examining the relationship between visual attention and stated preferences a discrete choice experiment using eye tracking abstract we examine the relationship between visual attention and stated preferences derived from a discrete choice experiment focussing on consumer preferences regarding country of origin food labels we employ a bayesian infinite mixture logit to derive results that reveal patterns of respondent heterogeneity that would not be captured assuming that random parameters take a specific distributional form our results reveal weak relationships between the eye tracking data our stated preference results and various attribute use questions although respondents with higher levels of visual attendance value specific attributes more highly the strength of the relationship is fairly weak therefore whilst we maintain that eye tracking is useful we argue that there needs to be greater clarity about the aims and purpose of using eye tracking in stated preference research

competition and corporate performance are people right to think that competition improves corporate performance my investigations indicate first that there are some theoretical reasons for believing this hypothesis to be correct but they are not overwhelming furthermore the existing empirical evidence on this question is weak however the results reported here based on an analysis of around 670 u k companies do provide some support for this view most important i present evidence that competition as measured by increased numbers of competitors or by lower levels of rents is associated with a significantly higher rate of total factor productivity growth

finnish consumer perceptions of carbon footprints and carbon labelling of food products abstract the aim of this study was to explore how finnish consumers perceive the communication of carbon footprints for food products the study comprised five semi structured focus groups and an online survey of 1010 respondents the study showed that the term product carbon footprint is familiar to many but there is substantial misunderstanding of its meaning only 7 of the respondents linked product carbon footprint spontaneously to greenhouse gas emissions associated with the product and an additional 5 of the respondents linked it to climate change there are positive attitudes towards carbon labels 90 stated that a carbon footprint would have at least a little impact on their buying decision but the information became meaningful only when many other purchasing criteria such as price and taste were satisfied furthermore 86 preferred carbon labels that allow comparisons of carbon footprints to be made among food products but there is divergence on perceived needs for carbon label content

willingness to pay for sustainability labelled chocolate an experimental auction approach this study evaluates young consumers attitudes to sustainable food and analyzes the determinants of their willingness to pay wtp for chocolate bars with different sustainability labels data were collected through experimental auctions in italy assessing respondents n 80 aged between 18 and 35 wtp for chocolate bars with three selected labels i e fair trade rainforest alliance and carbon footprint econometric outcomes reveal that several socio demographic factors exert a positive and statistically significant effect on wtp for all the selected chocolate bars namely age cohort older gender female and household income high respondents lifestyles and food consumption habits also had an effect on final bids this study offers valuable insights to policy makers and practitioners for efficiently targeting young consumers in campaigns to increase sustainability labelled food consumption

effect of distance of transportation on willingness to pay for food abstract consumers interest in locally produced foods is increasing hence there is a need to decipher and quantify consumers desire for local foods and understand the underlying causes of this demand more specifically we examine in this paper the issue of distance of transportation and its impact on consumer preferences we investigate how consumers willingness to pay wtp for food varies with the distance the food traveled results from non hypothetical second price auctions indicate that average wtp is falling in distance traveled indicating a preference for local production results also indicate that the marginal value of a mile traveled depends on the type of food studied apples vs wine socio demographic characteristics perceptions of freshness taste and food safety as well as support of local economy impact wtp for local foods

benefit estimates for landscape improvements sequential bayesian design and respondents rationality in a choice experiment a multi attribute stated preference approach is used to value low and high impact actions on four major landscape components addressed by the rural environment protection scheme in ireland several methodological issues are addressed the use of prior beliefs on the relative magnitudes of parameters standardized description of different levels of landscape improvements via image manipulation software adoption of efficiency increasing sequential experimental design and sensitivity of benefit estimates to inclusion of responses from irrational respondents results suggest that bayesian design updating delivers significant efficiency gains without loss in respondent efficiency and estimates are upward biased when irrational respondents are included

