the causes of preference reversal observed preference reversal cannot be adequately explained by violations of independence the reduction axiom or transitivity the primary cause of preference reversal is the failure of procedure invariance especially the overpricing of low probability high payoff bets this result violates regret theory and generalized nonindependent utility models preference reversal and a new reversal involving time preferences are explained by scale compatibility which implies that payoffs are weighted more heavily in pricing than in choice copyright 1990 by american economic association

get more pay more an elaborate test of construct validity of willingness to pay per qaly estimates obtained through contingent valuation estimates of wtp per qaly can be taken as an indication of the monetary value of health gains which may carry information regarding the appropriate height of the cost effectiveness threshold given the far reaching consequences choosing a particular threshold and thus the potential relevance of wtp per qaly estimates it is important to address the validity of these estimates this study addresses this issue our findings offer little support to the validity of wtp per qaly estimates obtained in this study implications for general wtp per qaly estimates and further research are discussed

co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 a structural decomposition analysis abstract this study examines the annual co2 emissions embodied in china s exports from 2002 to 2008 using environmental input output analysis four driving forces including emission intensity economic production structure export composition and total export volume are compared for their contributions to the increase of embodied co2 emissions using a structural decomposition analysis sda technique although offset by the decrease in emission intensity the increase of embodied co2 emissions was driven by changes of the other three factors in particular the change of the export composition was the largest driver primarily due to the increasing fraction of metal products in china s total export relevant policy implications and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper

bounded rationality climate risks and insurance is there a market for natural disasters this paper examines the role of insurances to reduce uncertainty associated with climate change losses for individuals of special interest is the value individuals place on the reduction of increased flood risks by insurance coverage using rank dependent utility and prospect theories risk premiums are estimated under different climate change scenarios for the netherlands the study delivers two main insights first estimation results suggest that a profitable flood insurance market could be feasible second climate change has the potential to increase the profitability of offering flood insurance 2009 by the board of regents of the university of wisconsin system

does the preference reversal phenomenon necessarily contradict the independence axiom one of the most puzzling paradoxes in decision theory is the preference reversal phenomenon this phenomenon seems to contradict the transitivity axiom for a long time one of the cornerstones of utility theory this paradox is established whenever a decision maker prefers lottery x to lottery y but is willing to put a lower selling price on x than on y such experiments first reported by harold lindman 1971 and sarah lichtenstein and paul slovic 1971 were repeated by david grether and charles plott 1979 werner pommerehne et al 1982 and robert reilly 1982 although the later researchers improved the mechanism through which the selling price emerges they all found systematic reversals a new approach to this problem was developed by charles holt 1986 and edi karni and zvi safra 1987 from two different starting points these authors showed that the preference reversal phenomenon does not necessarily prove a violation of the transitivity axiom as it may contradict the independence axiom this implies that people do not maximize expected utility but in that case the preference reversal phenomenon becomes just another evidence against expected utility theory but not against the transitivity axiom these results have their own disadvantages although the independence axiom is not as fundamental as transitivity it is nevertheless very appealing on normative grounds of course the preference reversal phenomenon necessarily contradicts at least one of the assumptions of expected utility theory but empirical evidence shows that despite its normative appeal violations of the reduction of compound lotteries axiom may happen see for example joshua ronen 1971 and doug snowball and clif brown 1979 in this paper i therefore suggest a decision mechanism for the preference reversals lotteries which is transitive and satisfies the independence axiom but not the reduction axiom

preference reversals and the independence axiom of all of the paradoxical patterns of behavior reported in laboratory experiments one of the most perplexing for decision theorists is the preference reversal phenomenon a subject in a preference reversal experiment is typically given a choice between a lottery with a high probability of winning a modest amount of money a p bet and a lottery with a low probability of winning a large amount of money a bet the lowest amount of money for which the subject would willingly sell either of these lotteries is also elicited the most common reversal is for a subject to choose the p bet over the bet but to put a higher selling price on the bet preference reversals were first reported by harold lindman 1971 and sarah lichtenstein and paul slovic 1971 in discussing the psychologists discovery of such reversals david grether and charles plott remark the inconsistency is deeper than mere lack of transitivity or even stochastic transitivity it suggests that no optimization principles of any sort lie behind even the simplest of human choices 1979 p 623 this paper offers a simple alternative explanation of documented preference reversals an explanation that does not require the abandonment of the transitivity assumption

