the greenhouse effect damages costs and abatement the buildup of so called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere co2 in particular appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate this paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects their potential costs to society and likely costs of abatement for a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess in economic terms the full range of possible non linear synergistic effects in the most favorable although not necessarily likely case of slow paced climate change however it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range at least in the industrialized countries of the world in the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible we tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate induced damages at 30 to 35 per ton of co2 equivalent worldwide with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea level rise the non quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded the costs and benefits of 1 reducing cfc use and 2 reducing fossil fuel consumption as a means of abatement are considered in some detail this strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers the indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from 20 to 60 per ton of co2 eliminated in addition there is good evidence that modest e g 25 reductions in co2 emissions may be achievable by the u s and by implication for other countries by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits savings to energy consumers of the order of 50 per ton of co2 saved a higher level of overall emissions reduction possibly approaching 50 could probably be achieved at little or not net cost by taking advantage of these savings we suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction or a carbon tax as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and co2 emissions to minimize the economic burden and create a political constituency in support of the approach we suggest the substitution of resource based taxes in general for other types of taxes on labor income real estate or trade that are now the main sources of government revenue while it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy making in fact we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria

preferences for energy efficiency vs renewables how much does a ton of co2 emissions cost concerns about climate change are growing and so is the demand for information about the costs and benefits of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions this paper seeks to estimate the benefits of climate change mitigation as measured by the public s willingness to pay for such policies we investigate the preferences of italian and czech households towards climate change mitigation policy options directly related to residential energy use we use discrete choice experiments which are administered in a standardized fashion to representative samples in the two countries through computer assisted web interviews our preferred estimates of the willingness to pay per ton of co2 emissions avoided is 133 for the italians and 94 euro for the czech respondents at 2014 purchasing power parity we find evidence of considerable heterogeneity in wtp driven by income the two samples differ in their within sample income elasticities of wtp but comparison across the two countries suggests an income elasticity of wtp of one or even greater than one for certain mixed logit specifications

family income and child health in the uk recent studies examining the relationship between family income and child health in the uk have produced mixed findings we re examine the income gradient in child general health and its evolution with child age in this country using a very large sample of british children we find that there is no correlation between income and child general health at ages 0 1 that the gradient emerges around age 2 and is constant from age 2 to age 17 in addition we show that the gradient remains large and significant when we reduce the endogeneity of income furthermore our results indicate that the gradient in general health reflects a greater prevalence of chronic conditions among low income children and a greater severity of these conditions taken together these findings suggest that income does matter for child health in the uk and may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status

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

the causal effect of family income on child health in the uk recent studies examining the effect of family income on child health have been unable to account for the endogeneity of income using data from a british cohort study we address this gap by exploiting exogenous variation in local labour market characteristics to instrument for family income we estimate the causal effect of family income on different measures of child health and explore the role of potential transmission mechanisms we find that income has a very small but significant causal effect on subjective child health and no significant effect on chronic health conditions apart from respiratory illnesses using the panel structure we show that the timing of income does not matter for young children moreover our results provide further evidence that parental health does not drive a spurious relationship between family income and child health our study implies that financial transfers are unlikely to deliver substantial improvements in child health

joint estimation of multiple cvm scenarios under a double bounded questioning format contingent valuation surveys frequently ask the same respondent for willingness to pay wtp for either different programs or different levels of provision of a single program when multiple scenarios are considered by the respondent the errors in the estimates of wtp are likely to be correlated across scenarios failing to account for correlation may lead to erroneous inferences concerning differences in wtp this paper presents a technique that can be used to jointly estimate wtp for multiple scenarios proposed within a survey when the double bounded questioning format is used monte carlo simulations are employed to show that estimates derived from the joint model provide lower parameter variances as well as tighter confidence intervals surrounding wtp the model is used to estimate wtp values for data collected in telephone interviews of california residents concerning wtp for fire reduction programs in oregon and california variance properties of these estimates are shown to be similar to those estimated using simulated data

an economic approach to the study of the relationship between housing hazards and health the case of residential fuel poverty in france abstract the impact of housing hazards on health outcomes is becoming a major issue especially given the recent and on going reviews of energy legislation in many european countries a large body of epidemiological literature argues that fuel poverty a frequently debated example of a housing hazard involving low indoor temperatures is associated with heightened health risks by using a large scale nationally representative dataset i seek in this article to delve into this alleged association and uncover a causal relationship between fuel poverty and self assessed health coming from an economics standpoint i used a panel approach based on an instrumental fixed effects model which allow me to analyse causality i used both objective and subjective fuel poverty indicators the results show that there is a significant causal relationship between fuel poverty and self assessed health status the estimated causality is exacerbated when subjective fuel poverty indicators are used the results also show that the negative impact of fuel poverty on health is deferred meaning that fuel poverty takes time to manifest itself in terms of poor health in policy terms this study adds to the debate on investing in housing energy efficiency schemes to reduce fuel poverty and thereby improve health outcomes it also lends support to the argument according to which improving housing conditions to curb fuel poverty is a lever for reducing pubic expenditures on health care

deliberative monetary valuation dmv issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change abstract this paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights fairness and equity deliberative monetary valuation dmv in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward however there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values the expected outcomes and their role moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value although this does not seem to have been widely recognised a new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes values associated with the individual may be exchange values charitable contributions or fair prices while social values can be speculative expressive or arbitrated the use of dmv is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation

altruism and the demand for environmental quality this paper asks whether individuals consider the value that future generations will receive from environmental quality when deciding what level of environmental protection to provide using data on life expectancy i develop two tests for altruism towards future generations one a test for strong altruism asks whether individual motives are purely altruistic when deciding to provide environmental quality the second a test for weak altruism combines an individual s concern for both self interest and the interest of future generations using data from a washington post survey on environmental attitudes to implement the test i find evidence of weak altruism

