credit constraints and the phenomenon of child labor abstract this paper develops an overlapping generations general equilibrium model where inefficient child labor arises due to credit constraints it derives a positive relationship between inequality in the distribution of income and the incidence of child labor looking at policy implications it shows how trade sanctions against countries using child labor may fail to reduce the incidence of child labor it discusses some alternative policies to reduce the incidence of child labor

theoretical and empirical advantages of truncated count data estimators for analysis of deer hunting in california truncated poisson and truncated negative binomial count data models as well as standard count data models ols nonlinear normal and truncated nonlinear normal mle were used to estimate demand for deer hunting in california the truncated count data estimators and their properties are reviewed a large sample n 2223 allowed random segmenting of the data into specification estimation and out of sample prediction portions statistics of interest are therefore unbiased by the specification search and the prediction results allow comparison of the statistical models robustness the new estimators are found to be more appropriate for estimating and predicting demand and social benefits than the alternative estimators based on a variety of criteria

human capital and inequality dynamics the role of education technology the paper offers a unified way to examine several puzzles on inequality dynamics it focuses on differences in the education technology and their effects on income distributions our overlapping generations economy has the following features 1 consumers are heterogenous with respect to ability and parental human capital and 2 intergenerational transfers take place via parental direct investment in education and public education financed by taxes possibly with a level determined by majority voting we explore several variations in the production of human capital some attributed to home education and others related to public education and indicate how various changes in education technologies affect the intragenerational income inequality along the equilibrium path

when are forest visits valued the most an analysis of the seasonal demand for forest recreation in poland while the demand for forest recreation has been a topic covered in many studies little attention has been paid so far to seasonal demand in a forest context the seasonal analysis is particularly interesting because of inter temporal change in forest attributes throughout the year which can influence trip taking behavior in this paper the model of seasonal forest visitation is developed to provide a richer understanding of the role played by seasonal fluctuation on a distribution of forest social benefits the analysis is based on an on site survey conducted in four forests in poland results show that the most valuable forest trips are those taken in fall and that seasonal trips are separable

two nested constant elasticity of substitution models of recreational participation and site choice an alternatives model and an expenditures model two demand modelsof recreational participation and s ite choice are developed an alternatives model and an expenditures model both assume maximization of utility over the year so allow for diminishing marginal utility they do not impose the restrictive assumption that where one goes on a trip isindependent of where one plansto go on other occas ions es timation iswith a nes ted constant elasticity of substitution preference ordering it is relatively easy to estimate because of global regularity it allowss itesto be complements and it hasthe potential to be locally flexible the application is to atlantic salmon fishing

estimation of the inconvenience cost of a rolling blackout in the residential sector the case of south korea abstract south korea is experiencing a serious imbalance in electricity supply and demand which caused a blackout in 2011 the korean government has planned to perform a rolling blackout to prevent large scale blackouts when the electricity supply reserve margin reaches less than 1 million kw this study attempts to estimate the inconvenience cost of household customers from a rolling blackout by using survey data to this end we apply a contingent valuation method cvm to measure their willingness to pay wtp in order to avoid a rolling blackout i e the suspension of electricity supply in this study we estimate the inconvenience costs stemming from both an unannounced and an announced rolling blackout as a result we find that the inconvenience cost of a sudden rolling blackout is estimated at 3900 67 krw 3 56 usd per month per household while that of an announced rolling blackout stands at 3102 95 krw 2 83 usd this difference in costs shows that people place value in receiving prior notice of a blackout and that inconvenience costs of between 166 0 billion krw 151 6 million usd and 174 3 billion krw 159 2 million usd per year can be reduced nationwide by giving households advance notice of a planned rolling blackout

site aggregation in a random utility model of recreation random utility models are commonly used to model the choice among a set of alternatives often due to data or computational constraints the analyst must use aggregated alternatives to estimate the model these aggregates are defined by averaging characteristics of alternatives over prespecified groups in this analysis we demonstrate that unless some very restrictive conditions hold the use of aggregated alternatives will lead to biased results then using a data set of recreational fishing in wisconsin we show the effects that this bias can have on the results estimated from the model

