economic valuation of the threat posed by the establishment of the asian tiger mosquito in australia invasive species policy could be better informed if we understood how much people value reductions in the risks posed by these organisms this study investigates the public s willingness to pay wtp for additional measures to reduce the risk of invasion of the australian mainland by the asian tiger mosquito atm the study contributes to the literature by applying a stated preference method to estimate the public s wtp to reduce the risk of an atm invasion expressed as a change in probability it is the first ex ante invasive species analysis to test over two discrete invasion reduction probabilities based on management effort further to overcome the challenges in valuing changes in probabilities the study presented respondents with a well defined discrete difference in the final probability with one scenario reducing risk from 50 to 25 and the other from 50 to 5 we find a significant difference in the mean wtp values between these two scenarios a 67 vs a 90 the overall conclusion is that estimated benefits of reducing the probability of an atm incursion outweigh the costs

distinguishing between equilibrium and integration in spatial price analysis this article introduces a new spatial price analysis methodology based on maximum likelihood estimation of a mixture distribution model incorporating price transfer cost and trade flow data this method permits differentiation between market integration and competitive market equilibrium and derivation of intuitive measures of intermarket tradability competitive market equilibrium perfect integration segmented equilibrium and segmented disequilibrium one can also use these estimates to derive semiparametric measures of time varying regime probabilities to track changing market conditions an application to trade in soybean meal among pacific rim economies demonstrates the usefulness of the method copyright 2002 oxford university press

preference uncertainty in stated preference studies facts and artefacts the ordinal scale and polychotomous choice methods are two widely used techniques for estimating preference uncertainty in stated preference studies this article presents the results of two experiments that apply these estimation techniques the first experiment was designed to compare and contrast the scores of the ordinal scale and polychotomous choice method the second experiment was conducted to test a scale that combines verbal expressions with numerical and graphical interpretations a composite scale the results of the study can be summarized in three key findings first the polychotomous choice method generates a higher proportion of yes responses than the conventional dichotomous choice elicitation format second the composite scale generates a significantly higher proportion of certain responses finally the ordinal scale performs poorly on the ground of construct validity

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

would developing country commitments affect us households support for a modified kyoto protocol abstract would us households be willing to pay more to support a modified kyoto protocol mkp if developing countries had binding future limits on greenhouse gas production we explore this question using data from a unique set of national internet samples and web based surveys using an advisory referendum format the contingent valuation method is applied to estimate annual household willingness to pay wtp for us senate ratification of the kyoto protocol for a split sample treatment the basic kyoto protocol bkp control group versus a mkp that includes limits on future greenhouse gas production for major developing countries treatment group the results indicate that the treatment significantly increases the probability of a yes vote on the advisory referendum econometric modeling results provide evidence that the mkp significantly increases us households median wtp to support the treaty

estimating the degree of market integration existing tests of spatial market integration are commonly based on statistical criteria without an explicit link to an economic model of price determination this article proposes new measures of market integration defined directly in terms of a well known spatial price determination model and develops an econometric methodology for estimating these measures due to the intractability of the conditional density function of prices we use indirect inference to estimate the model parameters and market integration measures the methodology is illustrated with simulated data and is applied to soybean price data for the united states brazil and the eu copyright 2008 oxford university press

a test of the equality of closed ended and open ended contingent valuations a test is developed to find whether open ended and closed ended contingent valuation mechanisms lead to significantly different results the test is based on joint estimation of willingness to pay responses to open and closed ended questions asked of the same sample of individuals in a public good example individuals do respond differently depending on question format possible explanations include different incentives for strategic behavior and respondents lack of familiarity with the open ended question type no differences in willingness to pay were found in a private good example

the stagnation of smallholder agriculture in malawi a decade of structural adjustment abstract malawi s efforts at structural adjustment have revolved around reforming the marketing and pricing of outputs and inputs in smallholder agriculture in practice the price oriented adjustment policies were not thorough enough and have led to disappointing results there is clearly a need to push for further reforms in pricing however structural adjustment in malawi will have to go beyond just getting prices right policies must also concentrate on structural and institutional weaknesses that constrain smallholder agriculture and contribute to widespread food insecurity and malnutrition