fuel poverty in the uk is there a difference between rural and urban areas abstract fuel poverty is a significant policy issue an argument often made is that rural households are more likely to be fuel poor due to the nature of rural housing stock and the more limited choice of energy sources in rural areas this paper uses panel data to compare the level and dynamics of fuel poverty in rural and urban areas of the uk in addition to descriptive analysis discrete hazard models of fuel poverty exit and re entry are estimated and used to assess the influence of housing and personal characteristics on the time spent in fuel poverty the results indicate that on average the experience of fuel poverty in urban areas is longer with a higher probability of fuel poverty persistence however on average the rural fuel poor appear more vulnerable to energy price increases while living in private accommodation or a flat increases their probability of remaining fuel poor relative to their urban counterparts these results indicate policy effectiveness may differ across rural and urban space however they also emphasise the limits of spatial targeting monitoring the dynamics of fuel poverty is important for ensuring that policy targets are effective and reaching those most in need

alternative models of individual behaviour and implications for environmental policy abstract most insights of environmental economics are in line with the standard neoclassical economic model of rational behaviour formulated in terms of maximization of utility in general or of profits in particular the standard theory of environmental policy is a case in point however the maximization hypothesis and its methodological foundation have been criticized on many grounds related to a lack of either logical or empirical content moreover over the years a great many alternative models of behaviour have been proposed both criticism and alternatives are surveyed here attention is devoted to relevant insights from the philosophy of science the notion of methodological individualism and other criticism the alternative behavioural models include bounded rationality and satisficing lexicographic preferences habitual behaviour incommensurability and multicriteria evaluation and various models of behaviour under uncertainty major implications of the criticism and alternative models of individual behaviour for environmental policy theory are outlined

children s environmental health education and economic development this article aims at investigating the interplay between environmental quality health and economic development in a unified olg framework human capital accumulation depends on the environment through its impact on children s health and workers productivity in turn environmental quality dynamics rely upon human capital that determines maintenance efforts this two way relationship generates a co evolution of human capital and environmental quality in the long run along the transition path the dynamic interactions between economic and environmental spheres allow for replicating two different trajectories some economies experiment an environmental kuznets curve while some others are caught into the environmental poverty trap

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

estimation of distance decay functions to account for substitution and spatial heterogeneity in stated preference research in a site selection choice experiment various hypotheses are tested related to spatial heterogeneity in willingness to pay wtp for environmental improvements spatial heterogeneity is measured through distance decay effects substitute sites inside and outside the experiment s choice set and spatial trend variables we demonstrate that distance decay functions differ between users and nonusers and across study sites also the distance to substitutes outside the choice set explains spatial variation in wtp we show that further extending the model with spatial trend variables reveals additional spatial heterogeneity in choices accounting for spatial heterogeneity patterns results in significantly different wtp estimates for environmental improvements jel q25 q51

green taxes in a post paris world are millions of nays inevitable turning the paris agreement s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments we address the question of the acceptability of cost effective climate policy in a real voting setting first we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes rejected in switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value added tax we examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes along with the perception of ineffectiveness most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes second at the same time of the ballot we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the swiss population survey respondents are informed about environmental distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design these impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model this original setting generates a series of novel results providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs e g social cushioning or recycling via lump sum transfers the case of lump sum recycling is particularly striking it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature we show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists prescriptions and the preferences of the general public

social capital and willingness to pay for coastal defences in south east england globally it is widely acknowledged that constructing hard engineered coastal defences is both financially and environmentally unsustainable here we seek to investigate the willingness of residents in rapidly eroding coastal zones to contribute towards the costs of constructing and maintaining such structures the originality of this paper is that it provides one of the first analyses of the influence of social capital parameters social trust institutional trust social reciprocity and social networks on respondents willingness to pay wtp fieldwork for the study was conducted in romney marsh a low lying coastal area of south east england the findings have substantive public policy implications for coastal management first is that we demonstrate that while social and institutional trust exerts a positive influence on wtp the presence of social networks militates against wtp secondly while the study found 45 6 of respondents were willing to pay an average monthly premium of 3 53 a high level of refusal to pay was evident among respondents thirdly even among those respondents willing to pay disagreement was expressed over the political administrative level at which a coastal defence tax should be collected

yes in my backyard spatial differences in the valuation of forest services and local co benefits for carbon markets in mexico forests provide many and large benefits including cost efficient climate change mitigation however international carbon markets have not stimulated the demand for forestry offsets domestic market mechanisms are emerging in many countries and forests could be highly valued through these policies as most of the benefits produced by forests are enjoyed locally here a choice experiment explores drivers of valuation and willingness to pay for forest carbon services in voluntary markets in mexico by comparing the valuation of citizens from four regions to test geographical preference for projects n 645 findings from multinomial logit models show valuation of forest carbon services is transferable and citizens would pay more for offsets from projects closer to their homes proximate forests provide a range of co benefits to local users including environmental services and opportunities for recreation factors related to valuation include sense of responsibility previous knowledge of carbon emissions previous visits to the sites regional identification and the valuation of local environmental services e g improvements in local air quality knowledge of spatial heterogeneity in valuation of the use of forest services can help to design market based instruments by identifying highly valued areas for environmental services programs and carbon markets

