design and analysis of simulated consumer choice or allocation experiments an approach based on aggregate data the authors integrate concepts in conjoint analysis and discrete choice theory in econometrics to develop a new approach to the design and analysis of controlled consumer choice or resource allocat

socio economic characteristics and the effect of taxation as a health policy instrument abstract this paper analyses the quantitative effects of using economic instruments in health policy on the basis of price elasticities calculated from estimated demand systems the nutritional effects of various taxation schemes are compared for households in different age groups and social classes focusing on the consumption of saturated fats fibre and sugar it is generally found that the impact of price instruments is stronger for lower social classes than in other groups of the population with regard to age groups it is mostly the youngest that decrease their demand for saturated fat in response to price changes while it is mostly the middle aged who exhibit price responsiveness in their demand for sugar these groups are however not considered as key target groups for dietary regulation thus tax instruments may be effective in improving diets on average but the design of the instruments and the targeting of vulnerable groups with special needs should be done with care it should be noted that a tax on a single nutrient or food may have undesired effects on the demand for other food components though this may be avoided by introducing taxes subsidies on several food products simultaneously

estimating stated preferences with rated pair data environmental health and employment effects of energy programs abstract respondents stated preferences for attributes related to various electricity generation scenarios are analyzed using a series of pairwise ratings multiple observations for each respondent facilitate estimating individual scale parameters scale estimates can identify uninformative rating patterns and make it possible to delete such observations or adjust wtp calculations cross section time series analysis of the data indicates that nonprice attributes increase in salience during the course of the experiment thus later responses may be better indicators of preferences than earlier responses comparisons of polychotomous with dichotomous models indicate that most respondents relative preference ratings are not simply dichotomous but discriminate systematically along the rating scale

demand elasticities for food products in brazil a two stage budgeting system the object of this article is to estimate demand elasticities for a basket of staple food important for providing the caloric needs of brazilian households these elasticities are useful in the measurement of the impact of structural reforms on poverty a two stage demand system was constructed based on data from household expenditure surveys pof produced by ibge the brazilian bureau of statistics in 1987 88 and 1995 96 we have used panel data to estimate the model and have calculated income own price and cross price elasticities for eight groups of goods and services and in the second stage for 11 sub groups of staple food products we estimated those elasticities for the whole sample of consumers and for two income groups

integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment and valuation mixed methods or mixed messages a mixed method approach was used to assess and value the ecosystem services derived from the dogger bank an extensive shallow sandbank in the southern north sea three parallel studies were undertaken that 1 identified and quantified where possible how indicators for ecosystem service provision may change according to two future scenarios 2 assessed members of the public s willingness to pay for improvements to a small number of ecosystem services as a consequence of a hypothetical management plan and 3 facilitated a process of deliberation that allowed members of the public to explore the uses of the dogger bank and the conflicts and dilemmas involved in its management each of these studies was designed to answer different and specific research questions and therefore contributes different insights about the ecosystem services delivered by the dogger bank this paper explores what can be gained by bringing these findings together post hoc and the extent to which the different methods are complementary findings suggest that mixed method research brings more understanding than can be gained from the individual approaches alone nevertheless the choice of methods used and how these methods are implemented strongly affects the results obtained

food demand and savings in a complete extended linear expenditure system demand equations derived from the classical constrained utility maximization problem state that quantities demanded are functions of all prices and income an implication is that consumer purchase decisions are interrelated and should be viewed from a systems context recent economic events have focused attention on the high prices of energy medical services food and housing as well as the low level of consumer savings such concerns make it desirable that we have estimates of a set of parameters which will allow inferences to be made about the probable response of food demand and savings to changes in consumer income and a comprehensive set of consumer prices the purpose of this note is to present and compare the parameter estimates and systems projections obtained from two alternative formulations of lluch s extended linear expenditure system eles savings is explicitly introduced into both variants by the constrained maximization procedure from a practical viewpoint we delineate a set of demand categories which we feel are more relevant to the study of current economic problems than those used in most published studies