selling at the farmgate or traveling to market using detailed survey data from uganda this article examines whether coffee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost we find that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market is close by wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher but if they have a large quantity of coffee for sale they are more likely to sell it to the market they are also more likely to travel to a distant market these findings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation we find no evidence that the decision to sell at the farmgate is driven by a self control motive

services and regional policy in this policy review section neil marshall and john bachtler explore the role of the service sector in regional policy within the member states of the european community focusing in particular on the role of the public sector and the application of financial incentives and controls they conclude that greater attention needs to be given to the relationships with national industrial and technological policies that there is considerable scope to employ public services that regional policy incentives should be tailored more closely to the needs of service enterprises and that there is a case for decentralized policy delivery in the second article s j syrett examines the implications for portugal of the introduction of a programme of local economic initiatives which has been inspired in large measure by the oecd and european community s own local employment initiatives programmes syrett stresses the dangers of the international transference of policy initiatives without reference to the political framework within which they were devised and without them being tailored to the particular circumstances of the country concerned

yea saying in contingent valuation surveys a number of recent papers have provided estimates of willingness to pay derived in contingent valuation surveys exceeding those revealed in experimental or real life markets one possible explanation for the overestimation of values is the presence of yea saying with the objective of reducing the occurrence of yea saying a new elicitation format referred to as the dissonance minimizing d m format is proposed an empirical comparison of the dm format with the conventional dichotomous choice dc format and the ambivalence reducing polychotomous choice pc format suggested by ready whitehead and blomquist 1995 is made results are encouraging for the dm

policy review section in this policy review section gerry stoker of the institute of local government studies presents a critical review of the role of urban development corporations udcs in comparing the experience of the udcs consideration is given to the varying nature of the land and property market in each udc area to the relationship with local authorities and other local bodies and the regeneration strategies pursued by the udcs this is followed by an assessment of the impact of the udcs in economic social and political terms in the second article john britton of the university of toronto examines the theoretical case for interventionist public policies to assist the innovation process in small and medium sized enterprises these arguments are supported by a review of the experience of various national support programmes introduced in the uk in particular the manufacturing advisory service introduced in 1978 and the design advisory service launched in 1982

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

the effectiveness of structural adjustment lending initial evidence from malawi abstract the world bank s new programs of structural adjustment lending are likely to prove most effective with those governments which demonstrate shared ideals in their approach to economic adjustment and policy reform malawi has long been regarded as a country placing great reliance on the market in resource allocation showing restraint in public sector expansion and retaining a strong export orientation the balance of payments difficulties and the deterioration in economic circumstances which began in 1980 did not arise solely from external shocks but the structural adjustment lending programs introduced in 1981 as a means of easing the painful reform process found root in a fertile and responsive policy environment this paper chronicles the first two sals to malawi reviewing in particular the specific policy reforms advocated and required by the bank the extent of their implementation and the provisional effects on the malawi economy

modelling the impact of world bank policy based lending the case of malawi s agricultural sector this article uses a multi market agricultural pricing model to analyse the impact of the world bank s three structural adjustment loans sals to malawi on the smallholder agricultural sector three price policy scenarios are simulated on the model representing zero partial and full compliance with the bank s sal price policy conditionality these scenarios are analysed in terms of their impact on the government budget smallholder real incomes maize production exportable cash crop production and the balance of payments critiques of the bank s programme and the government and bank bargaining strategies are assessed in the light of the modelling results

