choice modeling at the market stall individual versus collective interest in environmental valuation the market stall or valuation workshop has recently been proposed as a way of addressing some of the limitations of conventional stated preference analysis in this paper we attempt to combine a participatory technique similar to the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly being applied in environmental economics our focus is on how changes in the context of decision making between choices made in isolation and those made in a group setting and between choices made on individual well being versus collective criteria produce differences in estimated welfare measures the empirical context used is that of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a valuation workshop and that moving from individual to collective choice produces in this instance a rather interesting change in both values and preferences which depends on the respondent s interests

legitimizing farmers new knowledge learning and practices through communicative action application of an agro environmental policy this article examines the role of communication in the process that guides economic actors to integrate the moral obligations implied by adopting sustainability principles in their action choices and to reexamine their practices we analyze two approaches to implementing agro environmental measures that encourage farmers to preserve water resources verbal interactions between farmers and agricultural advisors who are part of these policy programs are analyzed drawing on jurgen habermas s theory of communicative action the discourse analysis used here shows that communicative action encouraged participants to reexamine the validity of the technical experiential and normative knowledge that legitimized their reasons for acting this study brings to light the fact that in the context of a business primarily oriented towards making a profit committing to sustainable development does not only operate in technical terms such a commitment also requires collective validation of the effectiveness of alternative farming practices

socially responsible investors and the microentrepreneur a canadian case socially responsible investors buy financial securities with two goals to make a market based return and to make companies act in a more socially responsible way most research on socially responsible investment deals with investing in stocks traded on major exchanges we add the case of loaning small amounts of funds to microentrepreneurs through a discussion of a particular case the case is that of calmeadow which in conjunction with the royal bank of canada set up a microlending project in rural nova scotia canada using hirschman s analysis of exit and voice we show that while socially responsible investors may make market based returns for their investments in stocks traded on major exchanges they have no effect on corporate behaviour because their action consists of exit and they are easily replaced by other investors they attain their first goal but not their second on the other hand in the calmeadow royal bank of canada case we see that those who lend money to microenterprises can more easily use voice the relative power difference between the lender and the microentrepreneur enables the lender to make the microentrepreneur act in a more socially responsible way although only marginally but because of the market imperfections existing in this case the very high transactions costs associated with administering small loans the lender concluded it could not attain a market rate of return in this case then the lender attained its second goal but not its first

why are informal loans still a big deal evidence from north east thailand abstractthis article examines the use and benefit of informal loans for different income groups of rural households in north east thailand using a difference in differences estimation approach which is later complemented by propensity score matching the article shows that different household groups profit from informal loans in different ways poor households increase their asset endowment and in particular farming assets whereas rich households food consumption rises especially if households borrow due to a shock by showing that informal loans serve different households for different purposes this article provides an explanation why they still play an important role

interest free loans between villagers abstract interest free loans are a common feature of low income rural economies in much of the economics literature lending at zero and positive interest are viewed as being highly segmented in the community with interest free loans an essential component of long term mutual consumption agreements between households an alternative interpretation is that zero interest loans are a credit contract that in lieu of interest includes an option allowing the lender to tax the borrower at a future date this option can take a variety of forms including the provision of labor or draft animal services or possibly a future loan in this paper we develop and test a model of household contract choice between zero and positive interest rate loans that builds on this alternative perspective it highlights the role of borrower and lender attributes and the economic environment in which they interact in determining contract choice enforcement considerations are secondary we use a unique household level data set

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

improving the process of valuing non market benefits combining citizens juries with choice modelling we attempt a first combination of the participatory technique known as the citizens jury with choice modelling a stated preference technique increasingly favored by environmental economists our application is conducted in the context of water quality improvements under the water framework directive the most significant reform in water legislation in the european union for many years we compare results with those of a conventional choice experiment we find that the choice experiment format can be successfully implemented in a jury setting and that moving from an individual to a collective choice setting produces a change in both values and preferences

deliberative monetary valuation dmv issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change abstract this paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights fairness and equity deliberative monetary valuation dmv in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward however there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values the expected outcomes and their role moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value although this does not seem to have been widely recognised a new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes values associated with the individual may be exchange values charitable contributions or fair prices while social values can be speculative expressive or arbitrated the use of dmv is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation

a theory of interlinked rural transactions this paper argues that the interlinking of labor output and credit contracts often observed in rural economies can be regarded as an attempt to improve allocative efficiency in the face of moral hazard it advances an economic explanation of the phenomenon which is rooted in the view that prevalent modes of transaction of which interlinked contracts are an example are shaped by technological considerations interlinking is shown to be an efficient economic response to unequally distributed information arising from the uncertainty which characterizes subsistence agriculture all pareto efficient allocations require a combination of wage cum output sharing with consumption credit contracts the analytical framework set up to demonstrate the results is used to examine the response of the contractual parameters to changes in i the returns to alternative occupations available to tenant laborers ii the cost of credit to the village economy and iii the riskiness of cultivation the analysis concludes that public policy to alleviate rural poverty must recognize the relationships between technological considerations and modes of transaction in the absence of a complete set of markets

