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

the individual travel cost method with consumer specific values of travel time savings the treatment of the opportunity cost of travel time in travel cost models has been an area of research interest for many decades our analysis develops a methodology to combine the travel distance and travel time data with respondent specific estimates of the value of travel time savings vtts the individual vtts are elicited with the use of discrete choice stated preference methods the travel time valuation procedure is integrated into the travel cost valuation exercise to create a two equation structural model of site valuation since the travel time equation of the structural model incorporates individual preference heterogeneity the full structure model provides a travel cost site demand model based upon individualized values of time the methodology is illustrated in a study of recreational birdwatching more specifically visits to a stork village in poland we show that the usual practice of basing respondents vtts on 1 3 of their wage rate is largely unfounded and propose alternatives including a separate component of the travel cost survey aimed at valuation of respondents vtts or as a second best asking if they wish if their journey was shorter and for those who do use full hourly wage as an indicator of their vtts

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

a cost benefit analysis of restoring the em river in sweden valuation of angling site characteristics and visitation frequency this article uses cost benefit analysis cba to evaluate restoration scenarios aimed at improving angling on the em river in sweden we find that none of the proposed projects are socially profitable when considering only values associated with angling we rely on a choice experiment ce to derive utilities and estimate the monetary value of angling site characteristics and then also use the utilities derived in a visitation frequency using a two stage budgeting approach the visitation frequency is then used to extract values for fishing license sales and business related income the case study illustrates how cba can provide useful insights into the potential economic returns of environmental restoration projects our case study also indicates that the results in terms of willingness to pay wtp and visitation frequency are general findings i e they appear similar across angling sites which is particularly useful from a policy point of view because it supports the use of benefit transfer for more cost effective river management

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

household equivalence scales and interpersonal comparisons recent papers have used household equivalence scales to construct measures of welfare inequality this procedure rests on an often implicit value judgement namely that if after adjustment for demographic characteristics two households are on the same indifference curve they are equally well off that value judgement is not compelling and there are situations in which it is ethically repugnant this is particularly likely if tastes are functions of past experience and income

non linearities and equivalence scales this paper focuses on the estimation and testing of equivalence scales in the context of a demand system with nonline ar logarithmic expenditure effects in its budget share equations the authors show that such nonlinearity enables one to identify the scal es without demographic separability restrictions on preferences and to avoid false rejection of the hypothesis that the scales are independ ent of the base utility level the empirical analysis is based on micro data drawn from the u k family expenditure survey copyright 1993 by royal economic society

exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss consumer s surplus is a widely used tool in applied welfare economics both economic theorists and cost benefit analysis often use consumer s surplus despite its somewhat dubious reputation the basic idea is to evaluate the value to a consumer or his willingness to pay for a change in price of a good from say pricep to pricep because price changes affect consumer welfare an evaluation of this effect is often a key input to public policy decisions yet consumer s surplus is probably the most controversial of widely used economic concepts both paul samuelson and ian little conclude that the economics profession would be better off without it it is my feeling of the situation that substantial agreement exists on the correct quantities to be measured the amount the consumer would pay or would need to be paid to be just as well off after the price change as he was before the price change the quantities correspond to john hicks compensating variation measures an alternative measure which takes ex post price change utility as the basis of comparison is hicks equivalent variation the controversy arises in the measurement of these quantities the usual measurement procedure is to use the area to the left of the marshallian market demand curve between two price levels jules dupuit originated this measure of welfare change and alfred marshall and hicks derived appropriate conditions for its use the primary condition for the area to the left of the demand curve to correspond to the compensating variation is to have constant marginal utility of income marshall gave this condition and if it holds the same quantity will be derived as the area to the left of the compensated hicksian demand curve this area to the left of the compensated demand curve is exactly what the compensating variation and equivalent variation measure thus the constant marginal utility of income is a sufficient condition for marshallian consumer s surplus to be equal to hicks consumer s surplus in this case arnold harberger s plea to use the welfare triangle as one half times the product of the price change times the quantity change to measure deadweight loss corresponds to the correct theoretical amount of welfare change in a recent paper robert willig derives bounds for the percentage difference between the correct measure of either the compensating or equivalent variation and the marshallian measure derived form the market demand curve his bounds which depend on the income elasticity of demand for the single good in the region of price change being considered as well as the proportion of the consumer s income spent on the good demonstrate that the marshallian consumer s surplus is often a good approximation to hicks consumer s surplus the fact that the proportion of the consumer s income spent matters as well as the income elasticity was first pointed out by harold hotelling willig contends that the approximation error will be less than the errors involved in estimating the demand curve thus he hopes to remove the need for apology that applied economists often need to give to theorists who remark on the inappropriateness of using marshallian consumer s surplus to measure welfare change however in this paper i show that for the case primarily considered by willig of a single price change which is also the situation in which consumer s surplus is often used in applied work no approximation is necessary professor of economics massachusetts institute of technology and research associate national bureau of economic research i would like to thank peter diamond erwin diewert daniel mcfadden robert merton robert solow hal varian joel yellin and the referees for help and comments research support from the national science foundation is acknowledged the reason that we still have two rather than one of samuelson s six measures of consumer s surplus arises from an index number problem of the correct basis for the welfare comparison i will give both measures but plan to concentrate on the compensating variation

the effect of nesting structure specification on welfare estimation in a random utility model of recreation demand an application to the demand for recreational fishing nested logit has become common in estimating random utility models of recreation demand because welfare analysis is often the objective of estimating these models it seems natural to ask what effect does the choice of nesting structure have on the welfare estimates generated by these models therefore we compare the results of nine nesting structures andfindthat the variation in welfare estimates across the models is not large our results are contrary to those of kling and thomson and shaw and ozog the difference appears to originate with differences in the estimated dissimilarity coefficients in the nested models

