An Estimation of Producer Preferences, and the Wage, Hours, and Gross Sales Effects of Migrant Labor in Alabama's Horticulture Industry

Using 2002 survey data, this study employs log-linear regression analysis to examine the effects of migrant labor on wages, hours, and gross sales in Alabama's horticulture industry. A binomial probit model is added to measure producer decisions to hire migrant workers. The presence of migrant workers is found to raise average wages within green industry firms, but exhibits no significant effects on hours and sales.Labor and Human Capital,

Essays on environmental productivity

The following three essays explore the use of the directional output distance function (Chambers et al., 1996), an economic model originally developed to measure efficiency and productivity for multi-input and multi-output production processes, to assess performance for multi-attributed environmental processes. The first essay illustrates the use of the directional output distance function to construct environmental indices. This model can be used to aggregate multiple environmental attributes into one measure of performance (distance to the frontier) just as an environmental index seeks to combine multiple attributes into one composite measure of performance. A nonparametric directional output distance function is estimated for a set of biological indicators that were collected to assess stream condition as part of a national study conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Modeling these indicators as outputs, the directional output distance function yields a similar measure of performance to the existing EPA index for this data. The second essay uses the directional output distance function to derive estimates of marginal performance for each of the biological indicators from the first essay, where marginal performance is defined as the degree to which increasing each of the indicators reduces an observation's distance to the output frontier. The directional output distance function is estimated parametrically, using the quadratic form. The resulting estimates of marginal performance are then used to develop a metric-weighting scheme that incorporates each metric's marginal contribution to performance, at each site, and to then construct an individually-weighted version of the original equally-weighted EPA index. The third essay uses the directional output distance function to derive shadow price estimates for a set of non-marketed wetland functions in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region Nanticoke River Watershed. The results suggest that for some sites in this watershed, the value of improved wetland condition outweighs the potential value of agricultural production. The average estimated values are also consistent with payments being made by the federal Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) in the study area

An Estimation of Producer Preferences, and the Wage, Hours, and Gross Sales Effects of Migrant Labor in Alabama's Horticulture Industry

Using 2002 survey data, this study employs log-linear regression analysis to examine the effects of migrant labor on wages, hours, and gross sales in Alabama's horticulture industry. A binomial probit model is added to measure producer decisions to hire migrant workers. The presence of migrant workers is found to raise average wages within green industry firms, but exhibits no significant effects on hours and sales

Performance-based environmental index weights: Are all metrics created equal?

This study estimates the marginal contribution to environmental performance made by six separate macroinvertebrate metrics included in an additive index developed to measure wadeable stream condition. We model the metrics as outputs in a quadratic directional output distance function, which serves as an alternate measure of environmental performance, and then derive the marginal performance for each metric. We use the resulting estimates of marginal performance to develop a metric weighting scheme that incorporates each metric's marginal contribution to performance, at each site, and then construct a weighted version of the original index. The performance-weighted index provides a similar measure of overall performance in this application, while also adding new information on the relative importance of each of the index metrics. This represents a new application of existing methods to measure productivity, and is closely related to the environmental shadow price literature.Environmental index weights Environmental performance Directional distance function