a dual definition for the factor content of trade and its effect on factor rewards in us manufacturing sector we introduce a dual definition of the factor content of trade fct using the concept of the equivalent autarky equilibrium estimating a symmetric normalized quadratic revenue function for the u s manufacturing sector between 1965 and 1991 we find that the fct for capital is positive while the fct for skilled and unskilled labor is negative suggesting that the leontief paradox is not present then the growth rate of the factor rewards is decomposed to the fct endowments and technological change effects we find that technological change is the most important determinant in explaining wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor

how traders influence their neighbours modelling social evolutionary processes and peer effects in agricultural trade networks abstract marketing channel choices in agricultural trade networks affect the networks overall performance and influence rural livelihoods this study identifies key determinants of these choices among natural rubber traders in indonesia to evaluate four policy scenarios and their potential effects on rural incomes since traders marketing decisions are based on past interactions resulting trade networks are formed in recursive processes and can be understood as complex adaptive systems due to inherent endogeneity in these systems process based approaches such as agent based modelling abm can be effective in understanding them using a self gathered primary dataset from jambi province indonesia we implement and parameterise an abm to simulate the formation of the rubber trading network and analyse the effects on rural livelihoods of four hypothetical policy scenarios improved micro credit availability increased access to education better infrastructure and transportation capacity and market information availability the model is calibrated through a genetic algorithm which maximises the similarity between the simulated network and the actual network observed in the data results indicate that sellers decisions on a buyer are primarily determined by debt obligations and past peer interactions the most influential sellers have a similar level of formal education as their peers and live in close physical proximity results of the policy scenario analysis suggests that policies aimed at reducing sellers dependence on credit from buyers and increasing education are the most effective policies for improving value chains and reducing poverty in the region under consideration

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

artificial adaptive agents in economic theory economic analysis has largely avoided questions about the way in which economic agents make choices when confronted by a perpetually novel and evolving world as a result there are outstanding questions of great interest to economics in areas ranging from technological innovation to strategic learning in games this is so despite the importance of the questions because standard tools and formal models are ill tuned for answering such questions however recent advances in computer based modeling techniques and in the subdiscipline of artificial intelligence called machine learning offer new possibilities artificial adaptive agents aaa can be defined and can be tested in a wide variety of artificial worlds that evolve over extended periods of time the resulting complex adaptive systems can be examined both computationally and analytically offering new ways of experimenting with and theorizing about adaptive economic agents many economic systems can be classified as complex adaptive systems such a system is complex in a special sense i it consists of a network of interacting agents processes elements ii it exhibits a dynamic aggregate behavior that emerges from the individual activities of the agents and iii its aggregate behavior can be described without a detailed knowledge of the behavior of the individual agents an agent in such a system is adaptive if it satisfies an additional pair of criteria the actions of the agent in its environment can be assigned a value performance utility payoff fitness or the like and the agent behaves so as to increase this value over time a complex adaptive system then is a complex system containing adaptive agents networked so that the environment of each adaptive agent includes other agents in the system complex adaptive systems usually operate far from a global optimum or attractor such systems exhibit many levels of aggregation organization and interaction each level having its own time scale and characteristic behavior any given level can usually be described in terms of local niches that can be exploited by particular adaptations the niches are various so it is rare that any given agent can exploit all of them as rare as finding a universal competitor in a tropical forest moreover niches are continually created by new adaptations it is because of this ongoing evolution of the niches and the perpetual novelty that results that the system operates far from any global attractor improvements are always possible and indeed occur regularly the everexpanding range of technologies and products in an economy or the everimproving strategies in a game like chess provide familiar examples adaptive systems may settle down temporarily at a local optimum where performance is good in a comparative sense but they are usually uninteresting if they remain at that optimum for an extended period a theory of complex adaptive systems based on aaa makes possible the development of well defined yet flexible models that exhibit emergent behavior such models can capture a wide range of economic phenomena precisely even though the development of a general mathematical theory of complex adaptive systems is still in its early stages the aaa models complement current theoretical directions they are