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

life cycle expenditure allocations and the consumption costs of children abstract in this paper we assess whether it is changing needs or intertemporal substitution that dominate household expenditure responses to the presence of children over the life cycle we construct lifetime expenditure paths for households with different demographic profiles and consider the shape of these paths and some possible implications for welfare measures simulated expenditure paths based on consistent single period and multi period models indicate that it is indeed changing needs that dominate such paths in periods when children are present in the household however allowing for intertemporal substitution is still shown to be important since it can introduce new information relevant to the calculation of household welfare

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

modelling farmer uptake of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract the uk biomass strategy suggests that to reach the technical potential of perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus by 2020 requires 350 000 hectares of land this represents a more than 20 fold increase on the current 15 546 hectares previous research has identified several barriers to adoption including concerns over security of income from contracts in addition farmers perceive returns from these crops to be lower than for conventional crops this paper uses a farm level linear programming model to investigate theoretical uptake of energy crops at different gross margins under the assumption of a profit maximising decision maker and in the absence of known barriers to adoption the findings suggest that while src willow at current prices remains less competitive returns to miscanthus should have encouraged adoption on a wider scale than at present this highlights the importance of the barriers to adoption recently announced contracts for miscanthus appear to offer a significant premium to farmers in order to encourage them to grow the crops this raises the question of whether a more cost effective approach would be for government to provide guarantees addressing farmers concerns including security of income from the contracts such an approach should encourage adoption at lower gross margins

effects of regulations on expected catch expected harvest and site choice of recreational anglers the use of public lands and waterways is often subject to environmental regulations designed to limit the depletion of resource stocks such regulations may influence expectations of quality destination choice and consumer surplus this paper examines the effects of environmental regulations on recreational anglers the empirical application develops a joint model of expected catch and expected harvest in conjunction with a random utility model of site choice findings for maine anglers indicate that regulations have sizable effects on catch and harvest site choice and welfare

the influence of a renewable energy feed in tariff on the decision to produce biomass crops in ireland abstract a target of 30 per cent substitution of biomass for peat in the three peat fired power stations from 2015 has been set by the irish government however a knowledge gap exists on the extent to which irish farmers would actually choose to grow these crops an extension of the renewable energy feed in tariff refit scheme to include the co firing of biomass with peat in electricity generation would enable the power stations to enter into power purchase agreements ppas these offer a fixed price to farmers for biomass feedstock the decision to adopt biomass is represented as a constrained problem under certainty with the objective of profit maximisation the results showed that the price offered under a ppa has a large effect on the economic returns from biomass crops the price that the power stations previously estimated they would be able to pay at 46 and 48 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively was used as a starting point at this price the number of farmers who would choose to adopt biomass production is insufficient to achieve the national co firing target the target could be achieved at 70 and 65 per tonne for willow and miscanthus respectively

testing the consistency of nested logit models with utility maximization abstract this paper provides simple necessary conditions for testing the local consistency of nested logit models with stochastic utility maximization a graphical analysis illustrates the extent to which these conditions extend the range of admissible dissimilarity coefficients beyond the unit interval

economic evaluation of short rotation coppice systems for energy from biomass a review abstract since economic profitability is the most important factor for the adoption of short rotation coppice src for energy from biomass our objective was to analyze and summarize published knowledge about the economic evaluation of src of 37 studies 43 reported economic viability of src in comparison to a reference system whereas 19 stated economic disadvantages of src and 38 reported mixed results depending on the underlying assumptions we found a wide variety of underlying assumptions underlying costs process chains and methods used to evaluate src systems of the 37 studies 8 used static approaches of capital budgeting 84 used dynamic approaches and 8 applied approaches in which uncertainties were taken into account due to the long term nature of investment in src and therewith the uncertain development of sensitive assumptions approaches which consider uncertainties were best suited for economic evaluation the profitability of src was found to be most sensitive to the price for biomass and biomass yield but site specific biomass data was lacking despite the wide variation within each cost unit costs for land rent harvesting chipping and establishment consistently made up the largest proportion of overall costs and should therefore be chosen carefully we close with suggestions for improving the economic evaluation of src and enhancing traceability and comparability of calculations

the influence of perceived uncertainty on entrepreneurial action in emerging renewable energy technology biomass gasification projects in the netherlands emerging renewable energy technologies cannot break through without the involvement of entrepreneurs who dare to take action amidst uncertainty the uncertainties that the entrepreneurs involved perceive will greatly affect their innovation decisions and can prevent them from engaging in innovation projects aimed at developing and implementing emerging renewable energy technologies this article analyzes how perceived uncertainties and motivation influence an entrepreneur s decision to act using empirical data on biomass gasification projects in the netherlands our empirical results show that technological political and resource uncertainty are the most dominant sources of perceived uncertainty influencing entrepreneurial decision making by performing a dynamic analysis we furthermore demonstrate that perceived uncertainties and motivation are not stable but evolve over time we identify critical factors in the project s internal and external environment which influence these changes in perceived uncertainties and motivation and describe how various interactions between the different variables in the conceptual model internal and external factors perceived uncertainty motivation and previous actions of the entrepreneurs positively or negatively influence the decision of entrepreneurs to continue entrepreneurial action we discuss how policymakers can use these insights for stimulating the development and diffusion of emerging renewable energy technologies