differences between continuous and discrete contingent value estimates in a split sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay wtp for food safety improvements the dichotomous choice dc elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of wtp than did a continuous method little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced by the statistical techniques used with the dc data most or all of the difference was due to differences in respondent behavior in addition the continuous wtp responses showed a significant scope effect while the dc responses did not the observed difference in behavior may be attributable in part to yea saying by dc respondents

a comparison of contingent preference models i compare the informational efficiencies of contingent rating contingent ranking and two contingent paired comparison methods as alternatives to the referendum contingent valuation method the contingent rating method is hypothesized to be most efficient because ratings convey information on preference intensities and can uniquely represent respondent indifference or ambivalence survey data on hunters ratings of alternative hypothetical hunting trips are used to estimate four alternative indirect utility models from which marginal willingness to pay measures for individual trip attributes are derived model comparison wtp estimates and their confidence intervals confirm the relative efficiency of the contingent rating approach

modeling food consumption decisions as a two step process this article evaluates the suitability of tobit analysis of food consumption patterns by comparing results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process two samples of adult women were selected from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey and the 1985 continuing survey of food intakes by individuals results show strong statistical evidence for questioning tobit analysis in examining food consumption decisions determinants of the decision to consume food within a particular food group often differ from the determinants of how much to consume particularly for more highly defined food groupings analysis of u s food consumption patterns and their dietary aspects with respect to consumer behavior has a long history traditionally ordinary least squares ols or some variant has been used in many studies where ols was not appropriate the tobit method was applied tobit allows for a discrete mass point for observations as well as a continuous range of values for the dependent variable this nonlinear method has yielded good results in a variety of studies e g mccracken and brandt lane and devaney and fraker this article examines the suitability of the tobit method for analysis of food consumption patterns the tobit method assumes that the decision to consume a given food item is the same as the decision about the amount of the food to consume ignoring the two step nature of the decision process may hamper understanding of true behavioral patterns lead to erroneous conclusions and generate incorrect policy recommendations this article compares results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process in the next section the statistical methods used to test whether food consumption is a one or two step decision process are described the following sections discuss the variables and data present the results and consider the conclusions

is individual environmental consciousness one of the determinants in transport mode choice this article models negative impact on the environment as one of the attributes of transport mode by this modelling we are able to examine whether individual environmental consciousness of this impact plays a significant role in his her choice of transport mode a survey data from saito and onohara area in northern osaka of japan is used to estimate the model with the heteroscedastic extreme value specification both of the estimated and simulated results imply that individual environmental consciousness does influence his her decision on transport mode choice in the sample furthermore the likelihood ratio tests indicate that both the utility and scale parameters are not equivalent across sub samples of university commuters research facility commuters and residents the results of the comparison across sub samples suggest that sometimes we may learn more from sub dividing a whole sample into several sub samples if we could distinguish them by their characteristics

offshore commodity hedging under floating exchange rates exchange rate uncertainty can have significant effects on the optimal hedging behavior of offshore commodity traders in this paper the standard commodity hedging framework is extended first to incorporate exchange rate uncertainty and second to forward cover transactions in the foreign exchange market the implications of exchange rate movements and forward cover decisions for offshore commodity hedgers are illustrated using data relevant to hedging australian export wheat on the chicago board of trade

video game demand in japan a household data analysis various economic studies of the video game industry have focused on intra industry details this article complements the approach by highlighting broader budget allocation by households using the total households data of the family income and expenditure survey this article estimates the demand model for video games estimation results show the effects of household income and demographic factors and prices of goods on the expenditure share of video games these results indicate the importance of explicitly considering a households budget allocation or at least including information on households

demand systems estimation with microdata a censored regression approach demand systems estimation increasingly makes use of household level microdata mainly to measure the effects of demographic variables data based on these household expenditure surveys present a major estimation problem for any given household many of the goods have zero consumption implying a censored dependent variable techniques which do not take this censored dependent variable into account will yield biased results we utilize a censored regression approach that is computationally simple consistent and asymptotically efficient the results are then presented and compared with those obtained using an uncensored technique