reconciling models of recreational route and site choices when employing travel cost models the unit cost of the essential input travel in the household s production of a recreation experience is central to obtaining the preference structure for the recreational good however little attention has been given to the choice of the route although the route defines the monetary and time costs used to compute travel costs conventional wisdom considers time and money costs in determining the cost per mile in the estimation of site choices but does not use both in determining the route choices and mileages this paper investigates whether models of recreational site and route choices can be reconciled

a note on choice of residential location in travel cost demand models where x is number of visits to a site p is price y is a k x 1 vector of observed individual characteristics and e is a random component 1 is a 1 x k parameter vector and p is a scalar parameter hundreds of models with this basic demand relationship as a basis have been estimated see smith s 1989 review my concern is that the price used in this model may be endogenous because people base decisions about where to live in part on proximity to recreation sites if so unobserved taste characteristics in the error term e will be

the demand for site specific recreational activities a characteristics approach abstract a model of constrained utility maximizing behavior is developed to explain how a representative individual allocates his ski days among alternative sites the physical characteristics of the ski areas and the individual s skiing ability are explicit arguments in the utility function the budget allocation is given along with the parametric costs to ski including travel costs entrance fees equipment costs and the opportunity cost of his time shares a site s share being the proportion of ski days that the individual spends at that site are derived and assumed multinomially distributed a stochastic specification which maintains the inherent properties of the shares maximum likelihood estimation confirms the basic hypothesis that costs ability and characteristics all are important determinants of the sites shares the model explains a large proportion of the skier s allocation of ski days a multinomial logit model of skier behavior is also developed and maximum likelihood estimates of its parameters are obtained examination of the summary statistics from my model and the logit model indicates that my model predicts the skier s choice of sites better than the logit model

abstinence from child labor and profit seeking abstract opponents of child labor suggest that demand driven mechanisms can eliminate such practices if consumers prefer adult labor products they suggest that labeling will drive out child labor products i show that under bertrand competition even with complete information this is unlikely when products are differentiated only by labor type such a scheme requires at least three firms and child labor costs at least as large as adult labor costs with additional lines of differentiation child labor is eliminated only when the adult labor costs are smaller thus while labeling may reduce child labor it is unlikely to eliminate it

modeling recreation demand in a poisson system of equations an analysis of the impact of international exchange rates we extend count data travel cost modeling by developing a utility theoretic system of semilogarithmic recreation demand equations the restrictions required to make the system utility theoretic are applied during estimation the model is applied to individual wilderness recreation trips in a system of four canadian wilderness parks the resulting demand system is used to examine the impacts of changing u s canadian currency exchange rates on participation and welfare of u s recreationists

a structural equations approach to modeling consumptive recreation demand abstract in this analysis we develop a two equation structural model of a count travel cost model of recreational angling demand and angling success by modeling the two equations jointly we avoid the difficulties associated with the usual approach which estimates the demand for recreational fishing sites assuming the existence of an exogenous measure of fishing quality our analysis explicitly develops the joint log likelihood function that combines the two processes we estimate our model using full information maximum likelihood methods

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

a semi parametric estimator for revealed and stated preference data an application to recreational beach visitation abstract we present a semi parametric approach for jointly estimating revealed and stated preference recreation demand models the discrete factor method dfm allows for correlation across demand equations and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity our model is a generalized negative binomial with random effects the random effect is composed of a discrete representation of unobserved heterogeneity and a factor loading that translates the heterogeneity measure into a demand effect our empirical application is to beach recreation demand in north carolina statistical evidence supports our dfm specification which imposes less restriction on model dispersion and incorporates unobserved heterogeneity in a flexible manner elasticity estimates are smaller than those derived from models with parametric specifications for unobserved heterogeneity and welfare estimates are slightly larger and less precise while parametric models clearly dominate if the specification of unobserved heterogeneity is correct the semi parametric dfm provides a flexible alternative in cases where mis specification is a potential problem

stability chaos and multiple attractors a single agent makes a difference abstract this paper provides an example in which a slight behavioral heterogeneity may fundamentally change the dynamical properties of a nonlinear cobweb market with a quadratic cost function and an isoelastic demand function we consider two types of producers cautious adapters and naive optimizers in a market of naive optimizers a single cautious adapter stabilizes the otherwise exploding market in a market of cautious adapters a single naive optimizer may destabilize the market without him there exists at most one periodic attractor in the market but with him there may appear many and even infinitely many coexisting periodic attractors

