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This paper analytically examines the demand for surgical masks following the recent health precautions due to coronavirus. Using a simple linear demand curve and alternatively examining the impacts of requirements that mandate (a) the wearing of masks by frontline workers; (b) suggested but not required masking by the whole public; and (c) compulsory masking by the whole public. The impacts of the different scenarios on the price elasticity of demand are determined along with the slope (or the rate of change) of elasticity. Some of these results differ when a non‐linear demand curve is considered instead. The equilibrium mask prices increase when masks are universally mandated, whereas the consumer surplus is higher when masks are recommended but not mandated. However, the ranking of consumer surplus is shown to be sensitive to the supply elasticity of masks. These considerations enable a structured means to view the demand implications of masking requirements and provide some food for policy thought.

Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, is a reference for sportfishing (SF). In this vein, a significant number of artisanal fishers from the communities surrounding Cerralvo Island-located 215 km from Los Cabos-have opted to offer SF as a tourist service in recent years. The SF has generated unevaluated economic activity in the area. Thus, stakeholders need to know this value to improve their management decision making. Therefore, this research aimed to make a valuation of the recreation service and factors that influence the demand of SF in Cerralvo Island and surrounding areas using the indirect travel cost method (TCM). For this purpose, 275 surveys were performed at the boat ramps in nearby towns. The estimated consumer surplus (EC) was USD 1,886 per visitor. Approximately 28,864 annual recreational sportfishing trips were recorded, so the total annual surplus was USD 54,437,504. The EC outperformed other national sites and was ≈140% higher than the highest valuation made for Los Cabos, which presumably derived from the differences in costs (v. gr., fishing charter, lodging). These values suggest the opportunity for the development of this activity in the study area.

We study the monopolistic competition model with producer-retailer-consumers two-level interaction. The industry is organized according to the Dixit–Stiglitz model. The retailer is the only monopolist. A quadratic utility function represents consumer preferences. We consider the case of the retailer's leadership; namely, we study two types of behavior: with and without the free entry condition. Earlier, we obtained the result: to increase social welfare and/or consumer surplus, the government needs to subsidize (not tax!) retailers. In the presented paper, we develop these results for the situation when the producer imposes an entrance fee for retailers.

In the pressure of excessive resource consumption and serious environmental pollution, governments provide various consumer subsidies to promote sales of energy-saving vehicles, including the energy-saving fuel vehicle (FV) and the pure electric vehicle (EV) in the automobile industry. Utilizing a Hotelling model, this paper explores two competing firms&rsquo, decisions on the selection of green technology innovations for vehicles, namely producing either the energy-saving FV or the pure EV, while the two vehicles are different from each other on not only the energy-saving level but also the consumer&rsquo, s acceptance. We further explore the impact of the government&rsquo, s consumer subsidy on the profits, environment, and consumer surplus. We find that the two competing firms&rsquo, equilibrium selections of green technology innovations for vehicles change as the variable manufacturing cost of the pure EV varies. In particular, when the variable manufacturing cost of the pure EV is moderate, the firm with a lower technology capacity for improving the energy-saving level of the FV (i.e., firm 2) will produce the pure EV while the other firm (i.e., firm 1) produces the energy-saving FV, and the converse is not true. In this case, the decreasing variable manufacturing cost of the pure EV will benefit firm 2 and make firm 1 lose in a competing context. In particular, both firms would charge lower retail prices as the variable manufacturing cost of the EV decreases. In addition, we find that although the consumer subsidy could reduce the purchasing cost for the consumer and promote both firms to produce higher energy-saving level vehicles, a firm can still reduce its retail price under certain conditions because of the competition between the two firms. Finally, we prove that the consumer subsidy can be always beneficial to the environment, while it may hurt the consumer surplus and the firms&rsquo, profits under certain conditions. The results provide suggestions for governments to adopt an appropriate consumer subsidy program from perspectives of the consumer, environment, and economy.

In much of today’s competitive marketplace, consumers have the opportunity to choose where they spend their money based on their examination of a company’s corporate social responsibility. A company’s social reputation and its promotional efforts may influence consumer choice. Sustainable development is highly regarded by governments, experts, decision-makers and managers in organizations and two-level supply chains. This supply chain includes a manufacturer (acting as leader) and a retailer (acting as follower), both of whom face demand uncertainty. In this article, the cost of advertising is considered in two ways for the manufacturer and the retailer. In the first model, the retailer determines the optimal retail price and order quantity, and the manufacturer determines the optimal wholesale price and the promotional efforts value so that their profits are maximized. In the second model, the retailer determines the optimal retail price, order quantity, and promotional efforts value, and the manufacturer determines the optimal wholesale price. We will also study the impact of promotional cost sharing on the coordination of the supply chain and the issue will be further explained with numerical examples. Therefore, in this research, the simultaneous effect of increased advertising and value consumer surplus is studied We examine cases when the retailer is a provider of promotional cost and profit, when consumer surplus is directed toward the retailer, and when both retailer and manufacturer achieve higher profits than when the manufacturer is responsible for promotional cost and profit.

