the dynamics of individuals fat consumption consumers are increasingly aware of the link between their lifestyle choices and the risk of noncommunicable diseases a dynamic approach incorporating this linkage in food demand is developed where consumers maximize utility over time by choosing fat intake to control their cumulative fat level the resulting dynamic indirect utility function and household data on meat fish and dairy consumption are used to estimate a censored demand system results show that consumers consciously adjust but not instantaneously their cumulative fat level highly educated households have a faster rate of adjustment of cumulative fat when cumulative fat level increases consumers shift to dairy or white meat from red meat products

a distribution company energy acquisition market model with integration of distributed generation and load curtailment options this work presents a novel day ahead energy acquisition model for a distribution company disco in a competitive market based on pool and financial bilateral contracts the market structure encompasses wholesale generation companies distributed generation dg units of independent producers dg units owned by the disco and load curtailment options thus while satisfying its technical constraints the disco purchases active and reactive power according to the offers of dg units customers and the wholesale market the resulting optimal power flow model is implemented with an object oriented approach which is solved numerically by making use of a branch and border sequential quadratic programming algorithm the model is validated in test systems and then applied to a real case study results show the general applicability of the proposed model with potential cost savings for the disco finally the analysis of lagrange multipliers gives valuable information which can be used to improve the market design and to extend the use of the model to a more general market structure such as a power exchange

a multiperiod energy acquisition model for a distribution company with distributed generation and interruptible load this paper presents a multiperiod energy acquisition model for a distribution company disco with distributed generation dg and interruptible load il in a day ahead electricity market assuming that cost information for individual generation companies gencos and discos is known the disco s energy acquisition strategy is modeled as a bilevel optimization problem with the upper subproblem representing individual discos and the lower subproblem representing the independent system operator iso the upper subproblem maximizes individual discos revenues the lower subproblem simulates the iso s market clearing problem that minimizes generation costs and compensation costs for interrupting load the bilevel problem is solved by a nonlinear complementarity method an 8 bus system is employed to illustrate the proposed model and algorithm in particular the roles of dgs and ils to alleviate congestion are analyzed

consumer knowledge food label use and grain consumption in the us responding to mounting evidence of the association between whole grain consumption and a reduced risk of heart problems and other diseases as well as an increased probability of body weight maintenance the us government has strongly encouraged its citizens to increase consumption of whole grains however compared against the 2005 federal dietary recommendations in 1994 1996 only 6 of americans met the current recommended whole grain consumption to narrow this huge gap between actual and recommended consumption of whole grains considerable changes in consumer behaviour will be needed a demand system with two censored consumption equations and endogenous food label use and nutrition knowledge variables is estimated to investigate the factors that affect the consumption of whole and refined grains food label use and nutrition knowledge are found to play important roles in the consumption of refined and whole grain products as are sociodemographic variables the results can be used to help develop

measuring the value of life saving from consumer reactions to new information abstract past studies have relied on cross section patterns of risky behavior to generate estimates of the value of life saving this approach is colored by several problems that affect the reliability of the results in potentially serious ways it is difficult to separate the risk components from the dis utility attributes of work or consumption to avoid selectivity biases and to disentangle user costs e g wearing a face mask from the risk premium paid for accepting risk to circumvent some of these difficulties this paper uses a different approach one which exploits the information about the value of risk reduction that is provided by changing consumption patterns over time brought about by changes in available information about risks this approach makes it possible to more reliably estimate the pure effects of risks on behavior and to generate unbiased distributions of the value of life saving the case of cigarette consumption over time provides an ideal setting to illustrate this methodology

flexible demand systems with serially correlated errors fat and oil consumption in the united states a flexible demand system proposed by lewbel is used to estimate u s fat and oil demand from 1950 to 1986 results suggest that the lewbel model outperforms the translog and aids and that correction for serial correlation is important findings also suggest that price and income effects together with increasing public health concerns primarily determine u s fat and oil demand

