differences between continuous and discrete contingent value estimates in a split sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay wtp for food safety improvements the dichotomous choice dc elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of wtp than did a continuous method little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced by the statistical techniques used with the dc data most or all of the difference was due to differences in respondent behavior in addition the continuous wtp responses showed a significant scope effect while the dc responses did not the observed difference in behavior may be attributable in part to yea saying by dc respondents

efficiency of public goods provision in space abstract this article incorporates a political decision process into an urban land use model to predict the likely location of a public good it fills an important gap in the literature by modeling the endogenous location of open space the article compares open space decisions made under a majority rules voting scheme with welfare improving criterion and finds households tied to a location in space compete for public goods significant differences emerge between the two decision criteria indicating that requiring referenda for open space decisions is likely to lead to inefficient outcomes specifically many open space votes are likely to fail that would lead to welfare improvements and any open space decisions that do pass will require amenities larger than needed to achieve the social optimum the more dispersed and large the population the larger the gap between the socially efficient level and the level needed for a public referendum to pass

payment vehicles for public goods evidence from california s proposition 21 proposition 21 on california s 2010 ballot concerned an annual surcharge on vehicles to support state parks proposition 21 failed leaving 25 of california state parks at risk of closure we analyze voting patterns which we show depend on the average gross price of the proposition political ideology environmental preferences the availability of substitutes and park salience we simulate counterfactual scenarios under which proposition 21 might have passed and use holdout samples to illustrate the predictive ability of our model heterogeneity across california makes our model potentially useful for predicting public sentiment for similar propositions even for jurisdictions without direct democracy

searching for the correct benefit estimate empirical evidence for an alternative perspective this paper contrasts the results of the contingent valuation hedonic price and property damages avoided valuation techniques each technique was used to estimate the value of flood risk reduction from the construction of a flood control project voting behavior in a referendum called specifically for the provision of the project was used to further interpret the results from the three valuation studies substantial differences were found between the estimates in explaining these differences an alternative perspective on the current debate over the validity and accuracy of nonmarket value estimates is offered

externally validating contingent valuation an open space survey and referendum in corvallis oregon abstract we ask whether respondents report the same decisions in non binding surveys as they do in real elections we study a corvallis or referendum to raise open space funds and find survey and election compatibility pivots on the characterization of undecided responses the survey and referendum percentage of yes votes match closely only if undecided responses are treated as no we compare survey based mean willingness to pay wtp estimates with election based estimates household wtp averages us 48 89 using election results while survey based wtp averages us 75 43 excluding undecided responses us 49 67 treating undecided responses as no and between us 49 96 and 80 05

contingent valuation from dubious to hopeless abstract approximately 20 years ago peter diamond and i wrote an article for this journal analyzing contingent valuation methods at that time peter s view was that contingent valuation was hopele

treatment of don t know responses in contingent valuation surveys a random valuation model abstract this paper provides a utility theoretic interpretation of don t know dk responses in contingent valuation surveys using a referendum elicitation procedure the random valuation model in this paper assumes that each respondent of a contingent valuation survey has an implicit valuation distribution rather than a single true value as traditionally assumed in his her mind if an offered referendum bid is not clearly different from the mean value of one s valuation distribution the respondent may give a dk answer to the cv referendum question based on this model a maximum likelihood procedure is proposed for estimating respondents willingness to pay for a nonmarket good with referendum contingent valuation data which include dk responses an empirical illustration of this estimation procedure is also provided

a randomized response approach to dichotomous choice contingent valuation in this paper we combine dichotomous choice contingent valuation dc cv with the randomized response rr method for asking sensitive survey questions rr increases respondents anonymity by allowing them to answer a sensitive question without revealing with certainty their true response we combine rr with dc cv to test for response effects in the valuation of a public good in a setting of expected social pressure while there are practical implementation issues our findings suggest that the rr technique is a useful tool for exploring social context effects rather than generalize from our pre test results we instead emphasize the development of the experimental technique

understanding the consequences of consequentiality testing the validity of stated preferences in the field this study pursues the external validation of stated preference methods by comparing survey responses from verified voters with the outcome of a parallel public referendum on a conservation and preservation program to be funded by a local property tax surcharge the majority of respondents were unaware of the upcoming referendum and the experimental design allows us to control for referenda related information effects as well as respondents perceptions regarding the consequentiality i e the potential policy impact of their survey votes we find the survey under predicts yes referendum votes at the precinct level these differences go away however if we focus only on respondents who perceived their survey vote to be consequential negative hypothetical bias among inconsequential survey respondents is also evident in the estimation of willingness to pay and controlling for consequentiality increases construct validity