the new institutional economics this outstanding book presents new original contributions from some of the world s leading economists including ronald coase douglass c north masahiko aoki oliver e williamson and harold demsetz it demonstrates the extent and depth of the new institutional economics research programme which is having a worldwide impact on the economics profession

agent based computational transaction cost economics this article explores the use of agent based computational economics ace for modelling the development of transactions between firms transaction cost economics neglects learning and the development of trust ignores the complexity of multiple agents and assumes rather than investigates the efficiency of outcomes efficiency here refers to minimum cost or maximum profit we model how co operation and trust emerge and shift adaptively as relations evolve in a context of multiple interacting agents this may open up a new area of application for the ace methodology a simulation model is developed in which agents make and break transaction relations on the basis of preferences based on trust and potential profit profit is a function of product differentiation specificity of assets economy of scale and learning by doing in ongoing relations agents adapt their trust in a partner as a function of his loyalty exhibited by his continuation of a relation they also adapt the weight they attach to trust on the basis of realized profit the model enables an assessment of the efficiency of outcomes relative to the optimum as a function of trust and market conditions we conduct a few experiments to illustrate this application of ace

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 1 an integrated dynamic approach abstract this is the first part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services the existing literature on environmental valuation is based on two distinct foundations the ecological valuation methods derive values by a cost of production approach their common characteristic is the neglect of consumer preferences the economic valuation methods focus on the exchange value of ecosystem services their common characteristic is that they are finally based on consumer preferences and do not adequately take account of the complex internal structure of ecosystems as the existing methods for the valuation of ecosystem services emphasize either the economic system or the ecosystem the main objective of part 1 is to provide the conceptual foundations for a new method of valuation of ecosystem services which deals simultaneously with the ecosystem the economic system and society in a balanced way within a simple pre industrial model it is shown how the interdependencies between the three subsystems influence values and how values change over time

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 2 implications of unpredictable novel change abstract this is the second part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services in the first part a simple pre industrial model was introduced to show how the interdependencies between the three subsystems society economy and nature influence values and how values change over time in this second part the assumption of perfect foresight is dropped i argue that due to novelty and complexity ex ante unpredictable change occurs within the three subsystems society economy and nature again the simple pre industrial model which was introduced in part 1 serves as a simple paradigm to show how unpredictable novel change limits the possibility to derive accurate estimates of values

evolving market structure an ace model of price dispersion and loyalty we present an agent based computational economics ace model of the wholesale sh market in marseille two of the stylized facts of that market are high loyalty of buyers to sellers and persistent price dispersion although it is every day the same population of sellers and buyers that meets in the same market hall in our ace model sellers decide on quantities to supply prices to ask and how to treat loyal customers while buyers decide which sellers to visit and which prices to accept learning takes place through reinforcement the model explains both stylized facts price dispersion and high loyalty in a coevolutionary process buyers learn to become loyal as sellers learn to o er higher utility to loyal buyers while these sellers in turn learn to o er higher utility to loyal buyers as they happen to realize higher gross revenues from loyal buyers the model also explains the e ect of heterogeneity of the buyers we analyze how this leads to subtle di erences in the shopping patterns of the di erent types of buyers and how this is

ecological economic analysis of wetlands scientific integration for management and policy abstract wetlands all over the world have been lost or are threatened in spite of various international agreements and national policies this is caused by 1 the public nature of many wetlands products and services 2 user externalities imposed on other stakeholders and 3 policy intervention failures that are due to a lack of consistency among government policies in different areas economics environment nature protection physical planning etc all three causes are related to information failures which in turn can be linked to the complexity and invisibility of spatial relationships among groundwater surface water and wetland vegetation integrated wetland research combining social and natural sciences can help in part to solve the information failure to achieve the required consistency across various government policies an integrated wetland research framework suggests that a combination of economic valuation integrated modelling stakeholder analysis and multi criteria evaluation can provide complementary insights into sustainable and welfare optimising wetland management and policy subsequently each of the various components of such integrated wetland research is reviewed and related to wetland management policy