The main attractions of national parks include their scenic beauty, security, wildlife and trees. For preserving and maintaining national parks, an appropriate pricing policy can be used. The current study focuses on using the travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) as a non-market valuation technique to value the National Botanical Garden in Bangladesh, a developing country where little or no previous works of this kind has been conducted before. The main objective of the paper was to suggest an appropriate entrance fee for the park by assessing the willingness to pay (WTP) from the TCM and CVM; by determining a revenue maximizing entrance fee from the CVM; and by considering socio-demographics, the characteristics of visits and the motivation of the visitors to preserve the National Botanical Garden. The study sampled 100 visitors. These visitors participated in a survey which consisted of closed questions followed by a semi structured in-depth interview. For data processing, SPSS and Microsoft Excel were used. Based on the travel cost demand function using the TCM, the study found that the amount respondents were willing to pay for entrance was 0.955 US dollars and yearly consumer surplus was 593634.5 USD. From the CVM, it was estimated that the WTP was 0.225 USD for the entrance and revenue maximizing entrance fee was 0.376 USD. Finally, the entrance fee suggested for National Botanical Garden was around 0.225 USD.

Uncertainty in demand and high online return rates tend to generate a large inventory backlog after a hot selling season. Some well-known companies such as Burberry and H&amp, M choose to burn these backlogs, which is very unfavorable to the sustainable development of enterprises and society. The omnichannel BOPS (Buy Online and Pickup in Store) provides consumers with a new and convenient choice of purchasing channels. Considering the probability of online return, we build expected profit models for retailers before and after opening a BOPS channel based on consumer surplus and purchase ratio via an online channel, store channel, and BOPS channel. Then, we prove the existence of optimal solutions and obtain the joint optimization decision on pricing and ordering. The results show that, under certain conditions, when the proportion of online channel buyers increases, the retailers&rsquo, optimal decision before opening a BOPS channel is to reduce the price and increase the order quantity, and the retailers&rsquo, optimal decision after opening a BOPS channel is to simultaneously reduce the price and the order quantity. Whether or not a BOPS channel is opened, when the purchase proportion of store channel increases, the optimal decision of retailers is to increase the price and order quantity at the same time. Furthermore, when the online return rate, the cost of online shopping, the inconvenient cost of the store channel, and the inconvenience of the BOPS channel relative to store channel increase, the optimal decision of retailers is to simultaneously reduce the price and order quantity. Moreover, when the maximum psychological value of the product increases, the optimal decision is to reduce the order quantity while increasing the price. In addition, the opening of a BOPS channel increases optimal price, optimal order quantity, and maximum expected profit.

Recent advances in network science has encouraged researchers to adopt a topological view when characterising the robustness of supply chain networks (SCNs). However, topology based characterisations, without considering the heterogeneity among the supply chains which form the SCN, can only provide a partial understanding of robustness. Hitherto, focus of robustness studies have been on cyclic SCNs, with unweighted and undirected links representing general inter-firm interactions. Here, we consider the specific case of a material flow SCN with multi-sourcing, which is characterised by a tiered structure with directed and weighted links. The proposed method uses the multinomial logit model to estimate the utility levels of supply chains within the SCN, as perceived by a focal firm which is indicative of the SCN consumers. The robustness of the SCN is characterised by considering the degree to which supply chains overlap with each other as a cost in the logit formulation. Finally, using a randomisation scheme to generate ensembles of SCN configurations which preserve the number of connections at each firm, the configuration which maximises the consumer surplus for the focal firm is identified. The proposed method is implemented on a real world SCN to identify the optimal configuration in terms of robustness.

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Multiple pharmacotherapy options are available to control blood glucose in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Patients and prescribers may have different preferences for T2DM treatment attributes, such as mode and frequency of administration, based on their experiences and beliefs which may impact adherence. As adherence is a pivotal issue in diabetes therapy, it is important to understand what patients value and how they trade-off the risks and benefits of new treatments. This study aims to investigate the key drivers of choice for T2DM treatments, with a focus on injection frequency, and explore patients' associated willingness-to-pay. Methods: A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was used to present patients with a series of trade-offs between different treatment options, injectable and oral medicines that were made up of 10 differing levels of attributes (frequency and mode of administration, weight change, needle type, storage, nausea, injection site reactions, hypoglycaemic events, instructions with food and cost). A sample of 171 Australian consenting adult T2DM patients, of which 58 were receiving twice-daily injections of exenatide and 113 were on oral glucose-lowering treatments, completed the national online survey. An error components model was used to estimate the relative priority and key drivers of choice patients place on different attributes and to estimate their willingness to pay for new treatments. Results: Injection frequency, weight change, and nausea were shown to be important attributes for patients receiving injections. Within this cohort, a once-weekly injection generated an additional benefit over a twice-daily injection, equivalent to a weighted total willingness to pay of AUD$22.35 per month. Conclusions: Based on the patient preferences, the importance of frequency of administration and other non-health benefits can be valued. Understanding patient preferences has an important role in health technology assessment, as the identification of the value as well as the importance weighting for each treatment attribute may assist with funding decisions beyond clinical trial outcomes.