a test of the habit formation hypothesis using household data numerous studies have confirmed the importance of habit formation as represented by a lagged dependent variable in demand analysis although all work to date has been based on aggregate time series data this study uses household level bls interview panel data to test the habit hypothesis an interrelated demand system for seventeen goods is estimated from cross section data and compared with a similar system based on time series data the results show that the habit component is significantly different between the two data sets and much smaller in the cross section data habit effects while not as large in cross section data as time series are still highly significant several explanations are offered concerning why the two sets of estimates differ copyright 1991 by mit press

residential broadband subscription demand an econometric analysis of australian choice experiment data the recent roll out of fibre optic cable suggests that the willingness of households in passed communities to subscribe to networked services is an important issue this paper studies the determination of the demand for network subscription through a discrete choice model the effect of installation and rental price on the likelihood of subscription is analysed the logit regression is based on choice experiment stated preference subscription data obtained from a national survey of households limitations of this preliminary work and suggestions for future research are discussed

on bias correction in the multivariate sample selection model heien and wessells two step estimator for the multivariate sample selection model has been used extensively during the past 15 years a modified version of it with slightly different selectivity regressors has also appeared in the empirical literature both estimators are unfounded and generally do not correct for the sample selectivity bias as intended but have continued to gain popularity in empirical applications the properties of the modified heien wessells procedure are investigated in both the bivariate and multivariate contexts and the conditions under which this estimator fails to correct for sample selectivity are examined the theoretical properties are demonstrated with a simulated random sample

using a choice experiment to estimate the benefits of a reduction of externalities in urban areas with special focus on electrosmog traffic noise air pollution and electromagnetic pollution i e nonionizing radiation also called electrosmog are typical negative local externalities in urban areas they are side effects of human and economic activities e g road transport telecommunication and they affect individuals well being negatively without compensation in recent years the increased number of mobile phone antennas in residential areas and thus the increased intensity of radiated power has aroused public concern discussions and protests the view of an antenna is annoying an increasing number of inhabitants in this article the stated choice experiment ce is used to estimate the willingness to pay wtp residents in the cities of zurich and lugano place on the reduction of these three environmental loads estimation results reveal that there is a positive and significant wtp for a reduction of air pollution and traffic noise levels to those limit values fixed by the government respondents also show wtp for reducing

confidence intervals for evaluating benefits estimates from dichotomous choice contingent valuation studies i evaluate the potential usefulness of nonmarket valuation concepts and techniques from environmental economics for improving wildlife conservation the concepts include distinguishing between on site recreation use value and off site passive use or

beyond mobile number portability measuring consumer preferences for service portability in japan s mobile phone market japan s mobile phone market has been oligopolized by three incumbents who are seeking vertically integrated business models which may prevent competitors from using platform layers to provide original services we conduct two types of conjoint analysis to measure consumer stated preferences and draw two main conclusions from the analyses first the average consumer is willing to pay more than jpy 2000 us 20 to increase mobile service portability second the average consumer s willingness to pay corresponds to jpy 100 200 us 1 2 per song for securing music download platforms a dilemma exists in consumer preferences for service portability in japan s mobile phone market namely the choice between free mobile service portability and convenient music download platforms

conjoint analysis of demand for ip telephony the case of japan with the recent diffusion of broadband bb services internet protocol ip telephony is expected to spread significantly in japan this article investigates the demand for ip telephony by using conjoint analysis projecting ip telephony demand also contributes to japanese info communication policy discussions two points are made first ip telephony is still currently considered an optional supplement or an add on service option of high speed bb internet access services in japan rather than a close substitute of existing plain old telephone service pots at this point we find little evidence that many households will promptly forsake their fixed line service for ip telephony second we conclude that the key condition for the proliferation of ip telephony is the complete guarantee of quality of service qos including voice quality number portability fax usage and emergency access comparable to or exceeding that of existing pots

a demand systems analysis of food commodities by u s households segmented by income using the 1987 88 nationwide food consumption survey twelve food commodity groups were analyzed according to household poverty status parameter estimates were used to obtain subsistence expenditures own price elasticities expenditure elasticities and income elasticities own price elasticities were similar between the income groups for most commodities however income elasticities were consistently higher for the lower income group the use of average estimates of price and income elasticities for the population as a whole for the projection of individual commodity demands is not likely to be successful if notable changes are evident in income distribution