the nexus between urbanization renewable energy trade and ecological footprint in asean countries abstract economic growth accompanied by rising energy demand in asean countries have been unprecedented over these few years on the other hand the energy consumed in the asean region is predominantly non renewable which could have implications for sustainable development previous studies that have investigated the energy growth environment nexus for this region are inefficient in terms of the proxies used to measure environmental quality and the estimation techniques adopted as such this study explores the influence of renewable and non renewable energy consumption economic growth and urbanization on a more reliable environmental indicator ecological footprint from 1990 to 2016 while controlling for trade first and second generation unit root and cointegration tests are applied amidst evidence of cross sectional dependence findings reveal that economic growth trade and non renewable energy contribute significantly to environmental degradation in asean countries this suggests that the region is growing at the expense of its environment while also indulging in emission intensive trade further findings show a one way causality from urbanization to non renewable energy consumption policy directions and implications of the findings for sustainability are discussed

persistence mean reversion and non linearities in emissions evidence from the brics and g7 countries the ministerio de economia y competitividad eco2014 55236 juncal cunado gratefully acknowledges financial support from the ministerio de economia y competitividad eco2014 55496

co2 emissions a quantitative analysis among the brics nations abstract this study aims to examine the volume of carbon dioxide co2 emissions by lag of the emissions and by the gross domestic product gdp for the brics brazil russia india china and south africa countries from 1980 to 2011 due to the heterogeneity of co2 emission among the brics countries we organized the countries into two groups in group 1 brazil and russia we identified that the main causes of the variation of co2 emission in time t are the emission of co2 in time t 1 and the annual gdp of the country in group 2 china india and south africa the findings do not depend on the income level of individual countries but only from the emission of co2 in the lag period therefore the main contribution of this study is that the environmental consequences of growing economic activity may be very mixed and must be examined on a case by case basis

a structural decomposition analysis of the emissions embodied in trade abstract the aim of this study is to quantify the driving forces behind the growth of carbon dioxide emissions embodied in trade eet the world input output database is used to estimate eet in 40 countries during 1995 2007 after which a structural decomposition analysis is applied to avoid biases in the results we have used the input output tables in previous year s prices and chained the outcomes in many developed countries the growth of emissions embodied in imports is much higher than the growth of emissions embodied in exports a key reason for this finding is the change in the structure of trade both in intermediate and in final products emerging economies like the bric countries have increased their share in production and trade at the expense of developed countries producers and consumers in developed countries have shifted towards importing a larger share of products from emerging countries this is the distinguishing feature that led to an increase of emissions embodied in imports for developed countries and an increase of emissions embodied in exports for emerging countries these results suggest policy makers to monitor eet more carefully and take the effects of trade on emissions into consideration

estimating willingness to pay with exaggeration bias corrected contingent valuation method estimates of the prices customers are willing to pay for new products or services using responses from survey questionnaires are notoriously biased on the high side an approach to obtaining more realistic estimates is suggested here called the exaggeration bias corrected contingent valuation method ebc cvm the method is an alternative to conventional contingent valuation methods cvms that have been used in economics and to a lesser extent in marketing two experiments and one field study are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in each case the proposed method outperformed conventional cvms in comparison with real choices or more realistic price estimates

bayesian analysis of interval data contingent valuation models and pricing policies the general aim of a contingent valuation survey is to elicit the willingness to pay wtp of respondents for some public commodity without a clear market price this could be a program to protect some environmental resource or as in our application the access to a recreational area of particular interest in this context we want to accommodate the possibility of zero wtp and we need to deal with the fact that observations arise as intervals for wtp rather than point observations we propose a flexible bayesian statistical analysis of wtp as a function of characteristics of the respondents that formally incorporates this structure through a mixture model we consider model uncertainty and pay particular attention to the predictive distribution of revenue if a certain entry price were asked the latter is an important tool for deriving pricing policies