i struggled with this money business respondents perspectives on contingent valuation abstract in the long running debates about the validity and legitimacy of contingent valuation cv very little research has engaged directly with respondents during or after the survey to explore what individuals willingness to pay wtp figure meant this paper presents the results of qualitative research with respondents to a cv survey carried out as part of the appraisal of a specific nature conservation policy in the uk the results show that respondents questioned the validity of their wtp figures through discussion of the difficulties they experienced in framing a meaningful reply significant difficulties included problems in contextualising what the scheme was and how much it might be worth in both monetary and non monetary terms an inability to work out a value for one scheme in isolation from others in other parts of the uk and feelings that values for nature were not commensurable with monetary valuation turning to the legitimacy of cv participants in the research challenged claims that cv is a democratic process for ensuring that public values are incorporated in policy decisions recognizing that hard economic choices have to be made in order to achieve nature conservation goals participants argued for a decision making institution where local people could contribute to environmental policy decisions through dialogue with scientists and policy makers in the final part of the paper this project is compared with three studies that have also used qualitative approaches with respondents during and or after a cv survey the paper concludes that more context specific qualitative research with respondents is needed to explore further the conclusion that cv may not be a good methodology for capturing complex cultural values for nature and landscape

how deliberation affects stated willingness to pay for mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions an experiment respondents reported willingness to pay wtp for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions after structured group discussion or without this deliberation deliberation did not affect mean or median wtp but it increased the number of issues respondents considered with some issues becoming more frequently considered and others less survey only respondents considered issues relevant for responding to a request for a charitable contribution group mode participants considered issues relevant for a public policy assessment findings suggest that ordinary citizens can offer valid input to environmental policy decisions but that framing effects in ordinary wtp surveys may prevent them from providing such input

participatory environmental education and willingness to pay for river basin management empirical evidence from nigeria this paper examines the role of participation as a tool for improving individuals perceptions and environmental values using a test retest experiment conducted in south eastern nigeria two identical contingent valuation experiments were interspersed by participatory workshops designed to involve respondents in framing and forming the valuation scenario econometric analyses found that participatory education significantly developed individuals perceptions of pollution problems and increased the magnitude and precision of their wtp for a river basin management scheme the extent of changes in perceptions declined with increasing levels of formal education suggesting that less educated respondents are more likely to hold weakly formed preferences

financial services for microenterprises principles and institutions abstract this article argues for the use of a financial systems approach in the provision of financial services to the poor the experience of the last decade has produced a successful technology for credit delivery that utilizes sound financial principles as its basis that is understanding the needs of the client increasing efficiency by cutting administrative costs and using various techniques to motivate repayment savings receives equal emphasis as a financial service and several principles for its provision are discussed the institutional dimensions behind this approach focus on the need to achieve self sufficiency which the article frames as a four stage process finally the article outlines various factors related to creating financial institutions that reach the poor and the policy implications that these suggest

background inequality and differential participation in deliberative valuation lessons from small group discussions on forest conservation in colombia abstract deliberative monetary valuation dmv methods have been proposed as a more democratic alternative to traditional contingent valuation methods cvm for natural resource decision making these deliberative methods are subject to criticisms one issue of concern is that the socio economic inequalities among members of the deliberative group may severely impede communication and consequently distort deliberative outcomes to examine such possibility we applied the deliberative methodology in a case study of forest conservation in colombia we found that those individuals who assumed social environmental leadership positions tended to dominate group discussion nevertheless the variations in the capacity to engage in group deliberation were better explained by participants personal characteristics than external constraints or group pressure also there was little evidence that leadership and domination in group deliberation significantly influenced participants stated wtp we conclude that dmv is vulnerable to the background inequalities among group members the democratic potential of deliberative methods should be critically examined in terms of the capacity to communicate effectively and equally

credit markets in northern nigeria credit as insurance in a rural economy this article addresses the issues of imcomplete markets and imperfect information in the context of credit markets in rural northern nigeria in much recent theoretical literature the problems of moral hazard and adverse selection are assumed to be decisive for the organization of agrarian institutions in contrast it is found that in the four villages surveyed credit transactions take advantage of the free flow of information within rural communities information asymmetries between borrower and lender are unimportant and their institutional consequences the use of collateral and interlinked contracts are absent credit transactions play a direct role in pooling risk between households through the use of contracts in which the repayment owed by the borrower depends on the realization of random production shocks by both the borrower and the lender

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

discourse based valuation of ecosystem services establishing fair outcomes through group deliberation discourse based methods involving small groups of citizens have yet to be thoroughly engaged in the practice of ecosystem valuation this remains true despite the fact that many ecosystem goods and services such as clean air biodiversity and unpolluted lakes and rivers are considered to be public goods the conventional application of ecosystem valuation relies heavily on methodologies such as contingent valuation in which individuals are asked to express the value they attach to ecosystem goods and services in social isolation the difference between the public nature of ecosystem services and their valuation through individual expression has thus recently led to calls for more deliberative forms of environmental valuation because the allocation of ecosystem services directly affects many people and raises normative questions about social equity it is argued that carefully designed discursive methods will help ensure the achievement of social equity goals in this paper we examine the theoretical and normative assumptions that rest beneath the proposed turn towards discourse based methods and identify procedures for testing their application in the field 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