effect of government quality grade labels on consumer demand for pork chops in the short and long run abstract despite ample evidence of pork quality variability at present there are few signals that would incentivize growers to produce higher quality pork using split sample choice experiment data from a nationwide online survey of u s pork chop eaters this research determines changes in pork chop demand in response to a potential change in u s government policy that would introduce a new pork quality grading system based on color scores our simulations include novel short run projections in which the conditional and latent class logit models are inverted to yield inverse demand curves the inverse demand curves are used to calculate equilibrium prices and pork revenue given a fixed supply of different pork qualities we supplement these calculations with a more traditional long run analysis in which prices are fixed and quantities of different qualities adjust compared to the status quo control of no quality grades we find that two grading systems based on alternative nomenclatures select choice prime vs good better best both have the potential to increase pork chop sales and revenue to the pork industry however we also find that if only the highest quality is labeled revenue could fall as the increase in demand for the higher quality is offset by the fall in demand for the lower qualities results also highlight important heterogeneity in consumer preferences and although sensory studies strongly suggest redder pork chops are more highly preferred there remains a non trivial share of consumers who prefer whiter pork even after quality grade labeling overall this study offers several insights that can help inform labeling and quality grading policies

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

content protection and transnational monopoly abstract the paper investigates how domestic content requirements imposed on a vertically integrated monopolist affect production and welfare three content schemes are investigated it is shown that a scheme can be formulated which increases the range of intermediate goods as well as the quantity of final good produced this occurs even though the firms production costs are invariably increased by content protection the scheme can also increase domestic welfare

information health risk beliefs and the demand for fats and oils mean and variance measures of health information about cholesterol and saturated fat are included in a demand system for fats and oils a bayesian model of health risk belief and consumer awareness surveys are the basis for computing these measures the empirical demand model shows that health information has resulted in significant increases in consumption for corn cottonseed and soybean oils and decreased consumption for butter and lard the predicted demand effects based on the bayesian information model are more reasonable than predictions from using either a time trend or a simple cumulative cholesterol information index copyright 1995 by mit press

enforcement for sale lobbying for water in pakistan s indus basin abstract surface irrigation is a common pool resource subject to over exploitation by upstream users we ask to what extent state enforcement of de jure water allocations designed to ensure adequate irrigation to downstream users is up for sale unique data on the land ownership of nearly a quarter million irrigators in pakistan s vast indus basin watershed provide a measure of political influence consistent with an influence driven model the decline in water availability and land values from head to tail is accentuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the head and attenuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the tail our paper shows how power disparities can be leveraged through the administrative state to capture valuable common resources

testing hypotheses about firm behavior in the cigarette industry data on the effects of excise taxes are used to investigate the level of competition in the cigarette industry a lower bound on the numbers equivalent of firms in the context of the conjectural variations model is derived and estimated results point to at least a moderately high level of competition and in particular allow for the rejection of the perfect cartel model this paper relies on comparative statics results and hence circumvents recent criticisms of a study of monopoly behavior in the cigarette industry

measurement of monopoly behavior an application to the cigarette industry a simple scheme is proposed to measure monopoly pricing behavior the coefficient of the tax rate term in a price equation identifies the ratio of price to marginal cost no direct measurement of costs is required so a major problem for other empirical studies of monopoly is avoided empirical results for cross section time series data support rejection of atomistic competition but also provide evidence against the operation of an effective cartel in the cigarette industry the model represents an alternative interpretation of related results in a recent paper by barzel application of the methodology to other markets is feasible

managing local commons theoretical issues in incentive design local commons encompass a wide range of resources whose shared feature is the need for some form of collective management in what follows we shall be concerned mainly with the problems of implementing a collective management plan whatever the mechanisms invoked many recent contributions to the literature have stressed that relatively informal collective management of common property resources can in the right circumstances avoid the severe resource degradation predicted by the tragedy of the commons nevertheless both empirical and theoretical arguments suggest that cooperative behavior may be only partial and the incentives of short term self interest only partially held in check under what circumstances then can more formal implementation mechanisms make good the deficiency and given that formal incentives are typically stronger than informal ones are there any reasons why informal incentives might nevertheless sometimes be preferred

