Olivier Beaumais

What are Households Willing to Pay for Better Tap Water Quality? A Cross-Country Valuation Study

We estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for better quality of tap water on a unique cross-section sample from 10 OECD countries. On the pooled sample, households are willing to pay 7.5% of the median annual water bill to improve the tap water quality. The highest relative WTP for better tap water quality was found in the countries with the highest percentage of respondents being unsatisfied with tap water quality because of health concerns. The expected WTP increased with income, education, environmental concern, and health and taste concerns with the tap water.

In search of natural resource-based economies : the case of the Seine estuary (France)

Industry represents about 31% of the upper Normandy region total value-added against 19.5% at national level. The same holds for the employment, since industry accounts for 21% of total local jobs, against 18% at national level. This article attempts to answer the following question: can we explain this specific concentration of economic activity by the natural advantages (water availability, easy access by water) provided by the Seine Estuary? We first characterize “strongly Seine Estuary-dependent” industrial sectors, using simple indicators such as water withdrawals and pollution emissions. Then, we evaluate the influence of these sectors on the forces (labor market pooling, input sharing and knowledge spillovers) that lead to concentration of the economic activity in the Seine estuary. We find strong evidence that this economic activity is still natural resource based.

Ecotax, rational use of energy and CO2 emissions

Many recent studies, theoretical and empirical, have scanned the potential effects of the implementation of an energy or CO2 tax in order to cut down the CO2 emissions. As far as macroeconomic modelling is concerned, several kinds of model have been used: macroeconometric (Standaert, 1992); general equilibrium (Burniaux et al., 1992); or technological (Manne and Richels, 1990; Vouyoukas, 1992). A survey of all these studies can be found in Hoeller et al. (1992). The impacts of such a tax, either at macroeconomic or at energy level, may be considered to be well known, and the same holds true for various accompanying fiscal policies (Laroui and Velthuijsen, 1992). The goal of the present study is to go further, with the introduction of an energy-saving investment programme based on microeconomic calculations along with a gradual CO2/energy tax and other fiscal measures.

Insiders vs. outsiders in the hotel sector

ABSTRACT We investigate whether entering an official hotel classification system is as lucrative as suggested in the tourism management literature. Indeed, in countries in which the official hotel classification system is voluntary, a substantial fraction of hotels choose not to enter the system, and are outsiders. Considering that being classified (being insider) as a predictor of the rate structure may raise an endogeneity issue, we apply the recursive semi-ordered probit model to control for endogeneity and appropriately assess the effect of being classified on price rates. Using a sample of 357 hotels of Corsica, we show that, in contrast to previous research, classification does not provide any rate premium. We also fully derive conditional probabilities and partial effects on differences in conditional probabilities within the recursive semi-ordered probit model.