Gale E. West

Consumer Confusion Over the Significance of Meat Attributes: The Case of Veal

Animal scientists today can produce pale colored grain-fed veal, thus achieving a high quality grade, while averting concerns over unethical treatment of milk-fed calves and excessive antibiotic use in milk-fed veal production. It is feared, however, that consumers may reject pale cuts of veal labeled as Grain-fed. Random parameter logit analyses of data from repeated choice experiments conducted in six suburban supermarkets in Quebec (n = 1027) revealed that intrinsic color of veal meat and extrinsic labeling of production method may significantly influence product choice; however, the direction of effects were inconsistent across ethnic and non-ethnic consumers and between experienced and non-experienced consumers of veal meat. Price effects were significant, but with a positive mean and a large standard deviation, indicating that, for many consumers, price may act as an surrogate indicator of veal meat quality. Older freshness dates were significantly discounted. It thus appears that most consumers will not categorically reject pale veal meat with a grain-fed label.

Best Management Practices to Enhance Water Quality: Who is Adopting Them?

This study investigates the determinants affecting producers’ adoption of some Best Management Practices (BMPs). Priors about the signs of certain variables are explicitly accounted for by testing for inequality restrictions through importance sampling. Education, gender, age, and on-farm residence are found to have significant effects on the adoption of some BMPs. Farms with larger animal production are more apt to implement manure management practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Also, farms with larger cultivated acres are more inclined to implement herbicide control practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Belonging to an agro-environment club has a positive impact for most BMPs.

Leisure activities and service knowledge and use among the rural elderly.

This exploratory study uses Andersens service utilization model to examine the relationship between the leisure activity patterns of older people and their knowledge and use of health and social services. Hierarchical stepwise multiple regression analyses of data from 418 people ages 65 and older in rural Québec revealed that leisure activity patterns may explain a greater amount of variation in service knowledge and use than conventional need characteristics such as physical and psychological health. Various activity patterns were significantly related to knowledge and use of services even after controlling for variables such as age and health status. Although some types of leisure activities appeared to augment knowledge and use of services, others seemed to deter it. Future explanatory models of service utilization among the elderly should be expanded to include leisure activity patterns.

Technical and Environmental efficiencies and Best Management Practices in Agriculture

An Input Distance Function (IDF) is estimated to empirically evaluate and analyse the technical and environmental efficiencies of 210 farms located in the Chaudière watershed (Quebec), where water quality problems are particularly acute because of the production of undesirable outputs that are jointly produced with agricultural products. The true IDF is approximated by a flexible translog functional form estimated using a full information maximum likelihood method. Technical and environmental efficiencies are disaggregated across farms and account for spatial variations. Our results show that there is a significant correlation between the two efficiencies. The IDF is used to compute the cumulative Malmquist productivity index and the Fisher index. The two indices are used to measure changes in technology, profitability, efficiency and productivity in response to the adoption of two selected Best Management Practices (BMPs) whose objective is to reduce water pollution. We found significant differences across BMPs regarding the direction and the magnitude of their effect.

Model Specification and Economies of Size in the Canadian Brewing Industry

The Canadian brewing industry operates in an international market and competes with rival brewers operating on a much larger scale. This reality was widely exposed during the negotiations of the Canada-US Trade Agreement (CUSTA) and has resurfaced more recently through press coverage of the lingering beer dispute between Canada and the United States. This dispute started in 1990 when the United States filed a complaint with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT) about Canadas discriminatory provincial marketing regulations. Canada responded shortly thereafter by initiating its own complaint, arguing that several states were enforcing discriminatory excise taxes (or tax credits) in violation of Article III of the GATT about national treatment. By April 30, 1992, GATT ruled in favor of the plaintiff in both cases and recommended that discrimina-

Risk aversion and willingness to pay for water quality: The case of non-farm rural residents

Stated choice experiments are used to investigate the economic valuation of rural residents living in the province of Quebec for water quality improvements. In Quebec, rural residents played an important role in the setting of stricter environmental regulations. Unlike most stated choice experiments about the valuation of improvements in water quality, this study explicitly accounts for risk in the design and analysis of choice experiments. Risk in phosphorus and coliform reductions is introduced through a three-point uniform distribution in the choice sets. The results show greater support for constant absolute risk aversion preferences than for constant relative risk aversion. Rural residents value coliform and phosphorus reductions and the more educated ones are particularly willing to see the government tax farmers and taxpayers to secure such reductions. As the science improves and risk in water quality outcomes decrease and as the political weight of non-farm rural residents increase, it should be easier for governments to replace voluntary cost-share programs by polluter-payer programs.

Willingness to pay for BMP-induced water quality benefits and deviations around expected water quality outcomes

This paper investigates the economic valuation of the benefits accruing to farmers derived from expected water quality improvements stemming from the adoption of best management practices (BMPs). The study applies the stated-choice experiments administered on a sample of farmers located in the Chaudière and Etchemin watersheds just south of Quebec City to characterize the preferences of farmers in terms of the mean and standard deviation of phosphorus and coliform reductions, and the costs borne by local farmers and by taxpayers in the province of Quebec to support the adoption of BMPs. The results show significant observed and unobserved heterogeneity regarding farmers’ marginal utility of phosphorus and coliform reductions. The distribution of risk attitudes encompasses all three types: risk aversion, risk neutrality and risk loving. Benefit valuation decreases with age, but the age effect is smaller than the heterogeneity across farmers of a given age. Farmers experience disutility when their own cost or taxpayers’ cost increases, but a private dollar is worth substantially more to farmers than a public one.