We propose new methods for comparing the relative out-of-sample forecasting performance of two competing models in the presence of possible instabilities. The main idea is to develop a measure of the relative ìlocal forecasting performanceî for the two models, and to investigate its stability...

Farm households in modern environments engage in multiple productive activities. In this paper we formulate and estimate a profit maximization model in which human capital enhances earnings through both activity-specific effects and across-activity factor allocation. Our purpose is to decompose...

The purpose of this research is to use measures of willingness to pay derived from random utility models as the basis for evaluating the properties of parametric and nonparametric estimators with binary choice data. Monte Carlo simulation results indicate that simple parametric methods...

This paper argues that the widespread belief that discrete contingent valuation (CV) questions yield substantially larger estimates of the mean (and the median) willingness to pay (WTP) for nonmarket environmental resources in comparison to estimates from open-ended CV questions is unfounded. A...

In an overlapping generations model, capital and labor produce two tradeable goods. A kleptocratic government spends the tariff revenue. Trade liberalization, which lowers the relative price of the importable to the private sector, benefits the retired generation if and only if the relative...

This paper discusses the role of economic integration in a model of endogenous growth where the size of the firm and the interactions between growth and the endogenous structure of the market play a crucial role. The focus is on the pure scale effects of integration and their welfare...

A proposed plan to preserve beach and beach access along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore thorugh beach re-nourishment offers the opportunity to apply contingent valuation techniques to explore the implications of three sources of preference heterogeneity for measures of people's willingness...

This paper reports the first attempt to measure the importance of controlling marine debris as an aesthetic characteristic of beaches and coastal area. The results are based on a contingent valuation survey designed to estimate the economic value people would place on controlling marine debris...

Economic theory often provides us with qualitative information on the properties of the functions in a model but rarely indicates their explicit functional form. Among these properties one can find monotonicity, concavity and supermodularity, which involve restricting the sign of the...

Pharmacy benefit management companies (PBMs) have emerged over the past decade in response to increased demand for health care cost containment. The ability to obtain volume rebates from drug manufacturers was the principle value added by the PBM industry during the early 1990s. However, PBM...