Inefficiencies in Digital Advertising Markets

Digital advertising markets are growing and attracting increased scrutiny. This article explores four market inefficiencies that remain poorly understood: ad effect measurement, frictions between and within advertising channel members, ad blocking, and ad fraud. Although these topics are not unique to digital advertising, each manifests in unique ways in markets for digital ads. The authors identify relevant findings in the academic literature, recent developments in practice, and promising topics for future research

Estimating community benefits from tourism: The case of Carpentaria Shire

The small rural communities in Australia's tropical savanna landscapes depend upon the region's natural resources for income and employment. Historically primary industries - including mining, grazing and, in the case of coastal communities, fishing - have been the pillars of economic activity in those regions. More recently, tourism has emerged as an additional nature-based industry, which offers new development and employment opportunities for populations in remote regions. Net benefits from tourism accrue from the balance of economic, social and environmental interactions of tourists with a destination. This paper presents a model of tourism impact in the Carpentaria shire of North West Queensland. A methodology is developed for tracking and quantifying social, economic and environmental impacts. Data from an in-progress research project are presented and analysed to test the hypothesis that community benefits could be improved without an increase in visitor numbers, by changing the composition of visitors to the region. Interpretations are offered as to how both, sectorial and regional planning and management can effect improved community benefits from tourism.tourism impact, net benefit, savanna regions, destination management, host community, grey nomads, Environmental Economics and Policy, Marketing,

THE IMPACT OF THE YOUNG-OLD AND THE OLD-OLD ON A SMALL RURAL REGION: AN APPLICATION OF THE WISCONSIN ECONOMIC IMPACT MODELING SYSTEM

The literature on the economic and fiscal impacts of in-migrating retirees on rural communities concentrates on the young, newly-retired. An issue not systematically addressed are the impacts on the communities as these retirees age. The Wisconsin Economic Impact Modeling System, a county level conjoined input-output/econometrics simulation model, is used to assess the impact of an aging rural population. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey, profiles of two household types are constructed and used to simulate the economic impact of an additional 500 elderly households into a small rural economy. Household types vary by age and, as a result, have different income levels and expenditure patterns. As hypothesized, the magnitude and nature of impacts is in direct proportion to relative household size and income level.aging, economic impacts, development policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, and Distribution

Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry-barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way to redistribute. Another obstacle is that consumer law research speaks to microeconomic and siloed contexts—deceptive fees by Wells Fargo or a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Even removing millions of dollars of deceptive credit card fees across the nation seems trivial compared to the trillion-dollar growth in income inequality that has sparked concern in recent decades. This Article synthesizes the fragmented empirical literature to offer a broader conception of consumer law’s place in governance. The data indicate that consumer market failures raise prices to consumers by well over a trillion dollars annually, aided by sophisticated algorithmic pricing; that this overcharge worsens economic inequality; and that consumer law, despite prominent critiques of its shortcomings, can reduce overcharge when designed well. The preliminary state of the evidence underscores the need for regulatory monitoring of markets to calibrate consumer law’s potential as a tax alternative. Redistribution is one of the government’s most basic functions, and efficiency one of the law’s guiding principles. There are strong normative foundations for making macroeconomic distribution an explicit goal of consumer law

Broadening Consumer Law: Competition, Protection, and Distribution

Policymakers and scholars have in distributional conversations traditionally ignored consumer laws, defined as the set of consumer protection, antitrust, and entry barrier laws that govern consumer transactions. Consumer law is overlooked partly because tax law is cast as the most efficient way to redistribute. Another obstacle is that consumer law research speaks to microeconomic and siloed contexts—deceptive fees by Wells Fargo or a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Even removing millions of dollars of deceptive credit card fees across the nation seems trivial compared to the trillion-dollar growth in income inequality that has sparked concern in recent decades. This Article synthesizes the fragmented empirical literature to offer a broader conception of consumer law’s place in governance. The data indicate that consumer market failures raise prices to consumers by well over a trillion dollars annually; that these market failures worsen economic inequality; and that consumer law, despite prominent critiques of its failures, can address those market failures when designed well. The preliminary state of the evidence underscores the need for regulatory monitoring of markets to leverage consumer law’s potential as a tax alternative. Redistribution is one of the government’s most basic functions, and efficiency one of the law’s guiding principles. There are strong normative foundations for making macroecomomic distribution an explicit goal of consumer law

Implications of Consumer Lifestyle Changes and Behavioral Heterogeneity on U.S. Energy Consumption and Policy

Understanding the relationship between consumer lifestyle and energy use is essential to solving many of the energy and sustainability challenges. By studying shifts in consumer lifestyle over time and behavior heterogeneity, this dissertation provides valuable insights into understanding energy consumption trends and improving energy efficiency programs. Technologies continue to change our daily lifestyles, influencing energy demand. In the first part of the dissertation, changes in how people spend their time (time-use) patterns are used as an indicator of lifestyle shifts. Using decomposition analysis changes in energy use due to these lifestyle shifts are measured. The results show that for an average American, time spent in residences increased at the rate of 3.1 minutes per day per year while time spent for travel and other non-residential activities decreased (-0.4 min/day/year and -2.7 min/day/year respectively). The time-use shifts induced a net energy change of -1,722 trillion BTU, 1.8% of national primary energy consumption in 2012. The lifestyle/energy shifts are interpreted as primarily driven by information and communication technology: people are spending more time at home with online entertainment and services. Information provided to consumers and energy efficiency rebate programs generally assume characteristics of an average consumer. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity in behavior, energy prices and impacts of electricity use. To understand the impact of heterogeneity on rebate programs, in the second part, the economic and carbon benefits of efficient choices of three household technologies (television, clothes washer and dryer) are assessed for different locations and usage patterns. For some households, an efficient energy washers and dryers do not save money, but brings substantial economic benefits to others. Viewing utility appliance rebate programs as tools for carbon abatement, abatement cost of carbon was assessed. At current rebate levels, for an average household, the abatement cost for carbon exceeds social cost of carbon (SCC). However, subpopulations with abatement cost less than SCC exists: 4%, 6%, and 41% for televisions, washers and dryers respectively. Therefore, abatement programs can benefit from targeted intervention. For targeted intervention, it would be useful to identify groups with high energy use and characterize their demographics. To achieve this, in the third analysis, time-use survey data is used to characterize patterns of TV watching. Using cluster analysis, the population was divided into three groups, the high-energy use cluster has 14% of the population and spends an average of 7.7 hours per day on TV. This relatively small group, due to high use, accounts for 34% of total television energy consumption. This group tends to be older, not in the work force and/or poorly educated. A high-use household purchasing an efficient television saves more than three times the energy of an average household. The main policy implications of these results are that more targeted information and policies have potential to enhance adoption by household who will benefit the most economically as well as reduce more carbon. In the management of utility efficiency programs, the results make a case for variable rebates or tiered communication programs