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

wealth taxation and economic growth abstract this paper investigates the effect of wealth taxation on economic growth using an endogenous growth model with the altruistic bequest motive we introduce intragenerational productivity differentials of human capital formation resulting in differences of growth rates among individuals the economy is divided into two groups those who leave bequests to physical capital investment and those who leave bequests to human capital investment an increase in taxes on life cycle savings will reduce the intragenerational growth differences while the effect of taxation on bequests wage income or consumption on intragenerational growth differences is ambiguous

evaluation of nonmarket goods recovering unconditional preferences a new approach is proposed for the evaluation of nonmarket goods starting from a complete or incomplete conditional demand system for market goods which is observable and depends on nonmarket goods this information is not sufficient to recover the underlying preference ordering of the representative consumer the central idea is to employ additional marginal willingness to pay functions for the nonmarket goods since they can be estimated either together with the demand system or in a separate step they are less arbitrary than the assumptions or hypotheses usually made if the entire system is weakly integrable the underlying ordering and appropriate welfare measures can be derived in this article i investigate the relationship between conditional and unconditional demand systems present sufficient conditions for weak integrability and demonstrate the practicability of the procedure proposed by means of three examples

a note on estimating nested constant elasticity of substitution preferences for outdoor recreation a generalized version of a well known statistical result is used to suggest an alternative strategy for estimating nested constant elasticity of substitution preferences for recreation demand parameter and welfare estimates from nested constant elasticity of substitution count data demand system models are presented and compared to estimates from the multinomial approaches developed previously a significant advantage of the count data estimation strategy over the multinomial based approaches is that the analyst avoids the difficulties associated with choice occasion specification and interpretation copyright 2003 oxford university press

ranking income distributions a large variety of policy questions involve choices between social states and a consequent ordering of the feasible alternatives when these social states are related to the levels of welfare experienced by individuals or households two central issues stand out in determining the relative desirability of different social outcomes one of these is the essentially positive exercise of achieving comparability between households with different characteristics such as composition or preferences operating in different environments for example facing different price structures the other concerns the normative judgments implicit in the evaluation of alternative allocations of resourcesthe emphasis placed on inequality between households and the extent to which greater inequality can be compensated by higher average living standards this paper focuses on the second of these issues and in doing so we abstract from the problem of household comparability by considering a population of n households identical in all respects except for their incomes the question of ordering social states then becomes one of ranking income distributions over a group of anonymous households or individuals borrowing the usual assumptions imposed on consumer preferences we may suppose that a social ordering of income distributions can be represented by a welfare function 2

social status and economic performance a survey abstract this survey combines ideas and results from sociology and economics recognizing that economic decisions are often shaped by social concerns and influences based on the sociological literature we define social status and describe its measurement we then describe the role of social status in economic analysis of saving and consumption wages and economic growth we review recent work on status determination in equilibrium including evolutionary models we conclude with some remarks on the need for further interaction between sociology and economics

valuing cultural world heritage sites an application of the travel cost method to mont saint michel abstractthis article using the zonal version of the travel cost method ztcm provides the first economic valuation of recreational trips to mont saint michel msm the msm was designated as united nations educational scientific and cultural organization world heritage site in 1979 and is the most visited coastal site in france the potential effects on consumer surplus cs estimates of some aspects of the ztcm are considered namely the treatment of the multiple purpose destination mp d trips the inclusion of the opportunity cost of time oct in the recreation demand model and the heterogeneity in the preferences the heterogeneity in the preferences is examined through a random parameters poisson model rppm the rppm generalizes the standard poisson model spm by allowing coefficients of explanatory variables to vary randomly across geographical units rather than being fixed our results show that 1 substantial cs values are associated with the msm 2 excluding ignoring mp d trips resul

