Books

Economic Valuation with Stated Preference Techniques: A Manual, (with Ian Bateman, Brett Day, Robert Sugden and 9 others), Edward Elgar, (2002).

 

This manual offers a detailed, up-to-date explanation of how to carry out economic valuation studies using stated preference techniques. The techniques use surveys to ask individuals how much they would be willing to pay or willing to accept in compensation for gains or losses of non-market goods and services. Applications of the technique include changes in air and water quality; noise nuisance; health care; risk; recorded heritage; cultural assets; habitats; landscape and so on. The resulting valuations can be used for a number of purposes including, but not limited to, demonstrating the economic value of environmental and cultural assets; setting policies for environmental policy; design of economic instruments; green national/corporate accounting; and natural resource damage assessment. Compiled by the leading experts in the field, this manual starts by explaining the concepts. It shows how to choose the most appropriate technique and how to design the questionnaires. Detailed advice on econometric analysis is provided, as well as explanation of the pitfalls that need to be avoided.

 

 

Book Chapters and Reports

 

Communication and Efficiency in Coordination Game Experiments, (with Anthony Burton and Martin Sefton), in Advances in Applied Microeconomics, 13, (ed J Morgan), Elsevier (2005).

 

In this paper we report experiments with pre-play communication in a 2´2 coordination game with conflicting risk-dominant and payoff-dominant equilibria. We examine whether players condition their choices on the messages received. We find that most players do condition, and do so in an intuitive way, announcing an intention to play the payoff-dominant action, and choosing the payoff-dominant action if the opponent expresses the same intention. However, a significant minority of players misrepresent their intentions, and in sessions where these players appear, communication does not always lead to the payoff-dominant equilibrium. We also compare one-way and two-way communication technologies, finding no significant difference, and we compare our results with existing results.

 

Valuation of Health Benefits Associated with Reductions in Air Pollution: Final Report, (with Susan Chilton, Judith Covey, Michael Jones-Lee and Hugh Metcalf), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, (2004).

 

The report describes a willingness to pay (WTP) study designed a) to generate empirical estimates of how much people in the UK are willing to pay for reductions in the health risks associated with air pollution, and b) to determine the direction and magnitude of any functional relationships which may exist between WTP bids and potential explanatory factors (e.g. age, income, perceived risk, expected quality of life). The study focused on chronic mortality, acute mortality, emergency admissions to hospital occasioned and days of breathing discomfort caused or aggravated by raised levels of pollution. Besides the quantitative data, qualitative interviews tried to explore the thought processes underpinning the quantitative responses. The quantitative results are reported together with some consideration of possible reasons for some of the variability of the estimates obtained. Possible policy implications are discussed.