stream ecosystem service markets under no net loss regulation abstract we analyze interactions between economics and ecology for ecosystem service markets under no net loss regulation previous studies of no net loss regulation address the ecological efficacy and valuation of restoration but largely ignore the effects of market dynamics we link an economic model of free entry equilibria with an ecological model that includes returns to scale and inefficiency of restored ecosystems and apply the result to stream mitigation banking in north carolina intuition from ecology alone must be modified to account for economic processes and vice versa to implement no net loss regulation one must not only account for ecological differences between restored and natural ecosystems but also consider the effect of market entry on the number and size of restoration projects in a purely economic model free entry equilibria are characterized by excess entry the equilibrium number of firms is greater than the welfare maximizing number ecological considerations may exacerbate or ameliorate this so that either excess entry or insufficient entry may occur depending on the specific ecosystem services sought

willingness to accept willingness to pay and the income effect abstract the gap between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta has previously been studied by searching for evidence of substitutability the neoclassical hypothesis or status quo bias testing for neoclassical versus psychological theories of preferences we study the gap differently asking whether the observed pairs of wta and wtp are consistent with neoclassical preferences we use sugden s alternatives to the neoclassical theory of choice in i bateman k g willis eds valuing environmental preferences theory and practice of the contingent valuation method in the us eu and developing countries oxford university press oxford pp 152 180 chapter 6 result showing that the effect of income on wtp can be approximated from information on the ratio wta wtp drawing inferences from a meta analysis of 201 wta wtp ratios we conclude that the data are not consistent with neoclassical preferences

willingness to pay for improved water service in manaus amazonas brazil the 1 5 million residents of the city of manaus form the epicenter for economic activity and development in the amazon basin the current water treatment facilities were built when there were a mere 100 000 people living here the fifteen fold increase in population has made access to water a major public health concern families that can afford to buy bottled water do and those that can not are susceptible to water borne disease and illness at an ever increasing rate in order to determine how much citizens are willing to pay for universal access to water service in the home the university of amazonas center for environmental sciences has conducted a survey of over 1600 residents collecting information on current water needs health concerns household socioeconomic characteristics and from a contingent valuation cv experiment how much they would pay for access to improve water service in the home this paper makes use of the 1479 observations from four elicitation formats 1 open ended 2 open ended with a bpre qualifyingq statement 3 descending bid dichotomous choice and 4 ascending bid dichotomous choice results suggest that residents are willing to pay wtp more than r 12 us 6 12 per month

ecosystem service value assessment for constructed wetlands a case study in hangzhou china abstract based on a comprehensive analysis of various classifications of natural resource values we summarized an ecological economic value system of constructed wetland cw ecosystems for treating eutrophic water using the cw located at the hangzhou botanical garden as an example the contingent valuation method cvm and shadow project approach spa were applied to estimate the economic values of cw system ecosystem services the cvm estimated a value of 800 000 yuan yuan chinese currency 7 6 yuan 1 usd as of august 2007 as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period meanwhile the spa calculated a value of 23 04 million yuan as the total economic value of the cw in a twenty year period it is determined that compared to the cvm the spa provides a more approximate value of the true monetary value of the hangzhou botanical garden cw this study could fill the gap of knowledge and provide a benchmark when evaluating constructed ecosystem services and help policy makers to promote the development of constructed wetlands in china

market organisation and trading relationships in this paper we give a theoretical model of buyers behaviour on a market for a perishable good where no prices are posted we show that if buyers learn from their own previous experience there is a sharp division between those who learn to be loyal to certain sellers and those who continue to shop around this feature remains in more general models which are simulated and is consistent with empirical data from the marseille fish market

the aggregation of environmental benefit values welfare measures distance decay and total wtp abstract we review the literature regarding the aggregation of benefit value estimates for non market goods two case studies are presented through which we develop an approach to aggregation which applies the spatial analytic capabilities of a geographical information system to combine geo referenced physical census and survey data to estimate a spatially sensitive valuation function these case studies show that the common reliance upon political rather than economic jurisdictions and the use of sample mean values within the aggregation process are liable to lead to significant errors in resultant values we also highlight the fact that for resources with use values then we should expect overall values to reduce with increasing distance from such sites but that changes in the choice of welfare measure will determine whether such distance decay is to be expected within values stated by those who are presently non users the paper concludes by providing recommendations for future improvements to the methodology