lobbying counterlobbying and the structure of tariff protection in poor and rich countries a political economy model of protection is used to determine endogenously the intersectoral patterns of protection three propositions are derived that are consistent with the stylized patterns of tariff protection in rich and poor countries nominal protection rates escalate with the degree of processing protection is higher on average in poor countries and rich countries protect agriculture relatively more than they protect manufacturing whereas poor countries do the reverse numerical simulations for archetypal rich and poor economies confirm that the endogenously determined structure of protection is broadly consistent with observed patterns of protection

natural resource economics under the rule of hotelling abstract natural resource stocks held in situ are physical assets equilibrium in the assets market requires that their rates of return be such that their owners are just willing to hold on to them rather than invest elsewhere i discuss a number of factors relating to the evolution of extraction costs to the durability of the resource to market structure and to uncertainty that are important in correctly characterizing the rate of return on holding exhaustible natural resource stocks the emphasis is put on how those factors can potentially help bridge the gap between the basic hotelling s rule of natural resource exploitation and the historical behaviour of the flow price of a number of resources i also highlight some theoretical and empirical issues that need further attention

economic geography and wages abstract this paper estimates the agglomeration benefits that arise from vertical linkages between firms we identify the agglomeration benefits off the spatial variation in firms nominal wages u

consumer demand for fair trade evidence from a multistore field experiment abstract we provide new evidence on consumer demand for ethical products from experiments conducted in a u s grocery store chain we find that sales of the two most popular coffees rose by almost 10 when they carried a fair trade label as compared to a generic placebo label demand for the higher priced coffee remained steady when its price was raised by 8 but demand for the lower priced coffee was elastic a 9 price increase led to a 30 decline in sales while consumers attach value to ethical sourcing there is significant heterogeneity in willingness to pay for it

consumers valuation of sustainability labels on meat there are various sustainability certifications and claims for food products that focus on environmental or ethical benefits these claims empower consumers to make informed purchasing decisions that take environmental and ethical considerations into account this paper compares consumers preferences for four types of sustainability claims related to organic meat free range animal welfare and carbon footprint using a choice experiment on a chicken breast product our results show that nine in every ten belgian consumers favor free range claims which are also valued the most highly attracting premiums ranging from 43 to 93 our study also shows that a vast majority of consumers 87 would welcome the introduction of an eu level animal welfare label the carbon footprint labels and the organic labels are less appealing to consumers who have lower willingness to pay for these labels belgian consumers prefer the national belgian organic food logo certified by a private organization to the newly introduced eu organic food logo

industrial centralization in indonesia in certain situations economic liberalization policies can increase the degree of spatial centralization of resources and spatial concentration of manufacturing in large metropolitan areas in addition historical patterns of location make it difficult to alter the degree of centralization this article explores these issues by specifying and estimating a nested logit model of industrial location of manufacturing activity in java focusing on the unincorporated sector the results indicate that plants strongly prefer locations with mature plants in related industries which offer a built up stock of local knowledge in addition the 1983 liberalization in indonesia was associated with increased centralization of the unincorporated sector although the liberalization gave unincorporated firms better access to government and other centralized services firms needed to centralize to take advantage of these opportunities because the bureaucratic process is centralized and communications are poor the relative increased growth of the corporate sector following liberalization may also have helped to further draw unincorporated plants into centralized locations

comparative statics for oligopoly a generalized result we perform comparative statics for a general model of asymmetric oligopoly and derive a concise formula for the response of one firm to a marginal change in its rival s strategic variable taking into account the responses of all other firms we obtain the conditions under which the sign of this response coincides with that of the mixed second order partial derivative of the firm s payoff function we then propose a distinction between gross and net strategic relationships i e strategic substitute and complement

agglomeration and land rents evidence from the prefectures abstract we use japanese prefectural wage and land rent data to estimate the magnitude of agglomeration effects in manufacturing and financial services we also examine the geographical range of agglomeration effects by estimating the extent to which they diminish with distance using a specification that encompasses the polar cases of purely local agglomeration economies on the one hand and national increasing returns on the other we find that the extent of agglomeration economies in both industries is significant but that their effect decays much faster with distance in financial services than in manufacturing that is the geographical reach of spillovers in financial services appears to be much lower than in manufacturing