embodied carbon dioxide emission at supra national scale a coalition analysis for g7 bric and the rest of the world abstract presented in this study is an empirical analysis of embodied carbon dioxide emissions induced by fossil fuel combustion for the world divided into three supra national coalitions i e g7 bric and the rest of the world row via the application of a multi region input output modeling for 2004 embodied emission intensities for the three coalitions are calculated and compared with market exchange rate and purchase power parity separately used to investigate the difference between nominal and real production efficiencies emissions embodied in different economic activities such as production consumption import and export are calculated and analyzed accordingly and remarkable carbon trade imbalances associated with g7 surplus of 1 53 billion tons or 36 its traded emissions and bric deficit of 1 37 billion tons or 51 its traded emissions and approximate balance with row deficit of 0 16 billion tons or 3 its traded emissions are concretely revealed carbon leakages associated with industry transfer and international trades are illustrated in terms of impacts on global climate policies the last but not least per capita consumption based emissions for g7 bric and row are determined as 12 95 1 53 and 2 22 tons respectively and flexible abatement policies as well as equity on per capita entitlement are discussed

embodied energy and intensity in china s normal and processing exports and their driving forces 2005 2015 abstract international trade has important impacts on a country s energy consumption this paper first uses the time series 2005 2015 extended input output database to study china s embodied energy and intensity in both normal and processing exports structural decomposition analysis sda is then applied to analyze the driving forces behind the embodiment changes the empirical results show that china s energy embodied in both normal and processing exports first increased in 2005 2008 dropped in 2009 due to the global financial crisis and then rose again after 2009 and finally dropped in 2014 2015 the embodied energy in trade as a percentage of total energy consumption in china was relatively stable before and after the global financial crisis at around 28 over the 2005 2008 period and 22 over the 2009 2015 period the contribution of the aggregate embodied intensity aei of exports to china s aggregate energy intensity dropped from 30 in 2005 to 21 in 2015 among china s trading partners the united states japan and korea together accounted for around half of china s embodied energy and aei in exports in 2005 but their shares dropped to only one third in 2015 energy efficiency improvement played the key role in reducing the embodied energy and intensity in china s exports similar analysis can be applied to other regions and indicators

hypothetical versus real willingness to pay in the health care sector results from a field experiment abstract we conducted a field experiment comparing hypothetical and real purchase decisions for a pharmacist provided asthma management program among 172 subjects with asthma subjects received either a dichotomous choice contingent valuation question or were given the opportunity to actually enroll in the program three different prices were used us 15 40 and 80 in the hypothetical group 38 of subjects said that they would purchase the good at the stated price but only 12 of subjects in the real group purchased the good p 0 000 we cannot however reject the null hypothesis that definitely sure hypothetical yes responses as identified in a follow up question correspond to real yes responses we conclude that the dichotomous choice contingent valuation method overestimates willingness to pay but that it may be possible to correct for this overestimation by sorting out definitely sure yes responses

are stated preferences convergent with revealed preferences empirical evidence from nigeria abstract the debate on the relevance of monetary valuation of environmental goods has often hinged around the convergence of stated and revealed preferences and in turn the actual money choices of respondents in this paper we report two separate experiments conducted in southeastern nigeria to compare irrigators stated willingness to pay for a river basin restoration scheme designed to mitigate soil and water pollution problems in their farms with their actual expenditures to mitigate the same pollution problems we found that the farmers stated and revealed preferences were significantly correlated but yielded significantly different means at 5 level while econometric analysis reveals a systematic association between key socioeconomic variables and farmers stated wtp lending credence to the cvm within its theoretical framework analysis of the qualitative follow ups reveals inconsistencies in some farmers stated and revealed preferences that cannot be satisfactorily explained on the basis of economic theory alone while individual utility maximisation was a dominant driver of both stated and revealed preferences for most farmers lack of environmental awareness information complexity risk aversion and peer pressure were seen to limit the ability and willingness of the least educated segment of the sample to make apparently rational economic decisions in both markets overall the results question the use of convergent and or theoretical validity arguments for justifying and or criticising the use of stated preference experiments in environmental policy