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

malawi reforming the state s role in agricultural marketing abstract the role of the state in agricultural marketing activities has been a contentious issue in many countries undergoing structural adjustment this paper examines three examples of smallholder market reform in malawi to illustrate the case for various forms of state involvement and the complexities involved in reducing the state s role when this is required

the impact of agricultural liberalisation on food security in malawi abstract the donor supported structural adjustment programmes have not impacted favourably on livelihoods food security and the general welfare of the poor in malawi this resulted from the prescription of wrong policy packages and limited attention to poverty alleviation policies policies have tended to concentrate on promoting market and price mechanisms less on addressing production constraints and non economic barriers to broad based economic growth there are losers and winners as a result of policy reforms in agricultural produce marketing the losers are mainly the smallholder farmers in the category of net food buyers low income or wage earners in urban and semi urban areas and smallholder farmers in remote areas the winners are smallholder farmers in the category of net food sellers private traders institutional traders and the state marketing agency the paper analyses the impact of pricing policy and market deregulation on the state marketing organisation and on the private marketing system highlighting the lessons to be learned and making recommendations on how to improve the food security situation at the household level

how is the liberalization of food markets progressing market integration and transaction costs in subsistence economies we propose a modification of baulch s parity bounds model to measure the market integration of food markets in developing countries instead of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs we estimate transaction costs predicted transaction costs compare well with survey data of traders probabilities of market regimes computed on the basis of predicted transaction costs fluctuate significantly and do not support fixed regime probabilities over time the probability of market integration with trade decreases consistently during food shortages increasing either the probability of no trade or loss making trade or the probability of profitable but unexploited trade opportunities the data further support a negative trend in market integration with trade

trains trade and transaction costs how does domestic trade by rail affect market prices of malawi agricultural commodities this paper measures the impact of low cost transport by rail in malawi on the dispersion of agricultural commodities prices across markets by exploiting the quasi experimental design of the nearly total collapse of domestic transport by rail in january 2003 due to the destruction of a railway bridge at rivirivi balaka estimations are based on monthly market prices of four agricultural commodities maize groundnuts rice and beans in 27 local markets for the period 1998 2006 market pairs connected by rail when the railway line was operational are intervention observations railway transport services explain a 14 percent to 17 percent reduction in price dispersion across markets geographical reach of trade varies by crop most likely related to storability and geographical spread of production perishability appears to increase impact reflecting limited scope for arbitrage overall impacts are remarkably similar in size across commodities

a comparison of alternative certainty calibration techniques in contingent valuation abstract a field test of two types of certainty calibration techniques in contingent valuation of public lands indicated that a 10 point certainty scale reduced wtp estimates by about half adjusting for uncertainty via a not sure option did not reduce wtp estimates but the variance increased there are several differences between these two ways of accounting for respondents uncertainty which may suggest why they provide different wtp value estimates and variances

new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia gould a and keeble d 1984 new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia reg studies 18 189 201 the paper analyses key aspects of the formation of new independent manufacturing firms in east anglia between 1971 and 1981 special attention is paid to trends in formation rates over time to the spatial bias of new firm origins towards both rural areas and the cambridge region and to the location character and impact of high technology new firms original findings include the contention that spatial variations chiefly reflect variation in the occupational structure of the resident workforce together with industrial mix plant size and previous industrial immigration some implications for government policy to new firms are discussed

estimating policy effects on spatial market efficiency an extension to the parity bounds model the standard parity bounds model pbm is extended to allow for dynamic shifts in regime probabilities in response to changes in marketing policy the approach allows estimation of the length of the adjustment period and a statistical test for no policy effects the extended pbm is applied to maize and wheat markets in ethiopia evidence of a dynamic adjustment path is found and grain marketing reforms are found to have improved spatial efficiency in a few markets worsened it in a few others but generally to have had little effect on the spatial efficiency of ethiopian grain markets

internal borders ethnic based market segmentation in malawi summary ethnic diversity is associated with poorer economic development but why i argue that market segmentation is one mechanism linking diversity to economic underdevelopment when ethnic groups are geographically segregated and trust is concentrated within groups markets will be tend to be segmented along ethnic lines i evaluate this argument using maize price data from seventy malawian markets over 14 years and combine it with census data on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups i find that maize price differences a key indicator of market segmentation are indeed larger for ethnically dissimilar markets even after taking sub national administrative borders geographic barriers and climatic differences into account these statistical findings are complemented by interview data from farmers and traders in three markets across malawi which highlight the centrality of trust in small scale maize trading as well as a preference for coethnic trading partners together these findings suggest that ethnic diversity and ethnoregional segregation in particular can have a negative impact on market integration an important driver of food security and long term economic development