ecological deficit tax a tax design and simulation of compensation for ecosystem service value based on ecological footprint in china abstract the expansion of resource tax to the occupation of natural ecological space is an important part of china s tax reform this paper quantifies the occupation of natural ecological space based on the demand for energy water and agriculture resources in terms of an ecological footprint and creatively convert the carbon emissions from energy consumption to occupation of carbon sinks such as woodlands and grasslands to obtain the ecological deficits in various regions of china based on the evaluation of the ecological service value the paper determines the correspondence between consumption projects land types and ecological functions realized the accounting of the economic value of the national ecological deficit as the sum of the regional deficits based on this the ecological deficit is used as an unpaid input factor in the construction of a green social accounting matrix table and a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model is used to analyze the effects of a tax policy on the compensation for the ecological deficit value the simulation results show that the double dividend hypothesis exists in the primary and tertiary industries and employment in the secondary industry that with a high value added labor decreased resulting in decreases in both the labor income of residents and their proportion of the national income the growth rate of gdp decreases in the short term and then gradually increases capital appreciation and net exports contribute greatly to economic growth based on the positive role of taxation schemes in reducing ecological deficits and their negative impacts on economic growth and the income distribution this paper suggests that with the improvement of big data on ecological occupation an ecological deficit tax can be introduced to target the energy sector which has a large ecological footprint in addition household income should be protected through tax cuts transfer payments and earmarked funds among other means to promote economic growth and protect the environment

economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services abstract the purpose of this special issue is to elucidate concepts of value and methods of valuation that will assist in guiding human decisions vis a vis ecosystems the concept of ecosystem service value can be a useful guide when distinguishing and measuring where trade offs between society and the rest of nature are possible and where they can be made to enhance human welfare in a sustainable manner while win win opportunities for human activities within the environment may exist they also appear to be increasingly scarce in a full global ecological economic system this makes valuation all the more essential for guiding future human activity this paper provides some history background and context for many of the issues addressed by the remaining papers in this special issue its purpose is to place both economic and ecological meanings of value and their respective valuation methods in a comparative context highlighting strengths weakness and addressing questions that arise from their integration

structure behavior and market power in an evolutionary labor market with adaptive search abstract this study uses an agent based computational labor market framework to experimentally study the relationship between job capacity job concentration and market power job capacity is measured by the ratio of potential job openings to potential work offers and job concentration is measured by the ratio of work suppliers to employers for each experimental treatment work suppliers and employers repeatedly seek preferred worksite partners based on continually updated expected utility engage in efficiency wage worksite interactions modelled as prisoner s dilemma games and evolve their worksite behaviors over time the main finding is that job capacity consistently trumps job concentration when it comes to predicting the relative ability of work suppliers and employers to exercise market power

