Despite wetlands being amongst the Earth’s most productive ecosystems, they have been degraded and lost at an unprecedented rate globally, especially throughout the last century. In recognition of the importance of the crucial ecological functions and economic benefits they provide,...

There is a growing body of evidence in the non-market valuation literaturesuggesting that responses to a sequence of discrete choice questions tend to violate theassumptions typically made by analysts regarding independence of responses andstability of preferences. Decision processes (or...

The use of economic tools such as the benefit-cost analysis often requires determining non-market values of environmental goods. One of the appropriate measures to determine these values is the contingent valuation. As a stated preference technique it allows to measure non-use values as well as...

The Catchment Management Authorities in New South Wales have programs that arecollectively investing $436 million over four years to achieve catchment-wide naturalresource/environmental improvements. In this paper, we consider the question of howto best allocate these resources so as to increase...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rochester. School of Medicine and Dentistry. Dept. of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, 2009.

Hierarchical or "multilevel" regression models typically parameterize the mean response conditional on unobserved latent variables or "random" effects and then make simple assumptions regarding their distribution. The interpretation of a regression parameter in such a model is the change in...

Statistical models involving latent variables are widely used in many areas of applications, such as biomedical science and social science. When likelihood-based parametric inferential methods are used to make statistical inference, certain distributional assumptions on the latent variables are...

This paper analyzes price differentials among conventional, cage-free, organic, andOmega-3 eggs using retail scanner data from two regional markets and the United Statesas a whole. Results reveal significant premiums attributable to cage-free (a 57% premiumon average) and organic (an 85% premium...