aid for the poorest some early lessons of uk experience the paper presents an interim review of recent attempts to reach the poorest people in developing countries through aid policy from the viewpoint of one donor the united kingdom it concludes that the uk has achieved a modest increase in the proportion of aid aimed at the poorest between 1974 and 1979 that poverty focused projects are in general more local cost intensive and have lower rates of return than others and that the principal difficulties in the way of successful implementation of poverty focused projects are excessive size an over rapid rate of disbursement inadequate local cost provisions and failure to specify the target group or the repayment strategy with sufficient precision it is argued that there are political obstacles to removing the second and third of these obstacles in donor countries and to removing the fourth in recipient countries also

demand for rural tourism the effects of quality and information the development of rural tourism is regarded as a promising diversification strategy especially for lagging and mountainous areas of the european union research concerning the demand and or supply of rural tourism services has been limited within the agricultural economics domain despite the significance attached to rural tourism by various rural development policy measures and initiatives the article examines the expenditure behavior of rural tourists within a framework of demand for composite heterogeneous goods the proposed framework captures the quality of the tourism experience as the commodity s unit value a quantifiable economic variable examines its effects on expenditures and allows for the estimation of elasticity in prices regarding expenditure and quantity empirical analysis is facilitated by a survey recording the expenditure behavior of 465 tourists in two rural and lagging areas of greece the quality of the tourism experience is significantly and positively affected by the income the source from which information about the trip is retrieved internet newspapers as well as general press and special travel press and by the amount of information sought by the consumer prior to the trip in turn the quality of the tourism experience is the major endogenous factor that positively influences expenditures for rural tourism further research is needed before evidence provided in this work can be used to draw policy conclusions and recommendations

organic labelling private label and u s household demand for fluid milk abstractthe u s fluid milk market has been experiencing two trends in the recent decade the fast growth of private label milk and organic milk using the data from nielsen homescan panel we estimate a censored demand system to study the demand relations among types of milk differentiated by brand types and organic status we find that sociodemographic factors still play important roles in household choice of milk types and fluid milk as a whole is an inferior good moreover as income increases households are more likely to shift from buying conventional milk to organic milk and from private label conventional milk to branded conventional milk as indicated by the asymmetric cross price elasticities corresponding implications for milk producers and marketers are discussed

beneficial or detrimental ignorance the straw man fallacy of flyvbjerg s test of hirschman s hiding hand summary in a recent paper in this journal the fallacy of beneficial ignorance a test of hirschman s hiding hand professor bent flyvbjerg claims that there is no such thing as beneficial ignorance and that ignorance is detrimental to project success moreover he argues that if hirschman s principle of the hiding hand were correct then benefit overruns would exceed cost overruns thus with a statistical test he demonstrates that the hiding hand is in fact less common than its evil twin the planning fallacy in this rejoinder the author shows that flyvbjerg s test is built on a straw man fallacy and that he fails to refute the hiding hand contrary to flyvbjerg who focuses on the narrow costs and benefits this paper provides evidence that while the hiding hand is found among projects that are project management failures but project successes the planning fallacy fits with projects that are both project management and project failures on that basis the author analyzes a sample of 161 world bank funded projects of different types and finds that the hiding hand prevails while future research should ascertain this finding the author then points out the methodological limitations of flyvbjerg s test indeed it is ironic that the hiding hand a principle crafted against the very idea of cost benefit analysis is refuted on that very basis even worse flyvbjerg in his cost benefit analysis ignores the full life cycle project costs and benefits the unintended project effects the difficulties and problem solving abilities so dear to hirschman and thus treats the management of projects as a kind of black box finally the author submits that hirschman was a behavioral project theorist and argues that it is more important to shed light on the circumstances where the hiding hand works than to question whether the principle of the hiding hand is right

