correcting for the endogeneity of pro environment behavioral choices in contingent valuation abstract in contingent valuation studies observed behavioral choices often enter as independent variables in the willingness to pay function however these variables may be endogenously determined when the error term in the behavioral model is correlated with the error term in the willingness to pay model we investigate the effects of correcting for the endogeneity of a variable namely membership status in environmental organizations that proxies unobservable characteristics of the respondents jointly modeling the membership variable and the willingness to pay response yields an estimate for the effect of the former that contradicts previous findings but is intuitive and agrees with theoretical expectations

an empirical study on taiwan s current account 1961 90 in this paper a simple intertemporal current account model is developed for a small open economy with imperfect capital markets the model nests both perfect and imperfect international capital mobilities as its special cases the model is empirically examined using taiwan s annual data for the period between 1961 and 1990 our results show that the model is able to explain some historical movements of taiwan s trade balance however in contrast to many findings from previous studies for other countries the model is rejected one important feature of the rejection of the model is that the actual trade balance series is much more volatile than can be explained by the model this is especially so for the periods when world oil shocks occurred these results indicates that changes in the terms of trade which our simple model neglects might be important factors in taiwan s current determination

a joint investigation of public support and public values case of instream flows in new mexico abstract instream flow can be defined as the flow of water in its natural channels without diversion alone among the western us states new mexico nm fails to provide any mechanism for the protection of instream flows and has a long history of political resistance to any change in the status quo using the combined results from two statewide telephone surveys this study jointly investigates stated voting preferences for a proposed institutional change and stated valuation preferences for minimum instream flow protection the contingent valuation cv question uses a dichotomous choice dc elicitation format and a voluntary contribution trust fund payment vehicle results show a highly significant positive correlation between expressed voting preferences and expressed valuation preferences additionally those individuals who respond yes to the voting question have an expected willingness to pay wtp of 80 with a 95 confidence interval ci that is always positive 62 97 while those who respond no to the voting question have an expected wtp that is actually slightly negative 6 with a 95 ci containing zero 14 2 taken together these results provide evidence of construct validity estimation results are also shown to be temporally reliable across repeated samples thus there is strong evidence of public support for instream flow protection and its associated nonmarket benefits such evidence helps to provide instream flow concerns with standing in future nm water policy debates prominent examples include explicitly defining beneficial use and public welfare to allow consideration of instream flow protection

semi nonparametric distribution free dichotomous choice contingent valuation abstract we apply a semi nonparametric distribution free estimator for binary discrete response data to the estimation of a dichotomous choice contingent valuation model using this estimator mean and median compensating and equivalent variation can be consistently estimated without making nontheoretically motivated assumptions on consumer preferences the approach is illustrated using a contingent valuation survey of willingness to pay for reduction of risk of premature death due to exposure to hazardous waste we find that a conventional parametric estimator and the proposed estimator give similar estimates of unconditional wtp but that conditional on explanatory variables the estimates are quite different

money income prices and interest rates including data from the 1980s sharply weakens the postwar time series evidence indicating significant relationships between money however defined and nominal income or between money and either real income or prices separately focusing on data from 1970 onward destroys this evidence altogether evidence indicating cointegration of real income and real money balances with due allowance for the effect of interest rates also deteriorates when the sample extends through the 1980s a positive finding is that the spread between the commercial paper rate and the treasury bill rate consistently contains highly significant information about future movements in real income copyright 1992 by american economic association

deficits government expenditures and tax smoothing in the united states 1929 1988 abstract barro s tax smoothing hypothesis tsh implies that the government runs a budget deficit whenever it anticipates the growth rate of national income to increase or the growth rate of its expenditure to decline we test this implication of the hypothesis by examining the implied cross equation restrictions on a vector autoregression var model using u s data for the period ranging from 1929 to 1988 our formal tests reject the hypothesis for the full sample period but cannot reject it for the post 1947 period further investigations show that the statistical rejection should be attributed to sharp differences in the statistical properties of the pre 1947 and the post 1947 data rather than the failure of the hypothesis itself

