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

After more than a decade of experience in the global marketplace, genetically modified (GM) foods continue to be controversial. Early GM traits were obtained by transferring genes across species, largely from soil bacteria, and this transgenic nature is one dimension of consumer resistance. Recently, breakthroughs have occurred using intragenic bioengineering where genes are moved long distances within specie and without antibiotic markers. These new intragenic bioengineering methods offer the potential for new commercial crop varieties with traits of direct value to consumers (e.g., enhanced nutrition) without reliance on outside foreign genetic material.To assess the potential market for new intragenic foods, a series of multiple-round random nth-price experimental auctions were conducted in the spring of 2007 on randomly chosen adult consumers with randomized food label and information treatments. Using the data collected through the experimental auctions, this dissertation assesses several issues including: (1) consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for GM food products with and without enhanced antioxidant and vitamin C levels, (2) the impact of controversial and verifiable information on consumers' WTP, (3) the public good value of verifiable information about GM, (4) the welfare impact of alternative labeling policies for GM foods, and (5) the impact of outside-the-auction consumer held product inventories on bids in food experiments.Results indicate that consumers are willing to pay significantly more for intragenic GM vegetables with enhanced nutrition than for a conventional product. This suggests that there is potential for new intragenic foods to find acceptance among consumers and that the food industry for the first time potentially has an incentive to voluntarily label GM foods as GM. The consumer welfare gains from labeling policies that differentiate intragenic and transgenic are quantified. However, the information available to consumers when making product purchase decisions is shown to have a significant impact on private valuations, thus potentially eroding demand for intragenic foods. Verifiable information from independent third-party organizations is shown to have value to consumers through enabling more informed product choices.

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1872&context=etd

Improving nutrient content through genetic modification: Evidence from experimental auctions on consumer acceptance and willingness to pay for intragenic foods

Straight-run vs. sex separate rearing for two broiler genetic lines Part 2: Economic analysis and processing advantages.

Evaluation of starter dietary digestible lysine level on broilers raised under a sex-separated or straight-run housing regime, part 2: Economics of sex separation and digestible lysine level for maximum returns.

The 2012 drought in the U.S. Midwest resulted in volatile crop prices. With field crops constituting a major input in livestock production, livestock producers sought a waiver to Renewable Fuel Standard biofuel mandates. They believed such a waiver would mitigate crop-price volatility; given crops are major inputs in biofuel production. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied the waiver under the belief that the waiver would have minimal if any impact on mitigating price volatility. Employing a VECM, the objective is to investigate if it was prudent for the EPA to reject the waiver. Results generally support EPA's conclusion that the waiver relaxing the biofuel mandate would have minimal impact.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Drought, biofuel, and livestock

We explore the estimation of crop yields and insurance premiums using a hierarchical Bayes small area estimator. The estimator is evaluated for Area Yield Production (AYP) policy using quasi-simula...

Gregory Colson

Papers

Improving nutrient content through genetic modification: Evidence from experimental auctions on consumer acceptance and willingness to pay for intragenic foods

Straight-run vs. sex separate rearing for two broiler genetic lines Part 2: Economic analysis and processing advantages.

Evaluation of starter dietary digestible lysine level on broilers raised under a sex-separated or straight-run housing regime, part 2: Economics of sex separation and digestible lysine level for maximum returns.

Drought, biofuel, and livestock

Estimation of Crop Yields and Insurance Premiums Using a Shrinkage Estimator