The embedding effect has frequently been observed in willingness to pay (WTP) studies.Since policy implications of valuation studies can be very sensitive to the composition of thepackage being valued, respondents’ apparent insensitivity to such fundamental characteristicssuggests that it is...

We examine the status of the maximization hypothesis in the positive economic theory ofrational choice. We argue that, contrary to a common belief, the maximization hypothesisdoes not play any role in large areas of positive rational choice theory. In contexts where itdoes, it is not logically...

This paper shows that although small or nancially constrained environmentalistgroups may be in a weak position, relative to polluting industries, in the directcompetition for political inuence, they can compete indirectly through changingpublic preferences over environmental quality. However, in...

We derive an explicit formula of the Watts’ poverty index, in terms of parametersof bivariate lognormal distributions of price indices and nominal livingstandards. This result enables us to: analyse the contributions of the distributionsof prices and nominal living standards in poverty;...

Using parametric formulae under lognormality for a broad family of povertymeasures, we show that when inequality measured by the Gini coeffcient isconstant, dening the poverty line as a fraction of a central tendency of theliving standard distribution restricts the evolution of the poverty...

A priori knowledge about the shape of living standards distribution has notbeen fully exploited in the literature to investigate properties of poverty indices.The method we propose is to exploit credible distributional assumptions to: generateadditional properties for poverty indices; relate the...

We derive an explicit formula of the Watts’ poverty index, in terms of parametersof bivariate lognormal distributions of price indices and nominal livingstandards. This result enables us to: analyse the contributions of the distributionsof prices and nominal living standards in poverty;...

In this paper we develop a simple procedure which delivers tests for the pres-ence of a broken trend in a univariate time series which do not require knowledgeof the form of serial correlation in the data and are robust as to whether theshocks are generated by an I(0) or an I(1) process. Two...

The service industries in general and financial services in particular have been disproportionatelylarge investors in information technology. However, critics have suggested that the productivityeffects of this investment have been negligible, a serious outcome given the importance of the...