Primary and secondary values of wetland ecosystems

Wetlands are continuously degraded in many parts of the world. One reason is the lack of the appropriate valuation of the multifunctionality of wetland. In an attempt to improve the understanding of the importance of this feature of wetlands an alternative classification of values is suggested; primary and secondary values. Primary value refers to the development and maintenance of ecosystems — their self-organizing capacity. Secondary values are defined as the outputs, life-support functions and services, generated by wetlands. Methods for measuring these values are discussed. Three case studies are presented which use different valuation methods and which to different degrees capture the primary and secondary values. It is concluded that only part of the total wetland value can be captured in monetary terms.     

Valuation and management of tropical forests

This paper develops a framework for the valuation and management of tropical forests that reflects their ecological and economic characteristics. The analysis demonstrates the importance of modeling the feasible use patterns and the information structure in tropical forest management decisions. The model predicts that cases exist where the foresighted management of forests leads to more preservation than the traditional expected value approach. An application in Thailand provides evidence that such cases occur in relevant ranges of benefit flows. The model focuses tropical forest management on assessments of sustainability and feasible sequences in light of uncertainty and information flows.     

Approaches to valuing the hidden hydrological services of wetland ecosystems

This paper investigates the role of the production function approach in capturing the value of hydrological services of wetland ecosystems. Hydrological research in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands in northern Nigeria suggests that the major role of the wet season inundation of the wetlands is in recharging the underlying aquifers. This paper shows that the hydrological services extend beyond direct use values, and have a significant economic value associated with them. Whereas the direct benefits provided by the wetlands, such as floodplain agriculture, fishing and forestry, have previously been assessed, this paper synthesizes the results of two approaches to capture the value of indirect benefits derived from the role of the wetlands in replenishing and maintaining groundwater resources within the wetland area.     

Natural vs. financial insurance in the management of public-good ecosystems

In the face of uncertainty, ecosystems can provide natural insurance to risk averse users of ecosystem services. We employ a conceptual ecological-economic model in which ecosystem management has a private insurance value and, through ecosystem processes at higher hierarchical levels, generates a positive externality on other ecosystem users. We analyze the allocation of (endogenous) risk and ecosystem quality by risk averse ecosystem managers who have access to financial insurance, and study the implications for individually and socially optimal ecosystem management, and policy design. We show that while an improved access to financial insurance leads to lower ecosystem quality, the effect on the extent of the public-good problem and on welfare is determined by ecosystem properties. We derive conditions on ecosystem functioning under which, if financial insurance becomes more accessible, (i) the extent of optimal regulation increases or decreases; and (ii) welfare, in the absence of environmental regulation, increases or decreases.     

Emergy evaluation of the artificial forest ecosystems in the watershed of Miyun Reservoir：a case study for ecosystems valuation and environmental management

To build the artificial forest ecosystem is the major eco-economic development model in the watershed of Miyun Reservoir. It is very important to evaluate the benefits of those ecosystems. Emergy theories are very helpful for us to establish a science-based assessment framework. Emergy evaluation of the artificial forest ecosystems in the watershed of Miyun Reservoir is used to asses the relative values of several ecological functions （sometimes called ecosystem services） and main ecosystem storages （sometimes called natural capital）. The main driving energies, internal processes and storages are evaluated. The main functions, including transpiration, GPP and infiltration, are evaluated, which are 609em$/ha/yr, 6,245em$/ha/yr and 340em$/ha/yr respectively. The total values of major environmental services are 4,683em$/ha/yr in the artificial forest ecosystem. The main storages of natural capital including live biomass, soil moisture, organic matter, underground water and landform are estimated, which are 112,028em$/ha, 9em$/ha, 40,718em$/ha, 34em$/ha and 6,400,514em$/ha respectively. The largest value is landform, which accounts for 97.7% of these calculated total emdollar values. The concept of replacement value is explored using the emergy values of both ecosystem services and natural capital. The total calculated replacement values are 302,160em$/ha.     

