VALUING WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT: A UTAH DEER HERD

Managers of public wildlife resources generally are concerned with enhancing the quality of recreation by increasing wildlife through habitat manipulation. However, current recreation valuation studies have focused upon variables that are inappropriate for use in these management decisions. The economic criterion for these decisions should be the value of a change in the stock of the wildlife population compared to its cost. An estimate of such a value was made for the Oak Creek deer herd in Utah, using a household production function approach in an optimal control framework. The value of an additional deer in the herd was estimated to be approximately $40.00.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

THE LOCATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF WESTERN NONMETRO HIGH TECH MANUFACTURERS: AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS

The Tobit estimation procedure was used to determine the factors which influence the location and size of high technology manufacturers in nonmetro areas in the West. The results indicate that high tech branch plants tend to locate in populous counties adjacent to Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Percent of local employment in manufacturing and agriculture was inversely related to branch plant employment, and the stock of human capital was not significantly related to employment. High tech unit plants also exhibited a propensity to locate in the more populous counties. Unlike branch plants, the unit concerns were more likely to develop or locate in communities with a highly educated work force and at greater distances from metro areas. The unit plants better fit the perception of high tech plants selecting high amenity locations with abundant skilled labor.Industrial Organization, Labor and Human Capital,

Status of the Instream Flow Issue in Arkansas, 1987

Expansion of Arkansas\u27 population with concurrent increases in the state\u27s domestic, industrial, and agricultural water uses and possible out-of-state diversion are placing substantial demands on the state\u27s water resources. In an attempt to address this growing concern, Act 1051 (1985) of the Arkansas legislature was passed requiring the determination of present and future state water needs. A specific area of this mandate was the quantification of instream flow requirements. Basic instream flow needs are maintenance of the aquatic ecosystem and dependent riparian environment. Flow reservation may compliment other instream uses such as recreation, navigation, water quality, and groundwater recharge. However, offstream uses (e.g. irrigation and industry) may compete for these same flows and often at the most critical time of year. In order to answer questions concerning instream flow requirements, over 40 methods of instream flow determination have been developed, the majority in the semi-arid western United States. These individual procedures may be classified into four major methodologies: (1) discharge, (2) single transect, (3)multiple transect, and (4) regression analysis of historical data. Requirements of these four types vary according to necessary level of expertise, time and effort expended, and monetary outlay. In one year, requests for fish and wildlife instream flow needs for approximately 60 stream reaches throughout Arkansas limited the possible options. Modification and further development of a well-known method is outlined as an initial step in the process of quantifying Arkansas\u27 instream flow needs. Examples are given for some of the major river basins throughout the state

Theoretical and Applied Economics of Water Demand Management: All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Economists have advocated efficient use of water resources through the demand management tool of marginal cost (including opportunity cost) pricing policies for several decades, using increasingly sophisticated models to point out the welfare gains of this policies. More recently, water markets have become de rigueur in many articles, books and texts as a way to automatically include both delivery and opportunity costs. A review of the experience in both the developed and developing world, however, suggests that the adoption of these policies has been infrequent at best, particularly for irrigated agriculture. The objective of this paper is to review existing demand management activities in many countries, including the U.S., and to try to provide some understanding of the failure of water management agencies to employ these tools. Water subsidies for agricultural water are found in many developed countries, such as the United States, and widely among developing countries, even when water is in critically short supply. Most papers and reports describing the application of marginal cost pricing and/or water markets, the same few references appear over and over (Chile, Israel, and Australia, for example). Many authors suggest that the reason for the widespread absence of full marginal cost pricing and/or water markets lies in the rent seeking behavior of current beneficiaries and the inertia in water management systems. While these barriers are important, technical and institutional difficulties also playa critical role, especially in irrigated agriculture. Based on examples from many countries, it is clear that water measurement at the user level does not exist and that it will be costly to implement and maintain, reducing the ability of managers to apply efficient pricing. Moreover, creating water (use) rights also requires some form of water control and measurement at the user level. For systems with many very small farmers, the problem is multiplied substantially. Institutional barriers also are difficult to overcome. Some of these barriers, such as reluctant administrations and powerful lobbies, reflect, at least in part, the kind of rent-seeking and inertia economists (and others) often point out. Some involve the economic reality of long-term leasehold interest and consequent large losses of investment value. Some are related to institutions other than those for water, such as insecure and/or fragmented land tenure. Still others are cultural and social, and represent a broad consensus of society, rather than specific beneficiary groups. The many examples of the institutional and technical difficulties suggest that as demand management increasingly becomes the rhetoric of water economists, and the water management community in general, finding workable solutions to the those problems is absolutely essential if efficient water pricing and water markets are to be implemented

