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We examine the revealed preference theory underlying the welfare analysis of public goods (e.g., environmental quality) by observing the consumption of related commodities. Inspired by Larson (1991) and Ebert (1998), and extended from Eom and Larson (2006), an empirical strategy is formulated, consistent with the theory of uniquely deriving use and nonuse values for a change in the public good. We show that the weak complementarity assumption and the Willig condition, the common preference assumptions used to support the revealed preference methods for non-market valuation, may be tested as parameter restrictions. A study of water quality valuation is presented to illustrate the proposed empirical strategy. Results show that the weak complementarity assumption and the Willig condition generally do not hold in the case study, and the consumer surplus derived from the indirect valuation method deviates largely from the exact welfare measures.

This paper develops a general model that addresses the starting point bias in the dichotomous choice evaluation data by incorporating both the anchoring effect and yea-saying bias. The model is applied to a contingent valuation study that evaluated the health benefits of air quality improvement in three major metropolitan areas in Taiwan. The empirical evidence shows a strong anchoring effect but an insignificant yea-saying bias. The results show a serious understated willingness to pay if the biases in anchoring and yea-saying are not controlled.

This paper presents a new market-incentive (MI) system to recycle waste-packaging containers in Taiwan. Since most used packaging containers have no or insufficient market value, the government imposes a combined product charge and subsidy policy to provide enough economic incentive for recycling various kinds of packaging containers, such as iron, aluminum, paper, glass and plastic. Empirical results show that the new MI approach has stimulated and established the recycling market for waste-packaging containers. The new recycling system has provided 18,356 employment opportunities and generated NT$ 6.97 billion in real-production value and NT$ 3.18 billion in real GDP during the 1998 survey year. Cost-effectiveness analysis constitutes the theoretical foundation of the new scheme, whereas data used to compute empirical product charge are from two sources: marketing surveys of internal conventional costs of solid-waste collection, disposal and recycling in Taiwan, and benefit transfer of external environmental costs in the United States. The new recycling policy designed by the authors provides a reasonable solution for solid-waste management in a country with limited land resources such as Taiwan.

This paper combines data from a double-bounded referendum contingent valuation survey and a travel cost survey. Rather than linking the two data sets through a common utility function, as in Cameron (1992) and Niklitschek and Leon (1996), we link them through the expenditure difference function. By using the expenditure difference approach, the parameters and their standard errors for individual preferences can be easily extracted, and the trip demand function and exact welfare measure of quality improvements can be estimated. This approach is illustrated in a case study that evaluates the benefits resulting from water quality improvements in the Tamshui river system in the Taipei Metropolitan Area of Taiwan. The empirical estimation results show that the use value becomes much larger when the water quality improves to a higher level. In addition, the nonuse value makes up a large share of the total value of improving water quality; thus the nonuse value could be crucial for examining projects aimed at improving the water quality of the four rivers in the Tamshui river system.

Out of sample tests were performed on two meat demand models: the linear, relative-price real-income specification and the almost ideal demand system. Variants of each model included seasonal effects and habit formation. Estimation procedures included single equation OLS, seemingly unrelated regression, and autocorrelation corrections. The models were tested over five different time periods. The study found that no particular model consistently outperformed the others. This was true over different time periods, across commodities, and across specifications and estimation techniques. A X2 goodness of fit test could not reject the hypothesis that outcomes were uniformly distributed by classes. There was little statistical difference between the top five model types. At the 5% level, the best predicting model was not significantly different from the top four contenders in a majority of the 15 test cases. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.