SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Alston, Julian M.; Brunke, Henrich; Gray, Richard S.; Sumner, Daniel A..

Food safety shocks can threaten the health of consumers, create havoc within an industry and result in severe losses to producers. Governments often attempt to enhance food safety by mandating standards and inspection of food products to supplement the voluntary efforts by private firms. This paper assesses a form of collective action that falls between typical government mandates and purely private action. The California pistachio industry recently established a U.S. federal marketing order. This order sets quality standards and requires inspection and certification, aiming to reduce the likelihood of dangerous or poor quality pistachios being sold to consumers and to provide some quality assurance to consumers. Simulation results indicate that, across...

Was the NOAA Panel Correct about Contingent Valuation?

Palavras-chave: Food Safety; Collective Action; Specialty Crops; Government Regulation; Marketing Orders; Pistachios; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Q18; Q13; I18; H4.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25461

Carson, Richard T.; Hanemann, W. Michael; Kopp, Raymond J.; Krosnick, Jon A.; Mitchell, Robert C.; Presser, Stanley; Ruud, Paul A.; Smith, V. Kerry; Conaway, Michael; Martin, Kerry.

The past few years have seen a highly charged debate about whether contingent valuation (CV) surveys can provide valid economic measures of people's values for environmental resources. In an effort to appraise the validity of CV measures of economic value, a distinguished panel of social scientists, chaired by two Nobel laureates, was established by NOAA, to critically evaluate the validity of CV measures of nonuse value. The Panel provided an extensive set of guidelines for CV survey construction, administration, and analysis, and distinguished a subset of items from their guidelines for special emphasis and described them as burden of proof requirements. Of particular interest was the Panel's requirement that CV surveys demonstrate "responsiveness to the...

Una nota sobre la recuperacion de costes de los servicios del agua en la cuenca del Gallego

Palavras-chave: Contingent valuation; Scope test; NOAA Panel; Environmental Economics and Policy; D6; H4.

Ano: 1996

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10503

Perez y Perez, Luis; Hurle, Jesus Barreiro.

Up to date, water management in Spain has been focused on supply approaches, with the result of providing consumers with this resource at a low price. Developments in the institutional framework regulating water management in the European context (mainly the implementation of the Water Framework Directive) have shifted this approach in order to promote sustainable water use. To achieve this objective, tariff policy must now take into account the water services cost-recovery principle for its different uses. Within this context, this paper estimates the public capital stock related to water supply and assesses the existing level of cost-recovery related to that stock. The methodology used, compares the tax level needed for full-cost recovery with actual...

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Water policy; Water framework directive; Cost recovery; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; H4; Q2; R5.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7997

Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Cardenas, Juan-Camilo.

Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded in a context of regulations and social norms that the group of users face. Such norms and rules affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives and therefore determine their decision to cooperate or over extract the resources from the common-pool. This paper discusses the importance of social norms in shaping behavior in the commons through the lens of experiments, and in particular experiments conducted in the field with people that usually face these social dilemmas in their daily life. Through a large sample of experimental sessions with around one thousand people between villagers and students, I test some hypothesis about behavior in the commons when regulations and social norms...

How Do Economists Really Think About the Environment?

Palavras-chave: Social norms; Regulations; Cooperation; Collective action; Common-pool resources; Experimental economics; Field experiments.; Public Economics; D71; Q0; Q2; C9; H3; H4.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91168

Fullerton, Don; Stavins, Robert N..

On a topic like the environment, communication among scholars from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences is both important and difficult, but such communication has been far from perfect. Economists themselves may have contributed to some rather fundamental misunderstandings about how economists think about the environment, perhaps through our enthusiasm for market solutions, perhaps by neglecting to make explicit all of the necessary qualifications, and perhaps simply by the use of jargon that has specific meaning only to other economists. In this brief essay, we seek to clarify some of these misunderstandings and thus to improve future interdisciplinary communication. We hope that natural scientists and other non-economists will take...

Coordinating to Eradicate Animal Disease, and the Role of Insurance Markets

Palavras-chave: Market failure; Economic analysis; Efficiency; Equity; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q2; H4; L51.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10910

Hennessy, David A..