precautionary saving and risk aversion an anticipated utility approach abstract yaari 1987 proved that within the anticipated utility framework a risk averse decision maker will have precautionary saving regardless of the sign of the third derivative of his utility function in this note we extend a modification of this result for an n period model

changes of co2 emissions embodied in china japan trade drivers and implications co2 emission embodied in trade is an important aspect to respond international carbon mitigation half of china s emission increase was due to production of exports in order to analyze the reason of such a rapid emission increase embodied co2 emission flows between china and japan for the period of 2000 2009 were estimated in this study by using emission embodied in bilateral trade eebt approach in order to raise policy implications for both countries from trade perspective decomposition analysis was further conducted in order to identify driving forces underlying changes during the study period moreover the concept of dependence on traded co2 was proposed for analyzing mutual dependence of china and japan s carbon emission and economy the results show that china was a net exporter of embodied co2 emissions between china and japan trade but both china s exported emissions and net emission transfer to japan began to decrease after 2007 more emissions were embodied in more advanced and less carbon intensive products especially for china s exports driving force analysis shows that trade volume was the main driver for the increase of embodied emissions and technology effect contributed mainly to the decrease the absolute value of technology effect was even larger than activity effect in some years this study also reveals that japan was relatively more dependent on china s co2 emissions and showed an increasing trend over the last decade while china s economic development was more dependent on imports from japan and such a situation reversed after 2006 this study suggests that china should further reduce its emission intensity for narrowing the gap of embodied emissions between the bilateral trade flows and japanese energy saving technologies should be transferred to china

primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in australian final consumption an input output analysis input output modeling of primary energy and greenhouse gas embodiments in goods and services is a useful technique for designing greenhouse gas abatement policies the present paper describes direct and indirect primary energy and greenhouse gas requirements for a given set of australian final consumption it considers sectoral disparities in energy prices capital formation and international trade flows and it accounts for embodiments in the gross national expenditure as well as the gross domestic product primary energy and greenhouse gas intensities in terms of mj and kg co2 e are reported as well as national balances of primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions

universal health insurance in the clinton plan coverage as a tax financed public good the financing arrangements embodied in the clinton health reform plan involve some important differences in the way in which public goods are usually financed the subsidies to small low wage firms mandated to provide benefits distort markets in both labor and products and offer incentives for the creation of small firms in addition the financing scheme implicitly envisions a head tax on families at modest income levels but offers a possible rationale for it nevertheless the main reason for many of the financing features appears to be an attempt to hold down the apparent budgetary cost of universal coverage

the contingent valuation debate why economists should care t he contingent valuation method involves the use of sample surveys questionnaires to elicit the willingness of respondents to pay for generally hypothetical projects or programs the name of the method refers to the fact that the values revealed by respondents are contingent upon the constructed or simulated market presented in the survey a spirited and occasionally mean spirited battle over such methods is currently being waged involving competing factions within the federal government economists and lawyers representing business and environmental groups and interested academics as well at issue is a seemingly quite specific question should environmental regulations currently under development at both the department of the interior and the department of commerce sanction the use of the contingent valuation method in estimating the damage done by spills of oil chemicals or other substances covered by federal law more generally the debate raises broad questions about what economists have to say about the values that individuals place on public or private goods the two papers that follow this one make cases for and against the use of the contingent valuation method my aim here is to provide an overview of the technique and the debate surrounding it i also want to suggest why this debate should matter to economists both professionally and in their roles as citizens and consumers

if you have the flu symptoms your asymptomatic spouse may better answer the willingness to pay question evidence from a double bounded dichotomous choice model with heterogeneous anchoring the small sample size of contingent valuation cv surveys conducted in patients may have limited the use of the single bounded sb dichotomous choice format which is recommended in environmental economics in this paper we explore two ways to increase the statistical efficiency of the sb format 1 by the inclusion of proxies in addition to patients 2 by the addition of a follow up dichotomous question i e the double bounded db dichotomous choice format we found that patients n 223 and spouses n 64 answering on behalf of the patient had on average a similar willingness to pay for earlier alleviation of flu symptoms however a patient was significantly more likely to anchor his her answer on the first bid as compared to a spouse finally our original db model with shift effect and heterogeneous anchoring reconciled the discrepancies found in willingness to pay statistics between sb and db models in keeping with increased statistical efficiency