deliberative monetary valuation dmv and democratic valuation dv a response to bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 abstract bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 comment on the dv approach which i proposed in an earlier issue they conclude that dmv overcomes some flaws of conventional stated preference sp methods addresses many of my concerns and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv several of their comments are debatable a closer look at dmv in comparison with dv and conventional sp methods shows that bartkowski and lienhoop s dmv approach addresses only one out of six major issues with conventional sp methods the lack of opportunities for group discussion my conclusion therefore remains unaffected due to the many technical issues with measuring individual willingness to pay wtp valuations based on majority voting principles are not only more transparent and more democratically legitimate than conventional sp or dmv they may also produce superior proxies for aggregated individual wtp

how to lend like mad and make a profit a micro credit paradigm versus the start up fund in south africa in current debates about micro credit joint liability schemes are often viewed as the only viable way to non collateralised lending and are thus seen as almost synonymous with micro credit this article reports about an alternative non participatory approach to micro credit prompted by the apparent inability of group credit schemes to reign in lending costs the article sets out the institutional requirements for cheap mass produced credit it argues that such credit can be viable if mechanisms are in place enforcing the self selection of potential borrowers and self motivation of existing borrowers the analysis of a mass minimalist micro credit institution from south africa supports the argument

transferring environmental value estimates issues and alternatives abstract environmental value transfer needs to be understood in the context of scientific information use in general this provides a different perspective upon the reasons why benefit transfer in particular appears so controversial and raises concerns over the limited types of validity testing being undertaken by those supporting such applications as ecosystem services valuation another key issue which we emphasise is the unintentional challenge to standard economic theory raised by the models used to conduct value transfers existing value transfer practice reveals the need for a more inclusive approach if environmental values are to be addressed we argue that there are robust alternative means for including multiple environmental values in decision processes these cannot be dismissed out of hand and analysts should be expanding their understanding of the available approaches which include attitude and norm measures multi criteria analysis and participatory deliberative institutions

capital requirements screening and interlinked sharecropping and credit contracts this paper provides one more rationale for interlinking credit and tenancy contracts in the context of production loans in an environment characterized by a heterogeneous labor pool and imperfect information landlords will have an incentive to avail themselves of screening devices by linking tenancy and credit contracts a screening device can be implemented the equilibrium set of contracts is characterized by a variety of interest rates some of which might be below the market interest rate the interest rate principal schedule is downward sloping with higher ability tenants choosing larger principals at lower interest rates

impact of microfinance on schooling evidence from poor rural households in bolivia summary channels for the influence of microfinance programs on a rural household s demand for schooling are identified income growth risk management child labor demand gender empowerment and parent information within a random utility framework a model of household consumption investment in education and borrowing suggests determinants at the individual household and regional levels of the probability of schooling gaps using data from two surveys of households of clients of microfinance organizations in bolivia regression models examine determinants of schooling gaps inferences about otherwise positive microfinance impacts identify potential negative effects of increased child labor demand which challenge usual assumptions and pose dilemmas for policymakers

integrating non monetary and monetary valuation methods softgis and hedonic pricing abstract in order to address the increasing need for improved linkages between different value perspectives we examine the possibility of integrating two valuation methods the non monetary softgis and monetary hedonic pricing we find them compatible and their output more comprehensive compared to traditional valuation based on one value perspective the public participatory softgis survey delivers information on the perception of urban green spaces which we use as a criterion for dividing green space categories in a hedonic pricing model we find that the perception expressed in the survey is generally consistent with the impact on property prices in the case of formal green spaces however it is inconsistent when it comes to informal ones places identified as lacking well maintained greenery exert a positive influence on property prices while positively evaluated informal green spaces had no impact at all we identify the latter as a typical trade off between different value perspectives informal green spaces are perceived differently following a monetary and a non monetary approach

financial systems in northern thai villages field research attempted to measure the risky environments the information structures the institutions and the risk response mechanisms of ten villages in northern thailand various key features are then modeled in an abstract but realistic way either with a full information risk sharing model or an information constrained version of the same model observations from some of the villages seem consistent with one or the other of these models but in many of the villages one is left with risk response variations across households which suggest that pareto improvements are possible

discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy abstract discursive ethics has its origin in the frankfurt school of critical theory as an applied ethic it is also associated with practical philosophy in this paper discursive ethics is discussed as a conceptual and practical framework for ecosystems valuation and environmental policy the discussion focuses on three main strengths of discursive ethics 1 it offers an integrated process for ecosystems valuation 2 it offers a decision making framework for responding to uncertainty and risk and the reality of action in indeterminacy 3 it offers a process for deconstructing common valuation concepts and identifying conditions for their critical reconstruction the theoretical discussion is followed by a case study example which illustrates the usefulness of discursive ethics in identifying valuation biases hidden behind disciplinary assumptions and conceptual norms these include cultural norms of rationality information biases which consider hard facts over soft values and disciplinary valuation biases which distinguish between hard and soft expert contributions as the case study illustrates a successful application of discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy demands sensitivity to such underlying biases beyond its policy relevance discursive ethics may also offer a framework for an extended peer discourse through which new foci in research and education can be identified

