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

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...

Loving Cultural Heritage. Private Individual Giving and Prosocial Behavior

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

The Effectiveness of Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Public Versus Private Management

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

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...

Food Security and Efficacy of the Intervention Mechanism in India

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

Prahadeeswaran, M.; Ramasamy, C.; Selvaraj, K.N..

Rice and wheat are the two major foodgrains in India and their level of production determines the country self-sufficient. Forecasts on cereals supply range from 250 to over 300 million tones in the country by the year 2020. Mere availability of foodgrains is not a sufficient condition to ensure food security but also necessary that the poor have sufficient means to purchase food. Poor economic access leads to food security and it has been checked by the government mechanism through the operation of Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) and foodgrains are distributed at subsidized prices to the people living Below Poverty Line (BPL). It is a safety net to more than 330 million poor and those nutritionally at risk and an important delivery channel with...

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

Palavras-chave: Food Security; Targeted Public Distribution System; Fair Price Shops; Minimum Support Price; Monte Carlo Technique; Food Security and Poverty; J21; H4; H5; O2; Q18.

Ano: 2006

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25465

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...

Allocation of Orbit and Spectrum Resources for Regional Communications: What's at Stake?

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

MacAuley, Molly K..

Contentious debate surrounds allocation of the geostationary orbit and electromagnetic spectrum, two resources used by communications satellites. An extensive economics literature alleges that the nonmarket administrative allocative procedures now in place are highly inefficient, but no research has empirically estimated the welfare loss. This paper develops a conceptual framework and a computerized model to estimate the economic value of the resources, the size and distribution of welfare costs associated with the present regulatory regime, and the potential gains from more market-like allocation.

Collective Action for Watershed Management: Field Experiments in Colombia and Kenya

Palavras-chave: Outer space; Communications satellites; Pricing natural resources; Community/Rural/Urban Development; H4; Q2.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10746

Cardenas, Juan-Camilo; Rodriguez, Luz Angela; Johnson, Nancy L..

The dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted in Colombia and Kenya. The Irrigation Game was used to explore the provision and appropriation decisions under asymmetric or sequential appropriation, complemented with a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment which looks at provision decisions under symmetric appropriation. The overall results were consistent with the patterns of previous studies: the zero contribution hypotheses is rejected whereas the most effective institution to increase cooperation was...

How Do Economists Really Think About the Environment?

Palavras-chave: Collective Action; Watersheds; Field Experiments; Colombia; Kenya; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Environmental Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Q0; Q2; C9; H3; H4.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91169

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...

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

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

Ano: 1998

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

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...

Was the NOAA Panel Correct about Contingent Valuation?

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

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

Rural Gaps in Participation in Early Childhood Education

1996 PRICING PERFORMANCE OF MARKET ADVISORY SERVICES FOR CORN AND SOYBEANS

Temple, Judy A..

While state government spending on early education has grown in recent years, accessibility of preschool programs for rural children remains a problem. Using census-tract data from a nationally-representative data set on U.S. children, multinomial logit estimation reveals significant differences in early education experiences between rural and nonrural children. Both rural children and children of less-educated mothers are less likely to participate in preschool. This paper concludes by discussing the appropriate role of local, state, or federal governments in funding rural preschool programs. While early educational investments are being touted as effective economic development tools, the nature of the positive externalities associated with preschool...

Tipo: Journal Article

Palavras-chave: Early education; Human capital; Preschool; Rural education; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Labor and Human Capital; Political Economy; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession; I2; R0; H4.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/53085

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.

International environmental agreements with mixed strategies and investment

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

Ano: 1998

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

Hong, Fuhsai; Karp, Larry S..

We modify a canonical participation game used to study International Environmental Agreements (IEA), considering both mixed and pure strategies at the participation stage, and including a prior cost-reducing investment stage. The use of mixed strategies at the participation stage reverses a familiar result and also reverses the policy implication of that result: with mixed strategies, equilibrium participation and welfare is higher in equilibria that involve higher investment.

Tipo: Working Paper

Palavras-chave: International Environmental Agreement; Climate agreement; Participation game; Investment; Mixed strategy; Environmental Economics and Policy; C72; H4; Q54.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/123719

An Economic Analysis of Bushfires Management Programs

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...

Investigating Distance Effects on Environmental Values: A Choice Modelling Approach

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

Ano: 2006

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

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...

What Should We Expect from Innovation? A Model-Based Assessment of the Environmental and Mitigation Cost Implications of Climate-Related R&D

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

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

This paper addresses two basic issues related to technological innovation and climate stabilisation objectives: i) Can innovation policies be effective in stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations? ii) To what extent can innovation policies complement carbon pricing (taxes or permit trading) and improve the economic efficiency of a mitigation policy package? To answer these questions, we use an integrated assessment model with multiple externalities and an endogenous representation of technical progress in the energy sector. We evaluate a range of innovation policies, both as a stand-alone instrument and in combination with other mitigation policies. Even under fairly optimistic assumptions about the funding available for, and the returns to R&D, our...

Demand Enhancement through Food-Safety Regulation: Benefit-Cost Analysis of Collective Action in the California Pistachio Industry

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

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/60745

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...