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

substitution effects in the valuation of multiple environmental programs abstract a theoretical framework for understanding substitution and complementary effects between environmental programs is derived a multiple program valuation function is specified and its structure analyzed a maximum likelihood estimator is derived to estimate the parameters of the valuation function using referendum type contingent valuation data the empirical analysis shows that the conventional benefit aggregation approach of independent valuation and summation overstates the benefits of two and three program policies by an average of 24 and 54 respectively

a cost benefit analysis of slowing climate change there are many conflicting views regarding the true dimensions of the climate change problem often these viewpoints are based on different estimates of key parameters with little indication as to why parameter estimates vary so much and which ones might be the more reliable the prospects for a co ordinated strategy to tackle climate change appear dim little consensus has emerged for example regarding the costs of abating carbon emissions some take the view that considerable improvements in energy efficiency are available at negative cost by setting minimum efficiency standards for vehicles and domestic appliances e g mills et al 1991 others regard the macroeconomic costs of even small reductions in carbon emissions as substantial manne and richels 1993 in the judgement of other researchers a proportion of carbon emissions arise purely as a result of institutional failings either at a regional level in the subsidies paid to fossil fuel energy producers in the erroneous belief that this promotes economic growth shah and larsen 1994 in failure to deal with air pollution glomsrod et al 1992 and vehicle congestion in urban areas hughes 1994 or at a global level in failing to make appropriate transfers to those countries whose forests contain rich biodiversity which we would wish to preserve pearce 1991

measuring the difference in mean willingness to pay when dichotomous choice contingent valuation responses are not independent dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys frequently elicit multiple values in a single questionnaire if individual responses are correlated across scenarios the standard approach of estimating willingness to pay wtp functions independently for each scenario may result in biased estimates of the significance of the difference in mean wtp values this paper applies an alternative bivariate probit approach that explicitly accounts for correlation across errors in the estimation of wtp and mean wtp using data from three separate dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies this correlation is demonstrated to have an effect on the significance level of mean wtp difference tests

environmental economics climate change policy and beyond a tribute to anil markandya environmental and natural resource economics is concerned with questions about how environmental and natural resources are and should be developed and managed among the main challenges in this research area is the excessive use of the earth s atmosphere as a sink of greenhouse gas emissions anil markandya is one of the internationally outstanding researchers not only addressing theoretical aspects of environmental problems but also developing appropriate policy approaches this paper depicts the milestones of his contributions to environmental economics and gives some special attention to his more recent works

transferring environmental value estimates issues and alternatives abstract environmental value transfer needs to be understood in the context of scientific information use in general this provides a different perspective upon the reasons why benefit transfer in particular appears so controversial and raises concerns over the limited types of validity testing being undertaken by those supporting such applications as ecosystem services valuation another key issue which we emphasise is the unintentional challenge to standard economic theory raised by the models used to conduct value transfers existing value transfer practice reveals the need for a more inclusive approach if environmental values are to be addressed we argue that there are robust alternative means for including multiple environmental values in decision processes these cannot be dismissed out of hand and analysts should be expanding their understanding of the available approaches which include attitude and norm measures multi criteria analysis and participatory deliberative institutions

the determinants of mortality mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time starting in a few countries in the 18th century and continuing to fall today in just the past century life expectancy has increased by over 30 years at the same time mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries with a difference in life expectancy between rich and poor countries of also about 30 years this difference persists despite the remarkable progress in health improvement in the last half century at least until the hiv aids pandemic in both the time series and the cross section data there is a strong correlation between income per capita and mortality rates a correlation that also exists within countries where richer better educated people live longer we review the determinants of these patterns over history over countries and across groups within countries while there is no consensus about the causal mechanisms we tentatively identify the application of scientific advance and technical progress some of which is induced by income and facilitated by education as the ultimate determinant of health such an explanation allows a consistent interpretation of the historical cross country and within country evidence we downplay direct causal mechanisms running from income to health

intergenerational discounting a new intuitive approach abstract this paper proposes a new intergenerational discounting approach for computing net benefits from the use of environmental resources the approach explicitly incorporates the perspectives of both the current and future generations as argued for by pigou pigou a c 1920 the economics of welfare 1952 4th edition london macmillan and ramsey ramsey f p 1928 a mathematical theory of saving econ j 38 543 559 and required by most national and international laws related to the use of these resources an equation for use in the calculation of net discounted benefits is developed which provides a middle position whereby both the reality of personal discounting and that of social discounting are included in a social welfare function

the role of technology in sustaining agriculture and the environment abstract visions of sustainable development often leave unanswered the question what actions taken by the current generation will ensure that future generations can meet their economic and environmental needs in this context we assess the role of technology in steering agriculture along a more sustainable path from the agricultural sector s perspective this requires an optimal investment plan for a nation s stock of environmental assets that accounts for an intergenerational fulfillment of sustainability s dual goals 1 satisfying food and fiber needs at reasonable costs to consumers and 2 providing environmental service flows in reviewing agricultural indicators to assess the nation s performance in meeting these goals we find productivity growth has increased while rates of soil erosion wetland conversion and pesticide application have declined however individuals continue to demand more environmental services while private markets undersupply environmental services the capacity of the agricultural sector to meet food and fiber and environmental service demands partially depends on the availability and adoption of new technology several market impediments explain the undersupply of sustainable technologies 1 firms cannot fully appropriate rents from technology development 2 success may vary with farm structure 3 the heterogeneity of the resource base influences adoption and 4 farmers cannot capture the benefits of environmental services to address these market failures sustainable agriculture policy should 1 support research and development in sustainable technologies and provide incentives to encourage adoption 2 ensure that conservation efforts reflect the efficient and sustainable allocation of environmental assets and 3 legitimize markets for foods produced under more sustainable practices

willingness to pay for ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation assessing the willingness to pay wtp of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs this paper contributes to the literature on the wtp for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating in addition to global benefits the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation it does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies the contingent valuation method is used to elicit the wtp for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the basque country spain results show that wtp estimates are 53 73 higher when ancillary benefits are considered

does france have a fuel poverty trap abstract in this article we focus on fuel poverty dynamics by answering two questions does france have a fuel poverty trap and what are the determinants of staying in or moving out of fuel poverty first we define three states into which individuals may be placed which are as follows the non fuel poverty state the fuel poverty state and the severe fuel poverty state second we use a mover stayer model that divides the population into the following two types of individuals those who remain in the same state during the observation period the stayers and those who move across states the movers this model applies to longitudinal data from mainland france showing that fuel poverty is not an absorbing state indeed a majority of the fuel poor and the severely fuel poor move to another better state therefore we can argue that france has no fuel poverty trap using two econometric models logit and multinomial logit we identify the stability and mobility determinants in different states as expected there is a relationship between income and the likelihood of an individual remaining in a particular state furthermore poor housing implies a greater likelihood of stability in fuel poverty or severe fuel poverty another result is that deterioration in fuel poverty status seems to stem more from difficult financial situations than from bad dwelling conditions