considering the effect of biomass energy consumption on economic growth fresh evidence from brics region abstract this paper investigates the relationship between biomass energy consumption and economic growth by incorporating capital and trade openness in production function for the case of brics countries in doing so unit root and cointegration tests have been used in order to examine unit root properties and long run relationship between the series for the period of 1991q1 2015q4 the results confirm the presence of long run equilibrium relationship between the variables moreover biomass energy consumption stimulates economic growth capital increments economic growth and trade openness spurs economic growth the feedback effect exists between biomass energy consumption and economic growth trade openness granger causes economic growth capital and biomass energy consumption the policy to adopt biomass as the primary source of renewable energy helps brics countries to achieve sustainable development goal in both short run and long run however the key innovative point of this study is to establish the sign for granger causality test

valuing health care using willingness to pay a comparison of the payment card and dichotomous choice methods this paper compares willingness to pay wtp estimates generated from the dichotomous choice dc and payment card pc approaches in a split sample wtp experiment concerned with allocating scarce health care resources across three health care interventions the dc approach is shown consistently to generate larger welfare estimates than the pc observed difference between pc and dc experiments cannot be explained by the inclusion of non demanders or methods of statistical analysis but may be partly explained by yea saying no evidence of range bias or mid point bias was found with pc responses data were also collected on respondents ordinal rankings of the three interventions and person trade offs ptos neither of these approaches converged with wtp future work must address the decision heuristics individuals employ when responding to valuation experiments

comparison of renewable energy policy evolution among the brics abstract renewable energy policy evolution of the brics is analyzed and assessed quantitatively based on the bai and perron s structure breaks test results indicate no break for time series of renewable production in russia while series of renewable production and consumption are characterized as segmented trend stationary processes around one or two structural breaks in brazil india and china renewable policies in brazil and china have long term positive effects on renewable energy production and consumption improving the two variables growth rate the time series structure change of indian renewable energy production is complicated and the long term impact of energy policies on renewable production is contradictory at the two breakpoints russian renewable policies are not working reducing renewable energy consumption growth in the long term empirical analysis suggests policy implications that china should mandate the promotion of renewable energy develop biomass energy on the base of comparative advantage and enhance renewable energy industry chain integration

consistency of risk premium measures this research uses the results of a series of within sample experiments to elicit risk premium measures from agricultural producers results show that there is little consistency between measures in different contexts and using different elicitation methods suggesting that underlying risk preferences are not consistent these results highlight some of the difficulty with expected utility theory and risk measurement

examining carbon emissions economic growth nexus for india a multivariate cointegration approach abstract the study probes cointegration and causality between carbon emissions and economic growth for india using ardl bounds testing approach complemented by johansen juselius maximum likelihood procedure in a multivariate framework by incorporating energy supply investment and employment for time span 1971 2006 the study fails to establish long run equilibrium relationship and long term causality between carbon emissions and economic growth however there exists a bi directional short run causality between the two hence in the short run any effort to reduce carbon emissions could lead to a fall in the national income this study also establishes unidirectional short run causality running from economic growth to energy supply and energy supply to carbon emissions the absence of causality running from energy supply to economic growth implies that in india energy conservation and energy efficiency measures can be implemented to minimize the wastage of energy across value chain such measures would narrow energy demand supply gap absence of long run causality between carbon emissions and economic growth implies that in the long run focus should be given on harnessing energy from clean sources to curb carbon emissions which would not affect the country s economic growth

carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth an aggregate and disaggregate analysis of the indian economy abstract this study investigates the long and short run relationships among carbon emissions energy consumption and economic growth in india at the aggregated and disaggregated levels during 1971 2014 the autoregressive distributed lag model is employed for the cointegration analyses and the vector error correction model is applied to determine the direction of causality between variables results show that a long run cointegration relationship exists and that the environmental kuznets curve is validated at the aggregated and disaggregated levels furthermore energy total energy gas oil electricity and coal consumption has a positive relationship with carbon emissions and a feedback effect exists between economic growth and carbon emissions thus energy efficient technologies should be used in domestic production to mitigate carbon emissions at the aggregated and disaggregated levels the present study provides policy makers with new directions in drafting comprehensive policies with lasting impacts on the economy energy consumption and environment towards sustainable development