measuring angling quality in count data models of recreational fishing a non nested test of three approaches this paper develops a methodology for investigating different specifications of angling quality in recreational demand models the methodology is used to compare three alternative specifications of the relationship between angling demand and site quality the site quality alternatives include chemical concentrations biological stress indices based on the chemicals and catch per unit effort the three alternatives are differentiated using a likelihood ratio non nested testing procedure

estimating social welfare using count data models an application to long run recreation demand under conditions of endogenous stratification and truncation this paper develops a negative binomial model of recreation demand that corrects for both truncation and endogenous stratification this approach recovers the demand associated with the general population not just the users of the site this model demonstrates the importance of the joint nature of the population s latent demand for trips and the consumer surplus associated with those trips the empirical results provide an estimate of the willingness to pay by washington state residents for hiking opportunities in the cascade mountain range these results are used to forecast total trips and willingness to pay over the next forty years copyright 1995 by mit press

the structure of constant elasticity demand models the demand model with constant price and income elasticities has been used extensively in applied agricultural economics this paper analyzes the structure of incomplete systems of constant elasticity demand functions it is demonstrated that there is a duality theory for incomplete demand systems that is analogous to the duality theory for complete systems this theory permits the recovery of that portion of the direct and indirect preferences pertaining to the goods of interest and we can calculate exact welfare measures for changes in income and in the prices of these goods for an incomplete system of constant elasticity demands the slutsky symmetry restrictions for integrability are presented and the implied structure of the direct and indirect preferences with respect to the prices and goods of interest is derived

education economic growth and measured income inequality in this paper education simultaneously affects growth and income inequality more education does not necessarily decrease inequality when the latter is assessed by the lorenz dominance criterion increases in education first increase and then decrease growth as well as income inequality when measured by the gini coefficient there is no clear functional relationship between growth and measured income inequality the model identifies regimes of this relationship which depend crucially on the production and schooling technology conventional growth regressions with human capital and inequality as regressors may miss the richness of the underlying nonlinearities but viewed as approximations may still provide important information on the nonlinear relationship between growth and education

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

count data models and the problem of zeros in recreation demand analysis in this paper we develop a count data model for consumer demand which explicitly allows for a large number of zero observations for the dependent variable and separation of the participation versus quantity decisions the advantages of the model over traditional censored and count demand models are brought out and the appropriate consumer surplus measures are derived by introducing a random error term into the traditional count model demand function the appropriate measure of expected consumer surplus for count models is derived the model is illustrated using a recreational survey of the general population

a canadian customer survey to assess power system reliability worth a common approach used in quantifying the worth or benefit of electric service reliability is to estimate the customer costs monetary losses associated with power interruptions customer surveys are often used to determine interruption costs the ieee power systems research group has conducted surveys of canadian electric utility customers in the residential commercial and industrial sectors these surveys were sponsored by the natural sciences and engineering research council and seven participating utilities this paper presents the overall results of these surveys with emphasis on the cost results

an assessment of the empirical magnitude of option values for environment goods this paper provides an empirical assessment of the magnitude of option values relative to expected surplus using a model presented by larson and flacco 1992 option values and option prices are computed for both simulated data sets and actual estimates of recreation demands results indicate that option values engendered by price and income uncertainty are generally quite a small percent of expected surplus

characteristics consumer surplus and new activities a proposed ski area abstract physical characteristics of activities and personal characteristics of the individual are incorporated into an expenditure function this function is used to define the compensating and equivalent variation for changes in the costs or physical characteristics of the existing activities or for a proposed activity as a function of its proposed characteristics and cost the model is used to estimate the demand for and the cvs and evs associated with the development of a colorado ski area these vary across skiers as a function of skiing ability value of time location of residence and skiing budget