green for green the perceived value of a quantitative change in the urban tree estate of new zealand abstract the urban tree estate impacts on the quality of urban life through the provision of a series of benefits that are ecological aesthetic social and economic in nature most of these benefits do not have a market price and exact information on the type of values people attach to urban trees is scarce the optimal allocation of resources towards the management of this natural asset is therefore problematic this study measures by contingent valuation the perceived monetary value of avoiding a 20 decrease in the urban tree estate of 15 cities in aotearoa new zealand the results reveal that on average households would be willing to pay around 2003 nzd 184 annually for the avoidance of a 20 reduction in their local urban tree estate with the commitment covering a period of 3 years half of the households would be willing to pay less than nzd 105 while the other half would be willing to pay more whether residents were willing to pay was influenced by the magnitude of the requested contribution bid the perceived seriousness of the 20 loss qualification and the strongest motivation for taking care of trees when using volunteer work as a metric for the valuation 66 of the sample agreed to contribute 4 h of volunteer work and 55 of those who refused to pay the contingent bid said yes to contributing in this form half the sample was dissatisfied with the number of trees in their cities the great majority wanting more trees the respondents indicated different importance levels for a series of benefits and negative effects associated with city trees aesthetics fresh air and trees representing nature in the city and bringing wildlife into the urban environment were the most highly regarded benefits while trees causing drainage problems generated the most concern the diverse motives given for interest in city trees highlighted the difficulties associated with measuring the total economic value of changes in this urban natural capital due to the non use bequest and existence value components

u turns and full circles two decades of agricultural reform in malawi 1981 2000 abstract this paper traces the evolution of malawi s agricultural policy over the past two decades during this period the world bank has played a key role in shaping policy reform through its adjustment loans three distinct reform phases can be identified 1981 87 when policy was dominated by the dogmatism of the world bank s pricist and state minimalist policies 1988 94 when a more flexible position was taken by both the bank and the malawi government both of whom acknowledged the structuralist critique of earlier policies and 1994 to the present when the reform process in agriculture became more politicized and a schism developed between the bank and the government this latter period is used to illustrate some of the unresolved policy issues pertaining to similar low income agrarian economies

fat tails and truncated bids in contingent valuation an application to an endangered shorebird species a yes response function in a contingent valuation study is said to have fat tails if it has a high and slowly declining yes response rate at high bid levels truncated bids refer to the practice of dropping high bid offers before a yes response rate of near zero is reached this is a common practice in contingent valuation we explore the extent and implications of fat tails and truncated bids in a study of an endangered shorebird species we find among other things that mean willingness to pay is quite sensitive to the highest bid offered so much so that the choice of highest bid nearly dictates outcomes

national and international benefit transfer testing with a rigorous test procedure benefit transfer as a mean to transfer values from existing monetary valuation studies to new policy sites has been in use for many years this paper aims to analyze the forecasting quality of benefit transfer by applying a rigoroust test also referred to as accuracy t test that takes into account testing errors which were made in previous surveys beside the analysis of national benefit transfers based on two german contingent valuation studies additional efforts were made to investigate into the validity and accuracy of international benefit transfer by considering two norwegian studies that employed a similar survey design

some empirical evidence on embedding effects in contingent valuation of forest protection abstract we test for an embedding effect on a geographically distributed public good and the extent to which improvements in the cvm design reduce the occurrence and magnitude of embedding effects in valuation using both open ended and dichotomous choice cvm for protection of forests in all of southeastern australia and two smaller portions of that area we find the occurrence of embedding effects in only one of the two levels when embedding effects were present there was a reduction in value much smaller than that found by kahneman and knetsch

difficulties in valuing street light improvement trust surprise and bound effects previous empirical research has demonstrated an internal inconsistency that may occur in response strategies between the first and second valuations made to closed ended contingent valuation questions one possible explanation for this bound effect is the surprise of being asked the second valuation question which may be enhanced where there is a lack of trust this paper considers the use of closed ended contingent valuation to estimate non market benefits for an improved street lighting scheme where there is a lack of trust in the agency responsible for provision the results provide confirmation that surprise is an important determinant of bound effects however efforts to reduce such bias using a prior statement of the bid range were found to be ineffective in increasing trust and reducing surprise given the importance of this area of research directions for future research are considered