a unified approach to incorporating demographic or other effects into demand systems a general method of introducing demographic effects into any demand system using modifying functions is described which permits complicated interactions of demographic variables with prices and expeditures theorems give properties the modifying functions must have to ensure integrability of the resulting system demand equations of the new system are given explicitly as functions of the original demand equations and the modifying functions the procedure is interpreted as altering a households technology and is shown to encompass adult equivalent scales and related methods examples of modifying functions are derived and applications of the technique to uses other than demographic variation are considered excerpt

estimates of semiparametric equivalence scales within the semiparametric framework introduced by pendakur 1999 we introduce a new loss function to estimate equivalence scales this loss function uses all available information from the total expenditures of both the reference and nonreference households and as such it produces more reliable estimates using canadian family expenditure data for 1996 we apply this loss function to obtain equivalence scale estimates for a variety of expenditure share categories such as food fuel and clothing copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination rand 054 rand2007 cls 1994 07 13 v1 2u standard latex document class rand rand 054 dispatch 12 7 2008 ce n a journal msp no no of pages 26 pe sharon rand journal of economics vol 40 no 1 spring 2009 pp 20 45 an empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination sofia berto villas boas economic theory does not provide sharp predictions on the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination if downstream cost differences exist then discrimination shifts production inefficiently toward high cost retailers so a ban increases welfare if differences in price elasticity of demand across retailers exist discrimination may increase welfare if quantity sold increases so a ban reduces welfare using retail prices and quantities of coffee brands sold by german retailers i estimate a model of demand and supply and separate cost and demand differences simulating a ban on wholesale price discrimination has positive welfare effects in this market and less if downstream cost differences shrink or with less competition introduction wholesale price discrimination means that an upstream firm sets different prices for the same product for various downstream retailers wholesale price discrimination is commonly practiced in many markets examples include markets such as petroleum distribution steel heavy trucking tobacco and pharmaceuticals in several countries milk and other dairy products are sold using government administered or sanctioned discriminatory pricing schemes wholesale price discrimination practices are also used for services such as loans insurance and advertising 1 competition authorities have been concerned with wholesale price discrimination the european union treaty s article 82 c prohibits practices where a dominant firm would place trading partners at a competitive disadvantage the u s robinson patman act forbids discriminat ing in price between different purchasers where the effect may be to lessen competition unless the university of california berkeley sberto are berkeley edu i thank the editor igal hendel and two anonymous referees for many helpful comments and max auffhammer cyndi berck peter berck gal hochman silke januszewski forbes george judge kai uwe k uhn diana lazo mark muendler aviv nevo ariel pakes jeff perloff andrew sweeting miguel villas boas and participants at uc san diego university of michigan the inra idei conference in toulouse and the university of british columbia summer conference in industrial organization for their suggestions i thank daniel klapper for letting me have access to the data support from the giannini foundation and from an aes grant are gratefully appreciated see for gasoline markets texaco v hasbrouck 496 us 543 no 87 2048 1990 and the new york state motor fuel marketing practices act for steel chan hall and rust 2003 for heavy trucking volvo trucks north america inc v reeder simco gmc inc docket no 04 905 for tobacco brooke group ltd v brown and williamson tobacco corp 509 us 209 no 92 466 1993 for wholesale pharmaceuticals see http www datcp state wi us trade business unfair comp drug price jsp for dairy markets see for example gardner 1984 and for services see givens 1983 c 2009 rand copyright

hedonic price analysis and selectivity bias hedonic valuation of quality attributes can be misleading when theassumption that these attributes are exogenous to sample selection isviolated this paper considers the simultaneity between hedonic valuationand sample selection in the context of a model of producer behavior andinvestigates empirically the case where land is demanded for use as an inputeither in agricultural production or in touristic development the empiricalanalysis suggests that failing to correct for sample selection results in abiased valuation of the effect of water salinity on agricultural land

handling unobserved site characteristics in random utility models of recreation demand abstract this paper presents a new random utility model of recreation demand that addresses the unobserved characteristics of recreation sites most random utility recreation demand models implicitly assume that all relevant site characteristics are observed by the researcher or allow for the possibility of unobserved characteristics in a restrictive manner unlike traditional approaches the proposed model avoids the bias unobserved site characteristics can cause in welfare estimates and the travel cost parameter monte carlo simulations motivate the proposed model by showing that it provides more efficient parameter estimates in contrast existing methods yield less efficient estimates and biased standard errors that overstate precision an empirical application to recreational fishing in wisconsin illustrates the potential importance of this modeling innovation in this application controlling for unobserved characteristics is important for a range of model specifications

identifiability of household equivalence scales through exact aggregation some empirical results general and commodity specific equivalence scales are estimated with canadian microdata the former are identifiable when exact aggregation is imposed however these identifiability restrictions can be tested as can homogeneity and symmetry in the model employed here exact aggregation is not rejected but homogeneity and symmetry are the estimated equivalence scales exhibit increasing returns to scale in family size they also rise with age exhibit strong regional effects and rural households scales are generally lower than those of urban households since scales are sensitive to imposing homogeneity and symmetry restrictions caution should be exercised in using such equivalence scales for policy purposes

