spatial variations in the male unemployment inflow rate 1985 spatial variations in the male unemployment inflow rate applied economics vol 17 no 1 pp 41 54

multivariate count data regression models with individual panel data from an on site sample the purpose of this paper is to consider the problem of controlling for on site sampling in the context of a system or panel of demand equations specifically in the context of recreation demand we are concerned with the situation in which survey respondents are asked to provide information not only about the actual trips to a specific site observed behavior but also their anticipated trips either under current conditions or given price and quality changes a multivariate poisson log normal mpln model and a seemingly unrelated negative binomial sunb model are used to jointly model the observed and contingent behavior data and to correct for on site sampling

the pricing of protected areas in nature based tourism a local perspective abstract this paper extends the literature on optimal pricing of recreation in protected areas by introducing price discrimination between groups of visitors and given that the agency charges different prices to subsets of visitors by including a distributional dimension that is particularly relevant for a national park agency receiving visitors from different origins other issues related to optimal entrance fees including negative ecological impacts and positive spillover effects on local communities resulting from changes in visitation are also discussed based on this model the paper provides an estimation of optimal entrance fees and revenues for the costa rican system of protected areas

the impact of industrial structure on changes in unemployment in gb travel to work areas 1989 92 the impact of industrial structure on changes in unemployment has been hard to establish conclusively this article examines this issue for gb travel to work areas for the period from december 1989 to december 1992 and concentrates in particular on the potential role of public and semi public sector employment in dampening the impact of recession in areas where such employment is relatively important it is concluded that industrial structure was of some importance in the changes in unemployment over this time a high percentage of employment in public and semi public agencies did mitigate the impact of recession other important explanatory variables included dummies to discriminate between north central and southern regions and changes in house prices

the theory of mixed demand functions abstract the properties of samuelson s mixed demand functions which express demand as a function of a mixed set of prices and quantities are derived by analyzing compensated or substitution effects and uncompensated effects the relationships between mixed demand functions and conditional or rationed demands are examined this provides insights on the behavioral implications of consumer theory for alternative demand specifications

unemployment stocks and flows in the travel to work areas of the north west region this paper examines spatial variations in unemployment stocks and flows in the north west region of great britain it utilises information describing the monthly flow of persons through the unemployment register combining the stock data with the flow data it is possible to infer the mean duration of unemployment so that the relative contribution of the inflow rate and the mean duration of unemployment in determining spatial variations in the unemployment rate can be investigated some travel to work areas are shown to have a low inflow rate and a high mean duration of unemployment whereas other areas have the reverse this suggests the existence of quite different types of unemployment problems in different areas the policy implications of this finding are discussed

a panel travel cost model accounting for endogenous stratification and truncation a latent class approach in this paper we develop a panel data negative binomial count model that corrects for endogenous stratification and truncation we also incorporate a latent class structure into our panel specification which assumes that the observations are drawn from a finite number of segments where the distributions differ in the intercept and the coefficients of the explanatory variables the paper argues that count data panel models corrected for on site sampling may still be inadequate and potentially misleading if the population of interest is heterogeneous with respect to the impact of the chosen explanatory variables jel q51 q57

testing the validity of contingent behavior trip responses while a number of validity tests exist for contingent valuation data to date there are very few literature examples for contingent behavior cb data the objective of this study is to test the validity of cb trip data for different levels of rock climbing access using data from surveys implemented before and after a policy restricting recreational access was imposed results from generalized negative binomial and seemingly unrelated poisson regression models show significant sensitivity to scope and suggest that cb data may be a valuable supplement to revealed preference data when policy proposals are outside the range of historical conditions copyright 2002 oxford university press

the demand for spatially complementary national parks using a panel dataset on annual visits to each u s national park we empirically analyze the demand for these parks using a spatial lag model which accounts for the complementary nature of the parks our results suggest that increases in fuel costs temperature increases of greater than 3 f and restrictions on foreign tourism all lower visitation to u s national parks causing associated decreases in money spent by tourists jobs created and income generated these results can also be used to analyze the possible implications of proposed public policies such as international visa requirements gas taxes and carbon taxing trading

