ECOLABELS AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY: SOME PRELIMINARY RESULTS

The public provision of information about the environmental performance of firms and products has generated considerable enthusiasm and become a common instrument of environmental regulation, even though the economic analysis of the social welfare properties of these policies is quite limited. This paper proposes a model for examining these properties.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Does the Family Investment Hypothesis Explain Immigrant Labor Market Activity?

No abstract.

Effects of Demographics and Attitudes on WTP for Fuel Import Reductions through Ethanol Purchases

imported fuel, willingness to pay, Marketing,

Competitive Bidding as a Means of Extracting and Demonstrating Farmer Willingness-to-Grow an Alternative Crop

Switchgrass has been identified as a model renewable energy feedstock. This article describes a project to evaluate the feasibility of producing a switchgrass crop in Tennessee dedicated to energy production. An unusual feature of this research/demonstration project is its use of a competitive bidding process to elicit estimates of the willingness of Tennessee producers to displace traditional crops with switchgrass. One goal of this process was to supplement survey data with real world information that would increase the credibility of the project\u27s results among potential market participants. This approach may prove interesting to readers faced with dwindling experiment station resources

AJAE Appendix: Challenges to the Development of a Dedicated Energy Crop

The material contained herein is supplementary to the article named in the title and published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 89, Number 5, December 2007.Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Willingness to Pay for Emission Reductions with E85

This study examines consumers' WTP for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from E85 as opposed to gasoline. Data were collected via a contingent choice exercise in a 2009 national online survey. As part of the fuel choice exercise, several fuel attributes were allowed to vary including emission reductions, import level, proximity of fuel availability, price, and fuel blend (E85 or regular gasoline). A random parameters model with demographics and attitudes interacted with emission reductions was estimated. The resulting estimates suggest that, overall the WTP for an emission reduction is not statistically significant. However, for some demographic and attitudinal profiles, the WTP is significant. An example profile includes younger age, female, concerned about climate change, not supportive of additional drilling, supportive of farmland being used for fuel, own or are likely to own a FlexFuel vehicle, and primary vehicle not an SUV.Willingness to Pay, Emission Reductions, E85, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Q41, Q51,

The complex links between governance and biodiversity

We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, and may or may not affect resource use. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological: Simple models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other important causes and control variables pivotal to the relationship between humans and natural resources. By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a well known recent study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests, elephants, and rhinoceros are fragile to simple conceptual and methodological refinements.Environmental Economics and Policy,