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

the performance of nested logit models when welfare estimation is the goal in this paper we examine the performance of nested logit models in the face of two specification errors the first specification error arises when a nested logit model is appropriate but the wrong nesting structure is chosen the second specification error occurs when the underlying stochastic process is not consistent with nested logit particular attention is placed upon the impact that these errors can have on welfare predictions monte carlo experiments are used together with analytical results to examine the resulting bias to welfare estimates in addition we explore the value of alternative model selection criteria in choosing nesting structures

spatial boundaries and choice set definition in a random utility model of recreation demand we are concerned with the definition of choice set used in random utility models of recreation demand in particular we are concerned with the spatial boundaries used to define choice sets in this paper using a model of day trip fishing in maine we examine the sensitivity of parameter and welfare estimates to changes in the spatial boundary we find that there exists some threshold distance beyond which adding more sites to the choice set has negligible effects on the estimation results

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

on measuring child costs with applications to poor countries the theoretical basis for measuring child costs is discussed and detailed consideration is given to two straightforward procedures for calculation engel s food share method and rothbarth s adult good method each of these methods embodies different definitions of child costs so that the same empirical evidence can generate quite different estimates depending on the method used it is shown that true costs are generally overstated by engel s method and understated by rothbarth s procedure although the latter unlike the former can provide a sensible starting point for cost measurement our estimates from sri lankan and indonesian data suggest that children cost their parents about 30 40 percent of what they spend on themselves

contingent valuation a practical alternative when prices aren t available a person may be willing to make an economic tradeoff to assure that a wilderness area or scenic resource is protected even if neither that person nor perhaps anyone else will actually visit this area this tradeoff is commonly labeled passive use value contingent valuation studies ask questions that help to reveal the monetary tradeoff each person would make concerning the value of goods or services such surveys are a practical alternative approach for eliciting the value of public goods including those with passive use considerations first i discuss the exxon valdez oil spill of march 1989 focusing on why it is important to measure monetary tradeoffs for goods where passive use considerations loom large although discussions of contingent valuation often focus on whether the method is sufficiently reliable for use in assessing natural resource damages in lawsuits it is important to remember that most estimates from contingent valuation studies are used in benefit cost assessments not natural resource damage assessments those working on benefit cost analysis have long recognized that goods and impacts that cannot be quantified are valued implicitly by giving them a limitless value when government regulations preclude certain activities or giving them a value of zero by leaving certain consequences out of the analysis contingent valuation offers a practical alternative for reducing the use of either of these extreme choices i put forward an affirmative case for contingent valuation and address a number of the concerns that have arisen

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

an empirical investigation of the consistency of nested logit models with utility maximization global conditions under which nested logit models are consistent with utility maximization are provided by daly and zachary and by mcfadden recently borsch supan and herriges and kling have provided conditions under which a nested logit model is locally consistent however previous work has not discussed implementation of these conditions here three alternative approaches to checking and formally testing for the consistency conditions using classical statistics are investigated in addition a bayesian approach to interpreting and imposing the local consistency conditions is provided the application is based on anglers choices regarding sportfishing alternatives in southern california

recreation demand choices and revealed values of leisure time i introduction at least since the work of becker 1965 it has been recognized widely that time may play an important role in consumer demand one of the areas where this may be most significant empirically is in the valuation of natural resource amenities through their associated recreation demands a principal reason is that recreation is a time intensive commodity so that the value of the time spent in recreation would be expected to play a large role in its overall value the potential bias to consumer s surplus estimates of the net economic value of recreation from excluding time prices from the demand model has been recognized from the outset for example by knetsch 1963 and clawson 1959 to incorporate time into recreation demand models researchers have generally adopted the practice suggested by mcconnell 1975 of defining the full price of recreation as the money cost of a trip plus its monetized time cost though the use of full budgets also called for by the becker approach is less widespread bockstael et al 1987 pointed out quite clearly that both full budgets and full prices are required in the demand function if the recreationist is jointly choosing labor supply with recreation at an exogenous marginal wage but that the structure of demand was unclear if the individual was not making such marginal labor supply choices i e if he or she was working fixed hours subsequently larson and shaikh 2001 showed that the full prices full budgets specification is sufficient to satisfy the constraints on demand parameters that arise because choice is made subject to two binding constraints regardless of the individual s position in the labor market they also pointed out that models that use full prices but only money income in effect ignoring the role of time as a resource constraint cannot be consistent with the requirements of choice subject to two constraints although the outlines of how time should enter the structure of demand are becoming clear a major unresolved issue is how to determine its value in practice several studies have followed the basic logic of becker s early work assuming that the opportunity cost of recreation time i e the value of other time forgone in favor of recreation is an exogenous parameter such as the average wage rate or more commonly some fraction thereof this fraction is either chosen arbitrarily or estimated as part of the recreation demand model as in cesario 1976 mcconnell and strand 1981 and smith et al 1983 such assumptions may be erroneous for a variety of reasons assuming the average wage is the appropriate opportunity cost of time presumes that the individual faces no constraints on hours worked derives no utility or disutility from work and has a linear wage function as has been noted by chiswick 1967 bockstael et al 1987 and smith et al 1983 this is unlikely to be true for many people assuming some constant fraction of the wage is the opportunity cost of time especially an arbitrarily chosen fraction also seems likely to be incorrect for most people for all of these reasons an individual s average wage does not necessarily reveal anything about the shadow value of discretionary leisure time either as an upper or lower bound in a recent advance feather and shaw 2000 adapted the heckman 1974 labor supply model to include information supplied by recreationists about their labor supply status in particular whether they felt under or over employed relative to their desired number of hours this information is used to identify subgroups in the data for which the shadow value of leisure time is less than the wage or more than the wage which helps in the estimation of both a wage function and a shadow value of leisure time function this approach produces individual specific estimates of the opportunity cost of leisure time based on their demographics and labor market decisions which are used in a subsequent recreation demand analysis