a study of cartel stability the joint executive committee 1880 1886 this article employs weekly time series data on the joint executive committee railroad cartel from 1880 to 1886 to test empirically the proposition that observed prices reflected switches from collusive to noncooperative behavior an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with asymmetric firms together with explicit functional form assumptions about costs and demand determines the estimating equations and stochastic structure of the econometric model the hypothesis that no switch took place so that price and quantity movements were solely attributable to exogenous shifts in the demand and cost functions is then tested against this alternative and rejected

survival of the unfittest why the worst infrastructure gets built and what we can do about it the article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects second it documents a much neglected topic in economics that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits for large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns benefit shortfalls and the systematic underestimation of risks third implications for cost benefit analysis are described including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects fourth the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects but the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality the article depicts this situation as survival of the unfittest fifth the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments finally the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development it is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending combined with more investments in emerging economies combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire

prices and quality effects in cross sectional demand analysis a conceptual clarification of the sources and meaning of cross sectional price variability is used to motivate a theoretical and econometric framework for the estimation of cross sectional demand functions quality effects are distinguished from supply related price variability to identify cross sectional demand for disaggregated food commodities an empirical application using data from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey indicates that parameter differences resulting from a failure to adjust cross sectional prices for quality effects are likely to be small for relatively homogenous disaggregated food commodities in demand analysis with cross sectional household budget data it is usually assumed that prices are constant allen and bowley prais and houthakker george and king given this assumption engel functions are estimated where expenditure or quantity is regressed on income or total expenditures family size and other demographic characteristics the assumption that cross sectional price effects are absent or are captured adequately by spatial and temporal dummy variables has not been evaluated empirically whether cross sectional price effects can be treated in this manner has implications for the specification of cross sectional demand functions as well as the estimation of engel functions there is a considerable literature on estimating price elasticities with cross sectional data most of the applications utilize timeseries cross sectional data annual or quarterly household consumption surveys and

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

evaluating tourism s economic effects new and old approaches abstract techniques such as multiplier analysis and input output analysis are still very commonly used to make estimates of the economic impact of changes in tourism expenditure these techniques have serious limitations and as a result alternative techniques have been developed to address the problems computable general equilibrium cge models are now extensively used especially in australia the uk the us and canada to estimate economic impacts of a wide variety of changes and policies across most sectors cge techniques have been used in the tourism context but so far not extensively economic evaluation in tourism thus fails to achieve best practice the paper presents arguments in support of cge modelling as the preferred technique in analysing the economic impacts of tourism and discusses its potential to drive future research in this area that is more relevant to real world tourism destinations

an empirical study of an auction with asymmetric information this paper examines federal auctions for drain age leases on the outer continental shelf from 1959 to 1969 these are leases that are adjacent to tracts on which a deposit has been discovered the authors find that the data strongly support the hypotheses that neighbor firms are better informed about the value of a lease than nonneighbor firms that neighbor firms coordinate their bidding decisions and that both types of firms bid strategically in accordance with the bayesian nash equilibrium model for first price sealed bid auctions with asymmetric information

advertising information and product quality the case of butter this study examines the roles of cholesterol information and advertising in explaining consumption trends for fats and oils focusing on butter results suggest increased consumer awareness of the health effects of blood cholesterol has contributed to the secular decline in butter consumption in canada although consumers responses to negative information appear to outweigh their responses to positive information the industry advertising campaign launched in 1978 by the dairy bureau of canada has had a positive effect on butter demand

estimation of demand functions using cross sectional household data the problem revisited a procedure that corrects for selectivity bias is proposed to estimate demand functions using cross sectional data under the assumption that prices vary across households this procedure which extends the work by cox and wohlgenant includes a two equation system of expenditure and unit value functions this model is applied to household expenditures for beef steaks and roasts

