Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Does ignoring multidestination trips in the travel cost method cause a systematic bias?

The present paper demonstrates that treating multidestination trips (MDT) as single-destination trips does not involve any systematic upward or downward bias in consumer surplus (CS) estimates because the direct negative effect of a price increase (treating MDT as a single-destination trip) is offset by a shift in the estimated demand curve. Still, ignoring MDT can greatly underestimate or overestimate the CS. In addition, we demonstrate that there is a sound theoretical basis for using preference information for allocating travel costs between different sites included in the MDT package. A novel extreme value approach is proposed, which does not require any overly restrictive assumptions about consumer preferences. This approach is applied to the zonal travel cost model of the Bellenden Ker National Park, Australia. Parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques are used for calculating CS estimates, and the effects of different MDT treatments and estimation methods are compared.     

Differentiating the consumer benefits from labeling of GM food products

Although recurrent evidence is found that consumers have different willingness to pay for GM and non-GM products, there is disagreement in the scientific community about the size of consumer benefits from GM labeling. In this article we use a theoretical model based on a standard constant elasticity of substitution (CES) to explain the importance of the quality effect. It is shown that failing to consider the quality effect may yield an overestimation of benefits from GM labeling, voluntary or mandatory.     

Standing on the shoulder of giants: the aspect of free-riding in RePEc rankings

Research papers in economics (RePEc) rankings have become a well-established source of information about actual and perceived academic performance of institutions, academic fields and their authors. One essential ingredient is the impact factors calculated in RePEc which differ from the standard ones. RePEc reports the ratio of the cumulative citations of all articles of a journal and the number of listed items. The continuously updated RePEc impact factors account for the whole journal and citation history. This approach gives rise to a potential free-riding of authors who profit from journal ranking established in the past. In this article, we demonstrate how the rankings of economists change if one calculates yearly impact factors. The distribution of gains and losses is most pronounced among middle-field ranked authors while the top group shows relative persistence.