valuing the non market benefits of wild goose conservation a comparison of interview and group based approaches wild geese graze on improved pastures and young cereal crops and hence can cause considerable damage to agriculture particularly in areas close to roosting sites this study uses contingent valuation cv to establish whether government compensation payments currently made to farmers represent value for money by estimating the value placed on goose conservation by the general public benefit estimates from a conventional interview approach are compared with a group based approach called the market stall ms this involves two 1 h meetings held 1 week apart and differs from conventional interviews in that participants are given more time to consider their preferences and to discuss their wtp question with other household members we argue that this type of group based approach to environmental valuation offers important advantages over individual interview approaches especially for unfamiliar and or complex environmental goods

bringing stakeholder values into environmental policy choices a community based estuary case study this paper discusses a methodology for joining deliberation and analysis using the case study example of a national estuary program planning effort in tillamook bay or usa we describe the development of a community based evaluation tool that links actions proposed by technical experts e g biologists ecologists engineers to restore functioning of the tillamook bay estuary with the values and concerns expressed by community residents this task required the explicit consideration of trade offs across multiple benefits costs and risks we describe the design and results of an evaluation workbook developed with input from both the epa staff and community residents that provided insight to decision makers by presenting participants with explicit choices across the key dimensions and consequences of proposed actions the final section of the paper discusses the successes and limitations of the project in relation to evaluation needs associated with other environmental policy initiatives 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

trust social capital and economic development many argue that elements of a society s norms culture or social capital are central to understanding its development however these notions have been difficult to capture in economic models here we explore ap ossible role for trustworthiness as corresponding to social capital individuals are trustworthy when they perform in accordance with promises even if this does not maximize their payoffs the usual focus on incentive structures in motivating behaviour plays no role here instead we emphasize more deep seated modes of behaviour and consider trustworthy agents being socialized to act as they do to model this socialization we borrow from a process of preference evolution pioneered by bisin and verdier 2001 the model developed endogenously accounts for social capital and explores its role in the process of economic development it captures in a simple formal way the interaction between social capital and the economy s productive processes the results obtained caution against rapid reform and provide an explanation for why late developing countries may not easily be able to transplant the modes of production that have proved useful in the west

an institutional analysis of methods for environmental appraisal abstract this paper focuses on a set of issues when choosing between methods for environmental appraisal approaches like cost benefit analysis contingent valuation multicriteria analysis and deliberative methods are based on very different assumptions concerning the characteristics of environmental resources the capacities of the individuals involved and the role the methods play in framing the process the present paper views environmental appraisal methods as institutional structures they are seen as rules concerning a who should participate and in which capacity b what is considered data and which form data should take and c rules about how a conclusion is reached specifically the choice of method defines the logic of the appraisal process and next influences the output while cost benefit analysis is based on the assumption of individual rationality deliberative methods assume that individuals can act according to social rationality the first part of the paper is devoted to clarifying what institutions are and their role in the valuation process second the main features of environmental or ecosystem services and the demands they raise for decision making are described a general framework for evaluating appraisal methods is then developed finally this structure is elaborated in more detail as a basis for deciding over the choices of methods in the case of evaluating ecosystem services a set of unresolved issues are identified especially related to how the choice of appraisal methods themselves should be instituted

agreeing to pay under value disagreement reconceptualizing preference transformation in terms of pluralism with evidence from small group deliberations on climate change abstract plural values contribute to multiple arrays of expressed preferences conventionally preference convergence toward consensus among initially disagreeing decision makers is understood in terms of diminishing value differences a cogent account of consensual decision that respects non diminishing value plurality is lacking instead there is a theoretic expectation for categorical consistency between subjective values and expressed preferences valuing agents in social interaction are expected to indicate identical preference orderings only if they hold correspondingly identical categories of values this expectation precludes meaningful conceptualization of preference convergence under divisive normative dispositions an alternative framework is proposed and illustrated by results from a designed deliberative forum on australia s climate change policy data were analyzed based on q methodology results show that small group deliberations enabled effective communication between distinctive subjective positions and broadened understandings between individuals while a consensual decision gained progress no identified value discourse diminished below a significant degree observed changes in values did not run parallel to the converging preferences suggesting a decline in value preference consistency these changes nonetheless are amenable to the principle of value pluralism an alternative rationality concept is needed to account for this moral ideal within economics

credit and sharecropping in agrarian societies this paper considers a model of linkage between land labor and credit transactions in the context of sharecropping the paper s objectives are a to derive and characterize the equilibrium in a model of a land scarce labour abundant economy under sharecropping given an infinitely elastic supply of identical sharecroppers at a reservation utility and b to demonstrate that in an imperfect market a landlord may offer credit to his tenant sometimes even at a subsidized rate of interest without necessarily insisting that the sharecropper borrow only from him precluding an involuntary linkage between credit and land transations it has been demonstrated that regardless of the presence or absence of linkage or any other control by the landlord as long as he can vary the size of the plot given to a tenant and there are enough potential tenants in equilibrium contracts a tenants utility under sharecropping will be the same as that which he could have obtained as a full time wage laborer this result implies that policies other than land reform will not affect the welfare of tenants

decision structuring to alleviate embedding in environmental valuation abstract embedding is the widely observed phenomenon that a good is assigned a higher value if evaluated on its own rather than as part of a more inclusive set embedding is considered a serious problem affecting the quality of many environmental management and health risk policy judgments this paper presents the results of an experiment involving of a structured small group approach for conducting environmental policy evaluations it focuses on eliciting problem specific values and discussion among participants about the pros and cons of multiple project alternatives in the context of tradeoffs between fisheries production and electricity generation from dams study results show a significant reduction in embedding which is viewed as an improvement in the quality of the preference judgments compared with a standard contingent valuation cv approach