Mountain-to-sea ecological-resource management: Forested watersheds,coastal aquifers,and groundwater dependent ecosystems

Improving the understanding of connections spanning from mountain to sea and integrating those connections into decision models have been increasingly recognized as key to effective coastal resource management. In this paper, we aim to improve our understanding of the relative importance of linkages between a forested watershed, a coastal groundwater aquifer, and a nearshore marine groundwater-dependent ecosystem (GDE) using a dynamic groundwater optimization framework and simple ecosystem equations. Data from the Kīholo aquifer on the Kona Coast of Hawai‘i Island are used to numerically illustrate optimal joint management strategies and test the sensitivity of those strategies to variations in physical and behavioral parameter values. We find that for a plausible range of watershed management costs, protecting part of the recharge capture area is always optimal. Without watershed protection, maintaining a safe minimum standard growth rate for a GDE-dependent marine indicator species, reduces net present value non-trivially, but optimal investment in watershed conservation offsets that potential reduction by 75 %. In general, we find that optimal watershed management and groundwater pumping are most sensitive to changes in water demand growth and parameters that describe nearshore salinity.     

Ownership Concentration and Share Valuation

Abstract. Concentrated ownership of large listed companies is widespread throughout the world, and Germany is typical in this respect. This paper proposes a method of distinguishing empirically between the beneficial and harmful effects of ownership concentration, and applies it to German data. The results show that, for most types of largest shareholder, the beneficial effects on minority shareholders of increased ownership (greater monitoring of management, and reduced incentives to exploit minority shareholders due to greater cash‐flow rights) are at least as large as, and sometimes significantly larger than, the harmful effect (greater private benefits of control due to greater control rights).     

宏观调控与公司价值

本文主要研究宏观经济政策变化是否对公司价值具有实质性影响。利用2004年宏观调控前后我国宏观经济政策的显著变化,构建“自然实验”框架．采用双重差分方法估计宏观调控对我国上市公司价值的影响程度。发现与国有公司和大公司相比,宏观调控使民营公司和小公司的价值下降幅度更大。所降低的幅度不仅具有统计意义上的显著性,而且具有经济意义上的显著性。研究表明,紧缩性的经济政策会在短期内显著降低公司价值。通过对超常收益率的稳健性检验,发现2004年的宏观调控中,民营化程度高的公司所受到的负面影响比小规模公司更大。     

未付酬劳动估算方法探析

未付酬劳动估算是生产总量核算中的一个重要内容,在核算理论及方法上存在着一定的不足和局限。本文从未付酬劳动价值估算的概念出发,分析了未付酬劳动估价方法。     

Intangible Investment and Market Valuation

This study derives performance‐ and expenditure‐based estimates of intangible capital and measures the extent to which intangible capital is captured by the equity market measures of firm value. Intangible capital is evaluated using occupational information available in the Finnish linked employer–employee data for the 1997–2011 period. The performance‐based organizational investment in value added is approximately 3 percent; R&D and ICT investment shares are lower, at 1.5 percent, and all are clustered in intangible‐intensive sectors that represent 40 percent of the private sector. Expenditure‐based organizational capital also exists in clusters other than that intensively investing in managerial and marketing effort, and performance‐based R&D capital is concentrated in the cluster with intensive R&D activity; both increase the market value of firms beyond the level that can be explained by standard economic analysis.     

Modelling Heterogeneity and Uncertainty in Contingent Valuation: an Application to the Valuation of Informal Care

Both the lack of market data and the need to adopt a more holistic approach in the valuation of non‐market activities within health care have pointed towards the use of contingent valuation (CV) methods. However, to date, few studies have employed such techniques to value informal care, despite its provision being an important public policy question. We propose an analytical framework that through the use of random parameters models and respondents' certainty scales can incorporate both unobserved and observed heterogeneity in the CV modelling. This is the first CV study of informal care for Scotland (UK) and a £7.68 per hour value is estimated.     

红树林生态系统服务功能价值分析与评价

红树林生态系统具有强大的生态功能,定量评价有利于更好地认识和重视其生态功能.文章在分析和总结的基础上,阐述了红树林生态系统的生态功能类型,并根据两个估算实例,探讨红树林生态系统服务功能价值估算方法体系,最后针对目前估算过程存在的不足进行了分析.     