transitory shock or structural shift the impact of the early 1980s recession on british regional unemployment this paper examines the impact of the early 1980s recession on regional unemployment in britain more specifically it seeks to evaluate the hypothesis that this recessionary shock was so severe that it caused an upward structural shift in the underlying mean unemployment rates of the regions this proposition is analysed using dickey fuller tests for difference versus trend stationarity and the augmented structural shift and trend break time series models developed by perron the results suggest that the apparent stochastic non stationarity in regional unemployment over the period 1965 95 is in fact due to an upward structural shift in regional mean unemployment rates in 1980 furthermore the nature of this shift appears to have differed as between the northern and southern regions of the country

investigation of stated and revealed preferences for an elk hunting raffle the charter forest experiment at the valles caldera national preserve vcnp in new mexico provides land managers policymakers and researchers a unique opportunity to examine an alternative public land management institution the vcnp mature bull elk permit lottery has been the largest revenue generating recreation program at the preserve since the program s inception in 2002 this paper uses stated and revealed preference ticket purchase data collected through an online survey to estimate a set of ticket demand equations for the purpose of assessing revenue generation access and the willingness to donate to this program

policy evaluation with combined actual and contingent response data the city of marietta georgia experimentally switched from flat fee financing to volume based pricing for its trash services in january 1994 both before and during the experiment detailed data on individuals observed responses to the actual introduction and contingent behavioral responses to a hypothetical introduction of volume based pricing were collected this study applies these data and investigates the methodology of collecting contingent behavior data and their use in policy analysis in particular this study empirically evaluates the effect of experience with the policy on responses to contingent behavior questions and tests for potential bias in the contingent behavior data

combining contingent valuation and travel cost data for the valuation of non market goods the travel cost method tcm has long been used to infer the economic value of nonmarket resources and public goods more recently contingent valuation cvm survey methods have gained popularity for eliciting these values here cvm survey responses are combined with tcm data on actual market behavior to estimate jointly both the parameters of the underlying utility function and its corresponding ordinary demand function this is a prototypical empirical example of a new modeling strategy variants of which should prove useful in many applications especially where reliance on a single valuation method is undesirable

on the determinants of full employment unemployment rates in local labour markets 1987 on the determinants of full employment unemployment rates in local labour markets applied economics vol 19 no 2 pp 191 200

estimating the demand for a new technology bt cotton and insecticide policies this article examines the potential demand for bt cotton in the southeast from information gathered in the first year of commercialization we combine revealed preference rp data on adoption of bt cotton varieties with stated preference sp data on willingness to adopt to estimate demand using a double bounded maximum likelihood procedure using estimated demand equations we simulate the costs of reducing conventional insecticide applications through subsidization of bt cotton results indicate that reducing cotton insecticide applications by 40 in the southeast would require a 21 acre subsidy with total annual program costs between 53 million and 60 million

the individual travel cost method with consumer specific values of travel time savings the treatment of the opportunity cost of travel time in travel cost models has been an area of research interest for many decades our analysis develops a methodology to combine the travel distance and travel time data with respondent specific estimates of the value of travel time savings vtts the individual vtts are elicited with the use of discrete choice stated preference methods the travel time valuation procedure is integrated into the travel cost valuation exercise to create a two equation structural model of site valuation since the travel time equation of the structural model incorporates individual preference heterogeneity the full structure model provides a travel cost site demand model based upon individualized values of time the methodology is illustrated in a study of recreational birdwatching more specifically visits to a stork village in poland we show that the usual practice of basing respondents vtts on 1 3 of their wage rate is largely unfounded and propose alternatives including a separate component of the travel cost survey aimed at valuation of respondents vtts or as a second best asking if they wish if their journey was shorter and for those who do use full hourly wage as an indicator of their vtts

re evaluating the income elasticity of the property tax base an important research issue relating to the property tax is its income elasticity income elasticities provide a potentially cost effective means to forecast local government revenues and in policy analysis they are used to judge the tax s behavior over business cycles its stability and capacity to generate necessary growth in revenues its adequacy while previous income elasticity estimates have been derived from simple log linear models this paper focuses on the residential component of the property tax base and develops and estimates a nonlinear structural model of residential property valuation in further contrast to previous studies which have relied on national or state

