environmental regulation and u s economic growth in this article we quantify the costs of pollution controls by reporting the results of simulations of the growth of the u s economy with and without regulation for this purpose we have constructed a detailed model of the economy that includes the determinants of long term growth we have also analyzed the interaction between industries in order to capture the full repercussions of environmental regulations however we have not attempted to assess the benefits resulting from a cleaner environment we find that pollution abatement has emerged as a major claimant on the resources of the u s economy the cost of emission controls is more than 10 of the total cost of government purchases of goods and services

inflation and asset returns in a monetary economy postwar u s data are characterized by negative correlations between real equity returns and inflation and by positive correlations between real equity returns and money growth these patterns are closely matched quantitatively by an equilibrium monetary asset pricing model the model also implies negative correlations between expected asset returns and expected inflation and it predicts that the inflationasset return correlation will be more strongly negative when inflation is generated by fluctuations in real economic activity than when it is generated by monetary fluctuations the co movements of real asset returns inflation and money growth have been studied extensively over the past fifteen years table i displays some of the statistical properties of these series using quarterly u s data from 1959 to 1990 note first the significantly negative correlation between real equity returns and inflation note also the negative correlation between inflation and the ex post real return to nominally riskless bonds while this fact is not particularly surprising numerous studies conclude that the correlations between ex ante real asset returns and expected inflation are also negative 2 in contrast to these patterns the correlation between money growth and real equity returns is weakly positive in the data while the correlation between money growth and the real bond return is virtually zero initially these empirical patterns were viewed as anomalies negative correlations between inflation and ex post real stock returns contradict the traditional view that equities ought to act as an inflation hedge 3 negative correlations between expected inflation and ex ante real returns violate the

social cost of environmental quality regulations a general equilibrium analysis the use of cost benefit analysis by federal regulatory agencies has expanded greatly in scope and sophistication unfortunately agencies continue to employ private cost rather than social cost to evaluate environmental quality regulations furthermore general equilibrium impacts and intertemporal effects of regulations are typically not included in the evaluation in this paper we estimate the social cost of environmental quality regulations mandated by the clean air and clean water acts we construct an econometric general equilibrium model of the united states to demonstrate that social cost estimates diverge sharply from private cost estimates we also demonstrate that general equilibrium impacts are significant and pervasive and that intertemporal effects of the regulations heretofore ignored are significant

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

minimum wages and the gender wage gap estimates are made of the effect of minimum wages on the size and composition of the gender wage gap in canada in 1986 it is found that minimum wages close the wage gap substantially for young workers and less so for adults the reduction in the gap is most attributable to the adverse employment effects of minimum wages the results also indicate that most of the reduction in the gap is realized through a fall in the discriminatory component

endogenous consequentiality in stated preference referendum data the influence of the randomly assigned tax amount recent empirical and theoretical research stresses it is important for survey respondents to believe that survey votes are consequential meaning their votes can potentially influence whether a proposed policy is undertaken we test the effect of a randomly assigned referendum tax on consequentiality using a survey about water conservation in western north carolina we find that consequentiality is endogenous to hypothetical referendum responses specifically as the assigned tax amount increases respondents are less likely to find the survey consequential as in related studies respondents who self report they perceive the survey to be consequential have a higher willingness to pay

does don t know mean no analysis of don t know responses in dichotomous choice contingent valuation questions the don t know response option in contingent valuation dichotomous choice questions is analysed using data from both willingness to pay and willingness to accept studies an empirical analysis is conducted to determine whether respondents are stating a response similar to yes or no responses or a middle response it is found that don t know responses are similar to no responses in the willingness to pay study in the willingness to accept study it is found that the don t know responses are similar to a middle response it is further suggested that researchers consider calculating ambivalence bounds when a don t know response is a middle response