a review of renewable energy investment in the brics countries history models problems and solutions abstract this paper reviews the history of renewable energy development in the brics countries the financing models for renewable energy development of brics countries include bank financing institutional loans industry funds and international financing this paper identified several problems with financing in brics countries including a lack of financing channels investment shortage for small and medium sized enterprises and imperfect government policies the solutions to these problems include expanded capital markets the financing of leasing services and build operate transfer and build own operate projects further a financial citizen participation model should be employed similar to that as germany and european union emissions trading system eu ets a financial citizen participation model means that legal entities private individuals and agricultural enterprises invest in renewable energy infrastructure through equity a regional reserve ratio monetary policy is suggested to allow regions to develop renewable energy

cognitive ability and scale bias in the contingent valuation method this study investigates whether or not the scale bias found in contingent valuation cvm studies on mortality risk reductions is a result of cognitive constraints among respondents scale bias refers to insensitivity and non near proportionality of the respondents willingness to pay wtp to the size of the risk reduction two hundred swedish students participated in an experiment in which their cognitive ability was tested before they took part in a cvm study asking them about their wtp to reduce bus mortality risk the results imply that wtp answers from respondents with a higher cognitive ability are less flawed by scale bias

exploring preference anomalies in double bounded contingent valuation double bounded dichotomous choice dbdc contingent valuation offers increased efficiency of willingness to pay wtp estimates compared with the single bounded format however evidence suggests dbdc generates anomalous respondent behaviour this paper provides the first investigation and explanation of these anomalies in health results suggest the incentives for truthful preference revelation are altered in the presence of a follow up question this result is found using both regression techniques and analysis of raw responses although findings suggest very certain respondents exhibit less anomalous behaviour inconsistencies remain across bounds the results of this study question the use of iterative valuation formats

benefits transfer of willingness to pay estimates and functions for health risk reductions a cross country study this paper provides a first application of the techniques of benefits transfer to the health economics literature these techniques seek to transfer the value of some good from one survey context to a new policy context so avoiding the need for new valuation surveys each time a new policy question arises two approaches to benefits transfer are assessed the simple transfer of mean values and the transferral of value functions we develop a new methodology for the latter approach in which value functions are iteratively built up from theoretical principles with transfer errors being tested each time a new variable is added through a novel application of advanced statistical tests we show that this approach outperforms the transferral of statistically driven best fit functions the case study presented focuses upon the transfer of contingent valuation cv willingness to pay wtp estimates and associated value functions for reducing the health risks associated with solar ultraviolet uv exposure common format studies are conducted in four countries with transfers between all of these being undertaken by calculating errors in predicted versus actual values across countries we show that when transferring between similar contexts simple mean value transfers outperform more complex value function transfers with the magnitude of the former errors being encouragingly small however this result is reversed when transfers are undertaken across dissimilar contexts where value functions partially adjust for these differences in summary these findings provide support and guidance for future applications

china s foreign trade and climate change a case study of co2 emissions abstract the globalization of trade has numerous environmental implications trade creates a mechanism for consumers to shift environmental pollution associated with their consumption to other countries carbon leakage exerts great influences on international trade and economy applying an input output approach the paper estimates the amount of carbon dioxide co2 embodied in china s foreign trade during 1997 2007 it is found that 10 03 26 54 of china s annual co2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of export goods destined for foreign consumers while the co2 emissions embodied in china s imports accounted for only 4 40 1997 and 9 05 2007 of that we also estimate that the rest of world avoided emitting 150 18 mt co2 in 1997 increasing to 593 mt in 2007 as a result of importing goods from china rather than manufacturing the same type and quantity of goods domestically during 1997 2007 the net additional global co2 emissions resulting from china s exports were 4894 mt then the paper divides the trade embodied emissions into scale composition and technical effect it was found that scale and composition effect increased the co2 emissions embodied in trade while the technical effect offset a small part of them finally its mechanism and policy implications are presented