spatial variations in the unemployment rate a case study of north west england taylor j and bradley s 1983 spatial variations in the unemployment rate a case study of north west england reg studies 17 113 124 this paper extends earlier work on the categorization of unemployment by exploring the reasons for spatial variations in cyclical unemployment and non cyclical unemployment regression analysis is used to divide total unemployment into a cyclical category and a non cyclical category in twenty eight travel to work areas in north west england during 1969 80 the spatial patterns of these two categories of unemployment are examined and an attemptis made to explain them the main conclusions are that spatial variations in the unemployment rate have been severely exacerbated by national recessions that the spatial patterns of cyclical unemployment and non cyclical unemployment are not random and that there is considerable scope for public policy in rectifying the persistent structural weaknesses in certain groups of travel to work areas in the nw region

the sensitivity of regional unemployment rates to the national trade cycle forrest d and naisbitt b 1988 the sensitivity of regional unemployment rates to the national trade cycle reg studies 22 149 153 this paper provides recent estimates for the uk of a model of regional unemployment rate variability due to thirlwall the principal findings are that regional industrial structure has continued to play a major role in determining regional unemployment variability and that the pattern of industrial variability appears to have changed little in the post war period however there remains a degree of regional specific variability which warrants further study forrest d et naisbitt b 1988 la sensibilite des taux de chomage regionaux au cycle economique national reg studies 22 149 153 cet article fournit des estimations recentes pour le royaume uni d un modele de la variation du chomage regional d apres thirlwall a partir des resultats principaux il s avere que la structure industrialo regionale ne cesse de jouer un role cle dans la determination de la variation du

roughing it up including jump components in the measurement modeling and forecasting of return volatility a rapidly growing literature has documented important improvements in financial return volatility measurement and forecasting via use of realized variation measures constructed from high frequency returns coupled with simple modeling procedures building on recent theoretical results in barndorff nielsen and shephard 2004a 2005 for related bi power variation measures the present paper provides a practical and robust framework for non parametrically measuring the jump component in asset return volatility in an application to the dm exchange rate the s p500 market index and the 30 year u s treasury bond yield we find that jumps are both highly prevalent and distinctly less persistent than the continuous sample path variation process moreover many jumps appear directly associated with specific macroeconomic news announcements separating jump from non jump movements in a simple but sophisticated volatility forecasting model we find that almost all of the predictability in daily weekly and monthly return volatilities comes from the non jump component our results thus set the stage for a number of interesting future econometric developments and important financial applications by separately modeling forecasting and pricing the continuous and jump components of the total return variation process

the dynamics of regional unemployment in the uk 1974 89 this paper investigates the relationship between regional and national unemployment for the uk for the period 1974 1989 this problem is approached by using the time series methods of cointegration and causality tests the main conclusions are that regional and national unemployment are not as closely related as might have been supposed although any causation may as previously assumed run from the national to the regional level some regions are seen to be changing their position in the hierarchy of relative regional unemployment while most retain their relative status

convergent validity and the time consistency of preferences evidence from the iowa lakes recreation demand project we examine the consistency of preferences over time and as implied by revealed versus stated preference contingent behavior data studies in this area are typically based upon a single site and focus on consumer response to changes in travel cost or site access we use data from the iowa lakes project which provides information on usage patterns over several years and for 132 lakes along with detailed water quality data this allows us to test for convergence in how individuals respond to changing site characteristics as well as the consistency of preferences over time and between actual versus contingent trips

modelling recreation demand using choice experiments climbing in scotland this paper is concerned with the use of thechoice experiment method for modelling thedemand for recreation using the example ofrock climbing in scotland we begin byoutlining the method itself including itstheoretical and econometric underpinnings datacollection procedures are then outlined wepresent results from both nested and non nestedmodels and report some tests for theimplications of choice complexity andrationality finally we compare our resultswith a revealed preference data model based onthe same sample of climbers

