Background: Since the inception of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NIC... more Background: Since the inception of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England, there have been questions about the empirical basis for the cost-per-QALY threshold used by NICE and whether QALYs gained by different beneficiaries of health care should be weighted equally. The Social Value of a QALY (SVQ) project, reported in this paper, was commissioned to address these two questions. The results of SVQ were released during a time of considerable debate about the NICE threshold, and authors with differing perspectives have drawn on the SVQ results to support their cases. As these discussions continue, and given the selective use of results by those involved, it is important, therefore, not only to present a summary overview of SVQ, but also for those who conducted the research to contribute to the debate as to its implications for NICE.
Mapping the distribution of the quantity and value of forest benefits to local communities is use... more Mapping the distribution of the quantity and value of forest benefits to local communities is useful for forest management, when socio-economic and conservation objectives may need to be traded off. We develop a modelling approach for the economic valuation of annual Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) extraction at a large spatial scale, which has 4 main strengths: (1) it is based on household production functions using data of actual household behaviour, (2) it is spatially sensitive, using a range of explanatory variables related to socio-demographic characteristics, population density, resource availability and accessibility, (3) it captures the value of the actual flow rather than the potential stock, and (4) it is generic and can therefore be up-scaled across non-surveyed areas. We illustrate the empirical application of this approach in an analysis of charcoal production in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, using a dataset comprising over 1100 observations from 45 villages. The total flow of charcoal benefits is estimated at USD 14 million per year, providing an important source of income to local households, and supplying around 11% of the charcoal used in Dar es Salaam and other major cities. We discuss the potential and limitations of up-scaling micro-level analysis for NTFP valuation.
This paper shows that preferences elicited via a ranking procedure differ systematically from tho... more This paper shows that preferences elicited via a ranking procedure differ systematically from those generated by pairwise choices, even though nothing in formal decision theory entails any such differences. The data strongly suggest that one of the best-known violations of expected utility theory may largely be an artefact of the pairwise choice procedure. However, expected utility theory is not rehabilitated
We investigate conflicts between wildlife conservation and recreational use that can occur at ope... more We investigate conflicts between wildlife conservation and recreational use that can occur at open-access sites when visitors dislike crowding. A theoretical model is proposed which determines the spatial distributions of visitors to a beach, given their willingness to walk to avoid crowding and the configuration of beach access points. This model is estimated for three sections of coastline in eastern England using data from aerial video photography. Visitor density is strongly and negatively correlated with distance from access points. Willingness to walk has a highly skewed population distribution. We discuss the implications of these findings for the management of conflicts between conservation and recreation at open-access sites.
Research (NIHR), was set up in 1993. It produces high-quality research information on the effecti... more Research (NIHR), was set up in 1993. It produces high-quality research information on the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of health technologies for those who use, manage and provide care in the NHS. 'Health technologies' are broadly defined as all interventions used to promote health, prevent and treat disease, and improve rehabilitation and long-term care. The research findings from the HTA programme directly influence decision-making bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Screening Committee (NSC). HTA findings also help to improve the quality of clinical practice in the NHS indirectly in that they form a key component of the 'National Knowledge Service'. The HTA programme is needs led in that it fills gaps in the evidence needed by the NHS. There are three routes to the start of projects. First is the commissioned route. Suggestions for research are actively sought from people working in the NHS, from the public and consumer groups and from professional bodies such as royal colleges and NHS trusts. These suggestions are carefully prioritised by panels of independent experts (including NHS service users). The HTA programme then commissions the research by competitive tender. Second, the HTA programme provides grants for clinical trials for researchers who identify research questions. These are assessed for importance to patients and the NHS, and scientific rigour. Third, through its Technology Assessment Report (TAR) call-off contract, the HTA programme commissions bespoke reports, principally for NICE, but also for other policy-makers. TARs bring together evidence on the value of specific technologies. Some HTA research projects, including TARs, may take only months, others need several years. They can cost from as little as £40,000 to over £1 million, and may involve synthesising existing evidence, undertaking a trial, or other research collecting new data to answer a research problem. The final reports from HTA projects are peer reviewed by a number of independent expert referees before publication in the widely read journal series Health Technology Assessment.