are hypothetical referenda incentive compatible a comment in a recent article in this journal cummings al 1997 offer experimental evidence rejecting the hypothesis that a hypothetical referendum is an incentive compatible mechanism for obtaining the social value of or willingness to pay for changes in the allocation of environmental goods and services while cautions in offering a blanket rejection of hypothetical referenda as a means of measuring economic values on the basis of their findings the authors do suggest that at least in experimental settings respondents appear to behave differently when real money is changing hands wheather hypothetical situations adequately mimic real market situations has been debated in the contigent valuation literature since its inception see cummings brookshire and schulze 1986 cummings et al s finding of incentive incompatibility appears to offer strong evidence for the critics of hypothetical referenda

developments in non expected utility theory the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk this article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways considerable research effort has now been devoted to the project of developing a superior descriptive model following an overview of non expected utility theories which distinguishes between conventional and non conventional approaches the paper seeks to assess these alternative models in terms of empirical success using laboratory and field data and theoretical usefulness the closing sections reflect on some new directions emerging in this literature

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

measurement of health state utilities for economic appraisal health status measurement for use in economic appraisal of health care programmes is reviewed in this paper with particular emphasis on utility measurement a framework for economic appraisal is presented displaying the various components that must be measured and showing how the three forms of analysis cost effectiveness analysis cost benefit analysis and cost utility analysis relate to the framework and to each other one of the components in the framework is health status it can be measured using ad hoc numeric scales willingness to pay receive or health state utilities the determination of health state utilities is reviewed covering the following issues alternative sources of utilities health state descriptions multi attribute utility approach determination of appropriate subjects utility aggregation and accuracy three measurement techniques for health state utilities are described in detail rating scale standard gamble and time trade off the use of these methods is described for both chronic and temporary health states and for both health states considered better than death and those considered worse than death

evaluating the validity of the dichotomous choice question format in contingent valuation hypothetical and actual cash willingness to pay wtp for an art print were elicited with dichotomous choice and open ended question formats comparing hypothetical and actual dichotomous choice responses using both a likelihood ratio test and the method of convolutions suggests we reject equality at the 0 05 but not the 0 01 level hypothetical wtp was roughly two times actual wtp with the dichotomous choice format there were no significant differences between the open ended and dichotomous choice question formats when both were used to estimate hypothetical wtp or both used to estimate actual wtp

energy co2 emissions and value added flows embodied in the international trade of the brics group a comprehensive assessment abstract the brics economies group i e brazil russia india china and south africa has become an important contributor to the growth of the world economy which is increasingly concerned about carbon emissions due to the recent increase in energy use in these countries while the embodied energy use related to emissions of the brics group has been discussed in the literature an integrated analysis of energy carbon footprints and value added flows associated with international trade among the brics group has to date rarely been reported based on an improved multi regional input output model south africa was extracted from the rest of the world in the world input output database wiod to analyze the above mentioned flows embodied in trade within the brics countries as well as between the brics group and other economies the results show that the brics economic entity was a net embodied flows exporter more flows were embodied in intermediate products than in final demand within the brics group compared with other brics economies china which is the largest transit country transferred more embodied flows from russia to other brics countries and drove more embodied flows from major economies including the united states and european countries outside the brics group than those within the brics group however china imported a relatively higher embodied energy and co2 in per unit value added from the brics countries than non brics countries while exporting relative lower embodied energy and co2 per value added to other brics economies than non brics countries the potential policy implications on cleaner development within the brics economies are discussed at the end of this paper

driving factors of carbon emissions embodied in china us trade a structural decomposition analysis abstract based on the environmental multi regional input output model this study employed structural decomposition analysis to investigate the driving factors of carbon emissions embodied in china us trade over the period of 1995 2009 effective driving factors were classified into six groups and each group included both factors at home and abroad the results show that factors trade structure of intermediate products at home and export market shares of final products at home presented the largest positive impacts to increments in carbon emissions embodied in chinese exports to the us while the majority of negative impacts was generated by changes in energy intensities at home the increment in carbon emissions embodied in us exports to china was mostly contributed by total demands abroad impacts of other driving factors were much smaller at the sectoral level both positive and negative impacts of driving factors were largely limited to a few sectors e g textiles products machinery transport equipment and electrical equipment here positive impacts were mostly contributed by export market shares of final products at home and total demands abroad and negative impacts were mainly contributed by energy intensities at home policy implications deduced from the results were discussed