estimating preferences for outdoor recreation a comparison of continuous and count data demand system frameworks abstract continuous and count data demand system models have emerged as attractive alternatives to the discrete choice random utility maximization models rums that currently dominate the seasonal multi site recreation demand literature this paper compares the frameworks conceptually and investigates their empirical performance with a common data set although the two modeling approaches employ substantially different behavioral and econometric assumptions results from a recreation application based on the 1997 iowa wetlands survey suggest that qualitatively similar policy inferences arise from the competing structures

wealth inequality educational environment and school enrolment evidence from mexico using data from the extended section of the 2010 mexican census 2 9 million households we study how school enrolment is associated with wealth inequality and with the educational environment the child is exposed to at the household and municipal levels we provide robust evidence of wealth inequality as a negative predictor of school enrolment for children in primary secondary and high school age ranges while a positive role is played by the educational environment through the introduction of interaction terms we account for how economic and educational variables are intertwined at both the household and the municipal level and we are able to illustrate the considerable heterogeneity in the role of adult education for households at different standards of living

going to the woods is going home recreational benefits of a larger urban forest site a travel cost analysis for berlin germany we present an application of the travel cost method to a large urban forest site in berlin germany the analysis is based on a large onsite survey and the same survey administered online although such applications are rare in an urban context applying a seasonal demand model to the case of grunewald is possible because the distances travelled are relatively large the majority of the respondents use motorized or public transport and grunewald is a large and unique urban forest site with very few substitutes the main results are the following 1 the demand for visits to grunewald is less elastic if only berlin residents are taken into account compared to when residents from the entire larger urban area of berlin are considered 2 estimated consumer surpluses are therefore greater if only berlin residents are taken into consideration 3 in addition demand is more elastic for the internet sample than for the on site sample 4 results suggest a lower bound overall consumer surplus of 14 95 per visit the results indicate that despite its inherent limitations non market economic valuation through the travel cost method can provide administrations with a powerful tool to monetize the benefits of urban forest recreation to increase public funding and redirect resources to address intensified use

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

valuing water quality as a function of water quality measures employing a unique and rich data set of water quality attributes in conjunction with detailed household characteristics and trip information we develop a mixed logit model of recreational lake usage and undertake thorough model specification and fitting procedures to identify the best set of explanatory variables and their functional form for the estimated model our empirical analysis shows that individuals are responsive to the full set of water quality measures used by biologists to identify the impaired status of lakes thus changes in these quality measures are not simply a scientific exercise but they also translate into changes in the recreational usage patterns and well being of individual households willingness to pay wtp estimates are reported based on improvements in these physical measures

the willingness to pay by households for improved reliability of electricity service in north cyprus abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households wtp is estimated using the payment ladder contingent valuation cv data from 350 in person interviews in north cyprus in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 13 8 increase in their monthly electricity bill a cost benefit analysis cba indicates that the annualized economic benefits of improved reliability of the electricity service would be approximately usd 35 6 million for the residential sector this figure is more than enough to finance the investments needed to completely eradicate any electricity outages in addition the fuel savings from substituting the generation of the new plants for the old plants would yield about usd 32 9 million per year in fuel savings hence a change from the current low reliability policy to one of providing a high quality service would yield an economic net present value to the residents of north cyprus of twice the investment costs or usd 173 3 million within five years

modeling hunting demand in the presence of a bag limit with tests of alternative specifications abstract bag limits complicate the measurement of consumer surplus from hunting because the point at which hunters cease taking trips is not necessarily the point at which they are unwilling to pay for additional hunting trips we develop and apply an econometric model which accounts for bag limits to data of deer hunting in california and we employ several alternative models that do not account for the bag limit we conduct non nested testing of the models and estimate welfare measures at existing conditions and after a quality improvement confidence intervals are provided for the welfare measurements