a bioeconomic model for estimating the optimal level of deer and tag sales this paper presents a dynamic model that determines the optimal number of deer hunting permit sales subject to the objective of maximizing the discounted economic benefits stream from both the consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of deer this bioeconomic model integrates economic benefits estimated using the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method with biological growth constraints on deer using a hunting zone in california as a case study the model found that the optimal levels of buck hunting permits sold should change on a rotational basis over time and that the current practice of not selling doe hunting permits for that zone is non optimal

a supply chain network economic model with time based competition abstract this paper presents an integrated model for time cost competition between supply chains with heterogeneous customers the firms in our model can offer various time options for their production service to time sensitive customers this gives rise of a new concept of time based supply chain which we call t chain to be the basic element in the competition and extends the inter supply chain competition to a new dimension of time assuming the customers are heterogeneous in time cost bi criteria decision making we integrate the discrete choice theory into supply chain network competition and formulate the equilibrium conditions as a multinomial logit based variational inequality problem numerical examples are presented for model illustration and managerial insights such as profit maximization for a firm who participates in this supply chain network

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

differences between willingness to pay estimates from open ended and discrete choice contingent valuation methods the effects of heteroscedasticity most comparative studies find that the discrete choice contingent valuation method dc cvm yields higher willingness to pay wtp estimates than the open ended oe format in this paper we discuss and test several hypotheses to explain why wtp estimates from oe and dc cvm questions differ we find that wtp estimates from discrete choice data are very sensitive to assumptions made about the random utility in particular violation of the homoscedasticity assumption may lead to biased wtp estimates if the error terms are correlated with the cost this violation was a main source of difference in wtp estimates in our studies

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

vertical relationships between manufacturers and retailers inference with limited data in this paper different models of vertical relationships between manufacturers and retailers in the supermarket industry are compared demand estimates are used to compute price cost margins for retailers and manufacturers under different supply models when wholesale prices are not observed the purpose is to identify the set of margins compatible with the margins obtained from estimates of cost and to select the model most consistent with the data among non nested competing models the models considered are 1 a simple linear pricing model 2 a vertically integrated model and 3 a variety of alternative strategic supply scenarios that allow for collusion non linear pricing and strategic behaviour with respect to private label products using data on yogurt sold in several stores in a large urban area of the u s the results imply that wholesale prices are close to marginal cost and that retailers have pricing power in the vertical chain this is consistent with non linear pricing by the manufacturers or high bargaining power of the retailers

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

zero expenditures and the estimation of engel curves over the brief interview periods typical of budget surveys such as the u k family expenditure survey households recorded expenditures are liable to be misleading indicators of their underlying consumption most starkly a household may not be observed to purchase commodities that it nevertheless consumes this paper considers the implications of such measurement errors for the estimation of demand systems and derives a consistent estimator for the special case of linear engel curves

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

revealing preferences for leisure time from stated preference data when consumer choice is constrained by time as well as money willingness to pay can be defined with respect to either numeraire the two measures can be related formally within a utility consistent model of choice subject to two constraints furthermore when information is collected on both the respondent s marginal value of time can be identified a system of willingness to pay time and money and the marginal value of leisure time is estimated jointly in an application to california whalewatching and whale stock enhancement the empirical approach can be applied with only minor additions to survey techniques for nonmarket valuation

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

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

equivalence scales in a rank 3 demand system abstract in the context of a rank 3 demand system equivalence scales measuring the cost of demographic characteristics independently of the base utility level can be identified from cross section data without demographic separability restrictions although this can also be achieved with a rank 2 demand system that contains a nonlinear log expenditure term in its budget shares tests performed in a nested framework suggest that the rank 3 demand system approach is empirically superior the informative structure of the rank 3 demand system is used to estimate a detailed pattern of demographic costs including the cost of single parenthood and economies of scale within the family

contemporaneous and intertemporal child costs equivalent expenditure vs equivalent income scales abstract parents may provide for their children by drawing on savings or borrowing as well as by reducing current consumption this means that child costs may be partly paid from reducing consumption in periods when the children themselves are not in the family static comparisons of consumption costs between households with and without children are therefore affected by the extent to which parents are willing and able to meet child costs through intertemporal transfers this paper analyses the implications of this argument for the estimation of adult equivalent scales and provides empirical illustrations using individual household data

impact of perennial energy crops income variability on the crop selection of risk averse farmers abstract the uk government policy is for the area of perennial energy crops in the uk to expand significantly farmers need to choose these crops in preference to conventional rotations for this to be achievable this paper looks at the potential level and variability of perennial energy crop incomes and the relation to incomes from conventional arable crops assuming energy crop prices are correlated to oil prices the results suggests that incomes from them are not well correlated to conventional arable crop incomes a farm scale mathematical programming model is then used to attempt to understand the affect on risk averse farmers crop selection the inclusion of risk reduces the energy crop price required for the selection of these crops however yields towards the highest of those predicted in the uk are still required to make them an optimal choice suggesting only a small area of energy crops within the uk would be expected to be chosen to be grown this must be regarded as a tentative conclusion primarily due to high sensitivity found to crop yields resulting in the proposal for further work to apply the model using spatially disaggregated data