starting even job mobility and the wage gap between young single males and females standard econometric analysis of male female earnings differentials ignores job mobility despite its vital role in theories of discrimination and its demonstrated importance in explaining the earnings of young men this paper develops a model of male and female earnings and job mobility and estimates it for young single men and women in canada using the 1981 survey of work history the results corrected for sample selection bias arising from job mobility suggest that male and female earnings determination differs considerably by job mobility status returns to mobility are much greater for males than for females the results also show significantly different mobility behaviour for men and women but if anything females are more mobile than males faced with the same earnings opportunities thus differential job mobility behaviour does not appear to account for any portion of the male female earnings gap

discrimination empirical evidence from the united states the study of discrimination received a major impetus in the 1960 s when increasing social attention focused upon race and gender differentials in market outcomes gary becker s the economics of discrimination 1957 strongly influenced empirical research by providing a definition of wage discrimination and suggesting a specific way in which it might operate during the following years new theories were developed and refined in an attempt to explain why there appears to be continued discrimination in spite of market forces presumably operating against it similarly a large amount of empirical work has been done to determine whether and how much discrimination actually exists and to a lesser extent to test the implications of the various theories even so the hope expressed by becker in the preface of the second edition 1971 that our understanding of discrimination would increase so rapidly that the materials in his book would become obsolete before another decade began has clearly not been fulfilled here we review what has been learned in the intervening years and suggest some fruitful directions for future research 1 the focus of this paper like that of most of the empirical research in this area is on determining the extent of discrimination rather than on testing alternative models of discrimination

willingness to pay and the cost of commitment an empirical specification and test in a static setting willingness to pay for an environmental improvement is equal to compensating variation in a dynamic setting however willingness to pay may also contain a commitment cost in this paper we incorporate the dynamic nature of the value formation process into a stated preference study designed to test whether there is an important dynamic component commitment cost in stated preference values the results clearly indicate that stated preference values can contain commitment costs and that these can be quite large respondents offered the opportunity to delay their purchasing decisions until more information became available were willing to pay significantly less for improved water quality than those facing a now or never decision these results have important consequences for the design and interpretation of stated preference data

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

the relation between stock prices and inflationary expectations the international evidence this paper provides empirical evidence on the relation between stock returns and inflationary expectations for nine countries over the period 1971 80 the fisherian assumption that real returns are independent of inflationary expectations is soundly rejected for each major stock market of the world using interest rates as a proxy for expected inflation our data provide consistent support for the geske and roll model whose basic hypothesis is that stock price movements signal negative revisions in inflationary expectations finally a weak real interest rate effect was found for some of these countries

internal and external labour mobility in canada quasi longitudinal canadian microdata was used to compare the movement of individuals between employers with job changes taking place within firms internal mobility is found to be much less common than job changing between firms workers changing jobs within a firm are more likely to be older and have higher wages and longer tenures in the jobs they leave than individuals employers this provides some support for the job matching hypothesis underlying recent research on the causes of individual mobility although it is also clear that workers in large or unionized firms are more likely to have the opportunity for internal promotion while wage gains obtained through internal mobility are smaller than those achieved through external mobility wage levels are higher for individuals moving within the firm it is argued that this observation is consistent with a dual labour markets interpretation of mobility patterns

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

male female earnings differentials and the role of language in canada ontario and quebec 1970 recent studies by robb 1978 and gunderson 1979a have analysed malefemale earnings differentials in ontario and canada respectively both authors first estimated sex specific earnings functions and then employed the estimated coefficients to decompose the observed or gross earnings differential into a portion attributable to differences in mean characteristics or endowments and a portion attributable to discrimination i discrimination is measured both by differential returns to the same productivity generating characteristics the estimated coefficients of the characteristics and by other forms of discrimination which do not appear explicitly in the earnings equation the estimated intercepts the purpose of this note is to report the results obtained from performing a similar decomposition analysis for quebec and to compare our results with those of robb and gunderson given the comparative nature of our study we have chosen to use the same data base sample characteristics model specifications and control variables as did robb and gunderson 2 the major difference between our study and those of robb and gunderson is the treatment of language robb did not include language variables in her earnings functions for ontario while gunderson employed what we term a narrow definition of language for canada in his earnings equations gunderson measured language skills by the ability to communicate in canada s official