socioeconomic status and child health why is the relationship stronger for older children case lubotsky and paxson 2001 show that the well known relationship between socio economic status ses and health exists in childhood and grows more pronounced with age however in cross sectional data it is difficult to distinguish between two possible explanations the first is that low ses children are less able to respond to a given health shock the second is that low ses children experience more shocks we show using panel data on canadian children that 1 the gradient we estimate in the cross section is very similar to that estimated previously using u s children 2 both high and low ses children recover from past health shocks to about the same degree and 3 that the relationship between ses and health grows stronger over time mainly because low ses children receive more negative health shocks in addition we examine the effect of health shocks on math and reading scores we find that health shocks affect test scores and future health in very similar ways our results suggest that public policy aimed at reducing ses related health differentials in children should focus on reducing the incidence of health shocks as well as on reducing disparities in access to palliative care

why the far distant future should be discounted at its lowest possible rate abstract a critical feature of the distant future is currently unresolvable uncertainty about what will then be the appropriate rate of return on capital to use for discounting this paper shows that there is a well defined sense in which the lowest possible interest rate should be used for discounting the far distant future part of any investment project some implications are discussed for evaluating long term environmental projects or activities like measures to mitigate the possible effects of global climate change

quantifying the prevalence of fuel poverty across the european union abstract the literature and policy base for fuel poverty in the uk and ireland is well established and there is a growing body of single country studies beyond these two eu member states for example brunner et al 2012 dubois 2012 robine et al 2008 however on a european level the last analysis of fuel poverty was conducted in 2004 prior to the enlargement of the eu using survey data this paper presents an updated overview of the prevalence of european fuel poverty in the context of the accession of numerous former social states and rising fuel prices analysis reveals the phenomenon of fuel poverty is occurring across the eu with particularly high levels of fuel poverty found in eastern and southern european states it is argued that there are both eu and national policy frameworks in place that address climate change and these could be used as a starting point for countries to address fuel poverty through improved domestic energy efficiency measures this paper reflects research undertaken in 2011 supported by eaga charitable trust within the umbrella of work examining issues of poverty and social exclusion across the eu which has enabled access to the eu silc dataset

objective and subjective measures of fuel poverty as energy prices continue to rise to reflect the real cost of carbon the numbers of households in fuel poverty is increasing rapidly this paper uses a unique data set to explore one alternative measure of fuel poverty based on whether consumers feel able to afford their energy similar to one introduced by the government a few years ago we explore the links between an expenditure based and our subjective measure of fuel poverty and compare these differences with those between official measures amongst low income households 28 spent more than a tenth of their income on energy in the home and so would be likely to qualify as fuel poor under the most usual definition but only 16 felt unable to afford sufficient energy to keep their homes warm amongst this group who felt they had difficulty in affording sufficient energy less than half were expenditure fuel poor the paper argues that reintroduction of a self reported measure by the government would be a valuable aid to policy development

preferences for distributional impacts of climate policy what role do people think distributional aspects should play in the design of climate policy the literature assessing climate policies has shown that assumptions regarding peoples distributional preferences for climate change policy impacts are central for policy assessment but empirical evidence for such preferences is lacking we design a discrete choice experiment that varies how climate policies affect the income of future generations living in three geographical regions with distinctly different current and predicted future income levels the experiment is implemented on a sample of the danish population and preferences are modelled in a latent class model our results show that a small majority of the sample 60 hold preferences consistent with inequity aversion with respect to future income effects of climate policies across regions for the same group we find that preferences for co benefits for current generations reflect a form of altruism but not inequity aversion in both cases the altruistic aspects are moderated by an element of preferences for positive outcomes in own region too the remaining classes display preferences with a varying focus on impacts in their own region or simply no support for further climate policy our results provide some support for the inclusion of social preferences regarding distributional effects of climate change policies in policy assessments and hence for the significant impact on policy this inclusion will have

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

fat tails and truncated bids in contingent valuation an application to an endangered shorebird species a yes response function in a contingent valuation study is said to have fat tails if it has a high and slowly declining yes response rate at high bid levels truncated bids refer to the practice of dropping high bid offers before a yes response rate of near zero is reached this is a common practice in contingent valuation we explore the extent and implications of fat tails and truncated bids in a study of an endangered shorebird species we find among other things that mean willingness to pay is quite sensitive to the highest bid offered so much so that the choice of highest bid nearly dictates outcomes

wealthier is healthier we estimate the effect of income on health using cross country timeseries data on health infant and child mortality and life expectancy and income per capita we use instrumental variables estimates using exogenous determinants of income growth to identify the pure income effect on health isolated from reverse causation or incidental association the long run income elasticity of infant and child mortality in developing countries lies between 0 2 and 0 4 using these estimates we calculate that over a half a million child deaths in the developing world in 1990 alone can be attributed to the poor economic performance in the 1980s

on the power of indicators how the choice of fuel poverty indicator affects the identification of the target population in light of the creation of the eu energy poverty observatory epov in january 2018 and the increase in debates on how fuel poverty is measured we propose a critical analysis of fuel poverty indi