content protection and tariffs under monopoly and competition abstract this paper compares the relative efficiency of local content schemes and tariffs as alternative means of achieving certain non economic distributional objectives the efficiency comparison is made under the alternative assumptions that an intermediate good component is produced a competitively and b by a single firm the paper shows how the ranking of tariffs and content schemes i is sensitive to these assumptions and ii depends on the local content ratio and the elasticity of demand for components the possible implications of vertical integration in the production process and rent revenue seeking behaviour are also considered insofar as they affect the ranking of policies

trade and efficiency effects of domestic content protection the australian tobacco and cigarette industries this paper provides an empirical investigation into the international trade and domestic market efficiency effects of physical domestic content requirements in the australian tobacco leaf growing and cigarette manufacturing industries the authors empirical evidence suggests that the content requirement has distorted trade by restricting leaf imports nevertheless the data are also consistent with the efficient contract hypothesis the mix of domestic to imported leaf used in cigarette manufacturing depends on domestic leaf production costs and on world leaf prices but not on the negotiated domestic leaf price copyright 1993 by mit press

nesting the aids and translog demand systems this paper shows that there exists a relatively simple demand model that is consistent with utility maximization and has nested within it both the almost ideal demand system and translog models this model is exactly aggregated then estimated using aggregate u s demand data the results are used to test the relative adequacy of the almost ideal demand system and translog models copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

consumer knowledge and meat consumption at home and away from home we investigate the roles of consumer knowledge and sociodemographic factors in the consumption of meat products at home and away from home censored dependent variables and endogenous dietary knowledge are accommodated by developing and estimating a simultaneous equations system results suggest endogeneity of knowledge and support the system approach to demand functions for meat products dietary knowledge decreases consumption of beef and pork at home and away from home but does not affect poultry or fish consumption in either location men eat more meat and fish than women meat consumption declines with age and regional and racial ethnic differences are present published by elsevier ltd

household demand for fats and oils two step estimation of a censored demand system a censored system of household fat and oil demand equations is estimated with a two step procedure using cross sectional data from the 1987 1988 us nationwide food consumption survey own price and total expenditure elasticities are close to unity and there is no evidence of gross substitutability compensated elasticities suggest net substitution among the products considered

renewable energy resources short term scheduling and dynamic network reconfiguration for sustainable energy consumption abstract this paper proposes a two phase approach for optimal short term operational scheduling with intermittent renewable energy resources res in an active distribution system the first phase determines the amounts of purchased power from the market and the unit status of distributed generation dg and feeds the data into the second phase a real time scheduling coordination with hourly network reconfiguration the two phase proposed approach is applied to a case study of a sixteen bus test system that uses synthetic data from renewable power generators and forecasts local user demands with a sampling time of five minutes

energy models for demand forecasting a review abstract energy is vital for sustainable development of any nation be it social economic or environment in the past decade energy consumption has increased exponentially globally energy management is crucial for the future economic prosperity and environmental security energy is linked to industrial production agricultural output health access to water population education quality of life etc energy demand management is required for proper allocation of the available resources during the last decade several new techniques are being used for energy demand management to accurately predict the future energy needs in this paper an attempt is made to review the various energy demand forecasting models traditional methods such as time series regression econometric arima as well as soft computing techniques such as fuzzy logic genetic algorithm and neural networks are being extensively used for demand side management support vector regression ant colony and particle swarm optimization are new techniques being adopted for energy demand forecasting bottom up models such as markal and leap are also being used at the national and regional level for energy demand management

coping with asymmetries in the commons self governing irrigation systems can work many analysts presume that the appropriators of a common pool resource are trapped in a hobbesian state of nature and cannot themselves create rules to counteract the perverse incentives they face in managing the resource the logical consequence of this view is to recommend that an external authority the government take over the commons but considerable empirical evidence from field and experimental settings holds that appropriators frequently do constitute and enforce their own rules and that these rules work our research agenda is to develop a coherent understanding of the set of conditions that enhance or detract from self organizing capabilities when individuals differ substantially from one another for the sake of concreteness this paper focuses on the asymmetry present in most irrigation systems between those who are physically near the source of water the head enders and those who are physically distant from it the tail enders this paper first explores the interaction between head end and tail end farmers particularly their decisions about whether to devote resources to the upkeep of the irrigation system and how bargaining between the parties can benefit all sides finally we examine empirical evidence from a study of irrigation institutions in nepal and discuss the broader practical significance of our findings