treatment of don t know responses in contingent valuation surveys a random valuation model abstract this paper provides a utility theoretic interpretation of don t know dk responses in contingent valuation surveys using a referendum elicitation procedure the random valuation model in this paper assumes that each respondent of a contingent valuation survey has an implicit valuation distribution rather than a single true value as traditionally assumed in his her mind if an offered referendum bid is not clearly different from the mean value of one s valuation distribution the respondent may give a dk answer to the cv referendum question based on this model a maximum likelihood procedure is proposed for estimating respondents willingness to pay for a nonmarket good with referendum contingent valuation data which include dk responses an empirical illustration of this estimation procedure is also provided

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

public support for reducing us reliance on fossil fuels investigating household willingness to pay for energy research and development abstract in order to reduce future dependence on foreign oil and emissions of co2 how much would us households be willing to pay annually to support increased energy research and development r d activities designed to replace fossil fuels does it matter whether the r d includes nuclear energy options we explore these questions using data from a unique set of national telephone and internet surveys using a national advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us household support of a national energy research and development fund erdf for investments in energy sources not reliant on fossil fuels while accounting for the level of un certainty in voting responses the wtp modeling includes a comparison of both classic maximum likelihood estimation mle and bayesian analysis evidence indicates that mle and bayesian analysis achieve similar statistical inference while the bayesian analysis provides a narrower confidence interval around estimated wtp

a randomized response approach to dichotomous choice contingent valuation in this paper we combine dichotomous choice contingent valuation dc cv with the randomized response rr method for asking sensitive survey questions rr increases respondents anonymity by allowing them to answer a sensitive question without revealing with certainty their true response we combine rr with dc cv to test for response effects in the valuation of a public good in a setting of expected social pressure while there are practical implementation issues our findings suggest that the rr technique is a useful tool for exploring social context effects rather than generalize from our pre test results we instead emphasize the development of the experimental technique

government borrowing and monetary accommodation this paper re examines the relationship between treasury borrowing and monetary growth examined previously with annual data by barro niskanen and hamburger and zwick our analysis based on quarterly data produces evidence of a positive and significant impact of total treasury borrowing upon the growth of the monetary base for the 1954 i 1961 ii and 1961 iii 1974 iv periods but an insignificant coefficient for the barro expenditure variable when the coefficient instability during the 1961 iii 1980 iv period is corrected by a dummy variable technique thy debt coefficient is positive and significant and remains stable for this two decade period

international capital mobility amongst the major industrialised countries too little or too much this paper examines capital flows among the major industrialized countries with a view to assessing m feldstein and c horioka s 1980 claim that international capital mobility is limited it argues that saving investment correlation tests are inherently flawed and proposes an alternative methodology for testing the degree of international capital mobility it finds that capital flows have been excessive in the sense that they are driven by speculative forces rather than by economic fundamentals copyright 1995 by royal economic society

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

disentangling preferences and expectations in stated preference analysis with respondent uncertainty the case of invasive species prevention abstract contingent valuation typically involves presenting the respondent with a choice to pay for a program intended to improve future outcomes such as a program to place parcels into conservation easement or a program to manage an invasive species deducing from these data the value of the good or bad at the core of the program the welfare gain generated by a parcel of conserved land for instance or the loss incurred by a species invasion often is not possible because respondent preferences are conflated with their expectations about future environmental outcomes in the absence of the program this paper formally demonstrates this conundrum in the context of a standard contingent valuation survey and examines the use of additional survey data to resolve it the application is to the prevention of lake invasions by eurasian watermilfoil myriophyllum spicatum an invasive aquatic plant that is present in many lakes in the northern u s and canada and a possible threat to many more respondents are shoreline property owners on lakes without eurasian watermilfoil the estimated per property welfare loss of a lake invasion is 30 550 for one model and 23 614 for another both of which are in reasonable agreement with estimates obtained from a recent hedonic analysis of eurasian watermilfoil invasions in the study area 16 and from a companion contingent valuation survey of shoreline property owners on already invaded lakes