estimating recreation preferences using hedonic travel cost and random utility models over the last decade several authors have questioned the validity of the hedonic travel cost model arguing instead that the random utility model is a superior method for valuing recrea tional site attributes this paper demonstrates that the two methods emanate from a similar utility theoretic framework yet in practice these methods differ in the assumptions made in their appli cation constraining the underlying utility functions to be consistent both models are applied to the valuation of recreational site attributes in the southeastern united states the way in which each method estimates preferences for site attributes is shown to depend critically on the method and the functional form of the underlying utility function micro economic theory began as an attempt to describe predict and value the demand and supply of consumption goods quality was largely ignored in initial theoretical treatises goods were assumed to be homogeneous over the last two decades however economists have started to address quality within the theory of demand environmental economists have extended the theory further to value the quality of recreational sites an important component of land management two distinct approaches for incorporating quality into recreational analyses have emerged the hedonic travel cost method htc and the discrete choice random utility methods rum the hedonic method views site attributes as though they were individual goods which are bundled together in a single purchase the random utility model treats quality as an index which is estimated by examining a discrete choice of alternative sites facing a consumer because the mathematical derivations for the hedonic rosen 1974 and random utility models mcfadden 1978 are quite different many practitioners do not recognize that both models are based on a common utility theoretic foundation in the first section of this paper we show how the hedonic and random utility methods are consistent with the same utility framework

the value of changes in deer season length an application of the nested multinomial logit model increasing deer populations can be controlled through manipulatingharvest limits or season length while such actions often result in benefitsto hunters both motorists and the agricultural sector also benefit as alower deer population leads to fewer incidences of harmful human deerencounters traditional recreation demand models are often employed toexamine the welfare implications of changes in daily hunting bag limits studies measuring the effects of changes in season length however arenoticeably absent from the literature this study uses a nested randomutility model to examine hunter choice over site and season selection toderive the values of changes in season length

the willingness of farmers to engage with bioenergy and woody biomass production a regional case study from cumbria abstract in this paper we explore the willingness of cumbrian farmers to switch land use from food production to biomass production in a landscape where food production is both heavily subsidised and the area is a centre for tourism this is against a policy background of a switch of subsidies from food production to environmental benefits increased concerns about emissions from farming and an increased demand for renewable energy we identified an awareness of new markets for renewable energy alongside increasing volatility of other crops against a background of increasing demand for food from this our conclusions are that the main short term opportunities for increasing biomass production in this region are through intensifying management of existing woodlands in the medium term as the financial case for biomass crops becomes more certain we can envisage a tipping point which would favour a switch from marginal agricultural land to biomass

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

assessing the value of museums with a combined discrete choice count data model this article assesses the value of dutch museums using information about destination choice as well as about the number of trips undertaken by an actor destination choice is analysed by means of a mixed logit model and a count data model is used to explain trip generation we use a utility consistent framework in which the discrete choice model for destination choice is linked to an indirect utility function the results are used to compute the compensating variation of particular museums and of the total group of museums in the sample

participation and study decisions in a public system of higher education we analyze the decision whether to participate and where and what to study in a public system of higher education based on a unique dataset of all eligible high school pupils in an essentially closed region flanders we find that pupils perceive the available institutions and programs as close substitutes relative to the outside option this implies an ambiguous role for travel costs they hardly affect the participation decision but have a strong impact on the decision where and what to study to illustrate how our empirical results can inform the debate on reforming public systems we assess the effects of tuition fee increases uniform cost based tuition fee increases achieve most of the welfare gains the additional gains from fee differentiation are relatively limited these welfare gains are quite large under conservative assumptions on the social cost of public funds and there is a substantial redistribution from students to outsiders copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

narrow choice sets in a random utility model of recreation demand we consider the implications of narrow choice sets on welfare estimation in a random utility model of recreation demand we hypothesize that careful formulation of the choice set focusing on the sites of policy interest and their closest substitutes will give reasonably accurate welfare estimates we use nearby sites as close substitutes and treat more distant sites as aggregate alternatives in our application to fishing in maine we find that the welfare estimates are rather sensitive to narrowing choice sets in this manner the sensitivity largely tracts variation in the estimated travel cost coefficient across the different models considered

controlling for observed and unobserved site characteristics in rum models of recreation demand hatch act and state of iowa the iowa department of natural resources and the u s environmental protection agency s science to achieve results star program grant r830818

a critical appraisal of the effectiveness of uk perennial energy crops policy since 1990 abstract energy crops are cultivated primarily for bioenergy production but can also have wider benefits to agriculture and the environment policies put in place in the uk and europe have promoted bioenergy and the growth of energy crops despite the various policy support mechanisms the cultivation of perennial energy crops has proceeded at a low rate this study rigorously analyses some of the key uk bioenergy policies since 1990 to assess why perennial energy crops have not fulfilled their potential the uk energy crops market is scrutinised and shows the industry is still nascent compared to government aspirations case studies of both successful and unsuccessful projects are evaluated to reveal how effective different policies have been in establishing uk perennial energy crops this original review shows significantly that none of the projects initiatives or schemes described can be viewed as an absolute success the main obstacles that have hindered progress include the lack of long term supportive energy crops policy the failure of headline projects and organisations the lack of competitiveness of long term perennial crop options compared to annual crops bureaucracy of schemes over ambitious projects and large scale support schemes tending to favour imported biomass rather than support domestic supply 25 years of failed energy crops policy suggests there needs to be a long term strategy future support for the sector must join up policy between different government departments to recognise multi functional benefits of perennial energy crops support mechanisms could aim to provide a competitive advantage for local supply and use and improve management of cashflows during establishment the risk burden should be shared between suppliers and end users smaller scale projects using established technologies are required with energy crops introduced in a phased manner supply side measures need to be balanced with demand side incentives to link supply with end user markets