factors affecting the timing of purchasing of butter margarine and blends a competing goods analysis the purchase dynamics of a subset of food fats and oils are investigated using event history analysis applied to a panel of u s households the consumer behavior examined is the switching between purchases of butter margarine and butter margarine blends across purchase occasions we find that price previous purchases seasonality and household size and composition affect product switching probability

locational asymmetry and the potential for cooperation on a canal abstract illegal water diversions and lax rule enforcement are common on irrigation canals we present a mathematical programming model of a watercourse calibrated to a canal in maharashtra on which farmers voted to cooperate to control water theft the model solution computes the crop choices and profits of individually optimizing farmers who differ in their location it reveals the spatial distribution of gains and losses from cooperation it illuminates why voluntary bargaining will rarely achieve an efficient water allocation it also shows that landless laborers might well be against local cooperation if the expropriated water nurtures labor intensive crops

cost and co2 reductions of solar photovoltaic power generation in china perspectives for 2020 abstract to improve the understanding of the cost and benefit of photovoltaic pv power generation in china we analyze the per kwh cost fossil energy replacement and level of co2 mitigation as well as the cost per unit of reduced co2 of pv power generation in 2020 at the province level three potential pv systems are examined large scale pv lspv building integrated pv bipv and distributed pv systems used in remote rural areas which have very low capacities the results show that in 2020 pv power generation could save 17 4 mtce fossil energy and 46 5 tg co2 compared with 600 mwe coal fired supercritical units also in 2020 the costs of solar electricity could be reduced by approximately 60 as compared to 2010 but would still be 11 74 higher than the current grid prices the pv electricity costs vary significantly among provinces in the economically developed eastern provinces the pv electricity mainly bipv is 0 67 0 86 rmb kwh this rate is close to grid parity owing to high grid prices but the co2 mitigation cost is high 456 693 rmb mg co2 the pv electricity mainly lspv in solar resource rich western provinces has lower cost 0 45 0 75 rmb kwh and lower co2 mitigation cost 172 419 rmb mg co2 but is farther from grid parity due to the low local grid price from a cost effective perspective lspv in the west provinces should be the first priority in pv deployment strategies and should receive strong financial support from the government this study provides a quantitative province specific analysis of pv power generation which can be used to support various pv subsidy policies

simple tests of distributional effects on macroeconomic equations the presence of distributional effects in macroeconomic equations is shown to coincide with nonlinearity in micro behavioral relationships parameters estimated with aggregate data as in representative agent models contain distributional biases that are not measurable using aggregate data alone tests for distributional effects and other measures of the extent of aggregation problems are derived using distributional data observed over time significant distributional effects are noted for a model of annual aggregate u s commodity expenditure data a static model that accommodates individual heterogeneity is found to be statistically equivalent to a simply dynamic model that accommodates first order autocorrelation

commons regulation and rent seeking behavior the dilemma of pakistan s guzara forests curred over the past 120 years these forests known locally as guzara forests can be characterized as regulated commons the regulation by placing quantitative restrictions on felling aimed at an orderly exploitation of these forests on the surface the failure of regulation seems to be a simple case of enforcement failure however a closer look reveals a fairly complex picture in which factors such as the delineation of property rights and the rent seeking behavior of those subject to regulation as well as of the regulators themselves have contributed to the problems of these forests the evidence presented in this article shows that the way the regulation was devised gave rise to a discordant structure of property rights involving the government and the local inhabitants despite early signals that it could not be effectively enforced no rectifying change was introduced in the structure of rights which has persisted into the postcolonial era indeed there was a reversal of some potentially beneficial institutional changes that had been introduced toward the end of the colonial period while the process of degradation was set in motion by discordances that arose in the process of delineating property rights it is the theory of rentseeking behavior that provides an adequate explanation of its persistence as well as of the subsequent reversals an effective response to the problem of the guzara forests must take account of two additional features in the regulation of these forests first in addition to the common property externality that leads to the tragedy of the commons these forests also display interjurisdictional externality by virtue of their location second a common