sea bass angling in ireland a structural equation model of catch and effort abstract the relationship between angling effort and catch is well recognised in particular that effort influences catch rates but increased catch which can be considered an attribute of fishery quality may influence effort in terms of number of fishing trips this suggests bi directional feedback between catch and effort in many travel cost applications little attention has been given to this endogeneity problem in this paper we expand the application of structural equation models to address this issue by jointly estimating demand effort and catch functions using a cross section dataset of sea bass anglers we propose two separate joint models first we include expected catch as an explanatory variable in the demand equation in the second we reverse the causality and use the expected number of fishing days as a covariate in the catch function the two approaches produce similar model estimates and perform better at predicting anglers catch and effort than standard models the findings confirm that sea bass angling is highly valued with a consumer surplus of about 282 318 per angler per day though this is likely to be biased upwards furthermore higher catches result in more days fished on average in a 2 1 ratio whereas on average an additional fishing day results in 3 4 additional bass caught

a latent class approach to modeling endogenous spatial sorting in zonal recreation demand models a method for incorporating unobserved heterogeneity into aggregate count data frameworks is presented and used to control for endogenous spatial sorting in zonal recreation models the method is based on latent class analysis which has become a popular tool for analyzing heterogeneous preferences with individual data but has not yet been applied to aggregate count data the method is tested using data on backcountry hikers for a southern california study site and performs well for relatively small numbers of classes the latent class model produces substantially smaller welfare estimates compared to a constrained version that assumes homogeneity throughout the population

alternative models of recreational off highway vehicle site demand a controversial recreation activity is off highway vehicle use off highway vehicle use is controversial because it is incompatible with most other activities and is extremely hard on natural eco systems this study estimates utility theoretic incomplete demand systems for four off highway vehicle sites since two sets of restrictions are equally consistent with utility theory both are imposed and the best fitting restrictions are identified using voung s non nested testing scheme the demand system is modeled using both poisson and negative binomial ii distributions data are provided by a survey conducted at four recreational off highway vehicle ohv sites in western north carolina

income inequality human capital accumulation and economic performance we show that greater income equality implies higher human capital accumulation and economic performance in an overlapping generations model with heterogeneity in income and talent given liquidity constraints and declining marginal utility individuals with a given level of talent receive education if their initial income is higher than a threshold level and the threshold is lower for more talented individuals assuming the more talented create more human capital when educated greater initial income equality for one generation then imply not only higher aggregate human capital accumulated by that generation but an improvement in all subsequent generations initial income distributions

a framework to implement supply and demand side contingency management in reliability assessment of restructured power systems this paper presents a framework to implement supply and demand side contingency management in the reliability assessment of hybrid power markets a model for the independent system operator iso to coordinate reserve and load curtailment bids for contingency states is introduced to balance reliability worth and reliability cost the load curtailments and generation re dispatch for a contingency state are determined based on minimizing the market interruption cost using an optimization technique a nonsequential monte carlo simulation technique based on this framework has been proposed to evaluate the customer reliability of restructured power systems with the hybrid market model the modified ieee reliability test system rts is used to illustrate the proposed technique

the choice of ski areas estimation of a generalized ces preference ordering with characteristics abstrac t a generalized ces gences preference ordering is developed and estimated it incorporates characteristics of both the individual and the activities the gences is used to explain the share of ski time an individual allocates to each ski area as a function of site characteristics skiing ability and costs the stochastic specification limited the shares to the 0 1 simplex this specification was found to be more appropriate than the conventional normality assumption the null hypothesis that preferences are homothetic and additive is rejected charactenrstics ability and costs are important determinants of demand the estimated elasticities provide numerous insights into skier behavior

rivalry in price and variety among supermarket retailers recent theoretical models of retail competition suggest that product heterogeneity is critical to retail price and variety strategies this article provides empirical evidence on supermarket retailers price and variety strategies using a nested constant elasticity of substitution nces modeling framework the model is estimated using chain level scanner data for four major grocery chains in a large urban west coast market the results show that retailers compete for market share using both price and variety while they all tend to follow moderately cooperative pricing strategies the extent to which they follow cooperative strategies in variety is less homogeneous