an empirical investigation of the heckscher ohlin theorem further empirical tests are required to substantiate or disprove the heckscher ohlin theorem because earlier tests were based on an incorrect test statistic a multi commodity two country two factor model is constructed to test the theorem and derive an appropriate test statistic the model provides testable hypotheses for trade based on its profit and wage content rather than on its capital and labour content the results show that the 1968 trade patterns for australia ireland japan korea new zealand and the united states support the heckscherohlin theorem while those of israel kenya and the united kingdom do not une etude empirique du theoreme heckscher ohlin il faut des tests empiriques additionnels pour decider si l on doit supporter ou renvoyer le theoreme de heckscher ohlin puisque les tests anterieurs ont ete eriges sur une statistique incorrecte les auteurs developpent un modele de commerce international pour deux pays deux facteurs de production et plusieurs biens afin de pouvoir confectionner un test approprie du theoreme le modele suggere des hypotheses veifiables construites a partir des variables profits et salaires plutot qu a partir de variables comme les coefficients d intensite en capital et en travail les resultats indiquent que les patterns de commerce en 1968 pour l australie l irlande le japon la nouvelle zelande et les etats unis tendent a supporter le theoreme heckscher ohlin alors que 1 experience du kenya et du royaume uni va dans l autre sens starting with leontief s seminal paper 1953 examinations of the factoral content of international trade have cast doubt on the reliability of the heckscher ohlin theorem in these studies patterns of trade between the rest of the world and the united states japan west germany and canada contradicted the theorem while those of east germany and india supported it bharadwaj 1962 leontief 1953 1956 roskamp 1961 stolper and roskamp 1961 tatemoto and ichimura 1959 and wahl 1961 as baldwin 1971 126 stated these results effectively destroyed the comfortable confidence of economists in the simple version of the heckscher ohlin trade theory they also provoked numerous articles advancing other ways to account for the pattern of a country s trade the test statistic used for these empirical studies of the heckscher ohlin theorem was developed by leontief and further applied by later investigators although it was never set within a theoretical framework no one questioned it until williams canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xvii no 1 february fevrier 1984 printed in canada imprime au canada 0008 4085 84 0000 0032 1 50 1984 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 157 55 39 104 on mon 20 jun 2016 05 49 18 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms empirical investigation of heckscher ohlin theorem 33 published his paper in 1970 in that work williams asserted that leontief s inference is incorrect the united states is plentiful in capital and he provided a model from which he derived a correct test statistic williams 1970 from a practical point of view a major limitation of williams s model is the assumption that trade is perfectly free and that factor prices will be equalized through trade more recent papers by deardorff 1979 and brecher and choudhri 1982 have suggested in a two country context at least that the factor content condition developed by williams should hold when factor prices are unequal and there are tariffs or other impediments to trade marxsen 1983 has demonstrated that such is the case and therefore that the williams condition should hold even if factor prices are unequal and trade is tariff ridden the purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical test of the heckscher ohlin theorem in the first section a multi commodity two country two factor model is constructed and an approprite test statistic is devised based on the profit and wage content rather than the capital and labour content of trade the second section presents the empirical test results for the 1968 trade patterns of the nine countries under study in the third section these results are considered in the light of previous work and conclusions are drawn about the heckscher ohlin theorem

decentralized dispersed exchange without an auctioneer abstract we stimulate exchange among geographically dispersed agents who face real costs of communication along with bounds to rationality and calculation exchange is entirely decentralized it is initiated by individual agents who broadcast costly messages indicating their interest in trade it is accomplished by bilateral bargaining between pairs of agents agents use the information gained from previous attempts at local trade to calculate their search strategies for succeeding rounds this decentralized mechanism can achieve a substantial improvement in the allocation of resources and the average welfare of agents in comparison with a randomized initial endowment but in comparison with walrasian equilibrium agents who begin with endowments of equal value end up with substantially unequal wealth although the initial inequality of utility is reduced

ecology and valuation big changes needed abstract ecological economics has developed as a transdisciplinary science but it has not taken significant steps toward a truly integrated process of evaluating anthropogenic ecological change the emerging dominance within ecological economics of the movement to monetize ecological services when combined with the already well entrenched dominance of contingent pricing as a means to evaluate impacts on amenities has created a monistic approach to valuation studies it is argued that this monistic approach to evaluating anthropogenic impacts is inconsistent with a sophisticated conception of ecology as a complex science that rests on shifting metaphors an alternative pluralistic and iterative approach to valuation of anthropogenic ecological change is proposed

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

how vulnerable is the emissions market to transaction costs an abms approach abstract the impact of transaction costs on the early emissions trading market is examined by applying an agent based model and simulation abms approach for a realistic model set up bounded rationality stochastic characteristics and learning by doing are considered in our search processes marginal abatement cost parameters are obtained from yoo et al 2010 which is an experimental study on the emissions trading in the korean power sector sensitivity analyses are performed on market performance indices with regard to transaction cost parameters which represent scales and the learning elasticities of transaction costs a total of 960 simulations were run in this sensitivity analysis sensitivity analysis results consistently show that higher transaction costs worsen market performance the most remarkable finding in these results is that welfare performance of all the transactions decreases by up to 50 as the scale parameters of transaction costs increase implying that welfare gain from introducing emissions trading disappears significantly however with learning curve effect welfare performance could be regained by up to 26 in sum although transaction costs significantly encroach upon trade gains at the early stage based on our simulation results the welfare loss by way of transaction costs is lessened as the knowledge of market participants progresses