part whole bias in contingent valuation will scope effects be detected with inexpensive survey methods the purpose of this paper is to test for scope effects with the contingent valuation method we use data from a telephone survey focusing on water quality improvements in the albemarle and pamlico sounds in north carolina we find that the willingness to pay estimates are sensitive to the scope of the policy these results suggest that the use of inexpensive survey methods may not be the cause of the failure to detect scope effects in some recent contingent valuation studies

the contingent valuation debate why economists should care t he contingent valuation method involves the use of sample surveys questionnaires to elicit the willingness of respondents to pay for generally hypothetical projects or programs the name of the method refers to the fact that the values revealed by respondents are contingent upon the constructed or simulated market presented in the survey a spirited and occasionally mean spirited battle over such methods is currently being waged involving competing factions within the federal government economists and lawyers representing business and environmental groups and interested academics as well at issue is a seemingly quite specific question should environmental regulations currently under development at both the department of the interior and the department of commerce sanction the use of the contingent valuation method in estimating the damage done by spills of oil chemicals or other substances covered by federal law more generally the debate raises broad questions about what economists have to say about the values that individuals place on public or private goods the two papers that follow this one make cases for and against the use of the contingent valuation method my aim here is to provide an overview of the technique and the debate surrounding it i also want to suggest why this debate should matter to economists both professionally and in their roles as citizens and consumers

job duration seniority and earnings an important stylized fact about labor markets is that workers with longer seniority with their current employer have higher earnings than other workers with the same total labor market experience this study shows that workers in longer jobs earn more throughout than workers in a series of shorter jobs and that the measured positive cross sectional return seniority is largely a statistical artifact due to the correlation of seniority with an omitted variable representing the quality of the worker the job or the worker employer match the implication is tha t earnings do not in fact rise very much with seniority copyright 1987 by american economic association

the role of question format for the support for national climate change mitigation policies in germany and the determinants of wtp this contingent valuation survey examines the willingness to pay wtp for climate change mitigation in germany willingness to pay is assessed by using a classic dichotomous choice referendum format and a two way payment ladder in a split sample design we find that mean wtp under the referendum format is more than twice the wtp in the payment ladder format but median wtp does not differ moreover we test the possible effect of different determinants on wtp determinants that considerably influence wtp are personal norm climate change scepticism agreement with the german renewable energy law and individualistic cognition income and gender are also important predictors

wage changes and job changes of canadian women the paper employs data from the 1986 87 labour market activity survey to investigate empirically how the wage rates of female paid workers in canada change when they change jobs in particular whether canadian women realize short run wage gains from job mobility following mincer 1986 we estimate the short run wage gain to job mobility by comparing the between job wage changes of current period job movers with the on the job wage growth of next period job movers the findings indicate that canadian women who changed jobs in 1986 realized short run wage gains of 8 9 percent and that women who quit their first job for nonpersonal job related reasons realized substantially greater wage gains than did women who quit for personal reasons were laid off or separated for other reasons

job mobility wage determination and market segmentation in the presence of sample selection bias this paper tests the hypothesis that mobility between jobs is an important determinant of individual wages and that econometric estimates of wage determination should correct for sample selectivity bias in job mobility we also test the hypothesis that different patterns of job mobility produce different appropriate corrections for sample selectivity bias in different segments of the labour market we conclude that labour market segments do differ and in particular that one can identify a marginal or low wage sector with mobility patterns and pay packages which differ from the pattern one can discern in the labour market as a whole mobilite entre emplois determination des salaires et segmentation du marche quand il y a biais de selection dans l ehantillonnage ce memoire verifie l hypothese que la mobilite entre emplois est un element determinant des salaires des individus et la proposition que les calibrations econometriques du processus de determination des salaires doivent etre corrigees pour tenir compte d un biais de selection dans l echantillonnage de mouvements entre emplois les auteurs verifient aussi l hypothese que differents patterns de mobilite entre emplois commandent des corrections appropriees differentes dans differents segments du marche du travail les auteurs en arrivent a la conclusion que les divers segments du marche du travail sont differents et qu en particulier on peut reperer un secteur marginal ou de bas salaires ofu les patterns de mobilite entre emplois et les remunerations different remarquablement de ce qui se passe dans le marche du travail dans son ensemble