the non use benefits of enhancing forest biodiversity a contingent ranking study until recently the majority of commercial forestry in the uk has comprised blanket planting of non native coniferous species which typically do not offer a high level of biodiversity however the uk government and consequently the uk forestry commission are committed under various international agreements to conserve and enhance biodiversity in british forests the study reported in this paper estimates that substantial non use values would be generated if the forestry commission were to continue in its current efforts to develop management practices that promote an increase in biodiversity across a large area of its commercial holdings in remote parts of the country which are seldom visited rather than adopting a referendum type contingent valuation method a discrete choice contingent ranking approach is used to estimate the general public s willingness to pay to increase the area of these forests managed under each of three forest management standards designed to offer increasing levels of biodiversity at the expense of commercial timber production this permits relative preferences for different forest management standards to be measured at the same time as willingness to pay to enhance biodiversity

demand system estimation in the absence of price data an application of stone lewbel price indices this article evaluates the feasibility of estimating a system of demand equations in the absence of price information using the approach developed by lewbel 1989 stone lewbel sl price indices for commodity groups are constructed using information on the budget shares and the consumer price indices cpis of the goods comprising the commodity groups which allows for household level prices to be recovered this study evaluates how susceptible are elasticities and marginal effects estimates from traditional parametric demand systems to the cpi used in the construction of the sl prices to do this three alternative regional cpis are considered for the construction of the sl prices monthly quarterly and a constant unity price index elasticities and marginal effect estimates are computed for eight food commodity groups using the exact affine stone index easi model as the parametric demand system and data from the united states consumer expenditure survey the estimates proved to be robust to the a

fruit and vegetable consumption patterns a segmentation approach in this article we study the heterogeneity of fruit and vegetable consumption patterns in france a finite mixture of aids models is used to describe food demand patterns revealing different preferences over distinct classes we obtained six different clusters which reflect specific socio demographic characteristics and different income and price elasticities this approach is appropriate for targeting specific public nutritional policies our main results show that unlike the other clusters in which the usual price and income policy tools may be used the lowest income cluster with the lowest consumption remains insensitive to economic variables

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

willingness to accept compensation for the environmental risks of oil transport on the amazon a choice modeling experiment abstract this paper looks at the question of whether subsistence level indigenous people place a value on the preservation of ecosystems independent of direct impacts of environmental change such as impacts on their production activities the economics literature generally suggests that non use values don t exist among the poor and in the informal sector of the economy we examine this issue through a choice modeling experiment a survey was conducted of rainforest communities who live on the banks of the amazon river rio solimoes in the vicinity of proposed oil and gas pipelines the data were analyzed in the choice modeling framework revealing relatively high amounts of compensation that were necessary in order to accept the potential ecosystem damages associated with oil transport even if the people were completely compensated for direct damages such as loss of access to productive resources these results suggest that environmental quality is important for its own sake a result that is very different from the implicit assumption among many economists

the public value of improving a weather forecasting system in korea a choice experiment study abstractthe korean government plans to improve the quality of its weather forecasting system in order to increase its public utility the benefits arising from the implementation of this plan shoul

simultaneously determined time varying hedge ratios in the soybean complex time varying hedge ratios are derived which account for the dynamic characteristics of prices in the soybean complex a multivariate generalized autogressive heteroskedastic mgarch model along with other conditional models is used to specify the relevant covariance matrix while the time varying representations of the variance matrix are statistically appropriateex anteand ex posthedging effectiveness indicate that they provide minimal gain to hedging in terms of mean return and reduction in variance over a constant conditional procedure whether similar findings arise from other applications of garch models to optimal hedging is a question for further research

