Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

This article proposes contemporary best-practice recommendations for stated preference (SP) studies used to inform decision making, grounded in the accumulated body of peer-reviewed literature. These recommendations consider the use of SP methods to estimate both use and non-use (passive-use) values, and cover the broad SP domain, including contingent valuation and discrete choice experiments. We focus on applications to public goods in the context of the environment and human health but also consider ways in which the proposed recommendations might apply to other common areas of application. The recommendations recognize that SP results may be used and reused (benefit transfers) by governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and that all such applications must be considered. The intended result is a set of guidelines for SP studies that is more comprehensive than that of the original National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Blue Ribbon Panel on contingent valuation, is more germane to contemporary applications, and reflects the two decades of research since that time. We also distinguish between practices for which accumulated research is sufficient to support recommendations and those for which greater uncertainty remains. The goal of this article is to raise the quality of SP studies used to support decision making and promote research that will further enhance the practice of these studies worldwide.

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Contemporary Guidance for Stated Preference Studies

This paper reports trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003 in the U.S. Analyses of Census and Current Population Survey data show that educational homogamy increased over most of this period, although there is some evidence of stabilization in the 1990s. From 1940 to the early-1970s, these increases were generated by decreasing intermarriage among groups of relatively well educated persons. Beginning in the early-1970s, the odds of intermarriage among the highly educated stabilized while the odds that high school dropouts marry up dropped substantially. These trends are similar for a broad cross-section of married couples and for newlyweds.

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Trends in Educational Assortative Marriage From 1940 to 2003 - eScholarship

Competition is a defining element of democracy. One of the most noteworthy events over the last quarter-century in U.S. politics is the change in the nature of elite party competition: The parties have become increasingly polarized. Scholars and pundits actively debate how these elite patterns influence polarization among the public (e.g., have citizens also become more ideologically polarized?). Yet, few have addressed what we see as perhaps more fundamental questions: Has elite polarization altered the way citizens arrive at their policy opinions in the first place and, if so, in what ways? We address these questions with a theory and two survey experiments (on the issues of drilling and immigration). We find stark evidence that polarized environments fundamentally change how citizens make decisions. Specifically, polarization intensifies the impact of party endorsements on opinions, decreases the impact of substantive information and, perhaps ironically, stimulates greater confidence in those—less substantively grounded—opinions. We discuss the implications for public opinion formation and the nature of democratic competition.

How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation (WP-12-14)

College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1530&context=econ_fac

Does education increase pro-environmental behavior? Evidence from Europe

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1531&context=econ_fac

Heterogeneity in the preferences and pro-environmental behavior of college students: the effects of years on campus, demographics, and external factors

Willingness to pay for an environmental improvement is a function of how long it takes to deliver the improvement. To measure the effect of time on benefits, I utilize a discrete choice experiment that includes an attribute for delay until the improvement occurs and simultaneously estimate discount rates and valuation parameters. I estimate the present value of immediate and delayed Minnesota River Basin improvements using discount rates directly estimated from the econometric model. Compared to an immediate river basin cleanup, Minnesota residents lose almost half of the benefits when cleanup is delayed by 5 years.

/pdf/intertemporal-valuation-of-river-restoration-4hjcqn3nlz.pdf

Intertemporal Valuation of River Restoration

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1534&context=econ_fac

Environmental performance of state-owned and privatized eastern European energy utilities

The observation of declining discount rates in experimental settings has led many to promote hyperbolic discounting over standard exponential discounting as the preferred descriptive model of intertemporal choice. I develop a new framework, consistent with the random utility model, which directly models the intertemporal utility function and produces explicit maximum likelihood estimates of discounting parameters. I apply this estimation method to a stated-preference survey of river basin cleanup options and revealed-preference lottery payment choices. Formal statistical tests fail to find evidence in support of hyperbolic or quasi-hyperbolic discounting. Annual discount rates range from ten to fourteen percent across the data sets and empirical specifications.

/pdf/estimating-discount-factors-for-public-and-private-goods-and-1qh6n89mku.pdf

Andrew G. Meyer

Papers

Does education increase pro-environmental behavior? Evidence from Europe

Heterogeneity in the preferences and pro-environmental behavior of college students: the effects of years on campus, demographics, and external factors

Intertemporal Valuation of River Restoration

Environmental performance of state-owned and privatized eastern European energy utilities

Estimating discount factors for public and private goods and testing competing discounting hypotheses