estimating willingness to pay do health and environmental researchers have different methodological standards health and environmental economists have been employing stated preference sp methods such as conjoint analysis or contingent valuation to estimate the monetary value of public health interventions and environmental goods and services however the quality of data and the validity of results are sensitive to a number of decisions researchers make the aim of this study is to compare the degree of the current consensus among active researchers in the rapidly evolving area of sp methods in health and environmental valuation we surveyed researchers who have published manuscripts on sp methods in the last 10 years researchers were presented with hypothetical sp studies with different attributes they were first asked which study they would recommend to use to inform policy decisions and then asked which study has better quality our results show that good practice sp methods vary among study features and among researchers with different amounts and kinds of research experience although health researchers

human capital job matching and earnings growth between jobs an empirical analysis the process of job matching is complementary to human capital investment in determining earnings growth over the individual job history change in earnings associated with moving between jobs is portrayed as a result of matching in this paper the idea of job matching is refined to distinguish between job matching within firms and job matching across firms the derived hypotheses are supported by empirical results of a causal model which controls for human capital and personal endowment variables

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

common stochastic trends in european stock markets the objective of the paper is to investigate whether price indices of different european stock markets display a common long run trending behaviour using cointegration analysis we provide empirical evidence of common stochastic trends among five important european stock markets over the period 1975 1991

are stocks a good hedge against inflation evidence from emerging markets theory suggests that equities are a good hedge against inflation however most of the empirical evidence for industrialized economies suggests that the relationship between stock returns and inflation is negative one explanation is the negative correlation between inflation and real output growth this paper examines the relationship between inflation and stock returns for ten important emerging stock market esm markets namely chile mexico brazil argentina thailand s korea malaysia hong kong philippines and turkey during the 1990s to anticipate the results the relationship between stock returns and inflation for the whole sample period is positive and statistically significant for three of the sample esms while it is positive but statistically insignificant for a further three only for one esm is the relationship negative and statistically significant this result may be due to the role of money and the positive relationship between consumer prices and output

split sample tests of no opinion responses in an attribute based choice model researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response options that allow respondents to express no opinion using a split sample design we explore the implications of alternative answer formats including and not including no opinion responses in an attribute based choice experiment the results indicate that using multiple no opinion responses may enable researchers to differentiate between respondents who choose no opinion options due to satisficing and those expressing utility indifference existing literature suggests no opinion responses may be treated as no but our results show treating no opinion responses as no can yield substantially disparate preference estimates

willingness to pay and willingness to accept how much can they differ comment i agree with the point made by edoh y amiran and daniel a hagen 2003 that there can be a substantial or even infinite divergence between the wta and wtp for a public good even where there is a nonzero elasticity of substitution between market goods and the public good provided that the indifference curves are asymptotically bounded with respect to market goods in the manner they describe this is an important point they are also correct to point out that the elasticity of substitution is a local concept whereas their asymptotic boundedness condition applies also for discrete changes my 1991 paper used a local analysis because it was following the structure of the analysis in robert d willig 1976 and alan randall and john r stoll 1980 i wanted to show that while randall and stoll appeared to extend willig s local result on wta versus wtp from price changes to changes in the quantity of a public good the relevant elasticity was in fact different and involved the substitution elasticity as well as the income elasticity i view these points by amiran and hagen as not two separate results but essentially the same result their asymptotic boundedness condition generalizes my zero elasticity of substitution condition to discrete changes the asymptotic boundedness condition can be expressed as follows assuming a bivariate utility function u x q and given a reference point x q associated with a reference utility level u u x q there exists some q q such that for all q q there exists no x such that u x q u in other words no amount of x can substitute for the reduction in public good from q to q q in the case of a zero elasticity of substitution q q but as amiran and hagen show in their theorem 1 this is unnecessarily restrictive when dealing with a discrete reduction in q furthermore their theorem 2 can be viewed as a special case of their theorem 1 in which q 0 which makes q an essential commodity it is well known in consumer theory that the wta to avoid the loss of an essential market good is infinite their theorem 2 extends this result to the case of an essential nonmarket good but as their theorem 1 shows essentialness is not necessary for an infinite wta the boundedness condition is the key and this implies a fundamental lack of substitutability between money market goods and the public good