alternative approaches for incorporating respondent uncertainty when estimating willingness to pay the case of the mexican spotted owl abstract this paper explores the sources and patterns of respondents uncertainty regarding their willingness to pay wtp and presents alternative approaches for incorporating this uncertainty into estimation of the logit model recently proposed approaches are compared to methods proposed in this paper which allows for incorporation of uncertainty regarding both yes and no responses these approaches are evaluated by comparing the goodness of fit and variability of mean wtp extreme recoding of uncertain yes responses as no responses reduces the logit goodness of fit and the precision of the wtp estimate incorporating the degree of uncertainty of yes responses results in the highest goodness of fit and the smallest variability of mean wtp among the various models addressing uncertainty a regression model is used to determine the significant determinants of respondent uncertainty

the net benefit of saving the asian elephant a policy and contingent valuation study reports results from a contingent valuation cv survey of willingness to pay wtp for the conservation of the asian elephant of a sample of urban residents living in three selected housing schemes in colombo the capital of sri lanka face to face surveys were conducted using an interview schedule is a non linear logit regression model is used to analyse the respondents responses for the payment principle questions and to identify the factors that influence their responses we investigate whether urban residents wtp for the conservation of elephants is sufficient to compensate farmers for the damage caused by elephants we find that the beneficiaries the urban residents could compensate losers the fanners in the areas affected by human elephant conflict hec and be better off than in the absence of elephants in sri lanka therefore there is a strong economic case for the conservation of the wild elephant population in sri lanka however we have insufficient data to determine the optimal level of this elephant population in the kaldor hicks sense nevertheless the current population of elephant in sri lanka is kaldor hicks preferable to having none c 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

congressional influence on u s monetary policy abstract congressional influence is generally discounted or ignored in political models of federal reserve behavior here i show that changes in the leadership of the senate banking committee are significantly correlated with monetary base growth more liberal committee leaders are associated with significantly higher base growth other factors held constant the result is shown to hold across several econometric specifications and different definitions of the congressional preference variable

trade and payments regime and the balance of payments in ghana abstract by 1982 the ghanaian economy was in the doldrums facing a severe foreign exchange constraint this state of the economy was attributed partly to the trade and exchange rate policies which had created distorsions and disincentives against exporting in particular and production in general since 1983 ghana has for the second time embarked on a trade and payments liberalization program this study examines the effect of the changing trade and payments regime on the balance of payments of ghana it provides some answers as to why the first liberalization episode was not sustained it also contrasts the experience of controlled and liberalized trade regime episodes the paper concludes by providing some lessons from the ghanaian experience

consumption smoothing capital controls and the current account in ghana much of the empirical evidence on developing economies indicates that the basic intertemporal model of the current account fails to predict the dynamics of the actual current account series this article argues that the model can predict the dynamics of the current account series if it is appropriately adjusted to reflect the nature of capital mobility and exchange rate policies in these countries using data on ghana that span across capital control and liberalized regimes this article reports three finding first consistent with the existing empirical evidence the basic model fails to predict the dynamics of the actual current account second extending the basic model to capture variations in interest rates and exchange rates better explains the path of the actual current account balances only during the liberalized regime third tests of asymmetric access to the international financial market indicate that economic agents in ghana could not use the international financial market to smooth their con

political regime change and the real interest rate the effect of changes in policy regimes on real interest rates has important implications for financial and economic theory there is little current evidence that policy regime changes have any impact on the level of real interest rates we use large political changes as our measure of policy regime changes changes in presidential administration are more significantly correlated with real rate changes than are changes in the federal reserve chair or the mean shift points identified by garcia and perron 1996 using time series methods we also show that change of party control of congress is a significant factor explaining real rates we argue that theoretical models built on the assumptions of constant or policy invariant real interest rates are at variance with the empirical evidence