In most applied cost-benefit analyses, individual willingness to pay is aggregated without using ... more In most applied cost-benefit analyses, individual willingness to pay is aggregated without using explicit welfare weights. This can be justified by postulating a utilitarian social welfare function, along with the assumption of equal marginal utility of income for all individuals. However, since marginal utility is a cardinal concept, there is no generally accepted way to verify the plausibility of this latter assumption, nor its empirical importance. In this paper we use data from seven contingent valuation studies to illustrate that if one instead assumes equal marginal utility of the public good for all individuals, aggregate monetary benefit estimates change dramatically.
The present decade has seen a growing interest in methods for the transferral of both benefit est... more The present decade has seen a growing interest in methods for the transferral of both benefit estimates and complete demand functions between open access recreation sites. This interest has been fuelled by the relatively high cost within such assessments of conducting individual valuation surveys at multiple sites. Research methods have moved swiftly in response to this demand, with initial studies examining values-only transfers being recently supplemented by attempts to transfer entire benefit functions. However, even these relatively sophisticated studies have (as their authors acknowledge) failed to yield reliable results (see for example . One reason behind such failure may lie in the difficulty of successfully modelling the inter-site variation in factors such as: travel cost (including adjustment of underlying journey times and expenditure for road availability and quality); population distribution and socio-economic characteristics; site quality; and the access to substitutes. The present study employs a geographical information system (GIS) to tackle this issue by integrating data from a number of sources (including a recreational site survey, the national census, regional road networks, etc.) permitting improved analysis of these factors.
Page 1. A CULTURAL THEORY ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF HEALTH RISKS FROM POLLUTED COASTAL BA... more Page 1. A CULTURAL THEORY ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF HEALTH RISKS FROM POLLUTED COASTAL BATHING WATERS by Ian H. Langford Stavros Georgiou Ian J. Bateman Rosemary J. Day R. Kerry Turner CSERGE Working Paper GEC 98-20 Page 2. ...
Abstract Everyone likes clean seawater to bathe in; but the cost of cleaning up all of Britain&am... more Abstract Everyone likes clean seawater to bathe in; but the cost of cleaning up all of Britain's beaches is enormous (£ 9 billion). But would the British public be willing to meet the costs of the clean up? This was the central question asked in this economic and epidemiological ...
Although dichotomous choice (DC) contingent valuation (CV) has been recommended by the US NOAA "b... more Although dichotomous choice (DC) contingent valuation (CV) has been recommended by the US NOAA "blue-ribbon" panel for large-scale contingent valuation studies, useful information can still be obtained from smaller, open-ended (OE) studies, often undertaken as a precursor to a DC survey. The CV [note use CV rather than CVM throughout] study considered here was carried out in Greece and looked at willingness-to-pay (WTP) for protecting the Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus-monachus) in the Aegean area. This is the most endangered seal in the world, and the application of the CVM methodology was the first such application in Greece. The OE data consists of two responses: first, a binary response detailing whether or not respondents were in principle prepared to pay for the protection of this seal; secondly, those respondents who answered "yes" to the first question were then asked to state their maximum WTP for such protection. A multivariate binomial -log-normal mixture model is used to develop a bid function including explanatory variables such as income, sex, age and education. Such a modelling approach provides an alternative to more commonplace tobit estimation. However, the model is extended to include further information which was collected on:
Page 1. COASTAL BATHING WATER HEALTH RISKS: ASSESSING THE ADEQUACY OF PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE EC D... more Page 1. COASTAL BATHING WATER HEALTH RISKS: ASSESSING THE ADEQUACY OF PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE EC DIRECTIVE by Stavros Georgiou, Ian J. Bateman Ian H. Langford, Rosemary J. Day and R. Kerry Turner CSERGE Working Paper PA 98-04 Page 2. ...