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

the privatization of agricultural trading in malawi abstract this paper examines the privatization of smallholder agricultural output marketing in malawi despite problems with implementing the privatization program including serious disruptions in the supply of maize the staple food the move toward greater private sector involvement in agricultural marketing has been successful nonetheless several medium term development issues e g food security and buyer and seller of last resort functions need to be addressed in the context of relations between the marketing parastatal admarc and the private sector before the policy change can be regarded as fully successful

structural change in malawi since independence consequences of a development strategy based on large scale agriculture abstract this paper investigates the nature of the structural change which has occured in the malawian economy since independence and identifies key policies pursued by the government which it is argued have been decisive in shaping this development the salient feature of structural change is shown to be the rapid growth of large scale agriculture associated with an equally rapid transfer of labour into wage employment and a decline in the importance of peasant production the implications of these changes for living standards and future development and policy are considered

contingent valuation a new perspective after several decades of academic research on the contingent valuation cv method a consistent behavioral explanation of hypothetical bias is still lacking based on evidence from economics economic psychology and the political sciences i propose an explanation that is based on two simple working hypotheses about respondent behaviour in contingent valuation surveys the first hypothesis is that survey respondents are unable to form consistent preferences about unfamiliar goods unless the choice context offers reliable informative cues that can be rationally exploited in simplified heuristics the second hypothesis is that the probability and impact of strategic responses in dichotomous choice questions about public goods depends on the extent to which the presented hypothetical costs differ from the actual costs the literature on hypothetical bias is revisited in the light of these behavioral hypotheses i find that the hypotheses are generally supported by the empirical data moreover the hypotheses are able to explain several important empirical phenomena that previous research has not been able to explain in particular they solve the puzzle that pre election polls but not cv surveys are able to predict actual referendum outcomes and they explain why income effects on willingness to pay are lower in cv responses than in actual votes if confirmed by further studies the hypotheses will have important implications for future research and practice first the hypothetical costs presented in the dichotomous choice question should to be close enough to the actual costs to be credible to all respondents this can be achieved by specifying the costs as a percentage rather than absolute change in taxes second the respondents should be given the option to answer based on information about the positions of large parties and interest groups with known political orientation rather than based on the raw policy information theory and evidence suggest that this new survey paradigm largely eliminates the fundamental problems of the conventional stated preference methods

a general model of starting point bias in double bounded dichotomous contingent valuation surveys abstract this paper develops a general model that addresses the starting point bias in the dichotomous choice evaluation data by incorporating both the anchoring effect and yea saying bias the model is applied to a contingent valuation study that evaluated the health benefits of air quality improvement in three major metropolitan areas in taiwan the empirical evidence shows a strong anchoring effect but an insignificant yea saying bias the results show a serious understated willingness to pay if the biases in anchoring and yea saying are not controlled

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

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

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

spatial integration at multiple scales rice markets in madagascar the dramatic increase in the price of rice and other commodities over the past year has generated new interest in how these markets work and how they can be improved this article uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in madagascar are integrated across space at different scales of analysis and to explain some of the factors that limit spatial arbitrage and price equalization within a single country we use rice price data across four quarters of 2000 2001 along with data on transportation costs and infrastructure availability for nearly 1 400 communes in madagascar to examine the extent of market integration at three different spatial scales subregional regional and national and to determine whether non integration is due to high transfer costs or lack of competition the results indicate that markets are fairly well integrated at the subregional level and that factors such as high crime rates remoteness and lack of information are among the factors limiting competition

the impact of offering two versus three alternatives in choice modelling experiments researchers designing choice modelling experiments have some latitude over the number of choice alternatives that can be offered in each choice set there is some evidence that design dimensions including the number of alternatives available in each choice set can influence model outcomes a key issue is whether referendum formats with binary options are preferable to choice sets with multiple alternatives a choice modelling experiment was performed where questionnaires delivered to two split samples differed only according to whether two or three alternatives were offered to respondents in each choice set the results indicate that more robust models could be constructed from the three alternative split compared to the two alternative split one reason for the difference is that respondents tended to display serial non participation in the two alternative format choosing an alternative consistently without regard for changes in the attributes for practitioners of the cm technique the results suggest that it may be preferable to offer more than two alternatives in a choice set that includes a status quo option

