factors influencing differences between survey and market based environmental value measures a unique us database combining survey and housing data is used to obtain household level stated and market based willingness to pay wtp measures to avoid living near landfills systematic differe

discrete choice with social interactions this paper provides an analysis of aggregate behavioural outcomes when individual utility exhibits social interaction effects we study generalized logistic models of individual choice which incorporate terms reflecting the desire of individuals to conform to the behaviour of others in an environment of noncooperative decisionmaking laws of large numbers are generated in such environments multiplicity of equilibria in these models which are equivalent to the existence of multiple self consistent means for average choice behaviour will exist when the social interactions exceed a particular threshold local stability of these multiple equilibria is also studied the properties of the noncooperative economy are contrasted with the properties of an economy in which a social planner determines the set of individual choices finally a likelihood function based on the theoretical model is given and conditions for the econometric identifiability of the model are established

preference heterogeneity in the structural estimation of efficient pigovian incentives for insecticide spraying to reduce malaria this paper bridges the theoretical and empirical literatures on the role of preference heterogeneity in characterizing externalities related to disease transmission we use a theoretical structure similar to locational sorting models which characterize equilibria in terms of marginal individuals who are indifferent between locations in our case the locations are binary consisting of whether or not to take a discrete preventative action individual heterogeneity arises in this structure due to variation in the costs and disutility associated with prevention we demonstrate application of this approach in the context of participation in insecticide based indoor residual spraying programs for malaria control in northern uganda we identify the parameters of our theoretical model using a stated preference choice experiment combined with estimates from published epidemiological studies the model implies that pigovian subsidies for participation in this context should decrease household malaria risk by 19 25 our approach can be applied to other bioeconomic externalities with spillovers from discrete preventative actions including agricultural pest management and the control of pest infestations and invasive species

households willingness to pay for public housing in the presence of price controls nonmarket housing allocation mechanisms such as queueing prevent households from revealing their marginal willingness to pay for housing through market prices we derive the households marginal willingness to pay using the intuitive idea that the length of the queue for a specific house reflects the households willingness to pay for housing characteristics we apply our methodology to public housing in the amsterdam metropolitan area and show that on average the households marginal willingness to pay for a unit of public housing is close to its marginal costs this suggests that the welfare loss of public housing through distortions in housing supply is rather limited and is mainly through distortions in housing demand we provide indirect evidence of the latter by showing that queueing induces inefficient matching of households and housing

on the equilibrium properties of locational sorting models abstract important to many models of location choice is the role of local interactions or spillovers whereby the payoffs from choosing a location depend in part on the number or attributes of other individuals or firms that choose the same or nearby locations in equilibrium this paper develops the equilibrium properties of a broadly applicable and readily estimable class of sorting models that allow location decisions to depend on both fixed local attributes including unobserved attributes and local interactions describes the conditions under which equilibria exist and are unique and provides a test for uniqueness in empirical analyses of sorting equilibrium

school segregation and the identification of tipping behavior we develop a method to empirically implement the schelling model of segregation and use it to study racial segregation in los angeles schools from 1995 to 2012 our two step method combines the estimation of parents preferences for their children s peers with a counterfactual simulation analysis we find substantial heterogeneity in the existence and locations of tipping points and stable equilibria schools are observed on equilibrium trajectories but many remained out of equilibrium by 2012 we also introduce novel instrumental variables to identify preferences for endogenous peer groups that require no additional data and can be used in other educational settings

non price equilibria for non marketed goods abstract as part of the resources for the future frontiers of environmental economics collection of papers we consider the problem of general equilibrium feedback effects in non price space as they relate to non market valuation our overall objective is to examine the extent to which non price equilibria arising from both simple and complex sorting behavior can be empirically modeled and the resulting differences in partial and general equilibrium welfare measures quantified after motivating the problem in general we consider the specific context of congestion in recreation demand applications which we classify as the outcome of a simple sorting equilibrium using both econometric and computable general equilibrium cge models we examine the conceptual and computational challenges associated with this class of problems and present findings on promising solution avenues we demonstrate the relevance of accounting for congestion effects in recreation demand with an application to lake visits in iowa our econometric and cge results confirm that for some plausible counterfactual scenarios substantial differences exist between partial and general equilibrium welfare estimates we conclude the paper by describing tasks that are needed to move forward research in this area

estimation of an equilibrium model with externalities post disaster neighborhood rebuilding we study the optimal design of subsidies in an equilibrium setting where the decisions of individual recipients impose externalities on one another we apply the model to the case of post katrina rebuilding in new orleans under the louisiana road home rebuilding grant program rh we estimate the structural model via indirect inference exploiting a discontinuity in the formula for determining the size of grants which helps isolate the causal effect of neighbors rebuilding on one s own rebuilding choices we find that the additional rebuilding induced by rh generated positive externalities equivalent to 4950 to each inframarginal household whose rebuilding choice was not affected by the program counterfactual policy experiments find that optimal subsidy policies bias grant offers against relocation with an inverse u shaped relationship between the degree of bias and the severity of damages from the disaster