input tariffs duty drawbacks and tariff reforms abstract this paper provides a systematic analysis of the effects of input tariffs and duty drawbacks on welfare the paper arrives at two broad conclusions first tariffs on inputs unaccompanied by duty drawbacks on exports have an ambiguous effect on welfare second increases in tariffs on inputs complemented by full duty drawbacks are welfare improving up to a point provided goods exhibit substitutability in production as well as consumption the latter conclusion is reinforced by the presence of a revenue constraint

on the profitability of production perturbations in a dynamic natural resource oligopoly abstract static oligopoly analysis predicts that if a single firm in cournot equilibrium were to be forced to marginally contract its production its profits would fall on the other hand if all the firms were simultaneously forced to reduce their production thus moving the industry towards monopoly output each firm s profit would rise we show that these very intuitive results may not hold in a dynamic oligopoly such as a nonrenewable natural resource oligopoly where the exogenous constraint would take the form of a contraction of the firm s output path over some fixed interval of time there are situations where a firm will gain from being the lone firm constrained in this way and cases where each firm will lose if all the firms in the industry are so constrained thus exactly reversing the conclusions obtained from purely static analysis

visual attention and attribute attendance in multi attribute choice experiments summary decision strategies in multi attribute choice experiments are investigated using eye tracking the visual attention towards and attendance of attributes is examined stated attendance is found to diverge substantively from visual attendance of attributes however stated and visual attendance are shown to be informative non overlapping sources of information about respondent utility functions when incorporated into model estimation eye tracking also reveals systematic nonattendance of attributes only by a minority of respondents most respondents visually attend most attributes most of the time we find no compelling evidence that the level of attention is related to respondent certainty or that higher or lower value attributes receive more or less attention copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

healthy sustainable and plant based eating perceived mis match and involvement based consumer segments as targets for future policy abstract given the inseparable environmental and health impact of dietary habits integrating health and sustainability goals has become a highly topical issue in policy development and communication to encourage consumers to adopt healthier and more sustainable diets increasing evidence indicates that it is possible to develop diets that are both environmentally sustainable and healthy but their potential success largely depends on consumers willingness and ability to change their behavior this study investigates consumer perceptions of the match or mismatch between healthy and sustainable diets and gives insight into consumers motivation to eat healthily and sustainably as measured by involvement data were collected in spring 2014 through a cross sectional quantitative online survey with samples representative for age gender and region in four european union eu countries united kingdom germany belgium and the netherlands n 2783 the images of a healthy diet a sustainable diet and a plant based diet were found to be highly compatible based on a strongly observed match between european consumers perceptions of these concepts half of the participants were highly involved in healthy eating and one third in both healthy and sustainable eating informational food policy actions targeting both healthy and sustainable food consumption behavior are recommended to address issues relevant to the target segments taking into account their levels of involvement increasing consumers motivation and involvement in health and sustainability emerges as a key trigger for increasing healthy and sustainable eating

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

joint trade liberalization and tax reform in a small open economy the case of egypt abstract we develop a cge model of the egyptian economy to analyze the impact of various trade liberalization scenarios allowing distortionary domestic taxes to vary endogenously in order to satisfy a fixed real government revenue target we decompose computed welfare gains into effects from tax reform trade reform and their interaction scenarios include removal or unification of the consumption tax capital tax or both and tariff unification a free trade agreement with the european union and unilateral tariff elimination welfare effects depend critically on the type of revenue replacement tax while both are important neither trade policy reform nor tax reform dominates

sustainability labels on coffee consumer preferences willingness to pay and visual attention to attributes abstract sustainability labels are important tools that help consumers assess the sustainability aspects of food while past studies have focused on visual attention to nutrition information no study has investigated the visual attention paid by consumers to the sustainability information on food our study contributes to the need to better understand consumers attention to sustainability information when making food choices the objective was to explore the importance that consumers attach to sustainability attributes and investigate how this relates to the visual attention paid to these attributes during the choice decision and to willingness to pay wtp visual attention during the decision making process was measured in terms of fixation time and fixation count which were then analyzed in relation to the stated attribute importance our results suggest that consumer segments with differences in stated attribute importance visually attend differently to these attributes higher valued attributes also exhibited higher visual attention our results suggest that consumers who spend more time attending to and fixate more on sustainability attributes value them more