omitted cross price variable biases in the linear travel cost model correcting common misperceptions the essence of the travel cost method is that the combination of the number of visits to a site and the round trip travel costs for each recreationist traces out a demand relationship since the geographic location of the recreationist s residence exerts a kind of experimental control which forces the more distant consumer to bear higher travel and related costs these travel costs are used as proxies for prices in estimating demand for the site s services clawson 1959 has presented the two step method for valuing a single site s services however it has been pointed out in the literature that single and isolated recreation sites very rarely exist and the failure to include prices for alternative sites in the demand equation leads to biased estimates for the value of the resource under consideration the literature contains some misconceptions about the direction of the bias consider quotations from two frequently cited studies

a note on the welfare effects of omitting substitute prices and qualities from travel cost models the bias to welfare estimates from omitting substitute prices or qualities in travel cost models is examined the presence of bias depends on whether single or multiple site changes are examined and the degree of correlation between the omitted and included prices for a multiple site price or quality change even when omitted price is uncorrelated with included price welfare estimates may be biased alternatively if omitted price is perfectly correlated the welfare measure may not be biased the presence of the bias depends equally on both the degree of correlation and whether a single or multiple change occurs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

specification tests for mixed demand systems with an emphasis on combining contingent valuation and revealed data abstract in a world characterized by r unrationed goods i e market goods and n r rationed goods such as most environmental goods necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an underlying rational preference structure are derived based on a system of mixed demand functions with complete information with incomplete information the case of a partial demand system is addressed and a test for separability is proposed the implications for testing rationality in a world characterized by combined rp and sp individual data are examined for data consistency testable conditions are derived

valuing the benefits of coastal water quality improvements using contingent and real behaviour recent moves in the european union have beenmade towards a toughening of legislation onbathing water quality this has focussedpolicy makers thoughts on the welfare benefitsresulting from such improvements especiallygiven their cost our paper uses a combinedstated and revealed preference approach tovalue coastal water quality improvements focussing on an area of scotland which hasconsistently failed to meet standards under thebathing waters directive we combine data onreal behaviour with data on contingentbehaviour using a random effects negativebinomial panel model this allows us to predictboth the change in participation trips shouldwater quality be improved and the welfareincrease per trip our model includes allowancefor the existence of substitute sites and forchanges in recreational behaviour during abeach visit

augmenting travel cost models with contingent behavior data this paper proposes contingent behavior survey questions as a valuable supplement to observed data in travel cost models of non market demand for recreational resources a set of observed and contingent behavior results for each survey respondent allows the researcher to control for individual heterogeneity by taking advantage of panel data methods when exploring the nature of respondent demands the contingent scenarios also provide opportunities to a test for differences between observed and contingent preferences and or b assess likely demands under conditionsbeyond the domain of observed variation in costs or resource attributes most importantly contingent scenarios allow the researcher to imposeexogenously varying travel costs exogenous imposition of travel costs together with panel methods reduces the omitted variables bias that plagues observed data travel cost models of recreational demand using a convenience sample of data for illustrative purposes we show how to estimate the demand for recreational angling by combining observed and contingent behavior data we begin with simple naive pooled poisson models and progress to more theoretically appropriate fixed effects panel poisson specifications

combining revealed and stated preference data to estimate the nonmarket value of ecological services an assessment of the state of the science this paper reviews the marketing transportation and environmental economics literature on the joint estimation of revealed preference rp and stated preference sp data the rp and sp approaches are first described with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of each recognizing these strengths and weaknesses the potential gains from combining data are described a classification system for combined data that emphasizes the type of data combination and the econometric models used is proposed a methodological review of the literature is pursued based on this classification system examples from the environmental economics literature are highlighted a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of jointly estimated model is then presented suggestions for future research in particular opportunities for application of these models to environmental quality valuation are presented

ecotourism demand and differential pricing of national park access in costa rica ecotourism presents developing countries with growing opportunities for enhancing resource conservation and economic growth but also raises pressing management and policy challenges this paper presents a conceptual framework and empirical analysis of the impacts of introducing a differential entrance fee policy at three national parks in costa rica data are collected using a contingent behavior methodology designed to elicit information on foreign tourists hypothetical park visitation behaviors at alternative entrance fee levels park visitation demand functions and price and income elasticities are estimated revenue maximizing fees are calculated and applications of differential pricing principles to park management are discussed