information and the life cycle consumption of hazardous goods safety is a major area of public concern the fact that people take risky occupations smoke or fail to use seat belts often provokes a regulatory response designed to either protect people from the risks directly or to provide them with more information on the hazards involved such policy is often based on the view that risk taking behavior is irrational or ill advised this paper develops life cycle models of the decision to consume hazardous goods a particular focus of the analysis is to consider the rational response to information about hazards rational consumption of a hazardous good is shown to depend on such factors as the nature of the hazard age life expectancy age at which information on the hazard was received and of course the underlying value of the good itself

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

the potential for water market efficiency when instream flows have value most of the effort being expended to revise western water policy concerns the maintenance of instream waters to the exclusion of traditional diversionary interests absent from the economics literature is a theoretical treatment addressing the interface between diversionary and instream water uses at issue is the potential for refining market operations to accomplish efficient allocation in the presence of both diversionary and instream uses optimization methods are employed to examine this issue in a highly generalized framework if a specific structure is adopted markets and other incentive based policies are demonstrated to be capable of efficient water allocation

a model of focusing in economic choice we present a generally applicable theory of focusing based on the hypothesis that a person focuses more on and hence overweights attributes in which her options dier more our model predicts that the decisionmaker is too prone to choose options with concentrated advantages relative to alternatives but maximizes utility when the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives are equally concentrated in intertemporal choice because the relative concentrations of an option s costs and benets can be dierent from the perspective of a single period and the perspective of the entire choice problem the decisionmaker often exhibits a form of time inconsistency she is present biased when the costs of current misbehavior are distributed over many future dates such as in harmful consumption but future biased when the benet of many

non monotonic health behaviours implications for individual health related behaviour in a demand for health framework a number of behaviours influence health in a non monotonic way physical activity and alcohol consumption for instance may be beneficial to one s health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities we develop a demand for health framework that incorporates the feature of a physiologically optimal level an individual may still choose a physiologically non optimal level because of the trade off in his or her preferences for health versus other utility affecting commodities however any deviation above or below the physiologically optimal level will be punished with respect to health distinguishing between two individual types we study a the qualitative properties of optimal time paths of health capital and health related behaviour b the perturbations of the optimal time paths that result from changes in exogenous parameters and c steady state properties predictions of the model and the implications for empirical analysis are discussed at length some comments on potential future extensions conclude the paper

water allocation under distribution losses comparing alternative institutions abstract the distribution of water resources is characterized by increasing returns to scale distribution links water generation to its end use standard economic analysis overlooks the interaction among these micro markets generation distribution and end use we compare water allocation when there is market power in each micro market these outcomes are compared with benchmark cases social planning and a competitive business as usual regime simulations suggest that institutions with market power in generation and end use generate significantly higher welfare than the distribution monopoly and the competitive regime however if the policy goal is to maximize the size of the grid a distribution monopoly is preferred

efficient spatial allocation of irrigation water in the presence of conveyance losses the efficient quantity of water applied falls with distance from the water source but the amount of water sent including conveyance losses actually increases with distance from the source except toward the tail end of the inigation system this implies that if marginal cost pricing were implemented farmers at the middle and lower reaches of the system would have to pay more money for less water received the model is illustrated and alternative financing schemes compared for an empirically derived demand function for imgation water despite massive public investments in irrigation infrastructure ex post evaluations of irrigation projects in developed and developing countries indicate that actual benefits are substantially below projected levels considerable evidence suggests that these low benefits are largely the result of poor on farm water use efficiencies and rent seeking activities that result from water charges that are low and often unrelated to water use chaudhry repetto bowen and young for example farmers near the system headworks are said to consume a disproportionate share of irrigation water while tail farmers are left with scanty and unreliable residual supplies reidinger wade many governments faced with increasing political pressure to conserve water and reduce fiscal deficits are considering higher water charges to decrease waste and increase cost recovery from project beneficiaries there is also increased awareness that low water charges and loosely enforced water rationing guidelines lead to environmental damages and excessive mining of groundwater resources in general the problems of water allocation and low user charges contribute to derivative problems in achieving efficiency equity fiscal stability and environmental sustainability