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

protest response and willingness to pay for culturally significant urban trees implications for contingent valuation method the contingent valuation method cvm could assist green space planning management and appreciation by assigning a monetary value to urban trees however the use of cvm is limited by its inherent methodological weaknesses a critical concern is the existence of a large proportion of survey respondents providing zero willingness to pay wtp and that these responses are not amenable to economic theory known as protest responses censoring protest responses from further treatment is a common practice which warrants reconsideration in light of our cvm survey results the survey involved 800 residents requested to state their wtp for preserving the culturally significant stonewall trees in urban hong kong about 28 of respondents returned a zero wtp for all respondents the strength of protest beliefs was assessed and the relationship between protest beliefs and wtp were examined our analysis produced contradictory results some protest items varied negatively with wtp as expected but other items increased with it respondents stated positive wtp harbored latent protest beliefs which are related to non economic preference the findings stand at odds with the assumptions underlying the censoring treatment and raise questions about the validity of wtp estimates these methodological implications should be taken into account in using cvm

measuring impartial preference for biodiversity biodiversity undergoes unprecedented rates of erosion despite the important services it provides this is considered evidence that biodiversity is undervalued biodiversity valuation is accordingly a prominent issue in the literature economic valuations are however largely criticized numerous alternatives have been introduced most of them involve participatory protocols aimed at producing high quality results being time consuming and expensive it is difficult to implement and reproduce them at a large scale we produce an easily reproducible inexpensive survey methodology to measure impartial preference for biodiversity we implement it in switzerland through a mail based survey our result is that biodiversity should be ranked after retirement schemes and public transportation but before relations with foreign countries order and security and culture and leisure in the expanses of the state current expenses therefore substantially underestimate the value that swiss people grant to biodiversity our new method is a viable alternative to standard economic valuation given the impartiality achieved at least in the swiss political context our estimate can be used by decision makers to assess the legitimacy of conservation programs or to gauge public support at a philosophical level our measure is relevant for public policies because it captures the stances that people take when they participate in public decisions

outreach sustainability and leverage in monitored and peer monitored lending abstract i study the contract design problem facing microfinance lending organizations mfos that want to maximize the impact and outreach of their lending activities to a target population of poor borrowers while remaining financially sustainable tradeoffs between outreach sustainability and financial leverage are shaped by the endogenous monitoring and delegation costs that arise within a chain of agency relationships subject to moral hazard between borrowers loan staff mfo equity owners and outside investors all else equal sustainable mfos that target poorer borrowers must charge higher interest rates have higher staff costs per dollar loaned and are less leveraged analysis of data for 72 mfos tends to support the findings

the influence of decision making rules on individual preferences for ecological restoration evidence from an experimental survey abstract we conduct an experimental survey to analyze how rules for collective decision making influence individual preferences regarding nature restoration plans our study compares two decision making rules a consensus rule and a majority rule wherein participants decide on a plan regarding nature restoration in the kushiro wetland japan our main finding is that the difference between the individual preferences and collective decision making is less significant under the consensus rule than the majority rule furthermore there is a larger disparity with regard to the marginal willingness to pay between collective and individual decisions when participants are unsatisfied with the results of collective choice

how to promote clusters policy experiences from latin america abstract in this paper we propose to differentiate between three types of clusters when it comes to formulating cluster oriented policies in latin america survival clusters of micro and small scale enterprises owe their existence more to unfavorable macroeconomic conditions and less to entrepreneurial competence and dynamism their competitive potential is limited support measures should mainly aim at improving the conditions for survival since these clusters are important in creating employment opportunities the impetus should be to break through the low skills low investment vicious circle more advanced and differentiated mass producers have been flourishing in the import substitution era but are coming under enormous pressure with the transition to open economies in these clusters the main challenge is to create an environment that stimulates and supports learning innovation and constant upgrading clusters of transnational corporations are typically dominated by foreign firms not only at the final assembly stage but also in parts production these clusters often are showcases of best practice manufacturing this can be used to stimulate the upgrading of domestic firms notably by involving them in the supply chain of transnationals

the ecological economics of economic democracy abstract ecological economics is at a sharp crossroads today mostly due to the unprecedented scale of the intertwined social and ecological crises we face we argue that the discipline should engage with the thinking and practices around alternatives to capitalism more substantially as this is essential and invaluable for the discipline s ability to contribute to a just and sustainable future we outline an agenda for future ecological economics research on economic alternatives that are shaped by the concrete ways in which economic democracy deals with issues of uncertainty complexity and value incommensurability and contribute to a kind of political economy that ecological economics would advocate we lay out how this question could be operationalised within the context of allocation and exchange i e alternatives to market production and investment i e alternatives to capitalist firm and economic subjectivities i e alternatives to self interest