Quantifying the impact of technical barriers to trade : a framework for analysis

There has been increasing use of technical regulations as instruments of commercial policy in the context of multilateral, regional, and global trade. These nontariff barriers are of special concern to developing countries, which may bear additional costs in meeting mandatory standards. Many industrial and developing countries express frustration with regulations that vary across their export markets, require duplicative conformity procedures, and are continually revised to exclude imports. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of the policy debate and methodological issues surrounding product standards and technical barriers to trade. They begin with a review of the policy context driving demand for empirical analysis of standards in trade, then provide an analytical overview of the role of standards and their relationship to trade. They then review methodological approaches that have been used to analyze standards and theirimpact on trade. Their main interest lies in advancing techniques that are practical and may be fruitfully extended to the empirical analysis of regulations and trade. They discuss concrete steps that could be taken to move forward a practical, policy-relevant program of empirical research. Such steps would include: a) administering firm-level surveys in developing countries; b) devising methods for assessing how much standards restrict trade; and c) establishing econometric approaches that could be applied to survey and microeconomic data, to improve understanding of the role of standards in exports.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Trade and Services,Trade and Regional Integration

If You Can't Trust the Farmer, Who Can You Trust? The Effect of Certification Types on Purchases of Organic Produce

An information asymmetry exists in the market for organic produce since consumers cannot determine whether produce is organically or conventionally grown. Various methods may solve this problem including signaling, reputation, and certification. Signaling and reputation may not work well, because signals are noisy, and reputation may be difficult for a producer to establish. Certification of the farm and its growing methods shows the most promise. A survey instrument testing the efficacy of certification is presented along with empirical analysis suggesting that no notable difference existed between independent certification methods, although independent certification had significantly different effects than self-certification.Asymmetric information, Certification, Ordered probit, Organic produce, Agribusiness,

The cost of compliance with product standards for firms in developing countries: an econometric study

Standards and technical regulations exist to protect consumer safety or to achieve other goals, such as ensuring the interoperability of telecommunications systems, for example. Standards and technical regulations can, however, raise substantially both start-up and production costs for firms. Maskus, Otsuki, and Wilson develop econometric models to provide the first estimates of the incremental production costs for firms in developing nations in conforming to standards imposed by major importing countries. They use firm-level data generated from 16 developing countries in the World Bank Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Survey Database. Their findings indicate that standards do increase short-run production costs by requiring additional inputs of labor and capital. A 1 percent increase in investment to meet compliance costs in importing countries raises variable production costs by between 0.06 and 0.13 percent, a statistically significant increase. The authors also find that the fixed costs of compliance are nontrivial-approximately $425,000 per firm, or about 4.7 percent of value added on average. The results may be interpreted as one indication of the extent to which standards and technical regulations might constitute barriers to trade. While the relative impact on costs of compliance is relatively small, these costs can be decisive factors driving export success for companies. In this context, there is scope for considering that the costs associated with more limited exports to countries with import regulations may not conform to World Trade Organization rules encouraging harmonization of regulations to international standards, for example. Policy solutions then might be sought by identifying the extent to which subsidies or public support programs are needed to offset the cost disadvantage that arises from nonharmonized technical regulations.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance,Administrative&Regulatory Law,Science Education

GLUMIP 2.0: SAS/IML Software for Planning Internal Pilots

Internal pilot designs involve conducting interim power analysis (without interim data analysis) to modify the final sample size. Recently developed techniques have been described to avoid the type~I error rate inflation inherent to unadjusted hypothesis tests, while still providing the advantages of an internal pilot design. We present GLUMIP 2.0, the latest version of our free SAS/IML software for planning internal pilot studies in the general linear univariate model (GLUM) framework. The new analytic forms incorporated into the updated software solve many problems inherent to current internal pilot techniques for linear models with Gaussian errors. Hence, the GLUMIP 2.0 software makes it easy to perform exact power analysis for internal pilots under the GLUM framework with independent Gaussian errors and fixed predictors.

A COMPARISON OF THE ECONOMIC RENT AND CONSUMER SURPLUS METHODS OF VALUING RECREATION BOATING SITES

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The Welfare Effects of Restricting Off-Highway Vehicle Access to Public Lands

Off highway vehicle (OHV) use is a rapidly growing outdoor activity that results in a host of environmental and management problems. Federal agencies have been directed to develop travel management plans to improve recreation experiences, reduce social conflicts and diminish environmental impacts of OHVs. We examine the effect of land access restrictions on the welfare of OHV enthusiasts in Utah using Murdock’s (2006) unobserved heterogeneity random utility model. Our models indicate that changing access to public lands from fully “open” to “limited” results in relatively small welfare losses, but that prohibiting access results in much larger welfare losses.Off-highway Vehicles, Recreational Access, Unobserved Heterogeneity, Random Utility Model, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,