Mark Dickie

Market Transactions and Hypothetical Demand Data: A Comparative Study

Abstract Empirical demand studies have been based on data from (a) actual market transactions or (b) hypothetical questions. Many social scientists are skeptical of the accuracy of responses to hypothetical questions, yet few studies assess the quality of this type of data. This article directly compares the demand relations obtained from actual market transactions and hypothetical survey responses using primary field data and limited dependent variable regression analysis. Using a log-likelihood ratio test, the null hypothesis that the two demand relations are statistically identical cannot be rejected at the 1% level of significance.

Do Classroom Experiments Increase Learning in Introductory Microeconomics

Abstract: Interest in using classroom experiments to teach economics is increasing whereas empirical evidence on how experiments affect learning is limited and mixed. The author used a pretest-posttest control-group design to test whether classroom experiments and grade incentives that reward performance in experiments affect learning of introductory microeconomics. The author measured the partial effects of experiments independently of instructor quality and teaching methods using Test of Understanding in College Economics scores. Experiments without incentives are associated with higher posttest scores and greater improvement over pretest scores, but grade incentives may offset benefits of experiments. Controlling for student aptitude and other characteristics, limiting influence of potential outliers, or adjusting for potential selection bias from incomplete observation of test scores does not alter the conclusion that experiments increase learning whereas grade incentives do not.

Willingness to Pay for ozone control: Inferences from the demand for medical care☆

Abstract The paper applies a discrete choice version of the household production approach to the valuation of nonmarket goods. Willingness to pay for tropospheric ozone control is estimated using medical care demand under assumptions of input necessity and weak complementarity. In example calculations, individuals living in high ozone areas are willing to pay over

Formation of Risk Beliefs, Joint Production and Willingness to Pay to Avoid Skin Cancer

170 annually for an environment in which ozone concentrations never exceed 12 pphm. Willingness to pay figures are two to four times larger than medical expense savings caused by the same ozone reductions. Estimates obtained are compared with results of previous studies, and proposed ozone control measures are discussed.

Valuing Reduced Morbidity : A Household Production Approach

This paper uses a survey of risk beliefs about skin cancer to provide new evidence on how people view risky situations. Empirical results presented are based on a measure of risk beliefs held at the time of the survey. Key findings are that risk beliefs about skin cancer account for factors including skin type, complexion, and sunlight exposure history. Also, the connection between risk beliefs and willingness to pay is explored by using reservation prices for a sun protection product. A new method for treating joint production in a household production framework is developed to support this analysis. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

Defensive Behavior and Damage Cost Methods

Individuals frequently apply a household technology to combine public and private goods in the production of nonmarket commodities for final consumption. Hori [9] demonstrates that in these situations, market prices of private goods together with production function parameters may encode enough information to value both public goods used as inputs and nonmarket final consumption commodities. Although this valuation methodology is objective and market based, it seldom has been applied for three reasons. First, underlying technical relations either are unknown or data needed to estimate them are unavailable. Second, even if relevant technical information is at hand, the consumers budget surface in commodity space may not be differentiable when joint production and other complicating factors are present. As a consequence, the commodity bundle chosen is consistent with an infinite number of marginal rates of substitution and values of public goods and nonmarket commodities remain unknown. Third, joint production and nonconstant returns to scale also pose serious difficulties when taking the closely related valuation approach of estimating the area behind demand curves for private good inputs and final consumption commodities [2]. This paper presents a unique application of the household production approach to valuing public goods and nonmarket commodities which allows for certain types of joint production and addresses key problems identified by previous authors. Technical relationships are estimated between health attributes, private goods, and air quality. Data used in the analysis are drawn from a special survey designed to implement the household production approach. Econometric estimates allow for censored dependent variables and cross-equation error correlations in panel data using tobit models with individual-specific variance components. Key results are: (1) attempts

Interregional Wage Disparities, Relocation Costs, and Labor Mobility in Canada

Suppose you wake up one morning and stumble into the kitchen to make coffee. You flip on the TV. While filling the coffee pot with tap water, you learn that your water supply is contaminated with Giardia lamblia. The newscaster reports that consuming contaminated water can lead to giardiasis, a common diarrheal illness that typically lasts a few days but can drag on for weeks. Infected persons may have to miss work or school or, in rare cases, may require hospitalization. Local authorities recommend boiling tap water before consuming it or finding alternate sources like bottled water. What do you do?

Parental Behavior and the Value of Children's Health: A Health Production Approach

This paper evaluates possible reasons why interregional wage differences might persist over long periods of time, such as a century or more. A general equilibrium model of interacting regions is developed which can consider explanations including interregional differences in production costs, changes in relocation (migration) costs, and differences in interregional transfer payments. Implications from the model are tested using panel microdata from the Canadian Labour Market Activity Surveys of 1989 and 1990. Key findings are that younger, better educated, native English-speaking workers, who presumably have better information and lower mobility costs, appear to have the smallest interregional wage differences. Thus, because the extent of spatial wage dispersion varies across workers with different characteristics, changes in the pattern of spatial wage disparities over time may be in part a demographic phenomenon.

Barriers to professional entry: how effective is the 150-hour rule?

Data on individual children and on sibling pairs are used to examine how family resource allocations affect childrens health and to estimate willingness to pay for reduced acute illness in children. Results highlight the importance of accounting for the endogeneity of child health and suggest that children with greater stocks of health capital whose parents invest in preventive and remedial medical care experience fewer days of illness. Estimated willingness to pay to avoid one day of illness-induced school loss is about

Interregional Wage Differentials in the United States: A Survey

100 to