using contingent valuation to value a noxious weeds control program the effects of including an unsure response category the national oceanic and atmospheric administration contingent valuation panel recommended that a response category be included along with the vote in favor and vote against options associated with a referendum contingent valuation question that allows individuals to express lack of a well defined opinion however the recommendation did not include guidance on how to analyze such responses in this article we describe the results of a carefully designed split sample experiment that allowed for comparison of a standard dichotomous choice referendum treatment to a treatment that included the option of responding unsure to the contingent valuation question in addition to the standard vote in favor and vote against response categories we are able to examine several options for dealing with the unsure responses and conclude that the unsure responses should be included in the value estimation as the respondents who choose this response category are distinct from respondents who choose the vote in favor and vote against response categories

reliability and predictive validity of contingent values does the nature of the good matter abstract because the contingent valuation mechanism cvm elicits verbal reports of maximum willingness to pay and not actual willingness to pay analysts have expressed doubts about the reliability and validity of contingent values for commodities such as environmental amenities this skepticism is usually attributed to the amorphous nature of the commodity and to peoples lack of familiarity or experience however our comparison of two commodities which lie at polar extremes of the private good public good continuum suggests that the nature of the good may have little influence on the reliability and predictive validity of the cvm instead aspects of the cvm itself e g explicit payment obligation may be more important for high intention behavior consistency

a new paradigm for valuing non market goods using referendum data maximum likelihood estimation by censored logistic regression abstract this paper challenges the w m hanemann amer j agr econom 66 332 341 1984 and c sellar j p chavas and j r stoll j environ econom management 13 382 390 1986 utilizations of logit models to estimate the value of non market resources from referendum survey data these data are more informative than conventional choice data the random utility interpretation of logit models is therefore too restrictive bypassing the utility function entirely it will be shown that parameters and standard errors for utility theoretic inverse hicksian demand functions can be extracted directly and much more simply estimated demand functions need not be limited to those corresponding to the linear in parameters utility difference specifications which can be handled by packaged logit programs

how closely do hypothetical surveys and laboratory experiments predict field behavior we compare the ability of three preference elicitation methods hypothetical choices nonhypothetical choices and nonhypothetical rankings and three discrete choice econometric models the multinomial logit mnl the independent availability logit ial and the random parameter logit rpl to predict actual retail shopping behavior in three different product categories ground beef wheat flour and dishwashing liquid overall we find a high level of external validity our specific results suggest that the nonhypothetical elicitation approaches especially the nonhypothetical ranking method outperformed the hypothetical choice experiment in predicting retail sales we also find that the rpl can have superior predictive performance but that the mnl predicts equally well in some circumstances experiment

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

property value capitalization and municipal open space referenda this paper first develops a theory of demand for land conservation in the presence of price effects due to both amenity creation and housing supply restriction three hypotheses designed to distinguish demand for amenities from homeowner rent seeking are based upon 1 renters 2 the quality of another locally provided good schools and 3 spatial autocorrelation of funding across municipalities econometric results suggest an observable degree of demand for open space measures is nonenvironmental in motivation efficiency and policy implications are discussed along with a recommendation for benefit cost analysis capable of separating nonrival amenities from other interests to certify open space measures jel h41 q24

referendum design and contingent valuation the noaa panel s no vote recommendation this paper considers the effects for offering a would not vote option in contingent valuation cv questions framed using the referendum format this approach arises from a suggestion made by the national oceanic and atmospheric administration s noaa panel on contingent valuation the noaa panel was asked to evaluate the use of this method for estimating the economic value of nonmarketed environmental resources in the context of natural resource damage assessments this test used the cv questionnaire developed for the study of the exxon valdez oil spill conducted by the state of alaska with in person interviews the findings suggest that when those selecting the would not vote response are treated as having voted against the program a conservative coding offering this option does not alter 1 the distribution of for and against responses 2 the estimates of willingness to pay derived from these choices or 3 the construct validity of the results

an independent sample test of yea saying and starting point bias in dichotomous choice contingent valuation abstract we developed several diagnostic tools to test the convergent validity of two common contingent valuation elicitation procedures data were collected from independent samples receiving dichotomous choice and payment card questions we compared actual with counter factual responses using deterministic and monte carlo methods and we found that wtp distributions and mean values varied by the value elicitation method we also developed a paired comparison test for procedure variance which indicated that yea saying and starting point bias influenced dichotomous choice responses

exports growth and causality in ldcs abstract using akaike s optimal lag criterion in a granger causality test the causal relationship between export growth and economic growth and vice versa is re examined for 20 countries it is argued that earlier analyses which ignore optimal lags in granger or sims causality tests suffer from certain shortcomings which are overcome by the present approach the results suggest some support for the export promotion hypothesis especially in the case of well known nics and thus differ from previous applications of granger test which did not adopt an optimum lag criterion and which showed no causality from export growth to economic growth in such cases however they are inconclusive in evaluating competing hypotheses