getting consumers to eat more whole grains the role of policy information and food manufacturers the 2005 dietary guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole grains this case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole grain food products we find that release of the dietary guidelines and related media attention did increase availability and sales of whole grain foods a large impact on consumption occurred through reformulation of existing products induced by competition among food suppliers this study reveals the key role product reformulation plays in inter firm competition and in realization of dietary changes recommended by public

economic impact of electricity market price forecasting errors a demand side analysis several techniques have been proposed in the literature to forecast electricity market prices and improve forecast accuracy however no studies have been reported examining the economic impact of price forecast inaccuracies on forecast users therefore in this paper the application of electricity market price forecasts to short term operation scheduling of two typical and inherently different industrial loads is examined and the associated economic impact is analyzed using electricity market price forecasts as the expected next day electricity prices optimal operating schedules and the associated costs are determined for each load these costs are compared with those of a perfect price forecast scenario in which actual prices are used to determine the operating schedules numerical results and discussions are provided based on price forecasts with different error characteristics

brand inertia in u s household cheese consumption to analyze u s consumers brand choices for cheese purchases we derive a set of discrete choice models from dynamic utility maximization acnielsen homescan survey data on u s households is used to estimate a dynamic probit model for each of the top brands for cheddar shredded and sliced cheese in four u s regions we find that households have strong brand inertia a result robust across alternative specifications predicted probabilities confirm greater inertia in the top brands and consumers are more likely to switch into them brand inertia is relatively larger in cheddar and sliced cheese especially in the central and southeast regions copyright 2008 oxford university press

the theory and econometrics of health information in cross sectional nutrient demand analysis understanding the role of health information in food and nutrient demand has become an important issue over the last decade endogeneity and measurement error are two empirical problems that are inherent in this type of analysis while some type of instrumental variables estimation would appear the obvious solution this article provides several theoretical and empirical reasons why this is not the case in cross sectional analysis an alternative estimation strategy is pursued an empirical example is given and the implications are discussed copyright 2001 oxford university press

getting rid of trans fats in the us diet policies incentives and progress artificial trans fats in foods increase chronic disease risk in the us population federal nutrition label regulation enacted in 2003 requires mandatory disclosure of trans fat content on packaged foods this action created incentives for the food industry to reduce trans fats both in response to consumer demand and through competition to maintain product reputation subsequent public actions include a ban on trans fat use in new york city restaurants and lawsuits against food companies which created further incentives to remove trans fats especially in the food service industry industry has reformulated packaged foods and found substitutes for restaurant fry oils and trans fats are disappearing from the us food supply market response extends throughout the supply chain and has spurred research to alter oilseed crop characteristics the widespread and relatively rapid industry response likely has improved the quality of us diets and demonstrates the potential for policy actions to spur such improvements

information endogeneity and consumer health behaviour application to dietary intakes due to heightened public health interest a growing number of consumer health behaviour studies are focusing on the effect of health information on the demand for health inputs and outcomes many of these studies however have overlooked the potential endogeneity of information variables stemming from unobserved individual heterogeneity due to simultaneity bias ignoring endogeneity may lead to inaccurate estimates of informational effects on health behaviour using dietary intake data for fat saturated fat cholesterol and fibre this paper illustrates the pitfalls of treating health information related to these nutrients as exogenous variables in their demand equations in most of the estimated models the exogeneity of information is statistically rejected when the information variables are treated as exogenous variables their effects on dietary intakes are underestimated the estimated effects of key intake determinants such as income education ethnicity and race are also different in such a