quality variation and quantity aggregation in consumer demand for food viewing the problem of quality variation in consumer demand for food as a problem of valid aggregation over goods leads to new insights the simple sum of physical quantities used as the measure of demand in the quality literature is found to be a theoretically arbitrary and potentially misleading measure of demand when goods are heterogenous alternative measures of demand derived from restrictions on quality variation consumer preferences or relative prices are investigated a hypothetical example illustrates the use of a hicksian composite commodity assumption the empirical as well as conceptual merits of the various measures are discussed the usual assumption made about prices in a cross section analysis of household food expenditures is that all households are facing the same prices estimation of price elasticities of demand is commonly left to time series researchers who get price information from intertemporal indices recently however there has been renewed interest in the otential of cross section analysis for estimation of price elasticities of demand for food especially when surveys collect data on both household expenditures for food items and on the physical quantities purchased

pooling access and countervailing power in channel governance fruit and vegetable marketing organization the greenery has experienced various governance structure changes like horizontal merger forward integration and the emergence of grower associations a multilateral incomplete contracting model is presented to account for these changes by analysing the interactions between pooling access and countervailing power this model does not only explain the changes at the greenery but it contributes also to the design of efficient channel governance this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors

the demand for food quality in rural china many studies of food demand do not use actual prices but unit values obtained by dividing expenditures by the quantity consumed this can bias empirical analyses because unit values are not exogenous market prices they reflect household food quality choices within each food category this article develops a framework for assessing the resulting bias in income and price elasticities of demand and applies the framework to data for rural china empirical results indicate that households in rural china tend to consume higher quality food as income increases with a greater sensitivity to income for basic foods than for luxury foods copyright 2009 oxford university press

an econometric analysis of demand for food quantity and quality in urban china this article offers an analytical framework for studying consumer demand for food quality based on a theory consistent demand model namely the exact affine stone index specification importantly it accounts for unobserved consumer and regional heterogeneity and allows for arbitrary engel curves the empirical value of our framework is illustrated in an econometric analysis of demand for food quality in china evaluating possible structural changes in consumer food expenditures in china is of paramount importance given the ever increasing global role of china and the implications of the structural food preference changes for the global food system the major findings emerging from this study indicate that income is an important determinant of demand for food quality and quantity with the relatively more affluent provinces having a higher affinity for food quality

confronting the implications of the cournot model with industry and firm data this paper derives testable implications of the standard cournot models and confronts these implications with real world data though we cannot expect that real world may be characterized by a simple static homogeneous model it is surprising that little empirical work exists on testing the implications of this most popular model of oligopoly and non cooperative game theory

a test of nutritional quality signaling in food markets prior to implementation of mandatory labeling in may 1994 new nutrition labeling regulations went into effect in the united states requiring mandatory disclosure of information on the nutritional content of foods this article uses grossman s model of totally effective quality signaling to evaluate whether markets were effective in information provision prior to the new regulation if markets were effective in providing information to consumers on the nutritional quality of foods the new regulation would be unnecessary the results of the logistic model where the probability of voluntary information disclosure is linked to the nutritional quality of food products and their prices indicate that private quality signaling was not reliably at work in food markets prior to implementation of the mandatory nutrition labeling regulation copyright 2000 oxford university press

strategic behaviour of incumbent firms in the uk abstract the main purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence of strategic behaviour in the uk by means of a questionnaire study performed across three broad manufacturing industries food electrical engineering and chemicals of the strategies which have received substantial theoretical attention r d and advertising appear widely used patenting pricing and excess capacity much less so vertical instruments such as purchasing policy also stand out as important but possibly only a minority of firms in our sample actively pursue strategic instruments

food prices and market structure in sweden this paper examines retail grocery price levels across a large panel of stores in sweden we explain price variation across stores by market structure variables to capture differences in competition intensity and a number of store and region specific factors most of the explained variation in prices can be attributed to store specific factors such as size and chain affiliation overall the relation between market structure variables and food prices is weak and effects are small in percentage terms nevertheless higher local concentration of stores higher regional wholesaler concentration and a lower market share of large stores are all correlated with higher prices

quantity and quality effects of advertising a demand system approach quantity and quality effects of advertising are investigated in this article a censored demand system is estimated for fish beef pork and other meats using norwegian household data in the demand model generic fish advertising and meat advertising is introduced as demand shifters and at the same time unit values are treated as endogenous the unit values capture the quality of the commodities empirical findings show that advertising can have both quantity and quality effects on household demand