A frequent assumption of hedonic price estimation using property market data is that spatial auto... more A frequent assumption of hedonic price estimation using property market data is that spatial autocorrelation of regression residuals is a feature of the error generating process. Under this assumption, spatial error dependence models that impose a specific spatial structure on the error generating process provide efficient parameter estimates. In this paper we argue that spatial autocorrelation is induced by spatial features influencing property prices that are not observed by the researcher. Whilst many of these features comprise the subtle nuances of location that might adequately be handled by modelling the error process, others may be substantive spatial features whose absence from the model is likely to induce omitted variable bias in the parameter estimates. Accordingly we propose an alternative estimation strategy. We use spatial statistics to determine the nature of spatial dependence in regression residuals. Subsequently we adopt a semiparametric smooth spatial effects estimator to account for omitted locational covariates over the spatial scale indicated by the spatial statistics. The parameter estimates from this model are found to differ significantly from those of a spatial error dependence model.
This paper develops a spatially disaggregated, structural econometric model of agricultural land ... more This paper develops a spatially disaggregated, structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based on the joint multi-output technology representation introduced by <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="AAR037C13">Chambers and Just (1989)</xref>. Starting from a flexible specification of the farm profit function, we derive land use allocation, input application, crop yield, and livestock intensity equations in a joint and theoretically consistent framework.
This paper develops a structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based ... more This paper develops a structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based on the joint multi-output technology representation introduced by Chambers and Just (1989). Starting from a flexible specification of the farm profit function we derive land use allocation, input applications, crops yield and livestock number equations in a joint and theoretically consistent framework. We present an empirical
This paper uses recently developed statistical techniques to achieve improved parameter estimates... more This paper uses recently developed statistical techniques to achieve improved parameter estimates from models of dichotomous choice contingent valuation data. Random effects associated with bid amounts presented to respondents are modelled alongside the variance of individual responses, to give a nested model which more truly reflects the structure of the data being analyzed. Quasi-likelihood methods for estimating parameters in such
Background: Since the inception of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NIC... more Background: Since the inception of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England, there have been questions about the empirical basis for the cost-per-QALY threshold used by NICE and whether QALYs gained by different beneficiaries of health care should be weighted equally. The Social Value of a QALY (SVQ) project, reported in this paper, was commissioned to address these two questions. The results of SVQ were released during a time of considerable debate about the NICE threshold, and authors with differing perspectives have drawn on the SVQ results to support their cases. As these discussions continue, and given the selective use of results by those involved, it is important, therefore, not only to present a summary overview of SVQ, but also for those who conducted the research to contribute to the debate as to its implications for NICE.
Mapping the distribution of the quantity and value of forest benefits to local communities is use... more Mapping the distribution of the quantity and value of forest benefits to local communities is useful for forest management, when socio-economic and conservation objectives may need to be traded off. We develop a modelling approach for the economic valuation of annual Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) extraction at a large spatial scale, which has 4 main strengths: (1) it is based on household production functions using data of actual household behaviour, (2) it is spatially sensitive, using a range of explanatory variables related to socio-demographic characteristics, population density, resource availability and accessibility, (3) it captures the value of the actual flow rather than the potential stock, and (4) it is generic and can therefore be up-scaled across non-surveyed areas. We illustrate the empirical application of this approach in an analysis of charcoal production in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, using a dataset comprising over 1100 observations from 45 villages. The total flow of charcoal benefits is estimated at USD 14 million per year, providing an important source of income to local households, and supplying around 11% of the charcoal used in Dar es Salaam and other major cities. We discuss the potential and limitations of up-scaling micro-level analysis for NTFP valuation.
