John Tressler

The Value of Statistical Life and the Economics of Landmine Clearance in Developing Countries

Summary This paper presents estimates of the value of statistical life (VSL) in rural Thailand using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. These estimates are applied to an economic analysis of landmine clearance. The estimated VSL of US

WHICH JOURNAL RANKINGS BEST EXPLAIN ACADEMIC SALARIES? EVIDENCE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

250000 suggests that the value of lives saved from landmine clearance is at least an order of magnitude greater than the values used in existing studies.

Constant returns to scale and competitive equilibrium under uncertainty

The ranking of an academic journal is important to authors, universities, journal publishers and research funders. Rankings are gaining prominence as countries adopt regular research assessment exercises that especially reward publication in high impact journals. Yet even within a rankings-oriented discipline like economics there is no agreement on how aggressively lower ranked journals are down-weighted and in how wide is the universe of journals considered. Moreover, since it is typically less costly for authors to cite superfluous references, whether of their own volition or prompted by editors, than it is to ignore relevant ones, rankings based on citations may be easily manipulated. In contrast, when the merits of publication in one journal or another are debated during hiring, promotion and salary decisions, the evaluators are choosing over actions with costly consequences. We therefore look to the academic labor market, using data on economists in the University of California system to relate their lifetime publications in 700 different academic journals to salary. We test amongst various sets of journal rankings, and publication discount rates, to see which are most congruent with the returns implied by the academic labor market.

Evaluating research – peer review team assessment and journal based bibliographic measures: New Zealand PBRF research output scores in 2006

Abstract This paper considers the implications of the assumption of constant returns to scale in expected utility maximizing models of the competitive firm or industry in which markets for risk are absent. Under widely used assumptions about risk preferences it is shown that with constant returns to scale average profits are more than necessary to cover the implicit costs of risk-bearing. When the free entry of identical firms is possible this assumption about technology is shown to be incompatible with the assumption that entrepreneurs are risk averse.

Research output in New Zealand economics departments 2000–2006: A stock approach*

This paper concerns the relationship between the assessment of the research of individual academics by peer or expert review teams with a variety of bibliometric schemes based on journal quality weights. Specifically, for a common group of economists from New Zealand departments of economics the relationship between Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) Research Output measures for those submitting new research portfolios in 2006 are compared with evaluations of journal-based research over the 2000–2005 assessment period. This comparison identifies the journal weighting schemes that appear most similar to PBRF peer evaluations. The paper provides an indication of the ‘power or aggressiveness’ of PBRF evaluations in terms of the weighting given to quality. The implied views of PBRF peer review teams are also useful in assessing common assumptions made in evaluating journal based research.

Ranking Economics Departments in Terms of Residual Productivity: New Zealand Economics Departments, 2000-2006

This paper considers the research productivity of New Zealand based economics departments from 2000 to 2006. It examines journal based research output across departments and individuals using six output measures. We show that the faculty at Otago and Canterbury as of April 2007 performed consistently well over the period, with Otago generally the highest ranked department. The output measures used place different emphasis on ‘quality’ versus ‘quantity’. Which measure is used has a significant influence on the rankings of Auckland, Victoria and Waikato. The inclusion of ‘visitors’ and the influence of research stars are also considered.

The Value of Statistical Life and Cost-Benefit Evaluations of Landmine Clearance in Cambodia

This paper utilizes a human-capital approach for ranking the research productivity of academic departments. Our approach provides rankings in terms of residual research output after controlling for the key characteristics of each department’s academic staff. More specifically, we estimate residual research output rankings for all of New Zealand’s economics departments based on their publication performance over the 2000 to 2006 period. We do so after taking into account the following characteristics of each department’s academic staff: gender, experience, seniority, academic credentials, and academic rank. The paper demonstrates that the rankings generated by the residual research approach and those generated by traditional approaches to research rankings may be significantly different for some departments. These differences are important in determining the likely efficiency impact of research assessment exercises.

The Relevance of the “h‐” and “g‐” Index to Economics in the Context of A Nation‐Wide Research Evaluation Scheme: The New Zealand Case

Development agencies spend approximately US

CITATIONS OR JOURNAL QUALITY: WHICH IS REWARDED MORE IN THE ACADEMIC LABOR MARKET?

400 million per year on landmine clearance. Yet many cost-benefit evaluations suggest that landmine clearance is socially wasteful because costs appear to far outweigh social benefits. This paper presents new estimates of the benefits of clearing landmines based on a contingent valuation survey in two provinces in rural Cambodia where we asked respondents questions that elicit their tradeoffs between money and the risk of death from landmine accidents. The estimated Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) is US

Researcher rank stability across alternative output measurement schemes in the context of a time limited research evaluation: the New Zealand case

0.4 million. In contrast, most previous studies of landmine clearance use foregone income or average GDP per capita, which has a lifetime value of only US