three variants on the allais example three variants on the famous allais example were administered to student subjects two variants involved small changes in the example yet greatly diminished the qualitative behavior known as the allais paradox the third variant is almost a direct test of daniel kahneman and amos tversky s certainty effect against mark machina s fanning out hypothesis the results favor the certainty effect over the fanning out hypothesis for at least the case of straight line indifference curves copyright 1989 by american economic association

mitigating hypothetical bias evidence on the effects of correctives from a large field study the overestimation of willingness to pay wtp in hypothetical responses is a well known finding in the literature various techniques have been proposed to remove or at least reduce this bias using about 30 000 responses on wtp for a variety of power mixes from a panel of 6500 german households and the fixed effects estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity this article simultaneously explores the effects of two common ex ante approaches cheap talk and consequential script and the ex post certainty approach to calibrating hypothetical wtp responses based on a switching regression model that accounts for the potential endogeneity of respondent certainty we find evidence for a lower wtp among those respondents who classify themselves as definitely certain about their answers although neither cheap talk nor the consequential script corrective reduce wtp estimates receiving either of these scripts increases the probability that respondents indicate definite certainty about their wtp bids

households willingness to pay for health microinsurance and its impact on actual take up results from a field experiment in senegal abstractcommunity based health insurance schemes cbhis have been present in the region of theis senegal for many years yet despite the benefits they offer take up rates remain low this article measures the willingness to pay wtp for cbhis premiums in such a context our results highlight the role of income wealth and risk preferences as determinants of wtp we also provide an analysis of the predictive power of wtp on the actual take up of insurance following our offering of membership to a sample of 360 households results show that wtp has a positive and significant impact on actual cbhis take up

carbon emission intensity in electricity production a global analysis we study changes in the aggregate carbon intensity aci for electricity at the global and country levels the aci is defined as the energy related co2 emissions in electricity production divided by the electricity produced it is a performance indicator since a decrease in its value is a desirable outcome from the environmental and climate change viewpoints from 1990 to 2013 the aci computed at the global level decreased only marginally however fairly substantial decreases were observed in many countries this apparent anomaly arises from a geographical shift in global electricity production with countries having a high aci increasingly taking up a larger electricity production share it is found that globally and in most major electricity producing countries reduction in their aci was due mainly to improvements in the thermal efficiency of electricity generation rather than to fuel switching estimates of the above mentioned effects are made using lmdi decomposition analysis our study reveals several challenges in reducing global co2 emissions from the electricity production sector although technically the reduction potential for the sector is known to be great

urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions empirical evidence from countries with different income levels abstract the growth of anthropogenic co2 emissions has been widely attributed to the combustion of energy in support of human activities associated with economic development while the link between urbanization economic growth energy consumption and co2 emissions has as a result received considerable multidisciplinary scholarly attention little work has been undertaken with respect to the how differences in the development stages or income levels of the countries studied may affect these relations here we empirically explore the link between urbanization economic development energy consumption and co2 emissions specifically taking into account the different income levels of the countries studied a series of panel data models and a balanced dataset for a panel of 170 countries were utilized in the study which took the period of 1980 2011 into consideration the result of panel cointegration tests suggested that a cointegration relationship existed between variables in all the countries studied and that a statistically significant positive relationship existed between the variables employed in the long run the results of a granger causality test based on the vector error correction model vecm provided evidence of varied granger causality relationships between the variables across the income based subpanels moreover we also undertook an impulse response and variance decomposition analysis that allowed us to forecast the impacts of economic growth urbanization and energy consumption on future co2 emissions during the period surveyed our results cast a new light on the importance of a country s development stage and income level for government policy decisions relating to the reduction of co2 emissions