towards a structural model of the tourist experience an illustration from food experiences in tourism abstract the tourist experience has for a long time been one sidedly understood as either the peak experience or the consumer experience for a better understanding of the tourist experience this paper tries to build a conceptual model in which both dimension of the tourist experience are integrated as a structured and interrelated whole the position and role of each experiential component such as eating sleeping transportation and so on in tourism can be more clearly understood in terms of this model for an illustration of the model food experience in tourism is examined in detail it is demonstrated that food consumption in tourism can be either the peak touristic experience or the supporting consumer experience dependent upon specific circumstances

is there curvature in the slutsky matrix d o the poor substitute among commodities more flexibly than the rich when relative prices change even when compensated for the income effects of the price changes is it necessary to add a third dimension to the slutsky substitution matrix to identify household income in short do the terms of the slutsky elasticity matrix curve smoothly from poor households to rich households in such a way that equation 1 is meaningful

the fallacy of beneficial ignorance a test of hirschman s hiding hand albert o hirschman s principle of the hiding hand stands stronger and more celebrated today than ever the principle states that ignorance is good in planning because if decision makers knew the real costs and difficulties of projects few ventures would ever get started the paper presents the first systematic test of the principle of the hiding hand including a test of whether hirschman s theory may be replicated with more and better data this was found not to be the case first statistical tests reject the principle of the hiding hand at an overwhelmingly high level of significance p 0 0001 in reality the exact opposite happens of what the principle states instead of project success being secured by creative error and beneficial ignorance where higher than estimated costs are outweighed by even higher than estimated benefits the average project is in fact undermined by a double whammy of substantial cost overruns compounded by substantial benefit shortfalls second hirschman was found to have made the error of sampling on the dependent variable undermining the validity of his findings third hirschman s sample of projects on which he built his principle is too small to support his wide conclusions fourth hirschman misrepresented his findings and misled his readers in sum the data do not support hirschman s proposition that ignorance is good in planning ignorance is bad if by bad we mean that ignorance leads to starting projects that should not have been started finally the data also do not support an interpretation of hirschman as an early behavioral economist as proposed by sunstein hirschman was a victim not a student of bias

parametric and semi parametric modelling of vacation expenditures we analyse several limited dependent variable models explaining the budget share that dutch families spend on vacations to take account of the substantial number of zero shares two types of models are used the first is the single equation censored regression model we estimate and test several parametric and semi parametric extensions of the tobit model second we consider two equation models in which the participation decision and the decision on the amount to spend are treated separately the first decision is modelled as a binary choice model the second as a conditional regression we estimate and test parametric and semi parametric specifications

an econometric study of tourism demand the aids model of us and european tourism in mediterranean countries the almost ideal demand system aids model was used to estimate tourism expenditure allocation by us and west european countries among a range of mediterranean destinations the approach has the advantage of an explicit basis in consumer expenditure theory and by modelling the changes in the budget shares of expenditure among destinations provides new information relative to that provided by the traditional single equation approach the estimated model was econometrically satisfactory although symmetry and homogeneity were rejected in line with the findings of past studies of consumer demand the expenditure elasticities demonstrated considerable differences in tourism demand preferences between origin countries and between traditional and newly developing destinations the own and cross price elasticities indicated the importance of effective prices in determining the allocation of expenditure among destinations

the quantity and variety of households meat purchases a censored demand system approach this study investigates the demand for 10 disaggregated meat products by u s households a censored demand system which imposes budget constraints in both observed and latent shares is estimated along with a detailed explanation of the estimation procedure additional details about the methodology not provided in previous studies should help researchers to empirically apply the model an innovation of the study is to introduce the censored demand system model for studying the variety of a household s food purchases most households buy between seven and eight different products and hardly change the variety of their purchases with changes in meat expenditure