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

low energy efficiency in rental properties asymmetric information or low willingness to pay abstract asymmetric information may explain low energy efficiency in rented properties energy ratings while a solution to the information problem will only lead to higher efficiency levels if renter s willingness to pay wtp exceeds landlord s investment costs using a sample of renters from one university this paper estimates this wtp using a discrete choice experiment where respondents choose from a hypothetical set of single bedroom apartments that differ according to a number of attributes including the energy rating results show that there is a strong disutility associated with the least efficient properties and that renters will pay significantly more for efficiency improvements at the lower end of the efficiency scale importantly our wtp estimates are calculated in a setting where respondents were informed about the energy rating system prior to choosing and where the rating was shown for every property therefore in order to maximise the impact of energy rating systems policymakers are encouraged to ensure that both these informational characteristics are in place

a modified implicit directly additive demand system a recently developed demand system nicknamed aidads an implicit directly additive demand system offers an approach to capturing consumer preferences across a wide range of expenditure levels aidads generalizes the les by assuming marginal budget shares vary with utility and hence with expenditure like the les aidads includes subsistence parameters that define minimum consumption levels here we present a modified aidads maidads that replaces the constant subsistence parameters with functions that also vary with utility these transformed subsistence levels are referred to as minimum consumption quantities this model is applied to the 1996 international consumption project data as these data span a wide range of expenditure levels maidads offers a viable alternative for the estimation of a global demand system results suggest minimum consumption quantities for staple grains livestock other food products alcohol and tobacco clothing and footwear and transport and transport services vary

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

does healthy food access matter in a french urban setting limited access to healthy food is commonly regarded as a contributing factor to poor dietary choices the objective of this article is to test this hypothesis in a french context given france s increasing obesity rates and incidence of poor dietary habits we use data on fruit and vegetable consumption frequency and different food retail availability measures for example the number of food stores food surface area and a dispersion measure based on store numbers store types and food area surface from several data sources in france we also employ different types of geographic units when measuring the food retail environment and instrumental variable model specifications to test the robustness of our results which indicate that fewer but larger retail outlets increase the odds of consuming the recommended level of fruit and vegetables we also find that an increase in food supply dispersion will improve fruit and vegetable consumption in paris but not in its suburbs

estimation of the public benefits of urban water supply improvements in ethiopia a choice experiment improving existing drinking water supply services in developing countries depends crucially on available financial resources cost recovery rates of these services are typically low while demand for more reliable services is high and rapidly growing most stated preference based demand studies in the developing world apply the contingent valuation method and focus on rural areas this study examines household willingness to pay wtp for improved water supply services in a choice experiment in an urban area in ethiopia a country with the lowest water supply coverage in sub saharan africa the design of the choice experiment allows estimation of the value of both drinking water supply reliability and safety the estimated economic values can be used in policy appraisals of improved supply investment decisions despite significant income constraints households are willing to pay up to 80 extra for improved levels of water supply over and above their current water bill women and households living in the

optimal hedging on futures markets for commodity exporting nations this paper utilises portfolio theory to examine the usefulness of futures markets to commodity exporting nations the theory of optimal hedging is extended to multi product exporters and applied to a sample of cocoa coffee and sugar exporting nations which face both price and quantity risks it is found that the optimal hedging strategy differs considerably across nations although they should all sell futures contracts totalling much less than expected exports and in many cases they should even buy futures it appears that futures markets may offer some but not all countries an attractive means of reducing year to year fluctuations in export revenues

food expenditures at home and away from home in the united states a switching regression analysis the results of this study showed that the decision to eat away from home was positively affected by income while the amount spent away from home was only affected by income again positively at higher levels of household income food expenditures at home were similarly affected by income only at higher levels of household income provided the household also ate away from home if the household did not eat away from home food expenditures at home were positively affected by income at all levels the effect decreasing in magnitude with the level of income a significant economic trend in recent vdecades is the declining share of consumer expenditures on food expenditures for food fell steadily from 20 0 of disposable personal income in 1960 to 16 1 in the third quarter of 1983 usda this drop occurred as a result of a decline in the share of consumer expenditures on food purchased for consumption at home the share of consumer expenditures on meals purchased at restaurants cafeterias and fast food chains remained constant at about 4 of disposable personal income hence the consumption of purchased meals away from home has become more important relative to food consumed at home a number of studies on food consumption at home and away from home have been made houthakker and taylor 1970 obtained results that indicate away from home food expenditures were more responsive to total consumption expenditures than at home expenditures based on 1960 61 household budget data time series data were also employed by houthakker and taylor to investigate the dynamics of food consumption prochaska and schrimper 1973 found that along with income the opportunity cost of time is an important factor in determining away from home food consumption fishe et al 1979 employing simple and heteroscedastic tobit models found that income and household specific circumstances are important determinants of restaurant expenditures lamm 1982 estimated a translog demand system for food consumed at home purchased meals and non food items his results indicated that consumers have been eating away from home more often primarily as a result of increases in their incomes recently huang and raunikar 1984 estimated engel equations for at home and away from home food expenditures using ordinary least squares and tobit regressions respectively in their study huang and raunikar found that in general at home food consumption is less income responsive than away from home food consumption the major objective of huang and raunikar s study was to investigate the importance to household food expenditures of consigned income for committed expenditures this study further investigates food consumption at home and away from home employing a switching regression model the same basic data analyzed by huang and rauniker hr are also analyzed here however since the hr study focused on consigned income households not reporting complete information with regard to committed expenditures e g rent or mortgage or after tax income were not included in their study in this study the emphasis is placed on the household s choice of whether to eat out and the factors affecting consequent away from home and at home food expenditures the sample includes all households that reported before tax income and is significantly larger than the sample used in the hr study