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

how beliefs influence the willingness to contribute to prevention expenditure we study how beliefs affect individuals willingness to contribute to prevention expenditure through a two type n person public good game and test several results empirically we show analytically that pessimistic agents will invest more in prevention expenditure than optimists we also demonstrate how small differences in beliefs may induce substantial differences in type related prevention expenditure the more atomistic agents are the less they will contribute to the public good pessimistic beliefs then lead to a double deprivation and we discuss potential issues and remedies the more optimistic a society is the lower will be its total green expenditure we then use a large international survey to study how beliefs and additional controls determine prevention expenditure we rely on several proxies for beliefs and the willingness to contribute to prevention expenditure which we combine through principal component analysis in addition we investigate the role of environmental education for the relationship between beliefs and the willingness to contribute because of potential endogeneity bias due to unobserved variables that are likely to affect both beliefs and the willingness to contribute we follow the theoretical analysis and resort to a recursive bivariate model our main findings are very much in line with the theoretical predictions we find across all specifications that more optimistic beliefs lead to a lower willingness to contribute environmental education affects the willingness to contribute only indirectly through its impact on beliefs

health income and relative deprivation evidence from the bhps it is believed that income affects health directly but it is argued that indirect income effects due to relative deprivation may be equally important this paper investigates these relationships using parametric and semiparametric panel data models which ameliorate problems of misspecification and unobservable heterogeneity by allowing for a flexible functional form of income we ensure that coefficients on relative deprivation variables are not an artefact of a highly non linear relationship between health and income the results provide strong evidence for the impact of income on self reported measures of health for men and women these results are robust across a range of techniques and are resilient to the inclusion of measures of relative deprivation the parametric results for relative deprivation largely reject its influence on health although there is some evidence of an effect in the semiparametric models

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

environmental valuation and rationality economic valuation of the envi structuring the empirical model or adding ronment is disputed in part due to the number auxiliary hypotheses the presumption is of anomalies reactions to these anomalies have that consistent preferences are there just included adding new auxiliary hypotheses to the to be uncovered thus errors are mea core model or dismissing the whole undertaking surement this paper takes a third route and uses observa biases to be corrected by retions made in valuation studies to improve choice fined methods mitchell and carson theory the paper covers the information prob 1989 certainly many studies can be critlem the issue of preference formation and under icized for being of low quality still the lines the role of the social sphere in defining what development of concepts like starting becomes individually rational while the findings point bias posit ion bias question ormay not simplify theory they may help us be der bias yea saying protest bids come more realistic and to understand errors pro and part whole bias all seem very ad duced by illegitimate simplifications

flexibility and stringency in greenhouse gas regulations the clean air act provides the regulatory framework for climate policy in the united states emissions rate performance standards are the metric identified for regulation of the electricity sector the most important source of emissions rates for existing sources could be averaged to achieve flexibility in compliance although the stringency of policies is ambiguous when flexibility is introduced for example a specific emissions rate improvement averaged over a larger set of generators may reduce the actual emissions change we evaluate three policy designs according to emissions rate emissions and marginal cost and show how a marginal abatement cost criterion can be applied within a technology based regulation this approach can quadruple the emissions reductions that are achieved with net social benefits exceeding 25 billion in 2020 and with a 1 3 electricity price increase over half of the benefits stem from improvements in conventional air quality

consumption process and multiple valuation of landscape attributes abstract environmental valuation can be seen as a process which evolves as individuals reflect on their consumption experience in this paper we consider how environmental values could change as the subject has reached the end of the consumption process a split sample comparison is conducted for estimating the values tourists give to a set of landscape attributes the first subsample was taken on site as subjects were on a tour contemplating the landscape of the island of gran canaria canary islands the second subsample was contacted at the airport when individuals were about to leave the tourist enclave since landscapes are complex environmental goods we utilize and compare a multiple contingent valuation cv approach with the stated preference approach of contingent ranking the results show that the influence of the consumption experience depends on the valuation method and the consideration of interaction effects in the model the valuation functions were not stable across both sites for most of the models considered and some of the attributes changed their values between the two points of the consumption process interaction effects were more relevant with the contingent ranking model suggesting that cv is a more limited approach in a context of multiple valuation

savings of the elderly and desired bequests cross section data often show that the wealth of the elderly increases with age even at advanced ages these and other results suggest that the life cycle hypothesis of consumption should be augmented to include a bequest motive for saving in this paper the author proposes a model of bequests and a test for a bequ est motive using panel data he finds that over a ten year period the elderly in the data set dissaved in contradiction to most cross section results the test offers no support for a bequest motive copyright 1987 by american economic association

joint estimation of contingent valuation survey responses hanemann s utility difference model for the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method is modified to account for interrelationships between responses to a set of contingent valuation questions a nonlinear seemingly unrelated regression model is presented to jointly estimate the probit models and to derive wtp from the cv responses the model is used to test and impose restrictions derived from economic theory on the utility difference model mean wtp estimates for three different types of changes in the quality of california deer hunting were uniformly lower for the joint response probit model compared to a set of independent probit models

moral behaviour altruism and environmental policy free riding is often associated with self interested behaviour however if there is a global pollutant free riding will arise if individuals calculate that their emissions are negligible relative to the total so total emissions and hence any damage that they and others suffer will be unaffected by whatever consumption choice they make in this context consumer behaviour and the optimal environmental tax are independent of the degree of altruism for behaviour to change individuals need to make their decisions in a different way we propose a new theory of moral behaviour whereby individuals recognise that they will be worse off by not acting in their own self interest and balance this cost off against the hypothetical moral value of adopting a kantian form of behaviour that is by calculating the consequences of their action by asking what would happen if everyone else acted in the same way as they did we show that a if individuals behave this way then altruism matters and the greater the degree of altruism the more individuals cut back their consumption of a dirty good b nevertheless the optimal environmental tax is exactly the same as that emerging from classical analysis where individuals act in self interested fashion

policy v individual heterogeneity in the benefits of climate change mitigation evidence from a stated preference survey abstract we use stated preference methods to investigate the public s preferences for decarbonization policies we ask three research questions first does the willingness to pay wtp for each ton of co2 emissions reductions depend on the policies and on individual characteristics of the respondents second how extensive is the variation associated with these factors third what factors affect support for or opposition to a carbon tax based on the responses to discrete choice experiments from a sample of italians we find that the wtp per ton of co2 ranges between zero and 230 the variation associated with the policy instrument is approximately of the same order of magnitude as that associated with individual characteristics of the respondents