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

discrete choice under preference uncertainty an improved structural model for contingent valuation abstract this paper is concerned with discrete choice contingent value estimation in the presence of response errors we attempt to extend the theoretical frameworks developed by hanemann 1984 amer j agric econom 66 332 341 and cameron 1988 j environ econom management 15 355 379 by introducing preference uncertainty with individual respondents we assume that respondents have incomplete knowledge about their true valuation of a nonmarket resource and thus may give wrong yes no answers on whether or not to pay a given bid amount for the resource a post decisional confidence measure for each observed yes no answer is elicited for characterizing the degree of preference uncertainty with the help of this confidence measure we develop an improved structural model for deriving value estimates data from a forest environment valuation survey are used for the empirical estimations

spatial price efficiency in mozambique s post reform maize markets maize zea mays shortages and maize price instability continue to occur in mozambique in spite of policy reforms and great capacity for increased production in northern mozambique this study measured the efficiency of spatial maize price arbitrage in mozambique s post reform period spatial price inefficiency does not seem to explain why food shortages continue to occur in mozambique suggesting nonprice market constraints such as poor infrastructure and poor market institutions as more likely explanations baulch s spatial efficiency test indicated that it is not profitable to ship maize from northern surplus maize regions to southern mozambique records of interregional maize shipments show that indeed grain is not being shipped from the north to the south market liberalization may have improved spatial price efficiency but high transfer costs still limit trade and potential benefits from freeing markets under these circumstances food shortages and price instability are likely to continue

maize is life malawi s delayed green revolution abstract the pattern of maize seed development in malawi demonstrates the importance of farmers capacity to articulate their interests through collective action and institutions despite the vital significance of maize as a wage good in malawi limited effective demand for maize seed research prolonged the period of technical stagnation analysis of the institutional factors shaping the demand for maize seed research complements previous work on malawi s political economy the supply of seed technology and adoption with implications for current political changes in that nation the importance of farmers organizations and state commitment to agricultural research in sub saharan africa

assessing community preferences for development projects are willingness to pay studies robust to mode effects abstract the demand driven approaches to development planning currently promoted by development agencies assume that it is possible to obtain accurate information about community preferences for project outputs whereas dozens of techniques are used to assess community preferences limited research has been conducted on the potential effects of data collection mode on findings in this research four different modes a household intercept and telephone survey and a series of focus group discussions were all employed to assess residents willingness to pay for improved water supply services in odessa ukraine findings from these exercises suggest that data elicitation mode effects such as social desirability and time pressures can bias the results obtained in demand assessment research and lead to substantively different conclusions and policy recommendations

assessing holistic economic value for multifunctional agriculture in the us abstract this study used contingent valuation method to shed light on public preferences on the multifunctional roles of the us agriculture and to present a holistic estimate of the economic value of the nonmarket goods and services of us agriculture contingent valuation survey instrument was administered to a sample composed from the ipsos web based panel fishbein s model of reasoned behavior and mediation hypothesis were combined to model the relationship between wtp behavioral intentions and sets of explanatory variables including attitudes perceived attributes about family farms farmland preservation programs government involvement in agricultural markets and ecological state of our world and socio demographic profiles results show that while exerting a highly significant impact on wtp attitudes mediate the effects of the attribute variables on wtp i e the attributes influence wtp directly as well as indirectly through attitudes the estimated mean wtp was 515 per taxpayer annually aggregating individual wtps across the us taxpayers above 20 years old produces 105 billion representing a crude estimate of the economic value that the us consumers place on the multifunctional roles of us agriculture