choice welfare and development a festschrift in honour of amartya k sen professor amartya sen has been a distinguished and influential scholar in development economics for over twenty years and this edited volume seeks to reflect his interests and the inspiration he has provided for others the editors have succeeded in creating a coherent and stimulating set of papers from well known contributors the volume deals with the enduring themes of amartya sen s work ranging through theoretical issues of development economics to the philosophical foundation of welfare systems and ethics in society contributors kenneth arrow a b atkinson pranab bardhan j l coles rajat deb jean dreze louis gevers peter hammond ravi kanbur eric maskin robert nozick siddiq osmani martin ravallion kevin roberts robert solow s wibaut

effects of an increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes the economic impact of a cigarette tax increase on the cigarette and tobacco industries depends on market forces and on the u s tobacco program this study uses a log linear equilibrium displacement model parameter estimates from prior studies and recent data to indicate quantitative effects international trade implies that the effect of the tax increase on the price of domestic tobacco will be small even in the case of fixed tobacco quotas however the effects on tobacco producers revenue quota lease rates and producer economic rents can be significant depending on the response of u s tobacco policy to a tax change

a new market for an old food the u s demand for olive oil while u s consumption of olive oil has tripled over the past two decades nearly all olive oil continues to be imported estimation of a demand system using monthly import data reveals that the income elasticity for virgin oils sourced from eu is above one but demand for nonvirgin oils is income inelastic the demand for olive oil as a single product is price inelastic differentiated by product characteristic and origin olive oils are highly substitutable with each other but not with other vegetable oils news about the health and culinary benefits of olive oil and the spread of mediterranean diet contribute significantly to the rising demand

alcoholism work and income this article reports on an empirical analysis of the relationships between alcoholism and income and working we show that the relationships between alcoholism and labor market success have important age or life cycle dimensions we present evidence that alcoholism may affect income more by restricting labor market participation than by affecting the wages of workers finally we demonstrate that the effects of alcoholism on earnings depend on the extent to which one controls for other covariates associated with alcoholism as such we suggest that there may be important indirect as well as direct effects of alcoholism on labor market success

information and the coase theorem abstract some economists think the coase theorem implies a lot about the proper scope of government intervention in the economy and about the welfare consequences of laissez faire others see it as a mere tautology that if people negotiate efficiently then every outcome will be efficient the coase theorem is important only if we believe that efficient negotiation is likely of course we can attribute inefficiencies to bargaining imperfection but it may not be useful to do so such attitudes sometimes seem to depend more on ideology than on reason this article gives one economist s reasoned view it discusses the coase theorem as a decentralization result and why decentralization results are interesting it considers mechanism design for revealing private information and describes the problems of centralization should the coase theorem should be viewed as a second best result property rights are more efficient than some reasonable alternative does the coase theorem recommend an institution or make

determinants of collective action on the local commons a model with evidence from mexico i develop a model of cooperation in small irrigation systems i give conditions under which an equalizing redistribution of wealth increases the level of equilibrium cooperation but also show that some redistributions that increase inequality can also increase cooperation the distributive rule a combination of arrangements for maintenance cost sharing and water allocation also affects the cooperation level i estimate statistical models of cooperation for three maintenance indicators using field data from a study of mexican irrigation societies social heterogeneity and landholding inequality are significantly associated with lower maintenance distributive rules that allocate water proportionally to landholding size likewise reduce maintenance

adjustment costs and dynamic factor demands for u s cigarette manufacturing abstract following the approach of berndt fuss and waverman a dynamic model for u s cigarette manufacturing is developed and factor demands estimated tobacco and capital stocks are treated as quasi fixed inputs the results indicate that there are significant adjustment costs associated with adjusting tobacco stocks but not with adjusting the capital stock short run intermediate run and long run output constant elasticities are estimated for inputs in cigarette production demand for u s tobacco by u s cigarette manufacturers is found be more inelastic than shown by previous studies using static models cigarettes produced for export appear to differ in their marginal cost of production from cigarettes produced for the sale in the u s market