congressional oversight committee influence on u s monetary policy revisited abstract grier 1991 shows that monetary policy is influenced by congress in that increases in the liberality of the senate banking committee leadership are significantly positively correlated with monetary base growth chopin cole and ellis 1996 claim that the house leadership statistically dominates the senate leadership for predicting money growth but that the direction of the effect is perverse a more liberal house leadership is associated with a lower rate of base growth in this paper i show that chopin cole and ellis s claims are unfounded properly measured both house and senate leadership have a significant positive effect on base growth over grier s 1991 original sample in later periods money growth regressions are not sufficiently stable to support hypothesis tests

macroeconomic conditions and committee re election rates the traditional literature on the link between the macro economy and house elections follows kramer 1971 and assumes all members of the president s party are equally vulnerable to voter wrath caused by economic changes using presidential party return rates from 10 house committees over the time period 1916 1996 i find the impact of economic conditions at the polls varies by committee generally committees that manage money or provide a public good are the most sensitive to economic fluctuations contrastingly members of the public works committee and the rules committee are more insulated from electoral culpability due to economic fluctuations

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

congressional policy preferences and u s monetary policy abstract this paper shows that the evidence of congressional impotence in influencing u s monetary policy presented in chopin et al 1996 is robust to inclusion of a dummy variable for the tenure of house banking committee chairman wright patman this result is in contrast to the assertion of grier 1996 further we show that specification problems of models of congressional influence over a sample period that extends beyond the mid 1980s can be the result of omitted variable bias when macroeconomic variables including oil price shocks are included in the model our results continue to hold contrasting our results with grier s indicates that the evidence concerning congressional influence is sensitive to the measure of congressional preferences

congress and the federal reserve we examine legislative activity targeting the federal reserve to determine when congress takes an interest in the fed and whether this interest has an effect on monetary policy using a keyword search of the thomas catalogue for the period from january 1973 through december 2010 we identify 1575 bills in the house and 728 bills in the senate pertaining to the federal reserve we classify these bills into several categories including those that expand fed powers and those that threaten or usurp fed powers using the romer and romer 2004 series of monetary policy shocks we find that prior to the early 1980s the fed responded to bills credibly threatening fed powers by lowering the federal funds target below that prescribed by current and forecast economic conditions however this accommodation ceased following the end of the non borrowed reserves targeting period in october 1982 analyzing the determinants of bill sponsorship we find that high unemployment high inflation and high long term real borrowing costs failures of the fed along the three dimensions of its mandate all lead to a greater number of bills seeking to alter the fed s powers importantly we also find that the relative importance of these three dimensions has changed over time under chairmen burns and miller congress took greater interest when unemployment was high under chairman greenspan congress took greater interest when inflation was high we believe that these findings are consistent with the view that the lessons of the great inflation changed the public perception of the fed s macroeconomic responsibilities which in turn better aligned congressional views on policy with those of the fed and allowed the fed to better resist remaining congressional pressure to its independence

a political model of monetary policy with application to the real fed funds rate abstract we construct an empirical model of u s monetary policy assuming that the federal reserve is an ordinary federal bureaucracy we use the real federal funds rate as our policy measure and show the existence of significant executive legislative and bureaucratic influence on the real rate of interest from 1961 to 1996 we find that presidential party is an adequate statistical measure of executive influence and that the voting scores of the senate banking committee leadership best represent legislative influence we argue that political changes cause systematic and predictable changes in monetary policy

further investigation of voluntary contribution contingent valuation fair share time of contribution and respondent uncertainty in the spirit of randall s resource energy econom 20 197 206 1998 argument for focusing on mapping the performance characteristics of alternative contingent valuation designs and formats the focus of this study is on three tests of the voluntary contribution mechanism we investigate the response effects of three crossed treatments 1 an informational treatment that randomly varies the total cost of providing the good to identify possible fair share effects 2 a split sample informational treatment that makes the time of contribution explicit and 3 elicitation formats that allow respondent uncertainty both as a follow up to a dichotomous choice question and asked directly in a split sample treatment