governance and competence how can they be combined transaction cost economics faces serious problems concerning the way it deals or fails to deal with bounded rationality the efficiency of outcomes trust innovation learning and the nature of knowledge the competence view yields an alternative perspective on the purpose and boundaries of the firm however the competence view cannot ignore issues of governance and in spite of serious criticism transaction cost economics yields some useful concepts to deal with them this paper aims to contribute to the development of theory and empirical research that connects governance and competence perspectives copyright 2004 oxford university press

motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem economics ethics and social psychology this paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors more specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour the latter was assessed using measures of attitudes subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay the results show that standard socio economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation the implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual s pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay

valuing the environment as input review of applications to mangrove fishery linkages the following paper reviews recent developments in the methodology for valuing the role of wetlands in supporting economic activity the main focus will be on mangroves serving as a breeding ground and nursery habitat in support of coastal and marine fisheries as this particular ecological function of a mangrove system means that it is effectively an unpriced environmental input into fisheries then it is possible to value this contribution through applying the production function approach the first half of the paper overviews the procedure for valuing the environment as an input applied to the case of a wetland supporting a fishery both the static ellis fisher freeman approach and the dynamic approach developed by barbier and strand incorporating the intertemporal bioeconomic fishing problem are reviewed the second half of the paper discusses briefly two recent case studies of mangrove fishery valuation an application in south thailand which is based on the static ellis fisher freeman model and an application in campeche mexico which is based on the dynamic approach 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

an interpretation of the factor content of trade abstract this paper shows that the factor content of trade can be used to indicate effects of trade on relative factor prices factor prices in two trading equilibria can be compared by comparing instead their two equivalent autarky equilibria constructed by changing factor endowments by the factor content of trade using relationships between autarky factor prices and factor endowments several relationships are derived between factor prices with trade and its factor content the most general result is a positive correlation between relative changes in the factor content of trade appropriately normalized and proportional changes in factor prices

contingent valuation and social choice the contingent valuation method for estimating the existence value of natural resources is examined for psychophysical robustness statistical reliability and economic sensibility extensions of standard models for willingness to pay and suitable econometric techniques for analyzing these models are developed the analysis is applied to a series of experiments on the value of preserving wilderness areas in the western united states the results call into question the reliability of the cv method for estimating existence values

a symmetric normalized quadratic gnp function and the u s demand for imports and supply of exports this paper reports estimates of a gnp function for the united states using data covering most of the postwar period and it introduces a new functional form the symmetric normalized quadratic variable profit function which is a natural extension of recent work by diewert and wales this functional form allows convexity in prices and concavity in fixed inputs to be imposed globally empirical results indicate that the demand for imports is less price elastic than the supply exports that an increase in labor endowment favors trade and that a deterioration of the terms of trade mostly hurts labor

globalization outsourcing and wage inequality there is considerable debate over whether international trade has contributed to the declining economic fortunes of less skilled workers one issue that has become lost in the current discussion is how firms respond to import competition and how these responses in turn are transmitted to the labor market in previous work we have argued that outsourcing by which we mean the import of intermediate inputs by domestic firms has contributed to an increase in the relative demand for skilled labor in the united states if firms respond to import competition from low wage countries by moving non skill intensive activities abroad then trade will shift employment towards skilled workers within industries in this paper we extend our previous work by combining new import data from the revised nber trade database with disaggregated data on input purchases from the census of manufactures we construct industry by industry estimates of outsourcing for the period 1972 1990 and reexamine whether outsourcing has contributed to an increase in relative demand for skilled labor our main finding is that outsourcing can account for 31 51 of the increase in the relative demand for skilled labor that occurred in u s manufacturing industries during the 1980s compared to our previous estimate of 15 33 this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

