of air and water quality and urban noise

willingness to pay and compensation demanded experimental evidence of an unexpected disparity in measures of value aside from possible income effects measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent unexpectedly wide variations between these sums however have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options this paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations the results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement damage assessments and interpretations of indifference curves

built to scale how sustainable business models can better serve the base of the pyramid abstract one of the greatest challenges for sustainable business models is achieving a scale of operations that is adequate to meet the quantity and depth of needs in their markets in this paper we examine scaling of sustainable business models at the base of the pyramid bop using within and cross case analyses we study the sustainable business models of three firms that provide affordable housing for people with very low incomes in mexico our analyses reveal the importance of community engagement as well as constraints on the ability to stimulate market forces when serving the very poor these findings suggest that the literature on sustainable business models should be modified to account for the essential roles of community engagement and government collaboration in lieu of reliance on market forces in enabling social enterprises to scale in order to better serve the very poor