estimating the elasticity of substitution between restricted and unrestricted inputs in a regulated fishery a probit approach abstract catch effort vessel and skipper characteristic data for a sample of boats involved in the tasmanian rock lobster fishery in the 1983 1984 season are used to estimate a fishing effort production function nested in a cobb douglas fishery production function the initial effort function is translog but tests suggest that the ces form cannot be rejected the vessel s choice of fishing ground is modeled by a probit equation the output from which is included in the ols estimation of the production function the elasticity of substitution between the inputs which are restricted by regulation and the other inputs is of particular interest as it determines whether input restriction is an efficient form of regulation for the fishery the results suggest a value significantly less than unity

benefit transfer via preference calibration prudential algebra for policy this paper proposes a new approach to benefit transfer the method assumes a specific form for preferences and uses available benefit information to identify and calibrate the preference parameters to match the existing benefit estimates this approach assures economic consistency of the transfers benefit measures can never be inconsistent with household income the logic also offers a series of potentially observable predictions that can be used to gauge the plausibility of benefit transfers when multiple benefit estimates from different methods are available such as hedonic property value travel cost demand and contingent valuation the framework uses the definition of the benefit concept from each method in a single preference function to reconcile differences it provides a specific way to take account of baseline conditions and scope effects i e the size of the proposed change consistently in the transfer the method is illustrated using estimates for benefit measure changes in water quality from three studies travel cost demand hedonic property value and contingent valuation analysis q26

distributive politics and economic growth a crude distinction between economics and politics would be that economics is concerned with expanding the pie while politics is about distributing it in this paper we analyze the relationship between the two we focus on how an economy s initial configuration of resources shapes the political struggle for income and wealth distribution and how that in turn affects long run growth our main conclusion is that inequality is conducive to the adoption of growth retarding policies we derive this result from a simple political economy model of growth and present cross country evidence consistent with it the key feature of our model is that individuals differ in their relative factor endowments we distinguish between two types of factors an accumulated factor called capital and a nonaccumulated factor called labor growth is driven by the expansion of the capital stock which is in turn determined by individual saving decisions long run growth is endogenous as the aggregate production function is taken to be linearly homogeneous in capital and productive government services taken together the provision of government services is financed by a tax on capital because government services are productive a small tax on

a theoretical foundation for count data models the paper develops a theoretical foundation for using count data models in travel cost analysis two micro models are developed a restricted choice model and a repeated discrete choice model we show that both models lead to identical welfare measures

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

precautionary saving in the small and in the large the theory of precautionary saving is shown to be isomorphic to the arrow pratt theory of risk aversion making possible the application of a large body of knowledge about risk aversion to precautionary saving and more generally to the theory of optimal choice under risk in particular a measure of the strength of the precautionary saving motive analogous to the arrow pratt measure of risk aversion is used to establish a number of new propositions about precautionary saving and to give a new interpretation of the dreze modigliani substitution effect copyright 1990 by the econometric society

estimating the willingness to pay for reliable electricity supply a choice experiment study abstract this research examines households willingness to pay wtp for an improved electricity service households stated wtp is estimated using the choice experiment ce method the data used in the estimations come from 350 in person interviews conducted during the period 5 22 august 2008 in north cyprus compensating variation cv estimates for a zero outage scenario are calculated using the parameter estimates from the mixed logit ml model these are 6 65 ytl turkish lira per month 3 02 usd for summer and 25 83 ytl per month 11 74 usd for winter in order to avoid the cost of outages households are willing to incur a 3 6 and a 13 9 increase in their monthly electricity bill for summer and winter respectively the wtp per hour unserved is 0 28 ytl 0 13 usd for summer and 1 08 ytl 0 49 usd for winter a preliminary cost benefit analysis indicates that the annualized economic benefits are approximately 42 7 million ytl 19 4 million usd for the residential sector this would justify an investment in additional generation capacity of approximately 268 mw which is far more than that which is needed to eliminate the service reliability problem