labour market segmentation and workers careers the case of the italian knitwear industry this paper reports on empirical research into the labour market in the knitwear and ready to wear industry in the province of jvjodena emilia in particular it looks at the careers of three categories of workers homeworkers those employed on the production lines of larger firms and artisans 1 italy in common with many other industrialised capitalist countries has witnessed a growing decentralisation of production this tendency has been differently interpreted but a consensus is emerging that such developments are not evidence of economic backward ness 2 on the contrary an industrial structure consisting of firms of different size but with a large number of small and even microscopic enterprises is increasingly being recog nised as one possible avenue of economic development taking this for granted the aim of these notes is to investigate the structure of the labour market in a prosperous area typified by economic growth which has the small firm as its base element

market emergence and transition arbitrage transaction costs and autarky in china s grain markets using trimonthly chinese provincial grain prices from 1988 to 1995 we estimate a parity bounds model of interregional trade for four subperiods to characterize how multiple aspects of market performance change during the process of economic transition for each period we estimate the extent to which arbitrage opportunities are realized by traders the transaction costs between location pairs and the likelihood that regions do not trade trade restrictions cannot explain the pattern of uneven market development over time infrastructure bottlenecks managerial incentive reforms and production specialization policies all were likely important factors affecting market performance

growth constraints on small scale manufacturing in developing countries a critical review abstract the question raised in this review is whether small scale producers in developing countries can expand or whether they are up against constraints which stunt their growth most of the literature has been optimistic on this score while internal constraints e g lack of managerial ability or external constraints e g discrimination from government are identified expansion is seen as an open ended process in other contributions this view has been severely criticized some allege that the small producers are exploited through various mechanisms others suggest that their road to expansion is blocked as a result of factors such as the pre existence of very advanced technology the control of large firms over product markets or difficulties in access to raw materials in discussing the arguments put forward in the debate an attempt is made to assess their theoretical bases and examine the extent to which they are supported empirically while most studies express explicitly or implicitly a definite view on the growth potential of small producers such judgement is rarely based on a comprehensive examination of the context which determines this potential

transfer costs spatial arbitrage and testing for food market integration conventional tests for food market integration ask often misleadingly whether prices in different locations move together in this paper an alternative methodology the parity bounds model pbm is developed which uses information on transfer costs in addition to food prices to assess the efficiency of spatial arbitrage monte carlo experiments using data generated by a point space spatial price equilibrium model show the pbm to be statistically reliable an application to philippine rice markets demonstrates that the pbm detects efficient arbitrage when other tests do not

market integration efficiency of arbitrage and imperfect competition methodology and application to u s celery this paper develops and applies a methodology to test for efficiency of interregional commodity arbitrage application of the methodology requires only time series data on prices for alternative cities regions countries or product forms yet the approach is capable of generating evidence on a number of market parameters including market integration arbitrage efficiency the magnitude of marketing margins product substitutability and competitiveness of markets estimation is based on a switching regression model with three regimes efficient arbitrage relative shortage and relative glut results from application of the model to u s celery marketing indicated significant departures from efficient arbitrage for both california and florida celery

valuing public goods discrete versus continuous contingent valuation responses independent applications of open ended and dichotomous choice formats are compared using tests of means estimating joint likelihood functions and nonparametric tests of distributions the null hypothesis of no difference in the open ended and dichotomous choice estimates of central tendency cannot be rejected for two out of three data sets while estimated standard deviations are significantly different for all three data sets in addition actual dichotomous choice means and standard deviations exceed those from comparable synthetic dichotomous choice data sets suggesting either open ended questions underestimate values or dichotomous choice bid structures may lead to systematic overestimates