directional heterogeneity in wtp models for environmental valuation many studies in the stated preference literature on environmental valuation do not include the effects of substitutes and distance in willingness to pay wtp models in spite of the relevance of these effects in aggregation and benefit transfer heterogeneity in the availability of substitutes over space may cause multidirectional distance effects in wtp as a result disregarding this spatial heterogeneity may lead to biased estimators of the distance effect and associated wtp values cameron 2006 in this paper we demonstrate that distance decay is subject to significant directional effects which tend to be related to differences in the availability of substitutes across the study area we apply a straightforward methodology to account for such spatial heterogeneity in choice experiments and assess the effect on wtp for improvements in ecosystem services in a lake district we model distance decay effects whilst controlling for heterogeneity between users and non users and non use related wtp reasons the directional effects result in significantly different wtp estimates different market sizes reflecting the population with positive wtp and differences in total wtp up to 32

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

the role of ancillary benefits on the value of agricultural soils carbon sequestration programmes evidence from a latent class approach to andalusian olive groves agriculture is a key sector for climate change mitigation strategies due to its co2 sequestration potential however in order to increase mitigation changes in current crop and land management are required which in many cases imply additional costs to farmers thus this research assesses society s willingness to pay using a discrete choice analysis for a soil management programme in andalusian olive groves identifying different groups based on preference heterogeneity we identify three groups and characterise them on the basis of socio demographics willingness to pay is higher in areas and for individuals who would directly benefit from the programme additionally the ancillary benefits associated to carbon sequestration capture an important share of the overall benefits our results show that soil carbon sequestration in olive groves provides net social value and can be a cheap and cost effective way of combating climate change

causal parameters and policy analysis in economics a twentieth century retrospective the major contributions of twentieth century econometrics to knowledge were the definition of causal parameters within well defined economic models in which agents are constrained by resources and markets and causes are interrelated the analysis of what is required to recover causal parameters from data the identification problem and clarification of the role of causal parameters in policy evaluation and in forecasting the effects of policies never previously experienced this paper summarizes the development of these ideas by the cowles commission the response to their work by structural econometricians and var econometricians and the response to structural and var econometrics by calibrators advocates of natural and social experiments and by nonparametric econometricians and statisticians this paper considers the definition and identification of causal parameters in economics and their role in econometric policy analysis it assesses different research programs designed to recover causal parameters from data at the beginning of this century economic theory was mainly intuitive and empirical support for it was largely anecdotal at the end of the century economics has a rich array of formal models and a high quality database empirical regularities motivate theory in many areas of economics and data are routinely used to test theory many economic theories have been developed as measurement frameworks to suggest what data should be collected and how they should be interpreted econometric theory was developed to analyze and interpret economic data most econometric theory adapts methods originally developed in statistics the major exception to this rule is the econometric analysis of the identification problem and the companion analyses of structural equations causality and economic policy evaluation although an economist did not invent the phrase correlation does not imply causation 1 economists clari

a theoretical approach to deliberative valuation aggregation by mutual consent in deliberative valuation a small group of selected persons explores the values that should guide collective decisions through a process of reasoned discourse proponents argue that deliberative techniques enhance the effectiveness and perceived legitimacy of policy making by facilitating public participation this paper outlines an approach to deliberative valuation that is grounded in democratic theory social psychology and cooperative game theory emphasizing applications to the monetary valuation of environmental services the analysis suggests that deliberative groups that employ consent based choice rules may aggregate individual values in a manner that systematically departs from the additive aggregation procedures of standard cost benefit analysis

healthy bodies and thick wallets the dual relation between health and economic status there is abundant evidence of a quantitatively large association between many measures of economic status including income and wealth and a variety of health outcomes such as mortality or morbidity however considerable and often heated debate remains especially across disciplines about the direction of causation and about why the association arises although medical scientists are often convinced that the dominant if not exclusive pathway is that variation in socioeconomic status produces health disparities they are increasingly debating among themselves about why low economic status might lead to poor health at least for modern industrial countries 1 the old standby arguments the less well to do have access to less or lower quality medical care or a stronger pattern of deleterious personal behaviors have been rejected as insufficient instead a series of intriguing competing theories have arisen that emphasize long term impacts of early childhood or even inter uterine environmental factors the cumulative effects of prolonged exposures to individual stressful events or reactions to macro societal factors such as rising levels of income inequality a common link is that each theory attempts to document the physiological processes through which low economic status leads to poorer health while these scientific questions are extremely important this research has taken place with little input from economists economists are now making contributions about the alternative pathway the impact poor health may have on economic resources poor health may restrict a family s capacity to earn income or to accumulate assets by limiting work or by raising medical expenses at a minimum this work should provide a caution against exaggerating the magnitude of causation from economic status to health outcomes but the potential contribution runs deeper as people age the evolving variation in individual health outcomes may offer additional statistical information to estimate parameters of household savings and consumption behavior that so far have proven to be somewhat elusive thus incorporating health uncertainty and risk into economic models should eventually enrich our understanding of basic tenets of household behavior the first section of this paper documents the size of the association between health and one prominent economic status measure household wealth section two deals with how health influences economic status by sketching out reasons why health may alter household savings and eventually wealth and then providing estimates of the empirical magnitude of these effects section three shifts attention to the alternative pathway the links between economic status and health and summarizes 2major controversies and evidence surrounding these issues

efficient estimation methods for closed ended contingent valuation surveys closed ended contingent valuation surveys can be very useful in the evaluation of nonmarket resources respondents merely state whether they would accept or reject a hypothetical threshold amount either as payment for giving up access to the resource or as a fee for its use the authors develop a maximum likelihood procedure which exploits the variation in the threshold values to allow direct and separate point estimates of regression like slope coefficients and error standard deviations without truncation bias their illustration uses data from a survey of recreational fisherman to examine factors which influence individuals willingness to pay copyright 1987 by mit press