How robust is a poverty profile?

Comparisons of poverty - indicating where or when poverty is greatest, for example - typically matter far more to policy choices than aggregate poverty measures, such as how many people are deemed"poor."So the author's examine how measurement practices affect empirical poverty profiles. They discuss the pros and cons of alternative approaches to developing a poverty profile and use those approaches on the same data set. In Indonesia, as in many countries, past methods of building poverty profiles have used the food-energy-intake method, defining the poverty line as the normal consumption spending at which a person typically attains a predetermined food-energy-intake in each subgroup. The author's argue that his method can yield differences in poverty lines (between urban and rural areas, for example) that exceed the cost-of-living differences the poor face. So, that method can mislead policy choices aimed at reducing absolute poverty. For comparison, they explore a cost-of-basic-needs methods, whereby an explicit bundle of foods typically consumed by the poor is valued at local prices, with a minimal allowance for non-food goods consistent with spending by the poor. This approach, though not ideal, is a conceptually transparent operational alternative that can be implemented with available data. They argue that this approach is more likely to generate a consistent poverty profile in that two people with the same measured standard of living - purchasing power of basic consumption needs - will be treated the same way. This refinement of past approaches retains some seemingly desirable features (such as concern for the tastes of the poor) and avoids others (such as the implicit use of a higher real poverty line in richer regions of the same country). For Indonesia, the cost-of-basic-needs methods finds more incidence, depth, and severity of poverty in rural areas, whereas the food-energy-intake method finds all measures of poverty worse in urban areas. The ranking of regions (provinces divided into rural and urban) by two methods has virtually zero correlation. The poverty profile by principal sector of employment is less sensitive to the choice of method, particularly in urban areas. This case study supports the conclusion that policymakers should be wary of underlying differences between methods of estimating poverty measures. The cost-of-basic-needs approach is fairly robust to severaly other methodological choices, notably changes in the composition of the basic need bundle (which determines the overall level of the poverty line), differences in the functional form of the poverty measure, and adjustment for spatial differences in prices, issues that have dominated debates on how to measure poverty. Ironically, the results of this study suggest that these issues matter less to poverty rankings (and hence to policy conclusions) than do the choices made in mapping a given specification of basic needs into monetary poverty lines.Poverty Lines,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Poverty Reduction Strategies

Designing a Foodshed Assessment Model: Guidance for Local and Regional Planners in Understanding Local Farm Capacity in Comparison to Local Food Needs

This thesis explores how to conduct a regional foodshed assessment and further provides guidance to local and regional planners on the use of foodshed assessments. A foodshed is the geographic origin of a food supply. Before the 1800s, foodsheds were predominantly local — within the city or neighboring countryside. Today most urban areas are supported by a global foodshed. While the global foodshed can present many benefits, it also creates tremendous externalities. In an attempt to address these concerns, promotion of alternative local foodsheds has re-emerged. A foodshed assessment serves as a planning tool for land use planners, as well as for local food advocates, offering an understanding of land use implications that is not often carefully considered. By determining the food needs of a region’s population, the land base needed to support that population can then be identified. In this way, planners can have a stronger basis for promoting working farmland preservation measures and strengthening the local foodshed. This thesis compares the approaches of five previous foodshed assessments and presents a model for conducting an assessment on a regional level. This model is then applied to the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts with the goal of determining how much the agricultural production in the Pioneer Valley fulfills the food consumption needs of the region’s population. The assessment also compares the amount of current working farmlands to open lands available for farming, and the extent of farmland necessary to meet regional food demand for various diet types

Consumer Engagement in Energy Markets: The Role of Information and Knowledge

External information (e.g., monetary and opportunity costs, retailer messaging), internal information (e.g., consumer knowledge, information processing), and the interaction between different forms of information can affect consumer engagement in markets. We employ an analytical framework which embraces both economic and psychological motives behind consumer behavior to investigate the motives and obstacles associated with household behavior in energy markets, using data from over 18,000 randomly selected responses drawn from three annual surveys of British households commissioned by the UK energy regulator. Three forms of household engagement – switching to a new electricity and/or gas supplier, changing electricity or/and gas tariffs, and changing payment methods of energy bills – are explored using a multiple-discrete choice framework. We find that internal information pathways have robust and strong effects on switching suppliers and tariffs. Concretely, a lack of belief in tariff differences discourages participation in energy markets. By contrast, professed knowledge of household energy spending and familiarity with energy tariffs drives consumer engagement. External information – supplier messages and Internet information may enhance each other in promoting market participation, conditional on message source and participation form. We also find that engagement by incumbent retailers (such as through consumer messages) can be effective in discouraging households from switching suppliers