This paper is based on the classic economics hypothesis that the presence of a reduced number of suppliers on a market can provide them a larger negotiation power towards consumers, thus being able to abuse this power in the disadvantage of consumers. Because the telecommunications market is characterized by a reduced number of operators due to its specific features, the present paper wants to analyze what are the implications on consumers, for the perspective of the costs they endure and what effects have the regulations on this market for the consumers from Romania. The paper analyzes how the reduction of interconnection tariffs affects the price structure of mobile communications, penetration rate of mobile communications, the degree of usage of these services and the evolution of the number of operators in the market, comparing the evolution of these variables before and after the 2009 European Commission proposals. Also the paper aims to determine the demand equation for mobile communications services through a panel model that analyzes 21 of the member states of the European Union, to identify the main factors that have influence on the demand and also to determine the price elasticity of demand.

Transport infrastructure investments are typically justified largely on the basis of their ability to increase travel speeds. However, new bicycle facilities, such as separated cycleways, may result in slower journeys. Economic appraisals of proposed bicycle facilities therefore tend to focus on the social benefits, in particular, improvements in public health resulting from increased physical activity. Yet, some welfare benefit must also accrue to the users of the new facilities, given they willingly choose to use them over faster alternatives. This thesis explores how discrete choice modelling can be used to analyse the trade-offs people make when choosing how they travel, and thereby (a) forecast changes in travel demand resulting from bicycle network improvements, and (b) quantify and monetise the resulting benefits to users. Despite the theory having been established in the 1970s, there have been few practical applications of this methodology, and it is yet to be used to value the user benefits of new bicycle facilities in a car-centric city. This thesis also assesses the short-term reliability of such assessments, by analysing changes in travel demand and preferences following an actual infrastructure intervention. It is found that bicycle network improvements offer substantial welfare benefits to users, in terms of improved accessibility, comfort, perceived safety, and transport choice – even though their journeys may end up being slower. Furthermore, these benefits amplify when links are connected into a network. By ignoring such benefits in project appraisal, bicycle facilities may be significantly undervalued, and transport investment decisions inadequately informed.

GREGA, L.: Using of welfare economics instruments for evaluation of agricultural research benefits. Acta univ. agric. et silvic. Mendel. Brun., 2005, LIII, No. 3, pp. 43-48 Except for direct forms of support of agriculture, including market price support, direct payments and support of agricultural inputs, there also exist many forms of indirect support of agriculture. Within this support of general services has an important role support of agricultural research. As an inevitable pre condition to evaluate efficiency of used financial sources from state budget is a quantification of benefit of agricultural research. The paper is focused on possibilities of using welfare economics instruments to quantify the benefit of agricultural research. consumer surplus, producer surplus, evaluation of agricultural research

Transportation system disruption due to a disaster results in "ripple effects" throughout the entire transportation system of a metropolitan region. Many researchers have focused on the economic costs of transportation system disruptions in transportation-related industries, specifically within commerce and logistics, in the assessment of the regional economic costs. However, the foundation of an assessment of the regional economic costs of a disaster needs to include the evaluation of consumer surplus in addition to the direct cost for reconstruction of the regional transportation system. The objective of this study is to propose a method to estimate the regional consumer surplus based on indirect economic costs of a disaster on intermodal transportation systems in the context of diverting vehicles and trains. The computational methods used to assess the regional indirect economic costs sustained by the highway and railroad system can utilize readily available state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) traffic models allowing prioritization of regional recovery plans after a disaster and strengthening of infrastructure before a disaster. Hurricane Katrina is one of the most devastating hurricanes in the history of the United States. Due to the significance of Hurricane Katrina, a case study is presented to evaluate consumer surplus in the Gulf Coast Region of Mississippi. RESULTS from the case study indicate the costs of rerouting and congestion delays in the regional highway system and the rent costs of right-of-way in the regional railroad system are major factors of the indirect costs in the consumer surplus. Language: en