paired comparison estimates of willingness to accept versus contingent valuation estimates of willingness to pay estimating empirical measures of an individual s willingness to accept that are consistent with conventional economic theory has proven difficult the method of paired comparison offers a promising approach to estimate willingness to accept this method involves having individuals make binary choices between receiving a particular good or a sum of money willingness to accept can be inferred from the ranking of dollar amounts and the good of interest using the paired comparison approach mean median willingness to accept for a private good is estimated at 59 52 contingent valuation estimate of willingness to pay for the same good yields a mean median of 28 28 while these estimates are statistically different the ratio of willingness to accept to willingness to pay is less than in most previous studies and closer to ratios found in actual cash experiments

life expectancy and the environment we present an olg model in which life expectancy and environmental quality dynamics are jointly determined agents may invest in environmental care depending on how much they expect to live in turn environmental conditions affect life expectancy as a result our model produces a positive correlation between longevity and environmental quality both in the long run and along the transition path eventually multiple equilibria may also arise some countries might be caught in a low life expectancy low environmental quality trap this outcome is consistent with stylized facts relating life expectancy and environmental performance measures we also discuss the welfare and policy implications of the inter generational externalities generated by individual choices finally we show that our results are robust to the introduction of growth dynamics based on physical or human capital accumulation c 2009 elsevier b v all rights reserved

climate change population ageing and public spending evidence on individual preferences abstract economic theory as well as empirical research suggest that elderly people prefer public spending on policies yielding short term benefits this might be bad news for policies aimed at combating climate change while the unavoidable costs of these policies arise today the expected benefits occur in the distant future drawing on data from over 12 000 households and using the ordered logit and the generalized ordered logit model we analyze whether attitudes towards climate change and climate policies as well as public spending preferences differ with respect to age our estimates show that elderly people are less concerned about climate change but more concerned about other global challenges furthermore they are less likely to support climate friendly policies such as the subsidization of renewables allocate less public resources to and have lower willingness to pay for environmental policies thus our results suggest that the ongoing demographic change in industrialized countries may undermine climate policies

self interest altruism and health risk reduction an economic analysis of voting behavior while classical economic theory suggests that the demand for private goods is motivated by economic self interest a growing body of literature suggests that the demand for public goods is driven both by self interest and by altruistic motives the political arena has been a major testing ground for this hypothesis recently a number of studies have tried to empirically isolate and determine the importance of economic versus ideological factors in explaining political choices by representatives kau and rubin 1979 peltzman 1984 kalt and zupan 1984 while congressional voting records have provided a rich source of data for empirical analysis a consensus opinion on the importance of self interest versus altruism has not been reached and remains controversial altruistic motivations have also been

measuring the benefits of local publilc goods environmental quality in gaston county north carolina local governments across the united states have been confronted with a growing range of federal and state mandated environmental protection programmes it is found that an application of contingent valuation to a local environmental policy is internally valid by theoretically and empirically examining the economic determinants of responses to a hypothetical referendum the resulting option price estimate is statistically reliable and has a reasonable order of magnitude results indicate that respondents are willing to pay for improvements in water quality but not air qualilty it is found that informatiion from various external sources helps to explain risk perceptions and these perceptions in turn influence willingness to pay the aggregate benefits of an air and water polllution control programme to gaston county are estimated to be 13 07 million annually with a 90 confidence interval of 11 07 million and 16 12 million

valuing externalities from energy infrastructures through stated preferences a geographically stratified sampling approach abstractthe externalities produced by high voltage transmission lines are multidimensional may strongly depend on the local context and are thus difficult to capture through standard environmental valuation exercises we experiment a gis approach to design a geographically stratified contingent valuation sample of the population resident in infrastructure corridors in a whole region we estimate by means of a binary choice logit model the perceived marginal damage from impacts of power lines on human health the landscape and the environment specific treatment is given to qualitatively different forms of impact namely real estate depreciation versus diffused perception of damage arising at different distances from the lines the set of gis based variables proximity to power lines presence of other infrastructure endowment of natural and built heritage and other local context variables prove to be significant predictors in the utility function of resident households finally we compute simulate

heterogeneous preferences regarding global climate change we examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today because no market data exist for such distant markets a statedpreference approach is used the analysis is based on the random parameters logit model and the results indicate substantial heterogeneity in respondent preferences that mean willingness to pay is a significant and increasing function of the scope of the impact and provocatively that respondents have the same preferences over the two very different time horizons that we consider e examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today studies using current market data have estimated the potential costs of climate change on agriculture mendelsohn nordhaus shaw 1994 and on other aspects of measured production nordhaus 1994 but market data can not reveal the willingness of those currently alive to pay for measures to mitigate impacts that may not happen for 100 years or more there is serious public discussion involving diplomats at the highest levels about measures to mitigate emissions that would cost the united states alone 100 to 200 billion dollars annually therefore estimating the willingness of those currently alive to pay for mitigation measures is not a fanciful exercise but rather a crucial effort to determine how much mitigation should be undertaken it is the preferences of those alive today regarding acceptable levels of climate impacts and not the unknowable preferences of those who do not yet exist that will ultimately determine how much mitigation we pursue in the next quarter century as this question cannot be answered with market data we use the stated preference sp approach and elicit preferences for preventing climate change induced impacts a host of climate change impacts have been enumerated this study focuses on one type of impact that may be important but has received little attention from economists scientists have predicted that widespread ecosystem shifts may accompany changes in climate vemap 1995 ecosys tem shifts are likely to evolve slowly indicating that lost use values are likely to be small for those alive today yet the public may still be willing and asked to pay for mitigation measures that are designed to slow the transformation of ecosystems the current debate over climate change demon strates two things the first is that some people do care about long term changes that will never affect them or perhaps even their children the second is that preferences regarding the impacts of climate change are very heterogeneous as other members of the public appear much less concerned long term horizons combined with heterogeneous prefer ences makes ecosystem shifts a useful place to begin analyzing preferences for mitigating climate change im pacts a stated preference survey was designed that asked respondents to choose their most preferred program to reduce ecological impacts from a set menu of five or six different programs the programs varied in terms of costs the degree of ecosystem change and in the mitigation method four different menus provided to each respondent yielded four distinct valuation responses section ii de scribes the random parameters logit model for repeated choices that allows for a flexible correlation structure based on heterogeneous preferences the ecosystem change and the stated preference survey are discussed in section iii in section iv we estimate the random parameters model and estimate the willingness to pay to prevent various levels of ecosystem change section v concludes with a discussion of how the scope of the impact preference heterogeneity and the time horizon affect willingness to pay