This paper shows that preferences elicited via a ranking procedure differ systematically from tho... more This paper shows that preferences elicited via a ranking procedure differ systematically from those generated by pairwise choices, even though nothing in formal decision theory entails any such differences. The data strongly suggest that one of the best-known violations of expected utility theory may largely be an artefact of the pairwise choice procedure. However, expected utility theory is not rehabilitated
We investigate conflicts between wildlife conservation and recreational use that can occur at ope... more We investigate conflicts between wildlife conservation and recreational use that can occur at open-access sites when visitors dislike crowding. A theoretical model is proposed which determines the spatial distributions of visitors to a beach, given their willingness to walk to avoid crowding and the configuration of beach access points. This model is estimated for three sections of coastline in eastern England using data from aerial video photography. Visitor density is strongly and negatively correlated with distance from access points. Willingness to walk has a highly skewed population distribution. We discuss the implications of these findings for the management of conflicts between conservation and recreation at open-access sites.
Research (NIHR), was set up in 1993. It produces high-quality research information on the effecti... more Research (NIHR), was set up in 1993. It produces high-quality research information on the effectiveness, costs and broader impact of health technologies for those who use, manage and provide care in the NHS. 'Health technologies' are broadly defined as all interventions used to promote health, prevent and treat disease, and improve rehabilitation and long-term care. The research findings from the HTA programme directly influence decision-making bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Screening Committee (NSC). HTA findings also help to improve the quality of clinical practice in the NHS indirectly in that they form a key component of the 'National Knowledge Service'. The HTA programme is needs led in that it fills gaps in the evidence needed by the NHS. There are three routes to the start of projects. First is the commissioned route. Suggestions for research are actively sought from people working in the NHS, from the public and consumer groups and from professional bodies such as royal colleges and NHS trusts. These suggestions are carefully prioritised by panels of independent experts (including NHS service users). The HTA programme then commissions the research by competitive tender. Second, the HTA programme provides grants for clinical trials for researchers who identify research questions. These are assessed for importance to patients and the NHS, and scientific rigour. Third, through its Technology Assessment Report (TAR) call-off contract, the HTA programme commissions bespoke reports, principally for NICE, but also for other policy-makers. TARs bring together evidence on the value of specific technologies. Some HTA research projects, including TARs, may take only months, others need several years. They can cost from as little as £40,000 to over £1 million, and may involve synthesising existing evidence, undertaking a trial, or other research collecting new data to answer a research problem. The final reports from HTA projects are peer reviewed by a number of independent expert referees before publication in the widely read journal series Health Technology Assessment.
In most applied cost-benefit analyses, individual willingness to pay is aggregated without using ... more In most applied cost-benefit analyses, individual willingness to pay is aggregated without using explicit welfare weights. This can be justified by postulating a utilitarian social welfare function, along with the assumption of equal marginal utility of income for all individuals. However, since marginal utility is a cardinal concept, there is no generally accepted way to verify the plausibility of this latter assumption, nor its empirical importance. In this paper we use data from seven contingent valuation studies to illustrate that if one instead assumes equal marginal utility of the public good for all individuals, aggregate monetary benefit estimates change dramatically.
The present decade has seen a growing interest in methods for the transferral of both benefit est... more The present decade has seen a growing interest in methods for the transferral of both benefit estimates and complete demand functions between open access recreation sites. This interest has been fuelled by the relatively high cost within such assessments of conducting individual valuation surveys at multiple sites. Research methods have moved swiftly in response to this demand, with initial studies examining values-only transfers being recently supplemented by attempts to transfer entire benefit functions. However, even these relatively sophisticated studies have (as their authors acknowledge) failed to yield reliable results (see for example . One reason behind such failure may lie in the difficulty of successfully modelling the inter-site variation in factors such as: travel cost (including adjustment of underlying journey times and expenditure for road availability and quality); population distribution and socio-economic characteristics; site quality; and the access to substitutes. The present study employs a geographical information system (GIS) to tackle this issue by integrating data from a number of sources (including a recreational site survey, the national census, regional road networks, etc.) permitting improved analysis of these factors.
Page 1. A CULTURAL THEORY ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF HEALTH RISKS FROM POLLUTED COASTAL BA... more Page 1. A CULTURAL THEORY ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF HEALTH RISKS FROM POLLUTED COASTAL BATHING WATERS by Ian H. Langford Stavros Georgiou Ian J. Bateman Rosemary J. Day R. Kerry Turner CSERGE Working Paper GEC 98-20 Page 2. ...