implicit interest rates usury and isolation in backward agriculture the unusually high interest rates in many backward agricultural regions have been a source of some puzzlement to economists adding to this puzzle is the fact that these rates can take on a wide range of values often within the same region one important question is why arbitrage between sectors does not lead to more homogeneous and lower interest rates the traditional answer to this is in terms of lender s risk it is argued that moneylenders in backward regions face a great risk of default and once this is taken into account the effective interest rate turns out to be no higher than its counterpart in the organised sector consequently there is no real room for arbitrage and the high interest rates are equilibrium prices while this explanation may be of use in some situations it is in general inadequate and can even be misleading the reason which novelists describing rural india have repeatedly written about is that in these financial transactions the lender s risk frequently ranges from minimal to non existent because the personalised relation between the borrower and the lender enables the latter to extract the defaulted loan in the form of asset transfers from the borrower in a somewhat stylised manner these deals could be thought of as follows a peasant takes a loan from his employer keeping some of his assets like land a standing crop or even the promise of labour services as security or collateral a collateral price is then fixed this is the conversion price used to calculate the amount of collateral that has to be relinquished to the lender given a certain amount of default clearly the lower the collateral price the larger the quantity of collateral that the peasant has to forfeit hence the underpricing of collateral amounts to the charging of an implicit interest a widespread feature of rural credit markets reported in many diverse studies bardhan and rudra 1978 myint 1964 raj 1981 roth 1979 and sivakumar 1978 to mention just a few is the underpricing of collateral an interesting attempt to bring collateral explicitly into a model of usury was made by bhaduri 1977 see also 1983 who argued that one of the reasons why landlords raise interest rates is in fact to encourage default and to claim ownership of the asset kept as collateral a sharp contrast to the lender s risk model this hypothesis has deservedly received much attention 1

motives behind willingness to pay for improving biodiversity in a water ecosystem economics ethics and social psychology this paper reports on empirical work extending the standard economic approach to valuation by including psychological and philosophical factors more specifically a contingent valuation method survey was applied to biodiversity improvement while simultaneously assessing rights based beliefs consequentialism and the theory of planned behaviour the latter was assessed using measures of attitudes subjective norms and perceptions of control over willingness to pay the results show that standard socio economic explanatory variables are far inferior to those of social psychology and philosophy and that these factors offer a better understanding of the motives behind responses to contingent valuation the implication is that alternative means of measuring an individual s pluralistic values should be taken into account in order to assess the validity and meaning of willingness to pay

ecosystems contingent valuation and ethics the case of wetland re creation this paper addresses a current issue in environmental valuation namely the extent to which environmental preferences depart from the usual economic paradigm to incorporate some lexicographic elements after a theoretical discussion the paper reviews attempts to explore this question empirically by supplementing contingent valuation analyses with an exploration of the motives behind willingness to pay responses including zero bids and refusals to answer this is followed by the presentation of new evidence investigating respondents willingness to pay for the creation of a wetland taken from 713 personal interviews of the british public 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

fairness in the contingent valuation of environmental public goods attitude toward paying for environmental improvements at two levels of scope abstract respondents to contingent valuation cv surveys give a variety of reasons for not wanting to pay money this variability is likely to reflect people s attitudes toward paying for the public good change their attitudes toward paying for public goods in general and a component that is independent of these attitudes but unique to particular beliefs about paying e g i can t afford to pay negative attitudes toward paying can contribute to an apparent insensitivity to different levels of the same public good in a telephone survey northern wisconsin property owners were asked about their wtp for four environmental public goods biodiversity indian spearfishing water quality and wolves at two levels of scope part and whole for water quality and spearfishing the part was a chain of lakes that was geographically nested within a larger region of lakes similarly the biodiversity whole represented a region comprising the smaller level of the public good the scope conditions for wolves were quantitatively nested levels of returning 300 and 800 wolves to northern wisconsin respondents beliefs about paying for each public good and level of scope were measured in order to test their generality across the different public goods and levels of scope negative attitudes toward paying that are general across public goods place restrictions on the use of cv for environmental public goods however negative attitudes that are tied to specific environmental public goods suggest that the valuation method might be difficult to implement in these cases only moreover negative attitudes toward paying that are either general or specific may contribute to perfect embedding when they are expressed across different levels of scope for the same public good respondents beliefs about paying for each public good were associated with an attitude toward paying for the respective good and an attitude toward paying for public goods in general at both levels of scope the general attitude was more explanatory of beliefs about paying for wolf reintroduction and spearfishing than were the specific attitudes the distribution of beliefs was sensitive to the type of good being valued but less so to the scope of the public good change contingent valuation practitioners should seek improvements in respondents perceptions of the fairness of the valuation process in order to facilitate citizens involvement in decisions about environmental public goods avenues for future research are proposed and discussed

a theoretical approach to deliberative valuation aggregation by mutual consent in deliberative valuation a small group of selected persons explores the values that should guide collective decisions through a process of reasoned discourse proponents argue that deliberative techniques enhance the effectiveness and perceived legitimacy of policy making by facilitating public participation this paper outlines an approach to deliberative valuation that is grounded in democratic theory social psychology and cooperative game theory emphasizing applications to the monetary valuation of environmental services the analysis suggests that deliberative groups that employ consent based choice rules may aggregate individual values in a manner that systematically departs from the additive aggregation procedures of standard cost benefit analysis