Agriculture tourism sector in Batu, Indonesia has strong potential with its natural environment. The Makmur Abadi farmers group is one of the farmer groups in Tulungrejo that offers apple pick tours. Visitors to Makmur Abadi have been increasing in recent years. This study aims to know visitors characteristics, factors that affects visit frequency and analyze the consumer surplus value of tourists in Makmur Abadi using travel cost method. The primary data was collected from visitors of Makmur Abadi from July to August 2013 and was analyzed using multiple regression models. The results shows that the characteristics of visitors in Makmur Abadi are dominated by visitors who are 31-40 years old, 69% respondents are males and 31% are females with most of the visitors already married. Most of the visitors have obtained the educational qualification of bachelor or diploma and most of the visitor’s occupation being government employees and entrepreneurs had personal income ranging from Rp. 3,000,000 – Rp. 4,999,000 per month. 83% of the visitors have only 2-5 leisure periods per month and most of the visitors came from Java, Bali and Sumatra Islands. The factors that significantly affects visit frequency are income, travel time Makmur Abadi, leisure time, marital status, revisit, infrastructures, and perception. The consumer surplus in Makmur Abadi apple pick tour is Rp. 2,584,390 per year per person.

This paper surveys results on Nash equilibrium and its refinements for several variants of the architecture for oligopolistic electricity markets. For different kinds of one-stage and two-stage auctions, I compare the game-theoretic solution with the competitive equilibrium and estimate the loss of consumer surplus due to producers’ market power. I conclude on the optimal architecture of the market.

We examine a two-node competitive market, taking into account the losses under transmission and the costs of transmission line construction. We state a welfare maximization problem and show how to solve it. Moreover, we analyze how the flow of good between markets affects the benefit of transmission system, consumer surplus and producers’ profit. We also consider a two-node market under imperfect competition and study the Cournot equilibrium depending on the transmission capacity.

This paper assesses travellers' responses to the use of existing Park-and-Ride (P&R) services based on an economical welfare maximisation approach. Specifically, the paper presents a modelling framework to estimate consumer surplus and producer surplus (business profits) on the basis of modal choice probabilities. The paper draws on evidence from Stated Preference surveys conducted around two P&R sites in Sapporo, Japan, where P&R services occupy a modest market space. Overall, the results suggest that business profit increases when economical welfare is maximised, as a consequence of increased demand. It is also shown that P&R choice is not only influenced by parking fees, but also by the fares and other attributes of alternative transportation modes. Accordingly, the interactions of P&R with alternative transportation modes should be taken into consideration in any strategic transportation policies oriented towards motivating sustainable transport mode choices.

This thematic report presents some initial data on mobile call termination rates, and the welfare improvement due to call termination rate regulatory interventions, in South Africa for the period 2010 to 2015.

This article presents a systematic analysis of the net economic benefits associated with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. We offer a derivation of producer and consumer surplus to estimate economic benefits. Fundamental to the implementation of these models is a specific value of the elasticity of demand, but in its absence we estimate what its value would be when the benefit-to-cost ratio associated with public support of the SBIR program equals unity. We infer from these calculations, and from general knowledge about the ability of SBIR-funded firms to exploit their monopoly position, that the SBIR program likely generates positive net economic benefits to society. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Aim: The main objective of the paper was to calculate social savings (and consumer surplus) of innovation on the example of railroads in Germany for 1985. The railways were among the most important innovations in the nineteenth century. Being aware of the limits of the social savings technique, the author included the concept of consumer surplus in his calculation Design / Research methods: For the purpose of the research, the author used the concept of social savings proposed by Robert Fogel and consumer surplus. Conclusions / findings: For the year 1895, social savings amounted to 2.82% (first equation) of GDP and 5.04% of GDP (second equation), taking into account elasticity of demand (-1,38), social savings amounted to 1.27% of GDP and 2.18% of GDP for Germany. The result thus elicited the author referred to the social savings from railroads as made available in literature and the author’s previous research. The author demonstrated that the social savings from the innovation were relatively small. Originality / value of the article: The results of research are useful for examining the impact of innovation, such as railroads, on the level of social savings. The paper fills the gap in the Polish economic thinking on the use of counterfactual methods. Implications of the research: The concept of social savings which takes into account demand elasticity can be applied successfully in evaluating the impact of (various) innovations on economic growth. Limitations of the research: The weakness of the method may be the lack of knowledge about the real level of elasticity of demand for innovation, as well as determining the level of prices of an alternative good, especially if the use of innovation at the initial stage of bringing it to the market involves a relatively high price.

The government decision to increase entrance fee in tourist locations has occasionally resulted in protests among the public and tourism operators. The objective of the study, with the context at Sendang Gile water fall, is to estimate the function of recreation demand and estimate the entrance fee acceptable by the visitors. Travel cost method was used in the study. Data of visitors to the tourist destination was collected by purposive sampling method. Results of the study showed that entrance fee increase is acceptable but at the rate lower than that determined in the Government Regulation.