analysis of part time pay in canada this paper analyses the difference between part time and full time wages in canada using the 1981 survey of work history since part time and full time workers are distinguished by hours worked and since hours worked and wages are interdependent selectivity bias occurs if ordinary least squares regression is used a modification of heckman s procedure to account for the fact that part time hours are doubly truncated is used to correct this problem the results indicate that adjusting for differences in characteristics the wage differential between part time and full time workers is 10 per cent or one third the unadjusted differential results vary somewhat by sex and marital status analyse de la remuneration du travail d temps partiel au canada ce memoire analyse les differences entre les salaires pour le travail a temps plein et a temps partiel au canada a partir des resultats de l enquete sur l activite en 1981 puisque les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel sont definis par le nombre d heures de travail et puisque le nombre d heures de travail et les niveaux de salaire sont interdependants il y a biais de selectivite quand on utilise la methode des moindres carres ordinaires dans l analyse de regression l auteur utilise une modification de la technique de heckman pour tenir compte du fait que le nombre d heures de travail a temps partiel est doublement tronque pour corriger le probleme les resultats montrent que apres avoir tenu compte des differences dans les caracteristiques des personnes on observe un differentiel de niveau de salaire de 10 pourcent entre les travailleurs a temps plein et a temps partiel soit le tiers du differentiel brut avant les ajustements pour tenir compte de caracteristiques differentes ces resultats varient quelque peu selon le sexe et selon la situation familiale the trend towards part time employment has generally escaped the attention and scrutiny of economists part time employment in canada grew at an annual rate of 4 1 per cent between january 1972 and january 1984 compared 1 one exception is nakamura and nakamura 1983 who examine related labour supply issues for married females canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique xix no 4 november novembre 1986 printed in canada imprim6 au canada 0008 4085 86 798 807 1 50 0 canadian economics association this content downloaded from 207 46 13 159 on sat 22 oct 2016 04 29 38 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms analysis of part time pay in canada 799 with a growth rate of only 2 4 per cent for full time employment as a result 15 4 per cent of jobs were part time as of january 1984 compared with 13 per cent in january 1972 2 the growth of part time employment raises a number of issues in particular labour canada 1983 argues that the hourly wage differential between full time and part time workers reached 26 3 per cent in 1981 it is not clear however that this gross wage differential between full time and part time workers is a useful figure a number of accepted measurable characteristics that determine wage differentials among workers may confound this comparison unless full time and part time workers have identical characteristics it would therefore be useful from a policy standpoint to eliminate these effects to identify part time effects and the gravity of the part time pay problem per se this paper analyses the differences between part time and full time wages to try to distinguish part time effects whatever the source from other established bases for differentials in the first section a standard model for wage comparison among workers is considered the source of selectivity bias is identified and a consistent estimation technique is described the second section uses this technique to analyse the differences in part time and full time wages using microdata from the 1981 survey of work history used by labour canada 1983 the third section summarizes the results and provides suggestions for further research a model for wage comparison with selectivity bias consider a standard model used extensively for union and non union wage comparisons lee 1978 duncan and leigh 1980 robinson and tomes 1984 simpson 1985 let wf be a vector of observations on the natural logarithm of hourly wages paid to full time workers and let x be a matrix of observations on measurable worker characteristics commonly used in such models namely educational attainment age sex union status public vs private sector status and region let wp and x be the corresponding observations for part time workers let h be the maximum hours of work permitted for classification as a part time worker then we specify wf xff3f if if h h 1