demographic effects in demand analysis estimation of the quadratic expenditure system using microdata the purpose of this paper is to estimate a complete theoretically plausible system of demand equations on microdata using the rich detail of these data to investigate the impact of demographic variables on demand behavior the system which we estimate is the quadratic expenditure system qes introduced by howe pollak and wales we evaluate four methods for incorporating demographic variables into the demand system three of these procedures imply parameter restrictions while the fourth does not tests on the restrictions imply that for our data unrestricted estimation yields significantly greater explanatory power

expanding contingent value sample estimates to aggregate benefit estimates current practices and proposed solutions a mail survey was administered to a panel of colorado consumers to obtain estimates of willingness to pay wtp for preserving union park detailed socioeconomic data for all surveyed individuals was available a priori we develop and employ the multiple

using conjoint analysis to derive estimates of compensating variation abstract we use several approaches to derive estimates of hicksian compensating variation from conjoint ratings data the different estimation approaches produced mixed results with respect to consistency with utility theory statistical significance of key variables magnitude of welfare estimates and confidence bounds on welfare estimates these findings suggest conjoint analyses are not a panacea for the problems being debated regarding contingent valuation and travel cost methodologies and conjoint questions appear to share many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions

multichoice logit modeling incomplete preference rankings of classical concerts in this article we develop an econometric model to analyze data on incomplete information on preferences the available information consists of groups of alternatives that are preferred to other groups of alternatives only for the most preferred group is a full ranking observed the resulting model is estimated on data concerning preferences on classical concerts

managing multiple international risks simultaneously with an optimal hedging model abstract a risk management model based on portfolio theory which accounts jointly for price quantity interest rate and exchange rate risks is developed and applied to cocoa and coffee production and exports in the ivory coast utilizing commodity and financial futures markets jointly the results show that a government export agency can reduce risks from 27 to 89 by following a multicommodity hedging program which manages several risks simultaneously the model and technique developed are applicable to many multiproduct firm and international risk management situations

is cultural heritage really important for tourists a contingent rating study in this article we present the results of a contingent rating study carried out on a sample of tourisits visiting scicli a sicilian town known for its baroque heritage in particular we focus on different attributes of tourism products namely season accommodation and cultural heritage to study how much each of these attributes weights in tourists preferences we also study how the socio demographic characteristics of people affect their evaluation of the different attributes of tourism products the heritage endowment appears to be far from being the most important factor this result is consistent across different socio demographic subgroups of interviewed persons

the valuation of the ijmeer nature reserve using conjoint analysis this paper describes an application of conjointanalysis the subject of the valuation study isthe ijmeer nature reserve which will be partlydestroyed when the new residential area ijburgis built this paper addresses the followingquestion what is the extent of the loss ofgreen and recreational values in this study the conjoint analysis consists of threedifferent analyses based on a three piecevaluation question the respondents are askedto subsequently rank mark and indicate theacceptability of a set of six cards