contingent valuation and the budget constraint abstract one of the most vehemently debated techniques for the valuation of environmental goods is the contingent valuation method critics of this method question its validity and reliability in many respects however at the moment the contingent valuation method is the only technique at hand for the assessment of non use values of environmental goods therefore it seems worthwhile to have a closer look at some of the criticism raised in this debate this paper deals with the so called budget constraint bias which is suspected of distorting the results of contingent valuation studies according to the critics of the contingent valuation method the stated willingness to pay for an environmental good as assessed by contingent valuation studies is systematically biased upwards because participants of such surveys do not properly observe their personal budget constraints it is maintained that respondents when asked about their willingness to pay for an environmental good do not regard the amount stated by them as reducing their budget left for the purchase of private goods in this paper it is shown that from a theoretical point of view respondents intuitively do the right thing when ignoring the seeming relationship between their willingness to pay for an environmental good and their capacity to buy private goods it is elucidated that contingent valuation surveys should focus on the assessment of the shadow price of an environmental good rather than of the respective willingness to pay therefore it seems that the budget constraint bias is meaningless with respect to the validity of the contingent valuation method

economic value of cedar relics in lebanon an application of contingent valuation method for conservation abstract the cedar forests in lebanon give shelter to a rich biodiversity and they constitute important mountainous relic habitats harboring a wide range of endemic rare and threatened species and species with economic potential these forests once covering the eastern and western mountain chains have been the providers of quality timber for the region in historical times the ancient practices have left the country with only 12 forest relics distributed on the mount lebanon chain even though recognized worldwide as flagship species and sites of cultural religious and historical values these forests have attracted limited international funds for their conservation these funds proved not to be sustainable for long term conservation plans therefore a system for securing local funds for the protection of cedar forest is needed in this context this research study was designed having three main objectives which are firstly to illustrate the differences in the value of cedar forests between citizens and villagers users and non users secondly to identify the best ways to collect local funds and design other tools involving for example public participation needed in setting out a sound strategy for the conservation of the cedar forests thirdly to use the findings of this study as a tool to investigate in further studies and to inform and influence decision makers about the importance of a long term conservation and sustainable use program as well as to consider a strategic approach for its sustainable use using an open ended questionnaire contingent valuation method is applied to highlight the importance of well informed population to obtain the willingness to pay wtp for a scenario to conserve cedar forests in lebanon to increase their surface areas to promote sustainable activities and to explore the degree of importance of their attributes and of the option bequest and existence values as perceived by the lebanese population the wtp is tested by using a regression model relating wtp to all socio demographic variables the questionnaires 416 were performed in three main cities in lebanon and in villages surrounding two nature reserves the difference in the individual wtp value for users and non users was approximately us 20 per household for both villagers and city dwellers the frequency of the zero wtp value was higher for non users the results obtained encouraged a national initiative to create a national trust fund and to integrate symbolic fees on the amenity services associated with cedar forests

technology trade and factor prices abstract the view that recent changes in the distribution of income primarily reflect technology rather than trade may be the majority opinion but has been harshly criticized by some trade economists this paper will argue that the critique in fact misses the point essentially because the critics undertake the wrong thought experiments trade volumes are not irrelevant if one poses the question correctly one immediately realizes that small trade volumes are inconsistent with a story that attributes large distributional effects to trade the factor bias of technological change is not immaterial except in the case where such change takes place in a small open economy as opposed to one that can affect world prices and where technical change occurs only in that economy rather than occurring simultaneously in other economies as well since the real situation does not meet either criterion factor bias definitely does matter most surprisingly the much maligned use of a factor content approach to infer the effects of trade on factor prices turns out to be an entirely justified procedure when carefully applied

factor prices and the factor content of trade revisited what s the use abstract this paper examines and extends a result of deardorff and staiger an interpretation of the factor content of trade journal of international economics 1988 24 93 107 d s who showed how the factor content of trade may indicate the factor price adjustments that can be attributed to that trade it elaborates on what this means and also extends it beyond several of the assumptions that d s used the strongest result in d s only for cobb douglas technology is extended to common constant elasticities of substitution and for small changes more general technologies also the assumption of nonspecialization is shown to be unnecessary with cobb douglas technology more generally noncompeting imports equate with hicks neutral technological improvements

introduction to the special issue on agent based computational economics abstract a brief overview of agent based computational economics ace is given followed by a synopsis of the articles included in this special issue on ace and in a companion special issue on ace scheduled to appear in computational economics