This is an empirical analysis of the dynamic changes in consumer surplus and industry profits after a low-cost carrier (LCC) enters markets, performed by estimating structural demand and price equations using unbalanced carrier-specific panel data of two to four carriers on nine routes for four to eight years (130 samples). Our findings are that gains in consumer surplus were substantial for as long as two years after market entry, but losses began in the third year, when two of the LCCs agreed on a code share with All Nippon Airways (ANA), a full-service carrier; since the third year, those carriers seem to have regained profitability. Our conclusion is that Japanese regulatory sectors, which have allowed full-service carriers other than ANA to engage in behavior that drives LCCs out of competitive markets while also allowing the code-shares between ANA and LCCs, seem to stand by the industry instead of consumers.

El presente documento tiene por objetivo analizar el impacto de la introducción de impuestos en la industria de telefonía móvil. Un impuesto común en este sector es el canon cobrado para financiar las actividades de fiscalización y supervisión del uso del espectro radioeléctrico. Con tal fin, se modificó el modelo de competencia entre redes móviles propuesto por Laffont, Rey yTirole (1998), para lo que se introdujo tres diferentes estructuras impositivas: un impuesto específico por cada minuto de telefonía móvil (impuesto de tipo I), un impuesto en función de la participación de mercado de cada una de las redes (impuesto de tipo II) y un impuesto lump-sum (impuesto de tipo III). Como resultado del modelo se obtiene que las firmas consiguen trasladar a los consumidores el total del impuesto (disminuyendo el excedente del consumidor) cuando la estructura impositiva es tipo I y II. Por el contrario, cuando el impuesto es de tipo III, los precios y las cantidades de equilibrio, así como el excedente del consumidor, se mantienen constantes.---The present document has for aim analyze the impact of the introduction of taxes in the industry of mobile telephony. A common tax in this sector is the canon received to finance the activities of taxation and supervision of the use of the radio spectrum. With such an end, the competition model between mobile networks proposed by Laffont, Rey and Tirole (1998), was modified introducing three different tax structures: a tax I specify in every minute of mobile telephony (TaxType I), a tax depending on the participation of market of each one of the networks (tax type II) and a tax lump-sum (Tax Type III). Since results of the model, obtains that the signatures manage to move the consumers the whole of the tax (diminishing the consumer surplus) when the tax structure is a type I and type II. On the contrary, when the tax is of type III, the prices and the quantities of balance, as well as the surplus of the consumer, they have been keeping constant.

This paper draws on a survey of consumers' willingness to pay surcharges to use debit cards and credit cards, rather than cash. Just as the price a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service is indicative of the value he/she places on that item, the willingness to pay a surcharge to use a payment method reflects that method's value to that customer, relative to any alternatives. We find a wide dispersion in the willingness to pay for the use of cards. Around 60 per cent of consumers are unwilling to pay a 0.1 per cent surcharge, which suggests that for these individuals, the net benefits of cards are very small or that cash is actually preferred. At the other end of the distribution, some individuals (around 5 per cent) are willing to pay more than a 4 per cent surcharge, indicating they place a substantial value on paying using cards. On average, consumers have a higher willingness to pay for the use of credit cards than debit cards. This difference can be viewed as the additional value placed on the non-payment functions – rewards and the interest-free period – of credit cards. We estimate that on average credit card holders place a value of 0.6 basis points on every 1 basis point of effective rewards rebate. Based on the survey data and information on the costs to merchants of accepting payment methods, we can predict the mix of cash, debit card and credit card payments chosen by consumers under different levels of surcharging and explore the implications for the efficiency of the payments system. In particular, the consumer surplus in a scenario where merchants do not surcharge and the costs of all payment methods are built into retail prices can be compared with that where merchants surcharge based on payment costs and retail prices are correspondingly lower. Our findings suggest that cost-based surcharging leads to some consumers switching to less costly payment methods, resulting in greater efficiency of the payment system and an increase in consumer surplus of 13 basis points per transaction.

A public economics framework is used to consider how pharmaceuticals should be priced when at least some of the research and development incentive comes from sales revenues. Familiar techniques of public finance are used to relax some of the restrictions implied in the standard use of Ramsey pricing. Under the more general model, poor countries should not necessarily cover even their own marginal costs, and the pricing structure is not related to that which will be chosen by a monopolist in a simple way. This framework is then used to examine ongoing debates regarding the international patent system as embodied in the world trade organization's agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.

This paper illustrates that the usual consumer surplus approach to evaluation of the benefits of a futures market fails because of certain unobserved benefits. In particular, when futures markets provide benefits in the form of a reduced variability of future spot prices, the usual consumer surplus approach will systematically understate the benefits of futures markets.

I show that partial vertical integration may either alleviates or exacerbate the concern for vertical foreclosure relative to full vertical integration and I examine its implications for consumer welfare.

El objetivo de este artículo, que fue producto de un proyecto de investigación, es el de demostrar mediante la aplicación de una metodología cartesiana, inductiva, que las políticas públicas en materia de desarrollo urbano y vial, con el apoyo de los particulares generan mayores beneficios que con el monopolio estatal. Para tales efectos, elementos del análisis económico del derecho fueron fundamentales para llegar a esta conclusión. Fue así como, se tomó un caso particular y concreto de un proyecto vial en la ciudad de Cartagena de Indias, esto es, Corredor de Acceso Rápido a la Variante de Cartagena.