existing food policies and their relationship to hunger and nutrition the federal government subsidizes either partially or fully 95 million meals each day through the food assistance programs u s department of agriculture usda 1984 despite the scope and cost of the food assistance programs table 1 recent studies have concluded that the incidence of hunger in the united states is increasing porter and washington chou 1 although there is general agreement that hunger reemerged in the united states during the 1980s there is much controversy regarding the extent of hunger the physician task force on hunger in america estimated that 20 million americans suffer from hunger at least some time each month but the president s task force on food assistance indicated that it is currently impossible to estimate the extent of hunger because of the absence of reliable data the objectives of this paper are twofold a to review current food programs and policies and their objectives relative to existing nutritional and hunger problems and b to appraise the existing food assistance programs based on their stated objectives this discussion is not intended to be a thorough discourse on key elements of food policy but is designed to highlight developments in food policy relating to the food assistance programs nutrition and hunger recent developments in food assistance programs

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

food expenditures and household demographic composition in the us a demand systems approach food expenditures and subsistence quantities of poverty status and non poverty status us households are analysed within a linear expenditure system that postulates subsistence quantities to be linear combinations of demographic variables using the us bureau of labor statistics 1992 consumer expenditure survey and detailed monthly consumer price indices this article obtains expenditure elasticities own price elasticities and subsistence quantities for each income group across nine broadly aggregated food commodity groups elasticity estimates and subsistence quantity estimates differ across income groups supporting the premise that policies targeted at specific income groups should be based on the target group s elasticity estimates rather than average population elasticities parameter estimates are then used to simulate how subsistence quantities and own price elasticities can be expected to vary according to the demographic composition of the household within a specific income group

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

portfolio theory and the demand for futures the case of california cotton this paper examines the simultaneous choice of cropping patterns and futures positions it derives the demand for hedging as a function of the price of a hedge and the crop choice set it estimates these functions for california cotton farmers it finds that both the costs of hedging and the opportunity to diversify risk by growing other crops substantially change the optimal hedge for california cotton farmers

comparing heterogeneous consumption in u s and japanese meat and fish demand this article uses national quarterly data to conduct an empirical analysis of pre committed meat and fish demand by u s and japanese households using the generalized almost ideal demand system gaids pre committed demand represents the component of demand that is insensitive to both income and price adjustments u s consumers are found to hold significant positive pre committed demand for beef and pork while japanese consumers appear to possess significant positive pre committed demand for beef and fish this provides evidence to partially explain observed differences in japanese and u s consumer reactions to nonprice and nonincome effects in beef pork poultry and fish in addition based on inand out of sample performance the more general gaids is preferred to the almost ideal demand system aids for both the u s and japanese demand systems results lend to improved demand modeling efforts and more complete understanding of true market forces at hand in meat and fish markets for these culturally diverse consumer groups

estimation of complete demand systems from household budget data the linear and quadratic expenditure systems in this paper we explore two issues in empirical demand analysis the estimation of complete systems of demand equations using household budget data section i and the incorporation of demographic characteristics into such systems section ii although there are numerous studies which use time series data to estimate complete demand systems and many which estimate engel curves from household budget data there are virtually none which combine budget data from different periods to estimate complete systems since each budget study corresponds to a single price situation one might conjecture that estimation of complete systems would not be possible unless budget studies were available from a large number of periods this is incorrect in section i we argue that interesting complete demand systems can be estimated from a small number of budget studies despite the limited price variability represented in such data to demonstrate this we use budget study data for two periods to estimate a pair of related demand systems the familiar linear expenditure system les and a quadratic expenditure system qes a generalization of les in which the demand equations are quadratic in total expenditure the inclusion of demographic variables in the analysis of household consumption patterns is desirable because there are likely to be systematic differences in the consumption behavior of households with different demographic characteristics but the effects of demographic characteristics have seldom been studied within the framework of complete demand systems in section ii we propose translating as a general method for incorporating demographic variables into complete systems of demand equations this method has not previously been discussed as a general technique for bringing demographic variables into demand systems although it has been employed in several studies to improve the estimates of the les and the qes presented in section i we reestimate these two systems using translating to incorporate family size

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

the influence of recession and income strata on consumer demand for protein sources though meat products are considered the primary sources of protein in the u s people consume a variety of protein sources including meat fish eggs dairy products and beans this study expands

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