The economy of Dominica faces a unique set of challenges. As with many other Caribbean nations, Dominica has historically been dependent upon agriculture. Over the past several hundred years, the island's economy has been largely supported through the concentrated mono-cropping of a variety of...

The public demand for ecosystem services measured by willingness to pay (WTP) in contingent valuation studies provides important information for designing Payment-for-Ecosystem-Service (PES) programs. However, the hypothetical markets for contingent valuation and respondents’ unfamiliarity...

This study attempts to evaluate the economic benefits of the country of origin labeling (COOL) in Taiwan. A Vickrey second-price sealed-bid auction was conducted to estimate the consumer’s willingness to pay for Taiwan products vs. those from China and Vietnam. Our experiment was designed to...

A stated preference experiment is conducted to elicit consumer WTPs for various blueberry attributes. The mixed logit model is employed to account for consumer heterogeneity. The model is set up in the WTP space where the distributions of WTPs are directly specified. Considering the high...

In this research, we integrated an experimental auction with sensory science techniques—namely, trained sensory panels used to analyze the sensory attributes of wines—to examine the effects of objective and sensory information in the market for California-produced Cabernet Sauvignons. The...

A surface water quality valuation index is developed and used to compare counties across the Appalachian Region. This index was based on a meta-analysis of non-market water quality valuation studies along with an application of benefit transfer. The results reveal that Pennsylvania, Georgia, and...

Payment-for-Ecosystem-Services (PES) programs are gaining appeal as flexible approaches to inducing the voluntary provision of ecosystem services (ES). Farmers, who manage agricultural ecosystems, provide important nonmarket ecosystem services to the public by their choice of production inputs...

Poster prepared for presentation at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s 2011 AAEA & NAREA Joint Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 24-26, 2011

We extend the existing literature on food taxes targeting obesity. First, we incorporate the implicit substitution between sugar and fat nutrients implied by a complete food demand system and by conditioning on how food taxes affect total calorie intake. Second, we propose a methodology that...