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

mixing methods within stated preference environmental valuation choice experiments and post questionnaire qualitative analysis abstract assessing public preferences for natural resources is a difficult task the complexity of the research problem has encouraged practitioners to adopt qualitative approaches as exploratory and diagnostic tools within the conventionally more quantitative stated preference research building on best practice from previous studies this paper reports the findings of post questionnaire focus group analysis investigating the adequacy of a choice experiment ce valuation exercise and its public acceptability the specifics of the scenario and design choices are shown to markedly reduce problems of charity like and bid realism fair share responses observed in previous studies and significant sensitivity to good characteristics is observed however a less tractable problem of valuing unfamiliar goods remains with insights given regarding public acceptability and the usefulness of the findings to environmental decision making

productive decentralization or indigenous growth small manufacturing enterprises and regional development in central portugal lewis j r and williams a m 1987 productive decentralization or indigenous growth small manufacturing enterprises and regional development in central portugal reg studies 21 343 361 small firms are crucial to the portuguese economy and have been important in the recent expansion of industrial activity away from core regions a survey of the formation and development of manufacturing enterprises in four contrasting rural locations within the central region tested the relevance of explanations based on north italian evidence of productive decentralization and spatial spread however analysis of employment characteristics inter firm linkages and conditions of firm formation reveals the dominance of independent and indigenous growth in the present wave of industrialization variations in firm characteristics between industrial sectors and economic environments indicate the need for more effective promotion policies not least to contain intra regional inequalities lewis j r et williams a m 1

green gold burley tobacco smallholder agriculture and poverty alleviation in malawi abstract the abolition in 1990 of the estate monopoly on cultivation of burley tobacco is expected to play an important role in reducing poverty among smallholders in malawi a nationwide survey in 1993 shows that smallholder households cultivating burley also grow more hybrid maize use more fertilizer and are more food secure but resource poor households particularly those headed by women face land and labor constraints on burley adoption burley and hybrid maize increase the demand for hired labor but not enough to absorb the growth in the rural labor force broad based poverty alleviation requires technology and programs targeted at the majority of smallholders with holdings of 0 5 hectares or less

testing for food market integration revisited this article considers the statistical performance of four commonly used econometric tests for market integration the law of one price the ravallion model cointegration and granger causality a spatial price equilibrium spe model that is subject to both production shocks and general price inflation and mimics many of the key characteristics of integrated food markets is constructed the model is used to generate food price time series of lengths that are typical of the short sample sizes available in most developing countries for both instantaneously integrated and independent markets a series of monte carlo experiments on these artificial food price time series are performed which show that all four of the conventional tests for market integration are statistically flawed

measuring the existence value of wildlife what do cvm estimates really show two research programs are brought together to contribute to the growing body of work on alternatives to standard welfare based approaches to environmental valuation and policy the first is the theoretical literature undermining the new welfare

increasing returns and market efficiency in agricultural trade abstract using detailed trader surveys in benin madagascar and malawi this paper investigates the presence of increasing returns in agricultural trade after analyzing margins costs and value added we find little evidence of returns to scale motorized transport is found more cost effective for large loads on longer distances but transporters appear to pool quantities from multiple traders margin rates show little relationship with transaction size personal travel costs are a source of increasing returns but the effect is small consequently total marketing costs are nearly proportional to transaction size working and network capital are key determinants of value added constant returns to scale in all accumulable factors working capital labor and network capital cannot be rejected this implies that policies to restrict entry into agricultural trade are neither necessary nor useful governments should focus instead on technological and institutional innovations to upgrade agricultural markets

small industry in developing countries a discussion of issues abstract this paper first examines the changing size distribution of industry in developing countries by region and over time and by reference to firm level surveys it discusses the underlying causes the importance of markets generated by the growth of agriculture and rural incomes for the regional development of industry both small and large scale is noted second it discusses the entrepreneurship issue arguing that while small and largefirms alike are highly responsive to the growth of markets the measured entrepreneurial response is neither as full nor as efficient as is desirable the third and last part discusses small industry programmes and their relation to development policy financing and extension programmes are considered in detail and there is a discussion of the risks involved some parallels with agricultural credit are discussed in particular the default problem and the problems associated with concessionary finance it is also argued that small industries and by implication the programmes intended to support them would stand to benefit from more efficient and also more labour demanding policies towards agriculture and industry