food labeling and eco friendly consumption experimental evidence from a belgian supermarket using an incentive compatible framed field experiment we investigate whether consumers food consumption is more eco friendly when the information about a product s environmental impact is more easily accessible through an online survey we identify a food label that is perceived to be the most easily accessible for assessing a product s eco friendliness among six alternatives these alternatives vary on multiple dimensions including whether a standardized score of the overall environmental impact is added this new food label is subsequently tested in an experimental food market embedded in a belgian supermarket we find that the presence of the new label that was preselected in the online survey leads to more eco friendly food consumption relative to either the label currently used in the supermarket or the label that contains the raw information of the environmental impact in our experimental food market the use of an easy to interpret but comprehensive environmental information label increases the overall eco friendliness of our subjects food consumption by about 5 3 relative to the default label used in current markets

sustainability labels on food products consumer motivation understanding and use this study investigates the relationship between consumer motivation understanding and use of sustainability labels on food products both environmental and ethical labels which are increasingly appearing on food products data was collected by means of an online survey implemented in the uk france germany spain sweden and poland with a total sample size of 4408 respondents respondents expressed medium high to high levels of concern with sustainability issues at the general level but lower levels of concern in the context of concrete food product choices understanding of the concept of sustainability was limited but understanding of four selected labels fair trade rainforest alliance carbon footprint and animal welfare was better as some of them seem to be self explanatory the results indicated a low level of use no matter whether use was measured as self reported use of different types of information available on food labels or as use inferred from the results of a choice based conjoint analysis hierarchical regression indicated that use is related to both motivation and understanding and that both motivation understanding and use are affected by demographic characteristics human values as measured by the schwartz value domains and country differences the results imply that sustainability labels currently do not play a major role in consumers food choices and future use of these labels will depend on the extent to which consumers general concern about sustainability can be turned into actual behaviour

do fair trade and eco labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience abstract in this study a face to face survey was conducted in order to reveal consumer preferences for ethical and environmentally sound labeling programs in coffee valuation questions regarding the fair trade shade grown and organic coffee labels were asked using a payment card format after consumers were previously informed about each of the labeling programs results suggest that consumers are very receptive toward both fair trade and shade grown coffee labels and consequently are willing to pay higher premiums for these labeling programs than for the organic coffee

aggregate savings and external imbalances in china over the last decade the internal and external macroeconomic imbalances in china have risen to unprecedented levels in 2008 china s national savings rate soared to over 53 percent of its gdp whereas its current account surplus exceeded 9 percent of gdp this paper presents a unified framework for understanding the structural causes of these imbalances i argue that the imbalances are attributable to a set of policies and institutions embedded in the economy i propose a unified framework for understanding the joint causes of the high savings rate and external imbalances in china my explanations first focus on an array of factors that encouraged saving across the corporate government and household sectors such as policies that affected sectoral income distribution along with factors like incomplete social welfare reforms and population control policies i then turn to policies that limited investment in china thus preventing the high savings from being used domestically finally i will examine how trade policies such as export tax rebates special economic zones and exchange rate policies strongly promote exports moreover the accession of china to the world trade organization has dramatically amplified the effects of these structural distortions in conclusion i recommend some policy reforms for rebalancing the chinese economy

time preferences and food choices evidence from a choice experiment time preferences have been recognized by numerous studies as an important driver of a number of healthy and environmentally friendly behaviors in this study we first examined if healthy and environmentally friendly food labels e g usda organic carbon trust health claim and calories are relevant in driving food choices second using the consideration of future consequences cfc scale we analyzed if individuals with different time preferences have different choice behavior and valuations in relation to these labels results indicate that consumers value both healthy and environmentally friendly attributes displayed on labels results also suggest that time preferences can significantly influence consumers valuation for the usda organic label the presence of health claims and the calorie amount attribute