comparative analysis of non market valuation techniques for the eduardo avaroa reserve bolivia abstract ecological tourism has held up as a potentially important development alternative in relatively undeveloped regions and countries however tourism is a highly vulnerable activity where tourists display voluntary and discretionary behavior while tourism can serve as an income generating activity for the region uncontrolled tourism that is developed without consideration of the environmental impact can adversely affect the natural areas determining what to charge tourists to view a natural area is difficult since demand elasticities are not readily available from observable transactions in order to better gauge the value tourists place on the reserve and their sensitivity to changes in the costs of visiting eduardo avaroa non market valuation provides several valuable tools here we test the convergent validity between two popular non market valuation alternatives the contingent valuation method and the contingent behavior method tourists to the eduardo avaroa reserve in bolivia were asked their willingness to pay in visitor days or in dollars due to an improvement in tourism services at the reserve our models show that the traditionally important variables predict willingness to pay for improved services for the contingent behavior contingent valuation and the pooled model however we find statistically and empirically meaningful distinctions in the estimates derived from the two methods comparisons of the implications of adopting the entrance fee recommendations from the two non market valuation techniques are made based on the revenues predicted to accrue to eduardo avaroa reserve if park management techniques were improved this research highlights the challenges in using non market valuation techniques for policy formation particularly in a developing country setting

time is money improved valuation of time and transportation costs the proper valuation of time isimportant for estimating the demand for severaleconomic goods this paper explores the propervaluation of time when estimating recreationaldemand where time costs represent asubstantial portion of the purchase price toestimate demand this paper uses a travel costframework to analyze actual behavior revealedpreference data and hypothetical behavior stated preference data which is induced byhypothetical increases in access fees traveltime and travel distance by comparing theresponses to these three contingencies theanalysis adjusts and improves the valuation oftime costs as evidence of this improvement this analysis demonstrates a great increase inthe consistency between the revealed and stateddata similarly this paper improves thevaluation of transportation related costs

transactions volume and volatility we show that the positive volatility volume relation documented by numerous researchers actually reflects the positive relation between volatility and the number of transactions thus it is the occurrence of transactions per se and not their size that generates volatility trade size has no information beyond that contained in the frequency of transactions our results suggest that theoretical research needs to entertain scenarios in which 1 both the frequency and size of trades are endogenously determined yet 2 the size of trades has no information content beyond that contained in the number of transactions article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

adopt a hypothetical pup a count data approach to the valuation of wildlife the willingness to pay wtp for a coyote conservation program is estimated using a novel payment vehicle based on how many problem coyotes respondents would be willing to sponsor for a year this hypothetical scenario mimics an increasingly popular type of actual market data from a phone survey conducted in prince edward island are analyzed using count data models that consider different processes explaining zero responses and the level of positive responses this is particularly important in the case of coyotes often regarded as an economic bad estimates of wtp per coyote per year around 18 22 and annual wtp per contributor of about 46 57 are obtained

properties of realized variance under alternative sampling schemes this article investigates the statistical properties of the realized variance estimator in the presence of market microstructure noise different from the existing literature the analysis relies on a pure jump process for high frequency security prices and explicitly distinguishes among alternative sampling schemes including calendar time sampling business time sampling and transaction time sampling the main finding in this article is that transaction time sampling is generally superior to the common practice of calendar time sampling in that it leads to a lower mean squared error mse of the realized variance the benefits of sampling in transaction time are particularly pronounced when the trade intensity pattern is volatile based on ibm transaction data over the period 2000 2004 the empirical analysis finds an average optimal sampling frequency of about 3 minutes with a steady downward trend and significant day to day variation related to market liquidity and a consistent reduction in mse of th

an extension of omitted cross price variable biases in the linear travel cost model correcting common misperceptions caulkins bishop and bouwes cbb 1985 raise an important issue concerning the conventional presumption of positive bias in consumer surplus when alternative sites are ignored in the travel cost method treatment of site value dwyer kelly and bowes 1977 they analyze a significant geographic dispersion phenomenon which can cause either negative or positive bias in travel cost model tcm estimates of site value when travel costs to alternative sites are omitted however the derivation of specification bias in the tcm which they provide is incomplete and could lead to generalizations which are erroneous cbb use the well known specification bias analysis to discuss the possible effects of ignoring alternative recreation sites in the tcm demand analysis given the estimated linear regression equation