congressional influence on u s monetary policy a reconsideration of the evidence abstract one of the few works that finds strong evidence of congressional influence on u s monetary policy is grier 1991 which finds a direct relationship between the liberalism of the senate oversight committee leadership and monetary base growth we extend this analysis by considering a longer sample period and by considering the preferences of house oversight committee leaders in addition to senators grier s evidence is not robust to these extensions where we do find correlation between congressional preferences and monetary base growth increased liberalism of congressional oversight committees is associated with lower monetary base growth

discrete choice under preference uncertainty an improved structural model for contingent valuation abstract this paper is concerned with discrete choice contingent value estimation in the presence of response errors we attempt to extend the theoretical frameworks developed by hanemann 1984 amer j agric econom 66 332 341 and cameron 1988 j environ econom management 15 355 379 by introducing preference uncertainty with individual respondents we assume that respondents have incomplete knowledge about their true valuation of a nonmarket resource and thus may give wrong yes no answers on whether or not to pay a given bid amount for the resource a post decisional confidence measure for each observed yes no answer is elicited for characterizing the degree of preference uncertainty with the help of this confidence measure we develop an improved structural model for deriving value estimates data from a forest environment valuation survey are used for the empirical estimations

does government ideology matter in monetary policy a panel data analysis for oecd countries this paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in oecd countries we use quarterly data in the 1980 1 2005 4 period and exclude emu countries our taylor rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time variant index of central bank independence with government ideology the results show that leftist governments have somewhat lower short term nominal interest rates than rightwing governments when central bank independence is low in contrast short term nominal interest rates are higher under leftist governments when central bank independence is high the effect is more pronounced when exchange rates are flexible our findings are compatible with the view that leftist governments in an attempt to deflect blame of their traditional constituencies have pushed market oriented policies by delegating monetary policy to conservative central bankers

tough and easy choices testing the influence of utility difference on stated certainty in choice in choice experiments respondents in stated preference studies may be uncertain about their preferences for the good presented to them inspired by wang j environ econ manag 32 219 232 1997 we hypothesize that respondents stated certainty in choice increases with the utility difference between the alternative chosen and the best alternative to that we test this hypothesis using data from two independent choice experiments both focusing on nature values in modelling respondents self reported certainty in choice we find evidence that the stated level of certainty increases significantly as utility difference in choice sets increases in addition stated certainty increases with income furthermore there is some evidence that male respondents are inherently more certain in their choices than females and a learning effect may increase stated certainty we find evidence of this in the first study where the good is described in rather broad and generic terms but not in the second study where a more specific description of the good is used

interest rates exchange rates and present value models of the current account this paper develops a testable intertemporal model of the current account that allows for variable interest rates and exchange rates these additional variables are channels through which external shocks may influence the domestic current account the restrictions from the theoretical model are subjected to present value tests using quarterly data from three small open economies the paper finds that including the interest rate and exchange rate improves the fit of the intertemporal model over what was found in previous studies the model predictions better replicate the volatility of current account data and better explain historical episodes of current account imbalance

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

the current account in developing countries a perspective from the consumption smoothing approach according to the consumption smoothing view a high degree of capital mobility implies that agents are able to fully smooth their consumption in the face of shocks this article develops aframework to test whether indeed the current account in developing countries acts as a buffer to smooth consumption in the face of shocks to national cash flow which is defined as output less investment less government expenditure using vector autoregression analysis we estimate the optimal consumption smoothing current account with data from a sample of forty five developing countries we find that for a majority of the countries the hypothesis offull consumption smoothing cannot be rejected suggesting that capital mobility may after all be quite high in this group of countries

real interest rates home goods and optimal external borrowing the paper investigates the optimal time path of consumption and external borrowing in the dependent economy model the small country faces given world prices and a given world real interest rate the presence of a home goods sector implies that the relevant real interest rate appropriate to consumption decisions depends on the rate of change of the real price of home goods the paper shows how transitory disturbances in output or in the world real interest rate affect the time profile of consumption and the trade balance in particular it is shown that the presence of a home goods sector dampens the consumption effects of changes in the world interest rate