discrete choice with social interactions and endogenous memberships this paper develops a theory of sorting and behavior when the latter is subject to social influences i extend the choice model with social interactions developed by brock and durlauf 2001a 2003 to allow for equilibrium group formation individuals choose a group and a behavior subject to an endogenous social effect the latter turns out to be a segregating force and stable equilibria are stratified the sorting process may induce inefficiently multiple behavioral equilibria such a theory serves as a means to solve identification and selection problems that may undermine the empirical detection of social effects on individual behavior i exploit the theoretical structure to build a nonlinear in the social effect selection correction term such a term allows identification and solves the selection problem that arises when individuals can choose the group whose effect the researcher is trying to disentangle

empirical estimates of beta when investors face estimation risk we examine empirical implications of models of differential information that formalize the following intuition securities for which there is relatively little information are perceived as relatively more risky because of the greater uncertainty surrounding the exact parameters of their return distributions the implication that beta risk for low information firms should decline as information increases is confirmed with several data sets we find such a decline over the first geveral periods subsequent to initial public offerings and initial listings there is also an abrupt risk decline at the first annual earnings announcement this paper examines several empirical implications of security return models involving differential information these models formalize the following intuition securities for which there is relatively little information are perceived as relatively more risky because of the greater uncertainty surrounding the exact parameters of their return distributions the research relates to two streams of literature the first revolves around the new issues and new listings market it begins with ibbotson 1975 and includes for example ritter 1984 beatty and ritter 1986 mcconnell and sanger 1987 and muscarella and vetsuypens 1989 the second is the literature dealing with the effects of differential information on the risk assessment of low information firms this second literature is exemplified by the work of klein and bawa 1976 1977 and barry and brown 1984 1985 in our examination we focus on how increased risk associated with low information firms henceforth called estimation risk manifests itself in observed return data we explore how observed security returns to low information firms appear to researchers in relation to how they appear ex ante to investors who base their predictive distribution of security returns on incomplete information about the parameters of the return generating process we also examine data on new listings and new issues to exemplify some of the relationships the data support the most obvious and direct implication of the differential information model that the expected systematic risk of low information firms decreases as time passes and information increases our evidence as in ibbotson that risk declines with seasoning rejects a restrictive null hypothesis that information risk is diversifiable and the under

network effects and welfare cultures we empirically examine the role of social networks in welfare participation using data on language spoken at home to better infer networks within an area our empirical strategy asks whether being surrounded by others who speak the same language increases welfare use more for those from high welfare using language groups this methodology allows us to include local area and language group fixed effects and to control for the direct effect of being surrounded by one s language group these controls eliminate many of the problems in previous studies the results strongly confirm the importance of networks in welfare participation

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

a new approach to computing hedonic equilibria and investigating the properties of locational sorting models abstract this paper outlines a new way to solve the traditional housing market assignment problem and uses it to investigate the properties of hedonic equilibria our approach to computing equilibria is based on rosen s 1974 bid function it has four desirable features i convergence implies a hedonic equilibrium ii convergence is guaranteed if a hedonic equilibrium exists iii it can solve for a new equilibrium following a shock to the market and iv if multiple equilibria exist it can identify them the algorithm is applied to micro data from san joaquin county california where the choice of a home provides access to public schools in particular school districts first we calibrate the algorithm to approximately reproduce actual housing prices in san joaquin county as a hedonic equilibrium then we introduce a policy that improves school quality in selected school districts we find that there are several possibilities for the new equilibrium for each of these potential equilibria we compare the marginal willingness to pay for school quality with the rate at which the improvement is capitalized into property values the resulting capitalization rates differ substantially from marginal willingness to pay

estimating ethnic preferences using ethnic housing quotas in singapore there are many policies around the world aimed at integrating groups gender ethnic national in education employment immigration and housing in the case of housing since prices may not internalize externalities in residential location choices we need to know preferences for welfare analysis this paper estimates people s taste for living with own ethnic groups ethnic preferences using unique policy variation from the ethnic housing quotas in singapore my approach combines policy induced variation commonly used in reduced form settings with a non parametric identi cation strategy in a structural demand estimation framework a la berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 i nd that all groups have strong preferences to live with at least some other

systems competition and network effects this paper discusses firm behavior market performance and the public and private institutions that arise in systems markets i e markets where consumers use compatible components together to generate benefits in such markets which include communications networks and hardware software networks popular products are inherently more valuable these network effects can drive corporate strategies and are critical in understanding innovation in many high technology markets the discussion here emphasizes the dynamics of consumer adoption decisions in the presence of network effects competition between incompatible systems and how suppliers choose which components are compatible and which are not

driving to opportunity local rents wages commuting costs and sub metropolitan quality of life we examine variation in local rents wage levels commuting costs household characteristics and amenities within metropolitan areas for 2071 areas covering the united states by density and central city status we demonstrate the sensibility of estimating wage levels by workplace not residence and recover decentralized rent gradients that fall with commuting costs we construct and map a willingness to pay index which indicates the quality of life typical households receive from local amenities when households are similar mobile and informed this index varies considerably within metros and is typically high in areas that are dense suburban sunny mild safe entertaining and have elevated school funding

estimating the general equilibrium benefits of large changes in spatially delineated public goods the purpose of this article is to report a new approach for measuring the general equilibrium willingness to pay for large changes in spatially delineated public goods such as air quality we estimate the parameters of a locational equilibrium model and compute equilibria for alternative scenarios characterizing the availability of public goods within a system of communities welfare measures take into consideration the adjustments of households in equilibrium to nonmarginal changes in public goods the framework is used to analyze willingness to pay for reductions in ozone concentrations in southern california between 1990 and 1995