distal order effects in stated preference surveys abstract stated preference researchers have previously demonstrated that a good s placement among a sequence of goods in a set of valuation questions i e proximal order effects can have a substantial impact on people s valuations of these different goods however the economic consequences of potential order effects stemming from other questions in a survey prior to the valuation tasks have received surprisingly little attention using an online climate change survey we identify order effects created by prior attitude elicitation questions and we assess the potential impact of these distal order effects on willingness to pay wtp estimates for stylized climate change policies we find that the order used in prior questions may change people s opinions toward various attributes of the good to be valued and thereby change wtp by a substantial amount this paper emphasizes the significance of order effects stemming from preliminary survey questions and supports a call for diligence in the random ordering of all potentially influential preliminary information in stated preference surveys to minimize inadvertent effects from any single arbitrary ordering

dichotomous choice contingent valuation with dont know responses and misreporting a new approach is presented that simultaneously deals with misreporting and don t know dk responses within a dichotomous choice contingent valuation framework utilising a modification of the standard bayesian probit framework a gibbs with metropolis hastings algorithm is used to estimate the posterior densities for the parameters of interest several model specifications are applied to two contingent valuation datasets one on wolf management plans and one on the us fee demonstration program we find that dks are more likely to be from people who would be predicted to have positive utility for the bid therefore a dk is more likely to be a yes than a no we also find evidence of misreporting primarily in favour of the no option the inclusion of dk responses has an unpredictable impact on willingness to pay estimates since it impacts differently on the results for the two datasets we examine copyright c 2009 john wiley sons ltd

willingness to pay for curbside recycling with detection and mitigation of hypothetical bias in this article we estimate willingness to pay for curbside recycling using a unique data set we also test for and detect significant hypothetical bias using stated and revealed preference data a short scripted cheap talk statement is used to mitigate the bias and provide more efficient estimates of the welfare impacts of curbside recycling programs copyright 2003 oxford university press

addressing negative willingness to pay in dichotomous choice contingent valuation this paper has four purposes first we outline the controversy surroundingthe issue of negative willingness to pay wtp in contingent valuation cv studies second we use monte carlo simulation to examine theperformance of alternative distributionalassumptions in estimating wtp in the presenceof varying proportions of the populationholding negative wtp values we focus ondichotomous choice cv dc cv where negativewtp values may be especially difficult todetect third we extend the simulation toinvestigate the performance of the mixturemodels that have recently been proposed forhandling identifying non positive wtp values fourth we extend the simulation to investigatethe performance of the nonparametric lowerbound turnbull approach results indicate thatthe relative performance of the dc cv modelingalternatives evaluated here which assumepositive wtp varies across the simulationsetting e g proportion of negative wtp butnone can be said to reasonably solve theproblem ex post this underscores theimportance of ex ante efforts to identify ifnegative wtp is likely to be prominent in agiven valuation setting in such cases appropriately handling negative wtp must beaddressed through ex ante survey design andmodeling choices that allow negative wtp

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

further tests of entreaties to avoid hypothetical bias in referendum contingent valuation abstract over estimation of willingness to pay in contingent markets has been attributed largely to hypothetical bias one promising approach for avoiding hypothetical bias is to tell respondents enough about such bias that they self correct for it a script designed for this purpose by cummings and taylor was used in hypothetical referenda that differed in payment amount in comparisons with behavior observed in otherwise identical real payment referenda the script worked remarkably well at higher payment levels dropping the likelihood of a yes vote to the level obtained in separate sample real referenda but less well at a lower payment level the repeated success of the script at higher payment amounts is a clear sign that additional research is warranted research that will bring us a more complete understanding of how the entreaty works this research may need to explore its workings at the individual respondent level

