ALBERT

Description:    Significant attention has been given to the improvement of environmental flows in recent years. An important factor to reduce the opportunity cost of flood creation needed for the environment is the access to storage capacity. Reallocating storage capacity from agriculture to environment, however, may have important impacts on irrigation water prices and the vitality of irrigation enterprises. In this paper, the long term impacts of storage capacity reallocation on the agricultural sector are analysed. It is shown that a reduction in storage capacity for irrigation water will reduce water prices for each level of dam content and shift the distribution of dam content to the left. As a result, the value of the irrigation sector is reduced. The impact on average water price is, however, indeterminate, implying that results from previous empirical studies may be valid only locally and that sensitivity analysis is important to show the robustness of empirical results. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9492-8 Authors Chi H. Truong, Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, Macquarie University, Building E4A, Room 452, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    Assessing the Willingness to Pay (WTP) of the general public for climate change mitigation programmes enables governments to understand how much taxpayers are willing to support the implementation of such programs. This paper contributes to the literature on the WTP for climate change mitigation programmes by investigating, in addition to global benefits, the ancillary benefits of climate change mitigation. It does so by considering local and personal benefits arising from climate change policies. The Contingent Valuation Method is used to elicit the WTP for ancillary and global benefits of climate mitigation policies in the Basque Country, Spain. Results show that WTP estimates are 53–73% higher when ancillary benefits are considered. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9491-9 Authors Alberto Longo, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast—UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health (NI), Gibson Institute for Land, Food and the Environment, MBC Lisburn Road, Belfast, BT9 7BL UK David Hoyos, Department of Applied Economics III (Econometrics and Statistics), University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Lehendakari Aguirre, 83, 48015 Bilbao, Spain Anil Markandya, BC3. Basque Centre for Climate Change, Gran Vía, 35-2, 48009 Bilbao, Spain Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    Current international law strongly favors policies designed to make imports safer (e.g., in terms of invasive species) over policies explicitly designed to discourage imports. We show that this preference may be counterproductive. A externality in trade is incorporated into a political-economy model of policy formation. Nations can address the externality by inspecting cargo and imposing a fine on contaminated imports. We compare the equilibrium when inspection is the only policy option relative to the equilibrium that emerging when nations may also manipulate the tariff. Ruling out the tariff causes socially excessive stringency in general, social welfare losses if domestic supply is highly inelastic, and in some circumstances an increase in the real tariff, measured as the difference between world and domestic prices. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9490-x Authors Michael Margolis, Department of Economics, Gettysburg College, 300 North Washington Street, Gettysburg, PA 17325, USA Jason F. Shogren, Stroock Professor of Natural Resource Conservation and Management, Laramie, WY, USA Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    Scientists and economists are increasingly worried that biofuels production is leading to land use changes in the form of competition with food crops or loss of natural ecosystems. I estimate acreage conversion in response to shocks in sugarcane (a biofuels feedstock) and soybean (thought to be affected by United States corn ethanol production) prices in Brazil at a national and regional level. Using county-level data from 1973 to 2005, I consider a dynamic panel data model of input demand for agricultural land, conditioning on price changes of other commodities. The short-run crop-price elasticity of sugarcane acreage in Brazil is estimated to be approximately zero, whereas the elasticity of soybean acreage is 0.9 when both spot and futures prices change. The regional estimates for soybeans show considerable variation, and are highest in areas of ecological importance, such as the cerrado . Sugarcane estimates are more homogeneous. These results should be taken into account in impact assessments of biofuels. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9493-7 Authors Catherine Hausman, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 207 Giannini Hall #3310, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310, USA Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    We implement a controlled, multi-site experiment to develop and test guidance principles for benefits transfers. These argue that when transferring across relatively similar sites, simple mean value transfers are to be preferred but that when sites are relatively dissimilar then value function transfers will yield lower errors. The paper also provides guidance on the appropriate specification of transferable value functions arguing that these should be developed from theoretical rather than ad-hoc statistical approaches. These principles are tested via a common format valuation study of water quality improvements across five countries. While this provides an idealised tested, results support the above principles and suggest directions for future transfer studies. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9476-8 Authors I. J. Bateman, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK R. Brouwer, Department of Environmental Economics, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands S. Ferrini, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK M. Schaafsma, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK D. N. Barton, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Oslo, Norway A. Dubgaard, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark B. Hasler, National Environmental Research Institute (NERI), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark S. Hime, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK I. Liekens, Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Boeretang, Belgium S. Navrud, Department of Economics and Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway L. De Nocker, Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Boeretang, Belgium R. Ščeponavičiūtė, Center for Environmental Policy, Vilnius, Lithuania D. Semėnienė, Center for Environmental Policy, Vilnius, Lithuania Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    The relocation of Athens Airport provided a rare experimental context in which residents experienced significant changes in noise levels due to the introduction or removal of aircraft noise. This paper reports the results from surveys around both airport locations, using stated choice experiments to estimate values for aircraft noise. The respondents were offered actual inter-temporal noise change scenarios rather than hypothetical variations, which is uncommon in the literature, incorporating the presence or absence of an airport and other relevant transport attributes that also changed with the airport relocation. Whilst there is some variation in the valuation of the airport closure and opening, when these values are adjusted to reflect the actual change in decibels, there is remarkably little difference between the old and new airports. However, a significant variation in aircraft noise values is identified between different areas, with respect to education and to a lesser extent income. Our preferred estimate of the monthly household willingness to pay for terminating aircraft noise exposure is 13.12€ and for avoiding the onset of aircraft noise is 9.53€. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-25 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9482-x Authors Sotirios Thanos, School of Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University, Sir William Arrol Building, EH14 4AS Edinburgh, UK Mark Wardman, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Abigail L. Bristow, Transport Studies Group, Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    This paper concerns the formation of International Environmental Agreements under uncertainty about environmental damage with different models of learning (complete learning, partial learning or no learning). The results of the existing literature are generally pessimistic: the possibility of either complete or partial learning generally reduces the level of global welfare that can be achieved from forming an IEA relative to no learning. That literature regards uncertainty as a parameter common to all countries, so that countries are identical ex ante as well as ex post . In this paper we extend the literature to the case where there is no correlation between damage costs across countries; each country is uncertain about a particular parameter (in our case the benefit-cost ratio) drawn from a common distribution but, ex post , each country’s realized parameter value is independently drawn. Consequently, while countries remain identical ex ante , they may be heterogeneous ex post . We show that this change reinforces the negative conclusions about the effects of partial learning on international environmental agreements, but, under certain conditions, moderates the negative conclusions about the effects of complete learning. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-15 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9477-7 Authors Charles D. Kolstad, Department of Economics and Bren School, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93110, USA Alistair Ulph, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester, M13 9PL Manchester, UK Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    Indoor air pollution (IAP) from cooking and heating stoves is a major cause of acute respiratory infections (ARI) and a serious health risk in developing countries. This paper examines improvements in respiratory health for children five and under in rural China resulting from stove and behavioural interventions to reduce IAP. The analysis uses data from a World Bank/Government of China project completed in 2006, whereby a large number of rural households from four provinces in China were subject to different combinations of stove improvement and behavioural interventions to reduce IAP levels and exposure. Difference-in-difference and matching models show that both stove and behavioural interventions were effective in reducing the incidence of ARI, although the latter are more cost effective. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9479-5 Authors Fei Yu, Colby College, 4000 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, ME 04901, USA Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    Recent studies suggest that some of the most contaminated waste sites in the United States have idiosyncratic or no discernable effects on nearby property values. This paper presents a meta-analysis of the literature measuring the economic impact of sites harboring waste materials on real estate values. A sample of 46 North American studies issued from 1971 to 2008 yields 129 distinct estimates that survive outlier diagnostics. The estimation results are highly robust and significant across estimators and specifications. They suggest that all classes of waste sites affect real estate prices, but sites classified as hazardous, especially aquatic hazardous sites, are associated with the greatest discounts. The estimated impacts of nonhazardous waste and nuclear sites are not statistically different from one another. Surprisingly, estimated impacts associated with sites included on the EPA’s National Priority List (NPL) are generally smaller (although still statistically significant) than those for non-NPL hazardous waste sites. The estimates for sites in Canada and Mountain, Middle Atlantic, and South Atlantic states exceed those for other regions. Larger impact areas and aggregated data, such as census block observations, are associated with lesser estimates. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-27 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9467-9 Authors John B. Braden, Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics, University of Illinois, 1301 W. Gregory Drive, Room 304, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Xia Feng, Office of Institutional Analysis & Effectiveness, College of William & Mary, Old Dominion Hall, James Blair Drive, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187, USA DooHwan Won, Department of Economics, Sungshin Women’s University, 249-1, Dongseon-Dong 3-GA, Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, 136-742 Korea Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460

Description:    We explore the implications of the farsightedness assumption on the conjectures of players in a coalitional Great Fish War model with symmetric players, derived from the seminal model of Levhari and Mirman (Bell J Econ 11:649–661, 1980 ). The farsightedness assumption for players in a coalitional game acknowledges the fact that a deviation from a single player will lead to the formation of a new coalition structure as the result of possibly successive moves of her rivals in order to improve their payoffs. It departs from mainstream game theory in that it relies on the so-called rational conjectures , as opposed to the traditional Nash conjectures formed by players on the behavior of their rivals. For values of the biological parameter and the discount factor more plausible than the ones used in the current literature, the farsightedness assumption predicts a wide scope for cooperation in non-trivial coalitions, sustained by credible threats of successive deviations that defeat the shortsighted payoff of any prospective deviator. Compliance or deterrence of deviations may also be addressed by acknowledging that information on the fish stock or on the catch policies actually implemented may be available only with a delay (dynamic farsightedness). In that case, the requirements are stronger and the sizes and number of possible farsighted stable coalitions are different. In the sequential move version, which could mimic some characteristics of fishery models, the results are not less appealing, even if the dominant player or dominant coalition with first move advantage assumption provides a case for cooperation with the traditional Nash conjectures. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s10640-011-9501-y Authors Michèle Breton, HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte Sainte Catherine, Montréal, H3T 2A7 Canada Michel Y. Keoula, HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte Sainte Catherine, Montréal, H3T 2A7 Canada Journal Environmental and Resource Economics Online ISSN 1573-1502 Print ISSN 0924-6460