Water Quality Trading in the Presence of Discrete Abatement Costs: An Experimental Analysis of Contract Length and the Timing of Investment

Food Security and Poverty, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Differential Use of Language by Adolescents Across Modes of Written Communication

The purpose of this study was to investigate how adolescents in a small urban setting in the upper Midwest use alternative modes of written communication (i.e., text messaging, email, instant messaging, and social networking) for discourse purposes in order to identify ways in which these modes could be utilized by non speaking individuals. This study explored the factors related to choice of mode, including identity of the communication partner, number of communication partners, purpose of the communication, and personal preferences of the individual. This qualitative study followed grounded theory methodology and used interviews as the primary means of data collection. The data was transcribed and analyzed through open coding, to answer the research question How and why do the form, function, and purpose of teenagers\u27 communication vary across different modes of written communication? The participants in the study were 13 individuals between the ages of 14 and 18. Data analysis revealed three categories. The first category was related to intrapersonal considerations such as the personal preferences of the individual. The second category, interpersonal explained the understanding participants possessed about semantic and pragmatic aspects of communication. The final category, extra-personal included factors outside the communication itself such as the attempts of others to regulate use of technology or concerns about privacy and safety. Based on those categories, four assertions emerged to answer the research question. Those assertions were: adolescents are skilled communicators who use different modes of communication to communicate different functions with different partners, adolescents are skilled communicators who are aware of the nuances of communication in a written genre, adolescents are aware of the potential dangers inherent in using these modes and they know how to protect themselves from said dangers, and adolescents may resist the attempts of outsiders to control their communications. Finally, the codes were further refined during axial coding in order to identify the central phenomenon, causal conditions, context, intervening conditions, strategies, and context. Axial coding analysis led the researcher to the emerging theory, adolescents are active communicators who purposefully choose their modes of communication and control how, when, and with whom they use each mode

Beyond Optimal Linear Tax Mechanisms: An Experimental Examination of Damage-Based Ambient Taxes for Nonpoint Polluters

The regulation of nonpoint source water pollution from agriculture is a complex problem characterized by a multiplicity of polluters, informational asymmetries, complex fate and transport processes, and stochastic environmental factors. Taken together, these characteristics make regulatory policy based on individual firm emissions prohibitively costly. To circumvent this issue, economists, beginning with the seminal work of Segerson (1988), have devised economic incentive instruments that assign liabilities based on deviations between the observed ambient water quality level and a specified pollution threshold (Xepapadeas 1991; Horan, Shortle and Abler 1998, 2002; Hansen 1998, 2002). In the special case of a linear damage function, the regulator can optimally set the parameters of Segerson's (1988) incentive scheme solely with information on the damage function. When the damage function is nonlinear, a depiction that likely represents many watersheds, Segerson's incentive scheme is firm-specific, and the regulator must acquire costly firm-specific data on factors such as input use, land management practice, and soil type. Using a linear damage function setting, recent laboratory experimental economics efforts have investigated the ambient-based mechanisms proposed by Segerson, as well as some simple variants (Spraggon 2002, 2004; Poe et al. 2004; Vossler et al. 2005). A fundamental limitaion of this body of research, however, is that has utilized an "optimal design" in which the threshold pollution level for triggering the abient-based policy is set equal to the social optimum. It is therefore unclear whether subjects are optimally responding to the tax and threshold combination, or simply trying to reacting to the focal point created by the threshold. A second limitation of past experimetnal economics research is that, following Segerson, these investigations have utilized the limited case of a linear tax function. While a tax policy is relatively straightforward to apply when damages are linear, the application to real world situations may be limited. A more believable circumstance is that economic damages increase at an increasing rate as ambient pollution levels rise. This paper advances the experimental literature on ambient based pollution mechanisms in two important ways. First, by employing a range of marginal tax rates and threshold levels, we show that subjects do in fact respond optimally to the tax and cutoff combination. Second, by using the damage based tax proposed Hansen (1998) and Horan et al. (1998), we show that aggregate results when the economic damages from ambient water pollution are nonlinear are not significantly different from corresponding results under the linear tax.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Bridging the Gap between the Field and the Lab: Environmental Goods, Policy Maker Input, and Consequentiality

This paper explores the criterion validity of stated preference methods through experimental referenda that capture key characteristics of a stated preference survey for a proposed environmental program. In particular, we investigate whether advisory referenda, where participant votes have either known or unknown weight in the policy decision, can elicit values comparable to that of a standard, incentive-compatible referendum. When participants regard their votes as consequential, our results suggest there is no elicitation bias with advisory referenda. For advisory referenda where participants view their votes as inconsequential, and for purely hypothetical referenda, we observe elicitation bias

Social Preferences and Voting: An Exploration Using a Novel Preference Revealing Mechanism

Public referenda are frequently used to determine the provision of public goods. As public programs have distributional consequences, a compelling question is what role if any social preferences have on voting behavior. This paper explores this issue using laboratory experiments wherein voting outcomes lead to a known distribution of net benefits across participants. Preferences are elicited using a novel Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is a more parsimonious mechanism than dichotomous choice referenda, but gives consistent results. Results suggest that social preferences, in particular a social efficiency motive, lead to economically meaningful deviations from self-interested voting choices and increase the likelihood that welfare-enhancing programs are implemented.Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, C91, C92, D64, D72, H41,