We propose a generalization of random coefficients models, in which the regression model is an unknown function of a vector of regressors, each of which is multiplied by an unobserved error. We also investigate a more restrictive model which is additive (or additive with interactions) in unknown functions of each regressor multiplied by its error. We show nonparametric identification of these models. In addition to providing a natural generalization of random coefficients, we provide economic motivations for the model based on demand system estimation. In these applications, the random coefficients can be interpreted as random utility parameters that take the form of Engel scales or Barten scales, which in the past were estimated as deterministic preference heterogeneity or household technology parameters. We apply these results to consumer surplus and related welfare calculations.

This dissertation consists of three essays on Hedonic price method which is widely used in non-market good evaluation. The first chapter outlines three topics involved and briefly discusses the motivations and methods, as well we some conclusions in each of the following chapters. Chapter 2 uses a conventional first stage hedonic price method to estimate the effect of an aquatic invasive species (Eurasian watermilfoil) on lakefront property values at selected Vermont lakes. Results indicate that as the primary component of total aquatic macrophyte growth in a lake Eurasian watermilfoil significantly and substantially affects lakefront property values. As Eurasian watermilfoil infests a lake, adding to the total macrophyte growth, property values can diminish by

CERNA WORKING PAPER SERIES 2010-19; This paper analyses the distributional effects of alternative scenarios of carbon taxes on car fuels using disaggregated French panel data from 2003 to 2006. It incorporates household price responsiveness that differs across income groups into a consumer surplus measure of tax burden. Carbon taxation is regressive before revenue recycling. However, taking into account the benefits from congestion reduction induced by the tax mitigates regressivity. We show also that recycling additional revenues from the carbon tax either in equal amounts to each household or according to household size makes poorest households better off.

The objective of this paper is to show the measurement of the environmental income from two private Spanish forests, the Cork Oak Woodlands of the Alcornocales Natural Park (Cádiz and Málaga) and the Scotch Pine Forest of the Sierra de Guadarrama (Madrid and Segovia). We also contribute to the technical and political debate on governmental regulations of forest environmental accounting in European Union. We have measured the environmental goods and services consumed by private landowners and public visitors through the contingent valuation technique. We have estimated the value of mushrooms gathering by public visitors in the Scotch Pine Forests of the Sierra de Guadarrama taking the price and harvest from the mushroom market in Pinar Grande (Soria). The value for carbon estimated accounts for the avoided damage of the greenhouse effect mitigation due to the sequestration of the atmospheric carbon dioxide. The environmental valuations show that the private environmental profitability rates in the Alcornocales Natural Park and in the Sierra de Guadarrama are 2.13 % and 3.43 %, in relation to their corresponding land market prices. We have estimated that the total net values added are 1.63 and 3.28 times higher than its corresponding conventional net values added in the Alcornocales Natural Park and in the Sierra de Guadarrama. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar una medición de la renta ambiental en dos tipos de bosques privados representativos españoles, como son los alcornocales del Parque Natural Los Alcornocales (Cádiz y Málaga) y los pinares de silvestre de la Sierra de Guadarrama (Madrid y Segovia). Con este objetivo también se pretende contribuir a los debates técnico y político sobre la necesidad de que los gobiernos regulen la aplicación de las cuentas ambientales integradas de los bosques europeos. La medición de los bienes y servicios ambientales del bosque consumidos por los propietarios privados y los visitantes públicos se ha realizado aplicando la técnica de valoración contingente. El valor de las setas recogidas por el público en los pinares de la Sierra de Guadarrama ha sido estimado aceptando los datos de precio y rendimiento del mercado de setas en Pinar Grande (Soria). La estimación del valor del carbono refleja el valor del daño evitado de la mitigación del efecto invernadero de la reducción del dióxido de carbono atmosférico. Las valoraciones ambientales muestran que las tasas de rentabilidad ambientales privadas del Parque Natural Los Alcornocales y de los pinares de la Sierra de Guadarrama alcanzan el 2,13 % y el 3,43 %, con relación a sus precios de mercado de la tierra. Se ha estimado que los valores añadidos totales superan en 1,63 y 3,28 veces a sus valores añadidos convencionales respectivos en el Parque Natural Los Alcornocales y en los pinares de la Sierra de Guadarrama.

The paper addresses the question of who benefits from public recreation areas. Employing a set of survey data from users and nonusers of state-owned recreation and conservation areas in Finland, we derive two measures for distributional analysis. The first, the income elasticity of willingness to pay for recreation services, indicates that public provision of recreation benefits lower-income groups more than higher-income groups. The second, a welfare measure including efficiency loss, reveals ambiguous impacts depending on the level of the fee implemented. Low fee levels decrease recreation visits among lower-income users, whereas high fees reduce the welfare level of higher-income users in particular.