when do people exploit moral wiggle room an experimental analysis of information avoidance in a market setup abstract we investigate if decision makers avoid information to exploit moral wiggle room in green market settings we therefore implement a laboratory experiment in which subjects purchase products associated with externalities in six between subjects treatments we alter the availability of information on the externalities the price of revealing information as well as the nature of the externality which could either affect another subject or change the amount spent by the experimenters on carbon offsets we find that subjects do not strategically avoid information when revealing information is costless when a very small cost of revealing information is introduced their behavior depends on the relation between prices and externalities in situations in which it is relatively cheap to have a large impact on the recipient s payoff subjects avoid information in order to choose selfishly for other parameterizations subjects behave either honestly egoistically or altruistically

increasing the profits of a subset of firms in oligopoly models with strategic substitutes consider an industry composed of n firms in a symmetric equilibrium designate a subset of s n firms and marginally reduce the strategic variables of the firms in the subset if the remaining firms simultaneously make the best reply to this exogenous displacement under what circumstances will profits of the firms in the designated subset increase we show that in the case of cournot competition among producers of perfect substitutes a marginal contraction is strictly beneficial strictly harmful if and only if the number of firms in the designated subset exceeds the adjusted number of firms outside it by strictly more strictly less than one the adjustment factor is unity when cost and demand functions are linear but more generally depends on the convexity of the cost and demand curves thus a marginal contraction of two firms in a triopoly has no effect on the profits of firms in the subset if cost and demand functions are linear if instead cost is linear but the inverse demand function is strictly concave strictly convex a marginal contraction will strictly decrease strictly increase profits the analysis is extended to the effects of nonmarginal exogenous changes in the outputs of the constrained firms this extension has implications for the relationship of stackelberg sequential move and nash simultaneous move equilibria our analysis has broad application to illustrate we show that it unifies results in the literature on export subsidies horizontal mergers and strikes the paper is organized as follows in section i our comparative static result is derived in section ii we present a wide range of applications in the conclusion and the appendix we generalize our analysis to other situations involving strategic substitutes

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

are duty drawbacks on exports worth the hassle many countries use duty drawbacks on exports yet there is no consensus whether countries should embrace or abandon them the answer depends on countries development priorities and economic conditions an increase in the drawback has a positive impact on export competitiveness but the welfare effect is ambiguous a welfare increase is more likely if the economy is small with high input tariffs low initial drawback low administrative costs and tariff leakages in china duty drawback removal after meeting its wto commitments improves welfare but hurts economic efficiency export competitiveness and real incomes further liberalization can mitigate these negative effects plusieurs pays utilisent ce genre de rabais de tarifs douaniers mais il n y a pas de consensus a savoir si on doit supporter ces mesures ou les abandonner la reponse depend des conditions economiques et des priorites de developpement des divers pays un accroissement de ces reductions a un effet positif sur la competitivite des exportations mais ses effets sur le niveau de bien etre sont ambigus un effet de bien etre positif est plus probable si l economie est petite et a des hauts tarifs sur les intrants de faibles rabais des couts administratifs faibles et peu de fuites en chine l elimination de ces rabais en accord avec les engagements exiges par l omc a ameliore le niveau de bien etre mais a eu un effet negatif sur l efficacite la competitive des exportations et les revenus reels une liberalisation accrue peut attenuer ces effets negatifs

the protectionist bias of duty drawbacks evidence from mercosur in a political economy setting where tariffs and duty drawbacks are endogenously chosen through industry lobbying it is shown that full duty drawbacks are granted to exporters who use imported intermediates in their production this in turn decreases their incentives to counter lobby against high tariffs on their inputs in equilibrium higher tariffs will be observed on these goods the creation of a regional block will change the political equilibrium duty drawbacks will be eliminated on intra regional exports which in turn will lead to lower tariffs for goods used as inputs by intra regional exporters evidence from mercosur suggests that the elimination of duty drawbacks for intra regional exports led to increased counter lobbying by users of intermediate products in its absence the common external tariff would have been on average 3 5 percentage points 25 percent higher