incorporating psycho social considerations into health valuation an experimental study abstract this study used multiple elicitation question modes and group discussions to value psycho social considerations associated with public perceptions of health risks values for saving 100 statistical lives in six different policy contexts varied by 50 largely due to psycho social considerations of choice and control a currency effect was found value of life differentials were smaller when questions were framed directly in the currency of lives saved rather than willingness to pay or public spending to save lives discussions reduced but did not eliminate inconsistencies and slightly increased the relative valuations of health interventions involving less choice and control by those at risk

an empirical study of the determinants of green party voting i empirically study the determinants of individuals green voting behavior for this i make use of three datasets from germany a panel dataset and two cross sectional datasets the empirically strongest determinants are the voters attitude or distance to nuclear sites the level of schooling and net income i show that those voters with deviant attitudes or alternative world views are more likely to vote green a result of the fact that the green party has always had the position of a protest party i find little role for demographic variables like gender marital status or the number of children this is in contrast to the stated preference literature age plays a role for explaining voting behavior only insofar as it proxies for health

testing the internal consistency of contingent valuation surveys abstract for an internal consistency check one can examine wtp responses to different surveys holding an environmental problem constant concave preferences imply wtpconcavein the success of a remedy the same preferences imply wtpconvexin the magnitude of an environmental problem assuming a successful remedy having opposite signed curvature of these two wtp patterns is general not requiring concave preferences for an adding up test an environmental commodity can be divided then wtp for one part plus wtp for the second part conditional on already having the first part equals wtp for the whole adjusted by an income effect

testing the influence of substitute sites in nature valuation by using spatial discounting factors this paper investigates the effect of nearby nature substitute sites on preferences for nature restoration contrary to prior studies we use a respondent centric approach to control for substitute sites we assess each respondent specific spatial context by computing densities of nature substitute sites within various ranges from each respondent s home this approach considers the use and non use values of nature together data from three similar discrete choice experiments carried out in flanders belgium are compared different spatial discounting factors are tested to explore how the substitution effect behaves with regard to distance latent class analyses are performed to account for preference heterogeneity among respondents we observe divergent behaviours across groups of respondents the distance to substitutes affects how respondents gauge substitute sites we find a significant influence of the squared average buffer distance but this effect varies in sign across case studies and classes of respondents our results demonstrate that individual specific gis data can significantly improve the representation of the spatial context and the transferability of value functions however the roles played by preference heterogeneity and nature perception on respondents capacity to value nature still deserves further attention in future research

would developing country commitments affect us households support for a modified kyoto protocol abstract would us households be willing to pay more to support a modified kyoto protocol mkp if developing countries had binding future limits on greenhouse gas production we explore this question using data from a unique set of national internet samples and web based surveys using an advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us senate ratification of the kyoto protocol for a split sample treatment the basic kyoto protocol bkp control group versus a mkp that includes limits on future greenhouse gas production for major developing countries treatment group the results indicate that the treatment significantly increases the probability of a yes vote on the advisory referendum econometric modeling results provide evidence that the mkp significantly increases us households median wtp to support the treaty

qualitative valuation of environmental criteria through a group consensus based on stochastic dominance abstract this paper introduces a qualitative valuation method to elicit stakeholders intensities of preferences for a complex environmental issue and multiple social groups environmental valuation studies have shown that in any complex environment with a diversity of environmental services stakeholders have difficulties using a monetary valuation to make trade offs between different environmental services stated preference methods such as the contingent valuation method cvm have been criticised for their individualistic format and assumptions of commensurability between environmental criteria to alleviate both of these criticisms we propose a qualitative valuation method the method contains a discursive step to allow stakeholders to discuss and construct a list of environmental criteria and alternative plans the list of criteria and plans is subsequently used by a group of experts to formulate an impact matrix im which is to be used in the succeeding individualistic steps of the methodology the first individualistic step consists of asking the stakeholders to rank alternative impacts ais in the im for each single criterion the stakeholders are then asked to express intensities of their preferences through pairwise comparisons between the ais of the constructed rank order on each single criterion these intensities are expressed on a qualitative scale subsequently to provide social intensities of preferences a social preference social rank order is first determined for each single criterion we propose to use the median value among the intensities of preferences as the social intensity of preference by assuming interpersonal comparability and taking into account stochastic monotonocity this is a pre processing step which allows us to reach social intensities of preferences in the lar rangeland iran where several social groups have conflicting interests on rangeland services leading to conflicting preferences on environmental criteria

a comparison of stated preference methods for environmental valuation this paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation cvm and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quality changes both of these methods require individuals to state their preferences for environmental qualities however choice experiments differ from cvm in that environmental attributes are varied in an experimental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices between bundles of attributes the empirical application involved the effect of environmental quality changes arising from forest management practices on recreational moose hunting values significant differences were found between the values derived from the two methods however detailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that respondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the cvm question restricting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied resulted in welfare estimates similar to the cvm model this highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than cvm in some cases