external shocks consumption smoothing and capital mobility in india evidence from an intertemporal optimization approach we examine the solvency of india s current account ca in the post liberalization period using intertemporal optimization approach to the ca using quarterly data ranging from 1996q1 to 2014q2 we

contingent valuation theoretical advances and empirical tests since the noaa panel beyond a simple cost effectiveness role and for many policy issues where all the goods or impacts at issue are not readily priced in the market the relevance of economics depends to a large degree on the ability to use contingent valuation cv and other closely related stated preference approaches the government s use of cv as a tool to place a monetary value on damages from the exxon valdez oil spill brought forth strong industry objections to the use of cv in response the national oceanic and atmospheric administration noaa one of the trustee agencies in the exxon valdez case commissioned a blue ribbon panel chaired by kenneth arrow and robert solow to review the use of cv in natural resource damage assessment proceedings the panel s report arrow et al and transmittal letter to the noaa general counsel concluded cv studies can produce estimates reliable enough to be the starting point for a judicial or administrative determination of nat

deficits politics and money growth the authors examine the linkage between federal deficits and money growth by allowing the fed s resp onse to any given deficit to vary systematically according to how the deficit is generated and the party affiliation of the current presid ent in equations for m1 and monetary base growth the structural def icit is consistently significant and invariant across political chang es while the cyclical component of the deficit or a direct measure of the business cycle is significant only during the tenure of democ ratic presidents copyright 1987 by oxford university press

bias in discrete response contingent valuation abstract the empirical literature on discrete response contingent valuation has found that seemingly innocuous changes in the statistical models estimated result in significantly different point estimates of willingness to pay this paper hypothesizes and tests several potential explanations for these results first it investigates and compares the biases inherent in single bounded and double bounded maximum likelihood estimation procedures and examines how they react to various bid designs and sample sizes then it examines the presence and identification of outliers in binary choice data and how these outliers influence estimation finally it presents an alternative approach to addressing the issue of outliers which explicitly acknowledges the possibility of upwardly biased response probabilities

construct validity of dichotomous and polychotomous choice contingent valuation questions in this note we conduct construct validity tests for dichotomous choice dc and polychotomous choice pc contingent valuation questions contrary to previous results we find that dc and pc estimates of willingness to pay are theoretically valid convergent valid and similar in terms of statistical precision similar to previous results pc respondents are less sensitive to information than dc respondents we conclude that dc and pc valuation questions are construct valid for this study sequential pc valuation questions could be used in studies where obtaining information about the certainty or intensity of respondent preferences would be useful

does realism matter in contingent valuation surveys the importance of stressing the realism or policy relevance of a contingent valuation cv survey is commonly recognized by cv researchers this paper focuses on the relationship between the probability that a subject s response will result in real consequences and the subject s accurate reporting of willingness to pay results from experiments support the argument that efforts to make contingent valuation surveys real are important however our results also suggest that the connection between the survey and the likelihood of a payment must be rather powerful before surveys generate accurate reporting of willingness to pay for a public good

present value tests of an intertemporal model of the current account abstract this paper first demonstrates that in a simple intertemporal open economy model the current account is equal to the expected decline of the present discounted value of net output of a country net output is defined as gross domestic product less the sum of investment plus government spending it then uses econometric methods for present value models to analyze the current account for four countries in two of these countries the model does a satisfactory job of explaining the current account

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

respondent experience and contingent valuation of environmental goods abstract respondent experience i e a respondent s information set has long been suspected to influence contingent valuation estimates of environmental values we assess the influence of experience by explicitly modeling the relationship between respondent experience and both fitted individual resource values and the conditional variance of these estimated values using three different joint specifications for experience and wtp normal censored normal poisson censored normal and zero inflated poisson censored normal we find discrete jumps in resource values as experience increases from zero and that more experienced respondents have smaller conditional variances simulation of arbitrary levels of experience allows standardization of the amount of information when developing welfare estimates