welfare analysis and intertemporal substitution abstract this paper explores the structure of welfare comparisons when direct utility is weakly separable over time the lifetime welfare effect of a reform is then the sum of atemporal hicksian variations and intertemporal variations reflecting intertemporal substitution these latter are shown to be of only second order importance in lifetime welfare comparisons approximations to the intertemporal variations when preferences are intertemporally additive are derived pointing to the welfare significance in this context of not only the intertemporal elasticity of substitution but also within period income effects numerical examples illustrate the analysis and suggest possible orders of magnitude

the value of ideal contingency markets in agriculture an incomplete markets equilibrium in which no contingency markets are available is compared to a complete markets equilibrium formed by introducing a futures market and a crop insurance market the two regimes are compared using comparative static and welfare analyses numerical examples highlight important characteristics of the model and illustrate how the effects of introducing contingency markets can be quantified the main conclusions are that contingency markets in agriculture increase economic efficiency but there is no guarantee that farmers and consumers both benefit it is found that futures and crop insurance markets may reduce farmer welfare when the demand for farm products is price inelastic

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

the influence of household composition on household expenditure patterns theory and spanish evidence a concept of demographic separability is proposed that formalizes the notion that there are groups of goods adult goods that have little or no relationship to specific classes of household demographics the numbers or ages of children that there exist adult goods demographically separable from children is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the validity of rothbarth s method for measuring child costs we propose two different methods for testing demographic separability and present results from a 1981 survey of spain the econometric evidence is in fair agreement with the theoretical presuppositions

comparing ranking and contingent valuation for valuing human lives applying nested and non nested logit models the aim of this paper is to investigate whetherrespondents perceive a discrete choice contingentvaluation dc cvm question differently from a rankingquestion we combine the two approaches to valuepublic projects that try to prevent people from dyingprematurely the combined valuation procedure enablesus to investigate the internal consistency of theutility structure between choices applying nested andnon nested logit models if the preference structureis allowed to shift the relative utility weights ofthe attributes differ between the valuation questions and the willingness to pay wtp estimate from thecombined procedure changes

measurement error in recreation demand models the joint estimation of participation site choice and site characteristics abstract in the demand for recreational fishing sites an important explanatory variable differentiating sites is the unobserved expected catch rate since the observed catch rate is subject to sampling variability using the average of a site s observed catch rates causes the parameter estimator on catch to be biased downward we develop and demonstrate a solution to this errors in variables problem when there are repeated measurements on the catch rate consistent and efficient estimates of both the demand parameters and the expected catch rates are obtained by simultaneously estimating them by maximum likelihood an empirical example demonstrates the importance of simultaneous estimation

the opportunity cost of travel time as a noisy wage fraction few issues are more important to welfare estimation with recreation demand models than the specification of the opportunity cost of travel time the two most common approaches to specifying this cost treat it as a fixed fraction of the recreationist s wage and either estimate the fraction done infrequently or assume it takes some value done commonly with references to results from the commute time literature used to justify the latter however these approaches lack firm conceptual rationales and the consequences of using them are not fully understood recognizing that information limitations often preclude more general approaches we use a joint recreation travel labor supply model to show that under relatively modest assumptions the opportunity cost of travel time can be expressed as a wage fraction with noise this formulation is straightforward to implement as part of random parameters based recreation demand models we then evaluate the welfare consequences of using the two approaches noted above which are special cases of the noisy wage fraction specification our results suggest that the more critical restriction to relax in opportunity cost of travel time specifications is the absence of noise rather than the specific level of the wage fraction

the implications of model specification for welfare estimation in nested logit models nested logit models are increasingly being used to value environmental amenities the implications of nesting structure choice of estimator fiml or sequential and restrictions on parameters across nested groups on welfare estimates are examined these issues have received little previous attention model selection criteria that can be used to distinguish among the models are extended and applied additionally a simulation procedure is implemented to construct standard errors for the welfare measures

estimation of combined site choice and trip frequency models of recreational demand using choice based and on site samples abstract concentrated log likelihood functions are derived for combined site choice and trip frequency models under choice based and on site sampling results show that they are equal to log likelihood functions derived conditional on explanatory variables a new estimator for estimation of population welfare measures is proposed

semiparametric estimation of lifetime equivalence scales pashardes 1991 and banks et al 1994 use parametric methods to estimate lifetime equivalence scales their approaches put parametric restrictions on the differences in within period expenditure needs across household types the intertemporal allocation of expenditure and the shapes of commodity demand equations this paper puts parametric structure only on the differences in within period expenditure needs across household types this implies structure on the intertemporal allocation of expenditure but leaves the shapes of commodity demand equations unrestricted semiparametric methods are used to estimate within period and lifetime equivalence scales with canadian expenditure data and to test the restrictions imposed on within period expenditure functions estimated lifetime equivalence scales are similar in size to those estimated by banks et al 1994 and exhibit equal lifetime costs for first and second children copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