beyond rationality towards reasonableness enriching the theoretical foundation of deliberative monetary valuation economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land use decisions stated preference sp methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods but they are also particularly controversial in response to accumulating criticism of sp deliberative monetary valuation dmv has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years however being a combination of elements from two theories neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy it lacks a convincing consistent theoretical foundation in our paper we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of amartya sen we find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of dmv s theoretical foundations e g meta rankings of preferences impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons

learning design contingent valuation ldcv noaa guidelines preference learning and coherent arbitrariness we extend the contingent valuation cv method to test three differing conceptions of individuals preferences as either i a priori well formed or readily divined and revealed through a single dichotomous choice question as per the noaa cv guidelines k arrow r solow p r portney e e leamer r radner h schuman report of the noaa panel on contingent valuation fed reg 58 1993 4601 4614 ii learned or discovered through a process of repetition and experience j a list does market experience eliminate market anomalies q j econ 2003 41 72 c r plott rational individual behaviour in markets and social choice processes the discovered preference hypothesis in k arrow e colombatto m perleman c schmidt eds rational foundations of economic behaviour macmillan london st martin s new york 1996 pp 225 250 iii internally coherent but strongly influenced by some initial arbitrary anchor d ariely g loewenstein d prelec coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences q j econ 118 1 2003 73 105 findings reject both the first and last of these conceptions in favour of a model in which preferences converge towards standard expectations through a process of repetition and learning in doing so we show that such a learning design cv method overturns the stylised facts of bias and anchoring within the double bound dichotomous choice elicitation format

the values jury to aid natural resource decisions congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources yet information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public including economic measures of value required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable existing sources of information about the public s values for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment include existing markets public surveys including contingent valuation and public involvement each of these sources has serious limitations

democracy and valuation a reply to schlapfer 2016 abstract this paper is a critical appraisal of schlapfer s 2016 proposal of a democratic valuation dv methodology to value public goods while we appreciate attempts to address the shortcomings of conventional stated preference techniques we have some reservations regarding dv our paper critically reviews the following characteristics of the proposed methodology i referendum format as decision making mechanism ii single dimensionality in the description of the policy issue to be valued and iii preference formation through provision of detailed information finally we calibrate democratic valuation against another alternative to conventional stated preference approaches namely deliberative monetary valuation dmv we argue that dmv addresses many of schlapfer s concerns regarding stated preference techniques and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv

sharecropping and the interlinking of agrarian markets one of the often noted features of less developed agrarian economies is the existence of interlinkages among the land labor credit and product markets the landlord is often the supplier of credit he frequently purchases and markets the output of the tenant farmers and often sells raw materials and even consumption goods to his tenant farmers how can this phenomenon be explained what are the welfare consequences of attempts to restrict these practices which often seem to constitute restraints on free trade these are the questions to which this paper is addressed a general set of arguments applicable to both competitive and noncompetitive environments are presented to situations where all the terms of the contract are determined in an optimal way as well as to situations where many of the terms are specified institutionally section i examines interlinked credit and tenancy contracts section ii examines interlinked marketing and tenancy contracts section iii points out the possible interlinking between labor contracts and consumption goods markets and section iv presents the different equilibrium frameworks discussed in the paper such as monopoly monopsony competition and equilibria with surplus labor

how effective is a big push to the small evidence from a quasi experiment summary this paper investigates whether a big push to the extreme poor in terms of a one off large grant enables them to participate in the microfinance program the analysis uses data from a quasi experiment on brac s ultra poor program in bangladesh the results for the baseline and repeat survey data for the treatment and comparison groups show that such a big push does make a significant impact on graduation to the microfinance program the results are robust to correction for self selection bias social capital and awareness also play important role in their decision on ngo membership and borrowing

an evaluation of monetary and non monetary techniques for assessing the importance of biodiversity and ecosystem services to people in countries with developing economies abstract biodiversity supports a range of ecosystems services that are of fundamental importance to people in poor countries economic valuation of biodiversity is important for the development of policies that protect biodiversity and alleviate poverty this paper provides an evaluation of monetary and non monetary techniques for assessing the value of biodiversity to people in least developed countries ldcs specifically research questions include 1 to what extent have monetary and non monetary techniques been used to assess the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ldcs 2 what are the key methodological practical epistemological and policy challenges to assessing the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ldcs 3 how can valuation methods be improved to allow more accurate valuation in ldcs

the shallow or the deep ecological economics movement ecological economics and its policy recommendations have become overwhelmed by economic valuation shadow pricing sustainability measures and squeezing nature into the commodity boxes of goods services and capital in order to make it part of mainstream economic financial and banking discourses there are deeper concerns which touch upon the understanding of humanity in its various social psychological political and ethical facets the relationship with nature proposed by the ecological economics movement has the potential to be far reaching however this is not the picture portrayed by surveying the amassed body of articles from this journal or by many of those claiming affiliation a shallow movement allied to a business as usual politics and economy has become dominant and imposes its preoccupation with mainstream economic concepts and values if instead ecological economists choose a path deep into the world of interdisciplinary endeavour they will need to be prepared to transform themselves and society the implications go far beyond the pragmatic use of magic numbers to convince politicians and the public that ecology still has something relevant to say in the 21st century author s abstract