a discrete state continuous time model of financial transactions prices and times financial transaction prices typically lie on a discrete grid of values and arrive at random times this paper proposes an econometric model with this structure the distribution of each price change is a multinomial conditional on past information and the time interval between the transactions the proposed autoregressive conditional multinomial acm model is not restricted to be markov or symmetric in response to shocks however such restrictions can be imposed the duration between trades is modeled as an autoregressive conditional duration acd model following engle and russell 1998 maximum likelihood estimation and testing procedures are developed the model is estimated with 12 months of tick data on a moderately frequently traded nyse stock airgas the preferred model is estimated with three lags for the acm model and two lags for the acd model both price returns and squared returns influence future durations and present and past durations affect price movements the model exhibits revers

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

valuing water level changes in reservoirs using two stated preference approaches an exploration of validity the combination of travel cost tcm and contingent behaviour cb methods is a relatively new research avenue in the recreational valuation community contrary to simple tcm applications tcm cb facilitates the ex ante valuation of marginal welfare effects resulting from environmental quality or quantity changes similar to the contingent valuation method cv even though tcm cb is highly policy relevant i e to inform changes in management regimes at recreational sites the validity of estimates has hardly received any attention and little is known about the performance of tcm cb compared to cv in this paper tcm cb and cv are explored with respect to several validity tests in a case study on the recreational effects of water level changes in a reservoir overall the findings reveal that tcm cb and cv perform equally well in terms of theoretical validity but that the marginal recreational value varies significantly between the two methods we also observe that both methods face similar internal difficulties with respect to the stability of values when the order of a set of valuation questions is changed

consistency in mixed demand systems contingent valuation and travel cost data in contrast to previous literature we propose a consistency test that does not impose any particular common functional form for the preference structure underlying the travel cost tc and contingent valuation cv models we derive testable consistency conditions between tc and cv data in the context of mixed demand systems when valuing changes in environmental quality these conditions are a subset of the rationality conditions the proposed consistency tests are implemented combining tc and cv data the empirical results show that it is possible to combine stated tc and cv but not revealed tc and cv data

using count data models in travel cost analysis with aggregate data estimators of recreational demand models frequently use continuous functional forms such as ordinary least squares ols on log transformed variables e g ziemer musser and hill however the nature of trip demand introduces complicating factors first trips occur in nonnegative quantities failure to control for this censoring will lead to biased estimation second because trips are available only in integer quantities the usual demand models which correlate marginal quantity with marginal price may be inapplicable in light of these factors a natural alternative is to use statistical models that explicitly recognize the count nature of trip demand several recent papers e g shaw smith grogger and carson creel and loomis have applied count models to the travel cost model these works largely have focused on truncated data sets based on choice based samples in this study the focus is on the older problem where zero demanders are included in particular the application of several robust estimators of count models to aggregated data will be considered the poisson distribution forms the foundation for the count models examined in this study although the poisson is a convenient distribution to work with it imposes some stringent constraints on the demand distribution in particular the poisson distribution assumes the variance of trip demand is equal to the expected value of trip demand to loosen these constraints a generalization of the poisson the negative binomial is discussed robust estimation procedures that permit further loosening of a priori assumptions are then reviewed permit data from the boundary waters canoe area are used to examine the effects of these count models on consumer surplus estimates and on coefficient variability

the effects of variable omission in the travel cost technique the travel cost technique is probably the most widely used method for estimating outdoor recreation demand functions consequently problems of specification have attracted much attention specification errors due to the omission of travel time and congestion effects have received the most recent attention with the consensus being that the travel cost technique underestimates the true value of recreational resources if these variables are omitted gum and martin 1975 wetzel 1977 mcconnell and duff 1976 yet the effect of variable omission is likely to vary depending upon the type of activity the existence of substitutes and related factors for this reason we reexamine from both an empirical and theoretical perspective the magnitude and nature of potential specification errors due to variable omission