Farmed animal production has traditionally been a dispersed sector. Biosecurity actions relevant to eradicating infectious diseases are generally non-contractible, and might involve inordinately high transactions costs if they were contractible. If an endemic disease is to be eradicated within a region, synchronized actions need to be taken to reduce incidence below a critical mass so that spread can be contained. Using a global game model of coordination under public and private information concerning the critical mass required, this paper characterizes the success probability in an eradication campaign. As is standard in global games, heterogeneity in private signals can support a unique equilibrium. Partly because of strategic interactions, concentrated...

Using Incentives to Buy Land-Use Change in Agriculture for Environmental Benefits

Palavras-chave: Biosecurity; Coordination failure; Disease insurance; Endemic disease; Global games; Market access; Public information; Veterinary public health; Livestock Production/Industries; D8; H4; Q1.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/7702

Pannell, David J..

In general, the use of incentive payments to landholders in environmental programs is poorly thought through. This article discusses situations where environmental incentive payments are more likely to be a cost-effective response by environmental funders. It is proposed that incentives can be used in two broad ways: to encourage trialling of new practices by landholders, or to compensate landholders for losses resulting from land-use changes. It appears that environmental funders often do not pay sufficient attention to the differences between these two approaches. The first approach only makes sense if the new practices are 'adoptable', and so are expected to remain attractive to landholders beyond the trialling phase. The importance of adoptability and...

Investigating Distance Effects on Environmental Values: A Choice Modelling Approach

Palavras-chave: Environmental subsidies; Incentives; Externalities; Adoption of innovations; Environmental policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use; Q24; Q28; Q57; Q58; H23; H4.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25397

Concu, Giovanni B..

This paper describes a Choice Modelling experiment set up to investigate the relationship between distance and willingness to pay for environmental quality changes. The issue is important for the estimation and transfer of benefits. The Choice Modelling experiment allows testing distance effects on parameters of environmental attributes that imply different trade-offs between use and non-use values. The sampling procedure is designed to provide a "geographically balanced" sample. Several specifications of the distance covariate are compared and distance effects are shown to take complex shapes. Welfare analysis shows that disregarding distance produces under-estimation of individual and aggregated benefits and losses, seriously hindering the reliability of...

A Unified Framework for Measuring Preferences for Schools and Neighborhoods

Palavras-chave: Aggregation; Choice Modelling; Distance; Geographical Sampling; Specification Tests; Environmental Economics and Policy; Q51; H4; D6..

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25566

Bayer, Patrick; Ferreira, Fernando; McMillan, Robert.

This paper sets out a framework for estimating household preferences over a broad range of housing and neighborhood characteristics, some of which are determined by the way that households sort in the housing market. This framework brings together the treatment of heterogeneity and selection that has been the focus of the traditional discrete choice literature with a clear strategy for dealing with the correlation of unobserved neighborhood quality with both school quality and neighborhood sociodemographics. We estimate the model using rich data on a large metropolitan area, drawn from a restricted version of the Census. The estimates indicate that, on average, households are willing to pay an additional one percent in house prices - substantially lower...

1996 PRICING PERFORMANCE OF MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES FOR CORN AND SOYBEANS

Palavras-chave: Capitalization; Local public goods; School quality; Discrete choice models; Hedonic price regression; Education demand; Labor and Human Capital; D58; H0; H4; H7; I2; R21; R31.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28513

Jackson, Thomas E.; Irwin, Scott H.; Good, Darrel L..

The purpose of this research report is to present an evaluation of advisory service pricing performance in 1996 for corn and soybeans. Specifically, the average price received by a subscriber to an advisory service is calculated for corn and soybean crops harvested in 1996. The average net advisory price across all 26 corn programs is $2.63 per bushel. The range of net advisory prices for corn is quite large, with a minimum of $2.08 per bushel and a maximum of $3.12 per bushel. The average net advisory price across all 24 soybean programs is $7.27 per bushel. As with corn, the range of net advisory prices for soybeans is substantial, with a minimum of $6.80 per bushel and a maximum of $7.80 per bushel.

The Role of R&D and Technology Diffusion in Climate Change Mitigation: New Perspectives Using the Witch Model

Palavras-chave: Agricultural Market Advisory Services; G1; D8; D7; D4; G2; H4; H8; Q1; Z1; Marketing.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/14787

Bosetti, Valentina; Carraro, Carlo; Duval, Romain; Sgobbi, Alessandra; Tavoni, Massimo.