managing credit for the rural poor lessons from the grameen bank abstract this paper based on a detailed study of the grameen bank in bangladesh suggests that the credit policies of the bank do not constitute a sufficient explanation for the bank s success and that its acclaimed policy of replacing individual collateral with group guarantee is in fact not practiced the paper presents an alternate explanation for the success of the grameen bank in addition it explains how the grameen bank has been able to overcome typical problems of implementing development programs by sustaining good performance from its large work force and keeping to a minimum the tendency of a few target beneficiaries to corner program benefits and flout organizational norms for their personal benefit

innovation in rural finance indonesia s badan kredit kecamatan program abstract donor agencies and governments are committing increasing resources to microenterprise credit programs much as they earlier funded rural credit yet few programs embody the lessons from this earlier experience central java s badan kredit kecamatan program shows considerable promise in providing the access convenience and flexibility desired by poor borrowers while assuring the financial viability of the credit institution by minimizing administrative costs and imposing interest rates sufficient to cover costs and prevent capital erosion recent progress has also been made in mobilizing voluntary savings strong political support from the government has been crucial to the program s success

deliberative monetary valuation and the evidence for a new value theory economists concerned with validity are combining stated preference methods with participatory deliberation to address on going criticism deliberative monetary valuation dmv uses formal methods of deliberation to express values for environmental change in monetary terms however the results have begun to define different realms of value reflecting pluralism in public concern over environmental change reviewing empirical dmv studies evidences a range of issues regarded as external to economics and the validity of its methods issues which are typically kept at arms length by most environmental economists namely multiple values incommensurability and lexicographic preferences social justice fairness and non human values

democratic valuation dv using majority voting principles to value public services the now dominant survey approaches to value public services remain contentious a common explanation is that stated preferences are generally difficult to measure i argue that the key problems of the dominant survey approaches can be explained more specifically by their ambition to measure individuals maximum willingness to pay wtp to estimate wtp researchers need to ask questions involving counterfactual prices to specify doubtful implementation rules and to aggregate preferences in a way that is inconsistent with political rights the procedures engender problems with scenario credibility incentive compatibility adequate information provision and democratic legitimacy as an alternative to the standard stated preference paradigm i propose a democratic valuation approach dv dv measures the exchange value of public services in the political domain in terms of the aggregate valuation implied by the median preferred expenditure level for public services the blueprint for survey design is the public finance referendum with multiple proposals i suggest that empirically straightforward and democratically legitimate exchange values may be a more powerful input to public policy decisions than theoretically correct but empirically problematic estimates of mean willingness to pay

valuing environmental policy options a case study comparison of multiattribute and contingent valuation survey methods this paper describes a promising new evaluation approach called a value integration survey that uses the objectives and tradeoffs expressed by participants to value environmental policy options this constructive technique which builds on the interactive elicitation process of decision analysts assists stakeholders in clarifying their values and in agreeing on a policy alternative the paper compares this multi attribute valuation method to contingent valuation surveys describes the sequence of respondents tasks and presents results from a case study comparison of contingent valuation and value integration survey methods in the context of valuing options for fire control in oregon s oldgrowth forests

an inquiry into quasi credit contracts the role of reciprocal credit and interlinked deals in small scale fishing communities in agrarian village societies beset with many hazards and uncertainties people evolve various means of coping with risk what is perhaps less known is that credit transactions can sometimes serve the function of reducing risk in such societies this article is concerned with examining several insurance motivated credit arrangements in small scale fishing communities a hunger insurance mechanism of reciprocal credit and a system of interlinked contracts aimed at insuring against risks in the spheres of labour and marketing relations will be extensively dealt with moreover the concept of triadic relationships will be shown to have special relevance in the case of traditional insurance arrangements aiming at controlling problems of moral hazard

credit incentives and reputation a hedonic analysis of contractual wage profiles a hedonic analysis of principal agent employment contracts is developed in which workers and employers exchange labor services and contractual payment patterns within this framework tests of alternative hypotheses are formulated and applied to contract data from a unique household level survey of economic activity in rural china in 1935 the results indicate that credit market constraints motivated workers and employers contract choices that shirking by workers rather than by employers was the dominant incentive issue that reputational concerns rather than threats of termination were the key worker disciplining device and finally that the contract s third party acted as an enforcement device rather than as a matchmaker subject to the availability of matched agent principal data this structural approach to modeling agency relationships can also be used in contemporary settings

preference refinement in deliberative choice experiments for ecosystem service valuation choice experiments have gained considerable popularity in ecosystem service valuation in a one shot survey respondents are faced with a strenuous task asking them to discover and monetize their preferences for often unfamiliar ecosystem services in a previously unknown hypothetical market situation we present a deliberative choice experiment that aims to generate well rationalized value estimates for policy advice two aspects of deliberation discussion and time to reflect are examined in terms of their effect on preference refinement we find more comprehensive choice motives after deliberation as well as indications for preference adjustment and a slight increase in choice certainty jel q51 q57