on the derivation of monetary policy shocks should we throw the var out with the bath water this paper considers an alternative econometric approach to the standard var methodology for identifying and estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks the alternative approach makes more reasonable assumptions about economic agents information set by 1 restructuring the var variables according to what data are actually observable in each point in time and 2 augmenting the var model with available measures of market participants expectations of various economic variables thus increasing the assumed information set should we throw the var out with the bath water unfortunately the results of this paper are somewhat inconclusive the expectations measures prove to be quite valuable the variances of all innovations are reduced by at least one half compared to the standard var innovations nevertheless the innovations monetary policy shocks and impulse responses for both methods are fairly similar indeed they are similar enough that the standard var approach cannot be rejected out of hand but dissimilar enough that the standard approach cannot be validated

bias in discrete response contingent valuation abstract the empirical literature on discrete response contingent valuation has found that seemingly innocuous changes in the statistical models estimated result in significantly different point estimates of willingness to pay this paper hypothesizes and tests several potential explanations for these results first it investigates and compares the biases inherent in single bounded and double bounded maximum likelihood estimation procedures and examines how they react to various bid designs and sample sizes then it examines the presence and identification of outliers in binary choice data and how these outliers influence estimation finally it presents an alternative approach to addressing the issue of outliers which explicitly acknowledges the possibility of upwardly biased response probabilities

voting on open space what explains the appearance and support of municipal level open space conservation referenda in the united states abstract numerous communities in the united states have been willing to use public funds to protect open space the amount of money allocated for open space protection by local and state governments exceeds the budget of the largest federal land protection program in the u s the conservation reserve program this paper analyzes what types of municipalities hold open space referenda and the level of support for these referenda factors that increased the probability of a municipality holding an open space referendum from 2000 to 2004 were large population low population density rapid growth of the surrounding area and highly educated and environmentally concerned residents increases in median household income up to 100 000 increased the likelihood of a vote but further increases in income beyond 100 000 decreased the likelihood for municipalities holding an open space referendum factors that increased support for passage of the referendum were rapid growth low unemployment rates highly educated residents and no new taxes given high levels of support for open space referenda 76 of municipal level referenda held from 2000 through 2004 passed the spatial pattern of locally managed open space will be largely determined by the factors that affect referenda appearance on a municipal ballot this conclusion suggests that locally managed conservation hotspots will cluster around fast growing affluent communities with highly educated residents such hotspots may or may not align with overall conservation priorities non governmental and environmental organizations should focus efforts on helping communities in locally managed conservation coldspots secure open space

who is afraid of political instability abstract an unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth among the sources contributing to such instability much of the blame has been assigned to political issues this paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long run relation between political instability and economic growth but finds no evidence of such a relationship sensitivity analysis indicates that there is a contemporaneous negative relationship but also that in the long run and ignoring institutional factors the group of african countries plays the determining role

how sensitive are environmental valuations to economic downturns abstract this paper assesses the temporal stability of willingness to pay estimates wtp under changing economic conditions specifically two questions are addressed a is wtp stable over time and b if it is not are the changes just driven by socio economic effects or something else in order to investigate these questions we used data from the contingent valuation method cvm study conducted after the prestige oil spill in spain in 2006 and a second wave of the same survey repeated in 2009 after spain entered a serious recession median wtp estimates dropped from 60 36 in 2006 to 26 92 in 2009 per household a statistically significant reduction to investigate the amount of the drop in wtp due to observables versus changes in preferences between 2006 and 2009 we use the 2006 logit wtp coefficient estimates with 2009 levels of the independent variables and we obtain a wtp of 46 37 this estimate is statistically different from the 2009 estimate 26 92 in the same fashion by using 2009 logit wtp coefficients with 2006 data we obtain an estimate of 50 29 also different from the 2006 estimate implications of these findings for temporal stability of welfare measures and benefit transfer exercises are also discussed

validation of stated preferences for public goods a comparison of contingent valuation survey response and voting behaviour this study reports the results from an in person comparison of contingent valuation cv survey response and subsequent voting behaviour on comparable propositions to increase public spending for landscape protection a substantial proportion of cv responses were not consistent with self reported actual voting decisions suggesting an upward bias of stated willingness to pay item non response and protest zero bids were more frequently given by those rejecting than those approving the actual proposition self reported actual decisions yielded a more consistent explanatory pattern than did hypothetical choices the official aggregate voting records show that these results cannot be explained simply by errors in self reported votes we conclude that referenda provide a valuable opportunity to test stated preference methods for public goods particularly public goods with significant passive use values however an important requirement is that the stated choices to be compared with the referendum decisions unlike in previous studies come from independent contingent valuation surveys