This paper uses the WITCH model, a computable general equilibrium model with endogenous technological change, to explore the impact of various climate policies on energy technology choices and the costs of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations. Current and future expected carbon prices appear to have powerful effects on R&D spending and clean technology diffusion. Their impact on stabilisation costs depends on the nature of R&D: R&D targeted at incremental energy efficiency improvements has only limited effects, but R&D focused on the emergence of major new low-carbon technologies could lower costs drastically if successful – especially in the non-electricity sector, where such low-carbon options are scarce today. With emissions coming...

Bid Design and its Influence on the Stated Willingness to Pay in a Contingent Valuation Study

Palavras-chave: Climate policy; Energy R&D; Fund; Stabilisation costs; Environmental Economics and Policy; H0; H2; H3; H4; O3; Q32; Q43; Q54.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50363

Carmona-Torres, Carmen; Calatrava-Requena, Javier.

The CV method estimate the monetary value that specific changes in the provision of goods and services represent for society, which is asked for their Willingness To Pay (WTP) for it, according to their budget and individual preferences, in a survey. The applications of CV are a source of information to important public decision-making. Therefore, it seems to be a desirable objective for a CV study to strive to detect and reduce, as far as possible, the bias affecting the elicited values. In the present work, the starting point bias in an application to the case study of the conservation of the Iberian Lynx in Spain is analyzed. This bias is caused by the potential influence of the bid values offered to the interviewees on their stated preferences. Three...

An Economic Analysis of Bushfires Management Programs

Palavras-chave: Contingent valuation; Starting point bias; Bid design; Dichotomous choice; Openended question; Iberian Lynx; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; H4; Q2; Q5; Q57.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25367

Ganewatta, Gaminda; Grahlmann, Linda; Handmer, John.

Allocating scare resources for fire management strategies requires information on the extent of economic losses from bushfires and the efficiency of alternatives. Despite the severity of bushfires, there is no agreed approach in Australia for estimating economic losses from fires nor for evaluating the economic efficiency of alternative suppression strategies. The poster proposes approaches to assess the economic effects of bushfires on local and state economies and sets out models to evaluate the economic efficiency of two key bushfire management strategies: presuppression and suppression. The first model arises from questions concerning the value of pre-suppression (before the fire) fuel reduction activities, and the estimation of an economically optimal...

Loving Cultural Heritage. Private Individual Giving and Prosocial Behavior

Palavras-chave: Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; A11; H4; Q51; Q54.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25278

Bertacchini, Enrico; Santagata, Walter; Signorello, Giovanni.

The aim of this paper is to analyse patterns of private individual giving to Cultural Heritage institutions in Italy. Based on the emerging economic literature on pro-social behavior, we carried out a Contingent Valuation survey to assess individuals’ willingness to donate to museums and heritage organizations according to different conditions and set of incentives. Our findings reveal that intrinsic motivations and accountability of the recipient institutions may be more effective drivers for eliciting charitable giving than the usually proposed fiscal incentives. The results provide avenues for future empirical research and policy suggestions for fund raising cultural institutions.

The Effectiveness of Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Public Versus Private Management

Palavras-chave: Charitable Giving; Cultural Heritage; Contingent Valuation; Pro-social Behavior; Financial Economics; D11; D12; H4; Z1.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/59415

Bayer, Patrick; Pozen, David E..

This paper uses data on juvenile offenders released from correctional facilities in Florida to explore the effects of facility management type (private for-profit, private nonprofit, public state-operated, and public county-operated) on recidivism outcomes and costs. The data provide detailed information on individual characteristics, criminal and correctional histories, judge-assigned restrictiveness levels, and home zipcodes allowing us to control for the non-random assignment of individuals to facilities far better than any previous study. Relative to all other management types, for-profit management leads to a statistically significant increase in recidivism, but, relative to nonprofit and state-operated facilities, for-profit facilities operate at a...

Police-powers, regulatory takings and the efficient compensation of domestic and foreign investors

Palavras-chave: Juvenile Crime; Juvenile correctional facilities; Recidivism; Prison privatization; Provision of public goods; Nonprofit; For-profit; Public; Labor and Human Capital; H0; H1; H4; K0; K4.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28484

Aisbett, Emma; Karp, Larry S.; McAusland, Carol.