willingness to pay for quality improvements should revealed and stated preference data be combined abstract in this article we propose theoretically consistent welfare measurement of use and nonuse values for an improvement in environmental quality with revealed and stated preference data an analytical model based on the comparative static analysis of the variation function that describes the relationship between recreation demand and dichotomous choice contingent valuation models is estimated our results show that revealed and stated data should not be combined under the same assumed preference structure unless the two decisions imply the same change in behavior induced by the quality change in addition our results indicate scope effects in willingness to pay measures estimated with stated preference data

economic growth and liquidation of natural capital the case of forest clearance the importance of natural capital to economic systems is increasingly recognized previous empirical models of economic growth rates however have emphasized accumulation of physical and human capital this paper shows that the economic growth of over 70 countries has been positively affected by liquidation of one aspect of natural capital forests while controlling for factors typically associated with national growth rates the positive association was robust to additions of various covariates such as forest exports level of economic development agricultural area and geographical position these results suggest that conversion of forests has partially fuelled the economic expansion of countries

a difficulty with the travel cost method instead of observable prices of recreational visits travel cost method tcm re searchers are obliged to substitute researcher assigned visitation cost estimates i argue that visitation costs are inherently subjective but are ordinally measurable so long as the cost in creases with distance travelled it follows that traditional tcm yields only ordinally measur able welfare estimates the household produc tion function formulation of tcm resolves this problem only by imposing severe and un testable analytical restrictions tcm cannot serve as a stand alone technique for estimating recreation benefits rather it must be calibrated using information generated with fundamentally different methods jel q26

convergent validity of revealed and stated recreation behavior with quality change a comparison of multiple and single site demands we consider the convergent validity of several demand models using beach recreation data two models employ multiple site data a count data demand system model and the kuhn tucker demand system model we explore the role of existing variation in beach width in explaining trip choices and analyze a hypothetical 100 foot increase in beach width we compare these models to a single equation model where we jointly estimate revealed and stated preference trip data and focus on a hypothetical scenario considering a 100 foot increase in beach width in each case we develop estimates of the change in beach visits and the welfare impacts from the increase in width the trip change estimates from two of the three models are similar and convergent valid though the willingness to pay estimates differ in magnitude

assessing the economic value of a world heritage site and willingness to pay determinants a case of changdeok palace abstract the main objective of this study is to estimate use value of a world cultural heritage in korea using the contingent valuation method cvm the type of question used in this study was closed ended or dichotomous choice based on the results of the pre test 10 price offers were given the logit models in both linear and logarithmic forms were employed to identify determinants from the dichotomous question the mean wtp values were 5706 won 5 70 in a log linear model and 6005 won 6 00 in a log logit model taking into account only domestic visitors aggregate use value from the log linear model was estimated to be approximately 1 93 million dollars while aggregate use value from the log logit model was estimated as 2 01 million dollars the results from this study revealed the economic value of the world heritage site to users or tourists in levels exceeding its monetary benefits

a new marked point process model for the federal funds rate target methodology and forecast evaluation abstract forecasts of key interest rates set by central banks are of paramount concern for investors and policy makers recently it has been shown that forecasts of the federal funds rate target the most anticipated indicator of the federal reserve bank s monetary policy stance can be improved considerably when its evolution is modeled as a marked point process mpp this is due to the fact that target changes occur in discrete time with discrete increments have an autoregressive nature and are usually in the same direction we propose a model which is able to account for these dynamic features of the data in particular we combine hamilton and jorda s 2002 a model for the federal funds rate target journal of political economy 110 5 1135 1167 autoregressive conditional hazard ach and russell and engle s 2005 a discrete state continuous time model of financial transactions prices and times the autoregressive conditional multinomial autoregressive conditional duration model journal of business and economic statistics 23 2 166 180 autoregressive conditional multinomial acm model the paper also puts forth a methodology to evaluate probability function forecasts of mpp models by improving goodness of fit and point forecasts of the target the ach acm qualifies as a sensible modeling framework furthermore our results show that mpp models deliver useful probability function forecasts at short and medium term horizons