unions industrial concentration and wages a re examination market structure or industrial concentration has long been recognized as an important influence on industrial output employment and profits it has also been recognized that some proportion of the profits from concentration may be diverted into wages through collective bargaining yet the precise nature of these relationships has received little attention although it has important implications for the evaluation of wage structure and the welfare loss arising from monopoly empirical studies of the impact of unions and industrial concentration on wages weiss 1966 jones and laudadio 1975 dalton and ford 1977 long and link 1983 follow a similar format after a brief verbal justification for the ability of unions to win higher wage increases when the employer is earning oligopoly profits these studies specify a wage equation of the general form

an aggregate measure for benefit cost analysis the kaldor hicks kh criterion has long been the standard for benefit cost analyses but it has also been widely criticized as ignoring equity and arguably moral sentiments in general we suggest the use of an aggregate measure khm instead of kh where m stands for moral sentiments khm simply adds to the traditional kh criterion the requirement that all goods for which there is a willingness to pay or accept count as economic goods this addition however runs up against objections to counting moral sentiments in general and non paternalistic altruism in particular we show these concerns are unwarranted and suggest that the khm criterion is superior to kh because it provides better information

theoretical incentive properties of contingent valuation questions do they matter in the field abstract green et al 1998 green d jacowitz k e kahneman d mcfadden d 1998 referendum contigent valuation anchoring and willingness to pay for public goods resource and energy economics 20 2 85 116 show theoretically that stated preference questions about public services can be framed in such ways that if the subjects accept the frame the payoff maximizing behavior will be to answer truthfully one key element of such a theoretically incentive compatible framing is that the hypothetical decision rule specified in the survey instrument is understood to be a majority rule rather than the efficiency rule typically used in cost benefit analysis we conducted field experiments in germany and switzerland to test if a referendum framing as suggested by green et al is effective in reducing strategic misrepresentation in a contingent valuation setting we did not find the expected effects of the framing treatments on stated willingness to pay or on individuals stated beliefs about the social choice context the results do not support hopes that a theoretically incentive compatible framing could be purposefully used to invoke the specific beliefs about the linkage between responses and policy implementation that would make stated preference questions incentive compatible

the inflation hedging properties of turkish reits this study empirically tests the inflation hedging abilities of turkish reits in comparison to the indices of common stocks listed on the istanbul stock exchange ise over the period december 1999 to december 2004 two main factors motivate this study first compared to their counterparts in developed capital markets turkish reits have some important tax incentives as well as flexibility in managing their portfolios second the turkish economy provides a rare and good opportunity to test the hedging behaviour of real estate stocks in periods of both high and moderate inflation rates the empirical results show that turkish reits in general provide a better hedge against both actual and expected inflation than do the ise common stock indices dividing the entire sample period into the high and moderate inflation sub periods we find that the hedging ability of reits is better under high inflation than under moderate inflation

contingent valuation and the budget constraint abstract one of the most vehemently debated techniques for the valuation of environmental goods is the contingent valuation method critics of this method question its validity and reliability in many respects however at the moment the contingent valuation method is the only technique at hand for the assessment of non use values of environmental goods therefore it seems worthwhile to have a closer look at some of the criticism raised in this debate this paper deals with the so called budget constraint bias which is suspected of distorting the results of contingent valuation studies according to the critics of the contingent valuation method the stated willingness to pay for an environmental good as assessed by contingent valuation studies is systematically biased upwards because participants of such surveys do not properly observe their personal budget constraints it is maintained that respondents when asked about their willingness to pay for an environmental good do not regard the amount stated by them as reducing their budget left for the purchase of private goods in this paper it is shown that from a theoretical point of view respondents intuitively do the right thing when ignoring the seeming relationship between their willingness to pay for an environmental good and their capacity to buy private goods it is elucidated that contingent valuation surveys should focus on the assessment of the shadow price of an environmental good rather than of the respective willingness to pay therefore it seems that the budget constraint bias is meaningless with respect to the validity of the contingent valuation method

does budget deficit lower equity prices in usa abstract this paper investigates the relationship between budget deficits and stock prices incorporating the effects of inflation and the demographic structure the results show that while the proportion of population in their prime earning age has a positive effect both budget deficits and inflation have a negative impact on stock prices

