计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Professor Titmuss, an eminent English social theorist, believes that man is inherently altruistic and that the duty of government is to create that social and economic climate which best channels man's drive to work together for the common good. In support of this belief, he has written a book about the procurement, distribution, and transfusion of human blood, a medical topic which he employs as an illustrative social and economic microcosm. The conclusion he reaches is foregone: "The voluntary socialized system in Britain is economically, professionally, administratively and qualitatively more efficient than the mixed, commercialized, and individualistic American system" (Titmuss, R.M: "Why Give to Strangers?" Lancet 1 :123-125, 1971). As the book was written with a bias, so will it be read with bias. My own bias is that of an American and a blood-banker. I am only too conscious of many deficiencies in the American complex of arrangements—it isn't

The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy

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

We investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decision maker by providing verifiable information brings out all the relevant information. We find that, if the decision maker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the relevant variables and about the preferences of the interested party or parties, competition may be unnecessary; while if the decision maker is unsophisticated or not well informed, competition is not generally sufficient. However, if the interested parties' interests are sufficiently opposed, or if the decision maker is seeking to advance the parties' decision maker's need for prior knowledge about the relevant variables and for strategic sophistication. In other settings, only the combination of competition among information providers and a sophisticated skepticism is sufficient to allow defective decision making.

Relying on the Information of Interested Parties

Geographical origin labels are important information and marketing tools and have recently become a central component of EU agricultural promotion. We consider demand in a non-EU export market for two distinct label types: country of origin (COO) and geographical indications (GIs). Additionally, two types of GIs, 'protected designations of origin' (PDOs) and 'protected GIs' (PGIs) are considered. Empirical findings indicate consumers' willingness to pay varies with the oil's COO and is greater for GIs than for non-GIs from a given country. Weaker evidence that consumers value PDOs more than PGIs is also found.

Consumers’ preferences for geographical origin labels: evidence from the Canadian olive oil market

Risk Aversion, Subjective Beliefs, and Farmer Risk Management Strategies

Risk preferences and purchase of energy-efficient technologies in the residential sector

Using the exchangeability method, we elicit Italian farmers’ short- and long-run perceptions of agricultural risks related to climate change We consider four sources of crop loss risk: powdery mildew and hail for grape growers and apple dieback and hail for apple farmers We find that perceived crop loss risks tend to be greater in the long run than in the short run Controlling for a variety of factors (past experiences with crop losses, farming experience, numeracy, interactions with other producers, and farm characteristics), we identify climate change beliefs as a critical factor explaining the short- vs long-run difference in risk perceptions: those who believe in climate change project larger future crop losses Additionally, prior direct experience with crop losses helps explain why certain farmers perceive greater risk Our results suggest that outreach services should offer field days providing first-hand exposure to crop losses and adopt a segmented approach that considers farmers’ climate change beliefs

Gregory Colson

Papers

Consumers’ preferences for geographical origin labels: evidence from the Canadian olive oil market

Risk Aversion, Subjective Beliefs, and Farmer Risk Management Strategies

Risk preferences and purchase of energy-efficient technologies in the residential sector

Climate change beliefs and perceptions of agricultural risks: An application of the exchangeability method ☆

Considering macroeconomic indicators in the food before fuel nexus