social cost of the tobacco program redux economists do not often get the chance to make long run checks on their own predictions fifteen years ago the senior author johnson analyzed the welfare effects of the flue cured tobacco program as it then was operating the somewhat surprising conclusion of that study was that the program s social cost was essentially zero the fact that the united states faced a less than perfectly elastic foreign demand function produced gains to offset the usual welfare triangle loss and the rather large efficiency loss from restricting an input land rather than output at that time the author made several long run predictions a the elasticity of foreign demand would increase as foreign output increased b institutional rigidities that fostered the u s monopoly position would erode c inefficiency losses would increase all of these would put financial and political pressure on the support

evaluation of price policy in the presence of water theft mathematical programming models of representative farms are commonly used to evaluate policies such as input subsidies and output price supports on canals in india upstream farmers routinely use more irrigation water than allotted in such circumstances the programming model should encompass farmers locational heterogeneity here a representative watercourse with thirty farms is calibrated to the eight crops fifteen irrigation turns yield responses to water and seepage in maharashtra not only does water theft increase the social cost of price policies but the policies increased inducement to theft by upstream farmers leaves those downstream with less water and lower incomes

economic rents under supply controls with marketable quota we analyze the distribution of economic rent between owners and renters of marketable production quotas and examine how this distribution changes with increases in marginal costs while quota owners unambiguously lose because of a marginal cost increase quota renters may gain depending on whether the marginal cost shift is divergent parallel or convergent using output and input prices county production quotas and quota rental rate data we estimate a marginal cost function for north carolina flue cured tobacco to demonstrate how wage increases affect owners and renters welfare

economics food choices and nutrition abstract our goal in this paper is to examine the role and influence of economic factors defined rather broadly on consumer food choices and hence nutritional outcomes we attempt to do this in a non technical fashion we examine the role of prices especially as they relate to the affordability of food in the united states and as a policy lever income is analyzed as a driving force behind changes in eating habits in particular increasing the demand for convenience the role of time constraints as well as time preference are examined as links to healthy eating habits and as forces behind current trends in eating patterns information and knowledge are given prominent play as counter balances to economic forces driving eating habits we conclude with and examination into maternal nutrition knowledge and children s dietary quality

impact of domestic content requirement on the us tobacco and cigarette industries abstract using a log linear equilibrium displacement model we quantify the impact of the recent domestic tobacco content requirement on us cigarette manufacturing we investigate effects on us growers and manufacturers and competing tobacco imports the policy increased domestic use of us grown tobacco but induced a small negative output effect tobacco imports decreased substantially the paper also discusses the political economic incentives for us manufacturers to comply with such policies the political cooperation between us growers and manufacturers decreases the opposition of the latter to protectionist policies championed by the former

schooling health knowledge and obesity the connection between schooling and health is well documented an important empirical issue that needs to be examined however is whether schooling s effects are due to individual health knowledge differences this empirical study examines this issue with an increasingly important health indicator obesity since provision of health knowledge is a major tool of public agencies promoting health this empirical study uses a new direct measure of health knowledge to test this hypothesis the results show that knowledge is inversely related to the probability that an individual is obese schooling s effects on relative weight and the probability of being obese are explained by differences in knowledge this result may imply that schooling s effect on the allocative efficiency of the household production of health is the main reason schooling is linked to health behaviour the result also may imply that the most effective method of health education is to highlight the disease element of poor dietary habits a

domestic content and compensatory export requirements protection of the motorvehicle industry in the philippines the motor vehicle industry in the philippines is protected by a virtual embargo on the importation of new vehicles but operates under the burden of domestic content and compensatory export requirements that protect philippine producers of automotive components this article develops a model to assess the net impact of this complicated protective regime estimates indicate substantial benefits to the assembly and components industries and losses to vehicle purchasers reform of the system to eliminate the embargo as well as the domestic content and compensatory export restraints at current tariff rates would benefit vehicle purchasers but would increase the effective rate of protection to assembly operations by decreasing prices of components reform measures to eliminate the domestic content and compensatory export requirements should be accompanied by simultaneous reductions in tariffs on assembled vehicles