CURBSIDE RECYCLING: WASTE RESOURCE OR WASTE OF RESOURCES?

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/28/04.Environmental Economics and Policy, Public Economics,

Cheap Talk Revisited: New Evidence from CVM

Two recent studies have shown that “cheap talk” is an effective means of eliminating positive hypothetical bias in experimental and field-auction settings. We further investigate the ability of cheap talk to mitigate positive hypothetical bias in a CVM phone survey administered to over 4,000 households. Positive hypothetical bias is detected in our data by contrasting revealed and stated preference information. However, a short, neutral cheap-talk script appears to exacerbate rather than mitigate the bias. Based on this and mixed evidence from earlier studies, we suggest caution in using cheap talk as an ex ante control for hypothetical bias.cheap talk, hypothetical bias, contingent valuation

Curbside Recycling: Waste Resource or Waste of Resources?

In this paper, we estimate the social net benefits of curbside recycling. Benefits are estimated using survey data on household willingness to pay (WTP) from over 4,000 households across 40 western U.S. cities. We calibrate WTP for hypothetical bias using an experimental design that contrasts stated and revealed preferences. Cost estimates are compiled from previous studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Institute for Local Self Reliance, as well as from in-depth interviews with recycling coordinators in our sampled cities. Remarkably, we find that the estimated mean social net benefit of curbside recycling is almost exactly zero. Therefore, the decision of whether to implement or maintain a curbside recycling program (CRP) must be done on a city-by-city basis.curbside recycling, willingness to pay, social net benefits, hypothetical bias, calibration

Carbon Sequestration and Permit Trading on the Competitive Fringe

This paper makes two contributions to the carbon-sequestration literature. The first is the development of a theoretical framework in which sequestration and permit trading are analyzed jointly in the context of a competitive fringe model. The second is a numerical analysis demonstrating the role market structure, or market power, might play in the determination of an equilibrium sequestration allocation and carbon price. We present three comparative-static cases, the first two of which assess the impact of relative changes in the cost structures of the dominant firm and competitive fringe. For these two cases we find that the equilibrium allocation of sequestration aligns with a higher carbon price when the competitive fringe experiences an increase in its marginal cost parameter. Conversely, the carbon price falls when the dominant firm experiences a decrease in its marginal cost parameter. In a third case we evaluate the impact of stricter regulation on the abatement decisions of the polluting firm. Our results demonstrate the importance of incorporating into empirical supply-side models demand-side information that is reflective of an underlying market structure

GIS-Based Estimation of Marginal Implicit Prices of Housing Amenities: The Case of High Ground and Stagnant Streams

We use GIS and econometric methods to estimate the marginal implicit values of environmental amenities associated with residential land parcels in the mountain town of Logan, Utah. Amenities include proximity to open spaces (such as parks, golf courses and lakes), commercial zones, major roads, streams, and general visibility of surrounding topography in the valley as determined by the elevation of the land parcel. The amenity value estimates are corrected for spatial autocorrelation. We find spatially dependent relationships between (1) a parcel’s value and its elevation, and (2) a parcel’s value and its adjacency to a stagnant stream. To our knowledge, this is the first hedonic study to assess the effect of stream stagnancy on land value

Estimating Hypothetical Bias in Economically Emergent Africa: A Generic Public Good Experiment

This paper reports results from a contingent valuation based public good experiment conducted in the African nation of Botswana. In a sample of university students, we find evidence that stated willingness to contribute to a public good in a hypothetical setting is higher than actual contribution levels. However, results from regression analysis suggest that this is true only in the second round of the experiment, when participants making actual contributions have learned to significantly lower their contribution levels. As globalization expands markets, and economies such as Botswana’s continue to modernize, there is a growing need to understand how hypothetical bias will influence the valuation of public goods.hypothetical bias, public good, willingness to pay, Botswana, Environmental Economics and Policy,

A Bioeconomic Model of the Great Salt Lake Watershed

We present a computable general equilibrium model of the interface between the Great Salt Lake (GSL) ecosystem and the regional economy that impacts the ecosystem. With respect to the ecosystem, the model treats the various representative species as net-energy maximizers and bases population dynamics on the period-by-period sizes of surplus net energy. Energy markets-where predators and prey exchange biomass-determine equilibrium energy prices. With respect to the regional economy, we model five production sectors (at the aggregate industry level)-brine cyst harvesters, the mineral-extraction industry, agriculture, recreation, and a composite-good industry-as well as the household sector. By performing dynamic simulations of the joint ecosystem-regional economy model, we isolate the effects of period-byperiod stochastic changes in salinity levels and an initial shock to species-population levels on the ecological and economic variables of the model

Interactive Scenario Analysis of Exhaustible Resource Problems

We provide several interactive models that can be used in an intermediate- or graduate-level, natural-resource economics course to numerically solve a host of exhaustible-resource problems, and thereby help to verify the intuition and symbolic solutions typically provided in textbooks. Examples are drawn from Tietenberg (2006)

Can Fighting Grade Inflation Help the Bottom Line?

This article uses a rich set of student transcript data to estimate the economic cost incurred by a university when it does not adopt a ‘mean-shift grading policy’ to fight grade inflation. We show that even in the face of moral hazard constraints a university can enhance its profitability by fighting grade inflation with a distribution-shifting policy