ANOMALIES IN VOTING: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS USING A NEW, DEMAND REVEALING (RANDOM PRICE VOTING) MECHANISM

This study investigates the influence of social preferences on voting decisions using a new Random Price Voting Mechanism (RPVM), which is best thought of as a public goods voting extension of the Becker-DeGroot-Marshack mechanism for private goods. In particular, this mechanism is used to investigate experimentally whether voting decisions are affected by the distribution of net benefits associated with a proposed public program. Recent papers have shown that, in additional to selfishness, factors such as inequality aversion, maximin preferences, and efficiency may influence individual decisions. However, the effect of social preferences on voting, the predominant funding mechanism for public goods by legislatures and public referenda, has not been thoroughly examined. We first establish the presence of anomalous behavior in dichotomous voting, and introduce the RPVM as a more efficient mechanism to examine such anomalies. We show that it is demand revealing in the presence of social preferences and empirically consistent with dichotomous choice voting. Laboratory experiments involving 440 subjects show that when net benefits are homogeneously distributed, the new RPVM is demand-revealing in both willingness-to-pay (WTP) and willingness-to-accept (WTA) settings, for both gains and losses. When the voting outcome potentially results in a heterogeneous distribution of (net) benefits, a systematic wedge appears between individuals' controlled induced values and their revealed WTP or WTA. With induced gains, the best-off subjects under-report their WTP and WTA in comparison to their induced value. Worst-off subjects express WTP and WTA that exceed their induced value. With induced losses a mirror image is evident. Best-off subjects over-report their induced value while the worst-off subjects under-report. Theoretical and econometric results presented in the paper suggest that these differences are caused by a concern for social efficiency.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Multiple bounded discrete choice contingent valuation: parametric and nonparametric welfare estimation and a comparison to the payment card

In multiple bounded discrete choice (MBDC) surveys, respondents indicate how certain they would be to vote in favor of a policy at different prices by choosing, for example, among “definitely yes”, “probably yes”, “not sure”, “probably no”, and “definitely no” response options for each price. In estimating non-market values from MBDC data, past researchers have made markedly different assumptions with respect to the assumed correlation of within-respondent decisions (one for each price) and the correspondence of stated payment certainty to actual behavioral intentions. The first objective of this paper is to provide guidance for future research efforts by discriminating between existing models and proposing new estimators that relax some important statistical assumptions of existing models. Contrary to a previous study, results in this paper suggest that within-respondent decisions should be treated as being perfectly correlated. The second objective is to examine whether it is worthwhile to collect the additional information on payment certainty, as it may place additional cognitive burden on respondents as well as data analysts. Using data from previous studies, MBDC is compared with the payment card, a related elicitation approach that does not gauge payment certainty. This comparison provides strong and systematic evidence that “definitely yes” and “probably yes” MBDC respondents would vote “yes” while other respondents would vote “no” in the absence of the certainty categories

Multiple bounded discrete choice contingent valuation: parametric and nonparametric welfare estimation and a comparison to the payment card

In multiple bounded discrete choice (MBDC) surveys, respondents indicate how certain they would be to vote in favor of a policy at different prices by choosing, for example, among “definitely yes”, “probably yes”, “not sure”, “probably no”, and “definitely no” response options for each price. In estimating non-market values from MBDC data, past researchers have made markedly different assumptions with respect to the assumed correlation of within-respondent decisions (one for each price) and the correspondence of stated payment certainty to actual behavioral intentions. The first objective of this paper is to provide guidance for future research efforts by discriminating between existing models and proposing new estimators that relax some important statistical assumptions of existing models. Contrary to a previous study, results in this paper suggest that within-respondent decisions should be treated as being perfectly correlated. The second objective is to examine whether it is worthwhile to collect the additional information on payment certainty, as it may place additional cognitive burden on respondents as well as data analysts. Using data from previous studies, MBDC is compared with the payment card, a related elicitation approach that does not gauge payment certainty. This comparison provides strong and systematic evidence that “definitely yes” and “probably yes” MBDC respondents would vote “yes” while other respondents would vote “no” in the absence of the certainty categories

Analyzing repeated-game economics experiments: robust standard errors for panel data with serial correlation

The purpose of this study is to provide guidance to those who analyze data from repeated-game experiments. In particular, I propose the use of heteroskedasticity-autocorrelation consistent (HAC) covariance estimators for panel data, which allows researchers to conduct hypothesis tests without having to place structure on the heteroskedasticity and/or serial correlation likely present in econometric models. Through Monte Carlo experiments I explore the properties of three panel HAC covariance estimators within a linear regression framework, including a new HAC covariance estimator proposed in this study, for a range of cross-section

Phase response measurement technique for waveguide grating filters

A simple interferometric technique is described which can be used to accurately measure the phase response of waveguide grating filters. A narrowband, tunable Ti:sapphire laser is used in a Michelson interferometer configuration, where light reflected from a waveguide grating filter is combined with a reference beam. The intensity of the combined beams is measured as the wavelength of the Ti:sapphire laser is tuned. The measured intensity exhibits a quasisinusoidal wavelength dependence, from which the phase response of the filter can be deduced. This method is successfully demonstrated using both an integrated optic waveguide grating filter and a bulk grating pair. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69947/2/APPLAB-66-17-2168-1.pd