Abstract Everyone likes clean seawater to bathe in; but the cost of cleaning up all of Britain&am... more Abstract Everyone likes clean seawater to bathe in; but the cost of cleaning up all of Britain&amp;#x27;s beaches is enormous (£ 9 billion). But would the British public be willing to meet the costs of the clean up? This was the central question asked in this economic and epidemiological ...
Although dichotomous choice (DC) contingent valuation (CV) has been recommended by the US NOAA "b... more Although dichotomous choice (DC) contingent valuation (CV) has been recommended by the US NOAA "blue-ribbon" panel for large-scale contingent valuation studies, useful information can still be obtained from smaller, open-ended (OE) studies, often undertaken as a precursor to a DC survey. The CV [note use CV rather than CVM throughout] study considered here was carried out in Greece and looked at willingness-to-pay (WTP) for protecting the Mediterranean Monk Seal (Monachus-monachus) in the Aegean area. This is the most endangered seal in the world, and the application of the CVM methodology was the first such application in Greece. The OE data consists of two responses: first, a binary response detailing whether or not respondents were in principle prepared to pay for the protection of this seal; secondly, those respondents who answered "yes" to the first question were then asked to state their maximum WTP for such protection. A multivariate binomial -log-normal mixture model is used to develop a bid function including explanatory variables such as income, sex, age and education. Such a modelling approach provides an alternative to more commonplace tobit estimation. However, the model is extended to include further information which was collected on:
Page 1. COASTAL BATHING WATER HEALTH RISKS: ASSESSING THE ADEQUACY OF PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE EC D... more Page 1. COASTAL BATHING WATER HEALTH RISKS: ASSESSING THE ADEQUACY OF PROPOSALS TO AMEND THE EC DIRECTIVE by Stavros Georgiou, Ian J. Bateman Ian H. Langford, Rosemary J. Day and R. Kerry Turner CSERGE Working Paper PA 98-04 Page 2. ...
A frequent assumption of hedonic price estimation using property market data is that spatial auto... more A frequent assumption of hedonic price estimation using property market data is that spatial autocorrelation of regression residuals is a feature of the error generating process. Under this assumption, spatial error dependence models that impose a specific spatial structure on the error generating process provide efficient parameter estimates. In this paper we argue that spatial autocorrelation is induced by spatial features influencing property prices that are not observed by the researcher. Whilst many of these features comprise the subtle nuances of location that might adequately be handled by modelling the error process, others may be substantive spatial features whose absence from the model is likely to induce omitted variable bias in the parameter estimates. Accordingly we propose an alternative estimation strategy. We use spatial statistics to determine the nature of spatial dependence in regression residuals. Subsequently we adopt a semiparametric smooth spatial effects estimator to account for omitted locational covariates over the spatial scale indicated by the spatial statistics. The parameter estimates from this model are found to differ significantly from those of a spatial error dependence model.
This paper develops a spatially disaggregated, structural econometric model of agricultural land ... more This paper develops a spatially disaggregated, structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based on the joint multi-output technology representation introduced by <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="AAR037C13">Chambers and Just (1989)</xref>. Starting from a flexible specification of the farm profit function, we derive land use allocation, input application, crop yield, and livestock intensity equations in a joint and theoretically consistent framework.
This paper develops a structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based ... more This paper develops a structural econometric model of agricultural land use and production based on the joint multi-output technology representation introduced by Chambers and Just (1989). Starting from a flexible specification of the farm profit function we derive land use allocation, input applications, crops yield and livestock number equations in a joint and theoretically consistent framework. We present an empirical
This paper uses recently developed statistical techniques to achieve improved parameter estimates... more This paper uses recently developed statistical techniques to achieve improved parameter estimates from models of dichotomous choice contingent valuation data. Random effects associated with bid amounts presented to respondents are modelled alongside the variance of individual responses, to give a nested model which more truly reflects the structure of the data being analyzed. Quasi-likelihood methods for estimating parameters in such
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Papers by Ian Bateman