Cultural species and their ecosystems

The target article was written for a workshop that I organized with Lin Ostrom titled “Rules as Genotypes in Cultural Evolution”. In my commentary, I describe the background for the workshop and target article in addition to commenting on the article itself. A compelling case can be made for functionally organized human groups as like species that adapt to their local environments. A cultural inheritance mechanism is required for this to happen, which functions analogously to genetic inheritance, although the mechanistic details need not be analogous. Indeed, a diversity of cultural inheritance mechanisms are possible that need not be mechanistically analogous to each other. In addition, most modern human populations consist of a diversity of functionally organized groups, or cultural ecosystems. The distinction between “species” and “ecosystem” is important because the concept of an inheritance system applies primarily to the former. Finally, positive cultural evolution in modern large-scale society must be engineered and an explicitly evolutionary perspective will add value to the enterprise.     

Contingent Valuation: Controversies and Evidence

Contingent valuation (CV) has become one of the most widely usednon-market valuation techniques. CV's prominence is due to itsflexibility and ability to estimate total value, includingpassive use value. Its use and the inclusion of passive use valuein benefit-cost analyses and environmental litigation are thesubject of a contentious debate. This paper discusses key areasof the debate over CV and the validity of passive use value. Weconclude that many of the alleged problems with CV can beresolved by careful study design and implementation. We furtherconclude that claims that empirical CV findings are theoreticallyinconsistent are not generally supported by the literature. Thedebate over CV, however, has clarified several key issues relatedto nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to CVpractitioners and the users of CV results.     

Intertemporal Valuation of River Restoration

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.     

Valuation in the Lab

Experimental methods have proven useful to explore the power and limits to nonmarket valuation through stated preference methods. We now understand better how people learn about and react to the incentives, institutions, and information created by surveys. This paper briefly reviews topics in experimental valuation, including ex ante bias corrections, ex post bias calibration, and examining the circumstances that strengthen or weaken the economist’s presumption of rational valuation.     

生态系统价值评估的经济学认识

本文就目前的研究热点—生态系统服务功能的价值评估的经济学基础进行初步研究和探讨,分析了如何从经济学角度来选择生态系统服务功能的价值评估对象,才能保证结果的可信性。同时,从经济学角度分析了生态系统价值评估存在的难题和困境,为今后的进一步研究提出了建设性方向。     

企业价值评估方法综述

企业的价值来源于企业的未来收益流,未来收益流的现值称为企业内在价值.由于市场参与者投资于企业的最终目的是为了未来获得收益,他对企业价值的评价取决于他对企业未来收益流的预期.按照评估思路的不同,本文将这些方法分为四类:资产价值法、对比法、DCF模型及其派生模型和实物期权法.其中DCF模型及其派生模型是当前主流的企业价值评估方法,实物期权法则是一种较新的方法,但其应用越来越广泛.本文是后两类方法的综述.     

Market Valuation and the q Theory of Investment

This study re-evaluates the role of the stock market in Japanese corporate investment decisions based on time-series data. Employing the time-series technique, we examine why the performance of Tobin's average q -type investment function is poor. We construct a series of average q and another of marginal q (a more fundamental profitability measure of investment) and investigate the relationship between the two. A cointegrating relationship is not detected between the two measures, both of which have a unit root. The divergence of average q from marginal q is not narrowed even if the imperfect competition of the output market is taken into consideration. We also examine which q measure is more relevant to Japanese corporate investment decisions by estimating separately the investment function with two measures of q as an explanatory variable. The estimation results show that entrepreneurs place more emphasis on marginal q than on average q in investment decisions.
JEL Classification Number: E22.     

Cable Service and Its Implicit Marginal Valuation

The objective is to estimate the implicit marginal value of channel offerings by cable systems in the USA. Hedonic analysis is a convenient framework in which to explore the relationship between the price of cable service and the channels offered by a cable system. Two separate hedonic equations are estimated-- one for the price of analog cable service and one for the price of digital cable service. With regard to the price of analog cable service, the implicit marginal valuation is statistically significant and positive for just 15 of 106 channel offerings and negative for seven channels. For the price of digital cable service, the implicit marginal valuation is statistically significant and positive for just eleven of 105 channel offerings and negative for five channels. The results suggest that a subscriber's utility would be enhanced by a pricing structure different from the typical approach used by cable systems today of offering a bundled package consisting of several channels. One alternative is to allow consumers to subscribe to just those programming services for which they have a positive implicit marginal value (i.e. an a la carte pricing structure).