estimating the economic benefits of acidic rock drainage clean up using cost shares abstract this paper reports the results of a stated preference study that estimates the economic value for cleaning up acid rock drainage in colorado s snake river watershed in contrast to much of the existing literature the present study emphasizes benefit estimation for three implementing projects rather than benefit estimation for general changes in water quality or large scale water quality policy the focus on implementing projects delivers information that is specifically relevant to current decisions being faced in the watershed while valuation questions in most stated preference studies present costs that have no relation to actual project costs this study presents a new cost share approach project costs are estimated and then valuation questions present different local cost shares to subjects this approach facilitates stated cost variation necessary for estimating the mean of the distribution of project values without resorting to experimentally designed fictitious stated costs in addition to estimating the mean value which facilitates benefit cost analysis the study also provides median value estimates which provide insights into the political feasibility of these projects study results suggest that local cost shares on the order of 20 40 depending on the project are politically feasible

the behaviour of the us consumer price index 1913 2003 a study of seasonality in the monthly us cpi this article analyses the seasonality in the monthly consumer price index cpi over the period january 1913 to december 2003 we examine three types of month effects if the mean of monthly cpi changes of the entire data set and of a given month were significantly different from zero if the mean of monthly cpi changes of a given month was different from the mean of the other months and if the variance of the monthly cpi changes for a given month was different from the variance of the other months the mean of monthly cpi changes for the entire data set 0 27 was found to be significantly greater than zero the means of monthly changes show a downward trend from september to december when the data are sliced into three sub periods we find an increasing trend in the means and medians of monthly changes but a decreasing trend in the sds of the monthly changes the mean of monthly cpi changes during the republican presidencies 0 15 was significantly lower than during the democratic presidencies 0

the impact of choice inconsistencies in stated choice studies a new test procedure revealing mutuallyinconsistent choices has been developed andapplied to stated choice data our analysisshows that inconsistent choices commonly occurin several stated choice tasks an applicationof the test to the norwegian value of timestudy data shows that failing to excludeinconsistent choices resulted in asubstantially higher value of time theinconsistent choices were made by less educatedparticipants as the tasks were undertaken inthe easy context of choosing travelalternatives with three attributes practitioners of more complex and cognitivedemanding designs should be particularilyconcerned with these results

willingness to pay and policy instrument choice for climate change policy in the united states abstract this paper provides the first willingness to pay wtp estimates in support of a national climate change policy that are comparable with the costs of actual legislative efforts in the u s congress based on a survey of 2034 american adults we find that households are on average willing to pay between 79 and 89 per year in support of reducing domestic greenhouse gas ghg emissions 17 by 2020 even very conservative estimates yield an average wtp at or above 60 per year taking advantage of randomized treatments within the survey valuation question we find that mean wtp does not vary substantially among the policy instruments of a cap and trade program a carbon tax or a ghg regulation but there are differences in the sociodemographic characteristics of those willing to pay across policy instruments greater education always increases wtp older individuals have a lower wtp for a carbon tax and a ghg regulation while greater household income increases wtp for these same two policy instruments republicans along with those indicating no political party affiliation have a significantly lower wtp regardless of the policy instrument but many of these differences are no longer evident after controlling for respondent opinions about whether global warming is actually happening

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

a contingent valuation estimate of the benefits of wolves in minnesota in this paper we estimate the willingness topay for a wolf management plan and a wolfdamage plan in minnesota using the contingentvaluation method the theoretical definition ofwillingness to pay for wolf protection iscomposed of use and non use values weincorporate a don t know response option in thedichotomous choice valuation questions a largenumber of respondents answered don t know themultinomial logit model is used todifferentiate between don t know and noresponses non use motives are importantfactors that explain willingness to pay we usethese benefit estimates in combination with twoalternative cost estimates to consider theefficiency of the wolf management and damageplans both plans have estimated benefitsgreater than costs