A government wanting to promote an efficient allocation of resources as measured by the total surplus, should strategically delegate to its competition authority a welfare standard with a bias in favour of consumers. A consumer bias means that some welfare increasing mergers will be blocked. This is optimal, if the relevant alternative to the merger is another change in market structure that will even further increase the total surplus. Furthermore, a consumer bias is shown to enhance welfare even though it blocks some welfare increasing mergers when the relevant alternative is the status quo.

The most important economic measures are monetary. They have many different names, are derived in different theories and employ different formulas; yet, they all attempt to do the same thing: to separate a change in nominal value into a ‘real part’ due to the changes in quantities and an inflation due to the changes in prices. Examples are: real national product and its components, the GNP deflator, the CPI, various measures related to consumer surplus, as well as the large number of formulas for price and quantity indexes that have been proposed. The theories that have been developed to derive these measures are largely unsatisfactory. The axiomatic theory of indexes does not make clear which economic problem a particular formula can be used to solve. The economic theories are for the most part based on unrealistic assumptions. For example, the theory of the CPI is usually developed for a single consumer with homothetic preferences and then applied to a large aggregate of diverse consumers with non-homothetic preferences. In this paper I review both the general literature and my own past contributions in order to identify theories of measurement that are based on plausible economic assumptions. It turns out that all such theories lead to the Törnqvist price or quantity indexes. The paper also covers several related topics, particularly the presently unsatisfactory determination of the components of real GDP. I also propose a novel set of integrated accounts to measure changes in relative prices as well as the sectoral sources of inflation.

This paper applies the travel cost method to visits to cultural sites in Armenia by domestic visitors. Respondents intercepted at four cultural monuments provided information on their visitation patterns, experience at the site, perception of the state of conservation of the monuments, and rating of the quality of the services and infrastructures. We combine actual trips with stated trips under hypothetical programs that would enhance the conservation of the monuments and improve one of (i) the cultural experience at the site, (ii) the quality of the infrastructure, or (iii) the quality of the services, and use the combined actual and stated trips to fit a panel data model. Our investigation shows that that there are significant use values associated with the four study monuments, and that conservation programs and initiatives that improve the cultural experience, or simply make it easier for the respondent to reach and spend time at the monument, are valued by domestic visitors and would encourage higher visitation rates.

This multidisciplinary work explores ways of making environmental policy decisions in managing public goods and natural parks with the goal of maximizing economic benefits to society. The contributors to the volume seek the best strategies for improving the environmental sustainability and quality of a public resource by showing how to develop quantitative information about the natural area and how it interacts with the economy. Such an analysis can be used to define policies that encourage interactions among institutions, local economic agents and park users. At the same time, it provides a measure to account for the implications of those policies on the local economy.

Under the principle of the Failing Firm Defense (FFD) a merger that would be blocked due to its harmful effect on competition could be nevertheless allowed when (i) the acquired firm is actually failing, (ii) there is no less anti-competitive alternative purchase, (iii) absent the merger, the assets to be acquired would exit the market. This paper focuses on potential anti-competitive effects of a myopic application of the third requirement by studying consequences of a horizontal merger on entry in a Cournot oligopoly with a failing firm. If the merger is blocked, entry occurs and consumer welfare is bigger when the industry is highly concentrated because gains due to augmented competition exceed losses due to shortage of output.

Thesis (M.Com. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006. The primary goal of this study was to determine the impact of price discrimination on tourism demand. Four objectives were defined with reference to the primary research goal. The first objective was to analyse the concept of price discrimination and relevant theories by means of a literature study. In this regard it was found that price discrimination between markets is fairly common and that it occurs if the same goods were sold to different customers at different prices. Price discrimination is also possible as soon as some monopoly power exists and it is feasible when it is impossible or at least impractical for the buyers to trade among themselves. Three different kinds of price discrimination can be applied, namely first-degree, second-degree and third-degree price discrimination. The data also indicated that price discrimination is advantageous (it mainly increases profit) and that it has several other effects too. The second objective was to analyse examples of price discrimination by means of international case studies. In these different case studies it was found that demand and supply, therefore consumer and product, formed the basis of price discrimination. If demand did not exist, it would be impossible to apply price discrimination. The findings also indicated that, for an organisation to be able to practice price discrimination, the markets must be separated effectively and it will only be successful if there is a significant difference in demand elasticity between the different consumers. Furthermore, the ability to charge these different prices will depend on the consumer's ability and willingness to pay. If an organisation should decide to price discriminate, it would lead to a higher profit, a more optimal pricing policy and also to an increase in sales. The third objective was to analyse national case studies. This was done through comparing the data of a tourism organisation price discriminating (Mosetlha Bush Camp, situated in the North West) to two organisations that did not implement price discrimination (Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Northern Cape and Golden Leopard Resort, also situated in the North West). It was found that a customer with low price elasticity is less deterred by a higher price than a customer with a high price elasticity of demand. As long as the customer's price elasticity is less than one, it will be very advantageous to increase the price: the seller will in this case get more money for less goods. With the increase in price the price elasticity tends to rise above one. The fourth objective was to draw conclusions and make recommendations. It was concluded that price discrimination could be applied successfully in virtually any organisation or industry. Furthermore, price discrimination does not always have a negative effect; but can have a positive ass well. It can have a positive effect on tourism demand. The findings emphasised that the main reason for implementing price discrimination is to increase profit at the cost of reducing consumer surplus. From the results it was recommended that more research on this topic should be conducted. Masters