In customary international and public law, “takings” resulting from regulations designed to protect the public good are generally excluded from compensation rules; this exclusion is known as a police powers carve-out (PPCO). Increasingly, this PPCO is being challenged, particularly in international investment law. This paper analyzes the efficiency properties of a PPCO in a model with endogenous regulation, investment and entry. We design a one-parameter family of carve-out/compensation schemes that induce efficient regulation and firm level investment even when the regulator suffers fiscal illusion and the social benefit from regulation is private information to the regulator. We show that offering a carve-out reduces the subsidy to risky industry...

The Role of Participation in CVM Survey Design: Evidence from a Tap Water Improvement Program in Northern Thailand

Palavras-chave: Regulatory takings; Expropriation; Environment; Foreign direct investment; NAFTA; Environmental Economics and Policy; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; F21; H4; K3; Q58.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/42842

Ahlheim, Michael; Fror, Oliver; Sinphurmsukskul, Nopasom.

In the environmental economics literature results from contingent valuation mail surveys (MS) are usually considered less reliable than results from face-to-face surveys (FtF). This is mostly due to low response rates and self-selection effects of the respondents. However, MS are much less costly than FtF surveys so that there exists a strong need to make MS more reliable in order to save costs for environmental policy makers. This paper proposes a participatory procedure of survey design in order to improve MS questionnaires. In an empirical study of water quality improvement it is demonstrated that this procedure yields results identical to those of a FtF survey. In contrast to focus groups commonly applied in contingent valuation, we are able to show...

Mock Referenda for Intergenerational Decision-making

Palavras-chave: Contingent valuation; Water quality improvement; Participatory techniques; Mail surveys; Elicitation question formats; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; D6; H4; L3; Q25; Q51.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25692

Kopp, Raymond J.; Portney, Paul R..

Traditional applications of benefit-cost analysis make use of what we refer to as the "damage function and discounting" (or DFD) approach. This approach is well-suited to the analysis of projects for which the principal benefits and costs occur within the next thirty to forty years, say. However, for projects with significant intergenerational consequences--i.e., impacts that do not arise for hundreds of years or more--the DFD approach becomes almost intractable. We propose an alternative conception of benefit-cost analysis for intergenerational decision-making--the mock referendum--that is: (i) arguably more consistent with the tenets of modern welfare economics; (ii) more amenable to the analysis of long-term projects or policies; and (iii) consistent...

Cooperation, Spatial-Dynamic Externalities, and Invasive Species Management

Palavras-chave: Discounting; Non-market valuation; Intergenerational equity; Contingent valuation; Labor and Human Capital; D6; H4.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10745

Epanchin-Niell, Rebecca S.; Wilen, James E..

Most terrestrial biological invasions occur in landscapes comprising numerous, independently managed properties. Thus, control of invasion spread generally depends on the choices of many managers, each deciding the extent to control invasions on their property. Here we develop a spatially-explicit, integrated model of invasion spread and human behavior to examine how people’s control choices under laissez-faire affect patterns of invasion spread and the total costs and damages imposed by an invader. We evaluate how characteristics of the bioeconomic and social system, including the extent of cooperation among managers, affect the divergence between socially optimal and private control efforts. We find that system-wide invasion externalities generally...

International Environmental Agreements: Emissions trade, safety valves and escape clauses

Palavras-chave: Biological invasions; Cross-boundary; Coordination; Spatial-dynamic processes; Spatial spread; Eradication; Containment; Negotiation; Optimal control; Cooperative management; Environmental Economics and Policy; Land Economics/Use; Public Economics; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; Q; Q1; Q2; Q5; H4.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61371

Karp, Larry S.; Zhao, Jinhua.

We explain how the structure of multi-national or multi-regional environmental agreements affect their chance of success. Trade in emissions permits has ambiguous and in some cases surprising effects on both the equilibrium level of abatement, and on the ability to persuade nations or regions to participate in environmental agreements. An escape clause policy and a safety valve policy have essentially the same properties when membership in environmental agreement is pre-determined, but they create markedly different effects on the incentives to join such an agreement. The two policies lead to a qualitative difference in the leverage that a potential member of the agreement exercises on other members.