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

farm level constraints on the domestic supply of perennial energy crops in the uk abstract there are a number of estimates of the land area that could potentially be dedicated to perennial energy crops such as short rotation coppice src willow and miscanthus in the uk but little is known about how farmers will respond to the opportunities presented by these relatively novel crops perennial energy crops face competition from other arguably more flexible uses of farmland and if not seen as attractive propositions to individual farmers they will not be grown farmers decisions are therefore a key constraint on potential supply this paper reviews the policy background and considers whether policy is based on any consideration of likely supply response before presenting outcomes of focus groups composed of farmers who already grow or are considering growing perennial energy crops there appear to be a number of barriers to adoption in addition to concerns over the security of contracts the current high wheat price increases the opportunity cost of committing land to perennial energy crops there are also worries about the impact of willow roots on field drains and the cost of returning the land to other uses this paper outlines a number of issues of importance to policy makers and suggests future research needs

consumption technology and the intrafamily distribution of resources adult equivalence scales reexamined adult equivalence scales are supposed to measure differences in the needs of households of different demographic composition formally they purport to measure the change in the cost of attaining a certain welfare level when the family composition varies this paper shows that the definition and the measurement of these scales depend crucially on the concept of welfare used when welfare is the utility parents derive from their own consumption one has to assume separability of parents and children s consumption this assumption implies that the only way of imputing the intrafamily allocation of resources is by observing the consumption patterns of adult goods regardless of the definition used one cannot separate the factors reflecting home technology i e needs from those determining the intrafamily distribution rule i e wants out of consumption data

equivalence scales and the costs of disability abstract the impact of disability on household welfare is estimated by equivalence scales using data from the 1986 1987 fes disability survey three methods of identifying scales from cross section data are considered these imply a series of restrictions that are tested on quadratic logarithmic engel curves the results indicate that there are substantial consumption costs associated with physical disability

a discrete choice model of recreational participation site choice and activity valuation when complete trip data are not available abstract a discrete choice model of the demand for site specific recreational activities is developed and estimated it simultaneously predicts both how many trips the individual will take and which site will be chosen on each trip the model is formulated to estimate demand when the data set reports the total number of trips in a given time period but the actual destinations for only a subset of the total the model also includes a correction for sample selectivity bias the application is marine recreational fishing the consumer s surplus associated with any change in supply conditions is derived and used to assess the impact of changes in species availability

the intuition behind income effects of price changes in discrete choice models and a simple method for measuring the compensating variation small and rosen s econometrica 49 1 105 130 1981 method for measuring consumer surplus using discrete choice models has been widely adopted in public policy analysis for the case of a price change the present paper elucidates five theoretical assumptions inherent within small and rosen s measure and employs indifference maps to demonstrate that this measure is only applicable to the context of a single discrete choice free of non linear income effects the paper argues that where non linear income effects are present the aforementioned theoretical assumptions should be relaxed and the consumption context revised from discrete choice to discrete continuous demand furthermore the paper proposes a simple analytical method for approximating the expected hicksian compensating variation in the presence of non linear income effects and compares the empirical performance of this method against existing methods using data from morey et al am j agric econ 75 3 578 592 1993 as well as offering a simple approximation the proposed method yields insights on the potential range of the compensating variation depending on the extent of switching between choice alternatives and on the attribution of the compensating variation to the relevant choice alternatives

a new utility consistent econometric approach to multivariate count data modeling summary in the current paper we propose a new utility consistent modeling framework to explicitly link a count data model with an event type multinomial choice model the proposed framework uses a multinomial probit kernel for the event type choice model and introduces unobserved heterogeneity in both the count and discrete choice components additionally this paper establishes important new results regarding the distribution of the maximum of multivariate normally distributed variables which form the basis to embed the multinomial probit model within a joint modeling system for multivariate count data the model is applied to analyzing out of home non work episodes pursued by workers using data from the national household travel survey copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

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

economic evaluation of miscanthus production a review this paper reviews the peer reviewed literature dealing with the economics of miscanthus cultivation to identify factors influencing the adoption of miscanthus and to reveal shortcomings in research in total 51 studies have been identified for this review the majority of these publications are recent i e the majority is published after 2009 and concern case studies in europe particularly the uk and ireland and north america this review reveals that the economic viability of miscanthus depends on largely uncertain assumptions especially concerning yields 10 48 t dry matter per ha and prices 48 134 t dry matter but also concerning the lifespan 10 20 years and different cost items a lack of established markets high establishment costs and uncertainties arising to a large extent from the long term commitment are identified as major barriers to miscanthus adoption in addition the level of support for miscanthus production e g via subsidies is identified as crucial for miscanthus profitability but is found to be highly heterogeneous across countries next to diversity in agronomic and economic assumptions also the assessment criteria and research techniques used to investigate the profitability of miscanthus differ widely while the net present value criterion was most frequently used we identify a lack of approaches that account for risks and uncertainties which seem to potentially play a critical role in the uptake of miscanthus by farmers

the fast decay process in outdoor recreational activities and the use of alternative count data models despite a number of significant advances in count data modeling during the last two decades and the growing popularity of these models in recreation demand analysis standard count data models are inadequate to address the fast decay process of the dependent variable and the associated long tail this article demonstrates how one and two parameter alternative count data models can be used to properly model the fast decay process and the associated long tail commonly observed in recreation demand analysis econometric results from an illustrative application suggest satisfactory performance of four of the eight alternative count data models proposed in this article