New Zealand is a small open economy that is remote from all major markets. The smallness and remoteness of New Zealand combine to imply that this country has, at least quantitatively, distinctive features for the regulation of economic activity by competition law. The isolation and small size of the economy mean that typically all but exporting firms are small as judged on a world scale, and that domestic markets are small and generally highly concentrated. This paper reviews the economic literature on the implications of an economy’s size and isolation for competition law. The literature suggests that principles underlying competition law do not change for small economies, but that the application of competition law should be different. In small economies, low regulatory and tax barriers to trade dominate the importance of competition law for good economic performance of domestic markets. In these economies, competition law should focus on economic benefit/detriment evaluations of mergers and trade practices rather than rules of thumb of the sort based on measures of market structure and indicators of competition, or those aimed at prohibiting particular practices per se. Producers’ surplus should not be de-emphasised in the calculation of benefits and detriments in small economies; particularly for activities that relate in any way to (potential) export activity. For any economy, particularly in the presence of competition, cooperation enhances economic performance in specific circumstances. In small economies cooperation can be particularly efficient-for example, in achieving scale and thereby export performance-although it may entail interaction among a large fraction of players in an industry. The approach that the literature suggests to the application of competition law in small economies places relatively heavy weight on dynamic efficiency as the criterion for competition law design and enforcement. It is squarely in accord with recommendations in the literature on desirable competition law for the so-called new economy.

Surveys of visitors to National Forests in Colorado were conducted to determine whether different fire ages and presence of crown fires have different effects on hiking and mountain biking recreation visits and benefits. Actual and intended behavior data were combined using a count-data travel cost model. The intended behavior trip questions asked about changes in number of trips due to the presence of a high-intensity crown fire, prescribed fire, and a 20-year-old high-intensity fire at the area respondents were visiting. Using the estimated recreation demand function, years since a non-crown fire had statistically significant positive effect on the trip demand of hikers. In contrast, presence of crown fires had no statistically significant effect on the quantity of hiker trips, but had a significant and negative effect on mountain biking trips. Crown fires also had a large effect on the value per trip, with crown fires increasing the value per hiking trip but lowering the value per mountain biking trip.

This paper measures the economic impact of reductions in the exposure of agricultural crops to mixtures of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphurdioxide (SO2) in the Netherlands. This provides an indication of the benefits of policy measures directed to reducing nitrogen and sulphur emissions. A reduction in air pollution raises crop yield and supply. The prices of some crops are regulated by the EU. An increase in the supply of these crops affects farmer income through the effect on the quantity sold. The price of non-regulated crops, however, decreases with a rise in supply. For these crops, farmer income is affected both by the effects on quantity and price. Consumer surplus is positively affected by price decreases. A reduction in NOx and SO2 of 20% and 60% respectively is estimated to increase producer income with 96 million guilders annually and consumer surplus with 90 million guilders. These increases sum to 1% of crop turnover and 6% of total income from crop production.

It is generally believed that higher competition benefits consumers, and encourage the antitrust authorities to foster competition. We show that this view can be misleading in the presence of welfare-maximising nationalised firms. Using a simple model with a nationalised firm, we show that entry of private profitmaximising firms makes consumers worse off compared to nationalised monopoly. Entry increases profit of the incumbent firm, industry profit and social welfare at the expense of the consumers. Our result is important for competition policy.

Should governments in developing countries promote private ownership and deregulated prices in noncompetitive sectors? Or should they run publicly owned firms and regulate prices at the expense of rents to insiders? A theoretical model is used to answer these normative questions. The analysis focuses on the tradeoff between fiscal benefits and consumer surplus during privatization of noncompetitive sectors. Privatization transfers control rights to private interests and eliminates public subsidies, yielding benefits to taxpayers at the cost of increased prices for consumers. In developing countries, where budget constraints are tight, privatization and price liberalization may be optimal for low profitability industries but suboptimal for more profitable industries. And once a market has room for more than one firm, governments may prefer to regulate the industry. Without a credible regulatory agency, regulation is achieved through public ownership. Copyright The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / the world bank . All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.