Enforcing the environment: regulatory realities

This paper explores mandatory environmental regulation of industry through the eyes of the regulator. While there is much written about the salutary effects of environmental law on industry, we are only just beginning to appreciate how, in practice, this operates and the extent to which the regulatory official is a key actor in the process. The paper reports on a qualitative study of environmental agency officials – their values, their attitudes toward industrial operators, pressures from environmental groups and the manner in which they interpret and apply axioms of environmental law. Their technicist, ‘shallow green’ perspective is revealed as they attempt to make regulatory deals. Their interpretative discretion is considerable in the face of a highly ambiguous legal framework, and much uncertainty about the limits of their power. Major features of legislative control, such as towards sustainability, are regarded as unworkable, and prosecution is experienced as a blunt weapon. The implications of the findings for the regulatory official and for the wider role of mandatory regulation are discussed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Consumer willingness to pay for in-flight service and comfort levels: A choice experiment

In the competitive aviation market as a result of the emergence of low cost carriers, charter airlines have had to reconsider their approach to service provision. Specifically, the reduction in service and comfort levels offered by the low cost airlines provides charter carriers with an opportunity to differentiate their product based on the quality of the offering. To consider this strategic option we employ an on-line choice experiment to examine consumer choices with respect to the bundle of services on offer when deciding to purchase a flight. With these data we use the Bayesian methods to estimate a mixed logit specification. Our results reveal that in principle passengers are willing to pay a relatively large amount for enhanced service quality.     

The economics of household waste management: a review

In recent years reducing the amount of waste generated by households has become an important policy issue in industrialised economies. It is no longer acceptable to discard waste without concern for environmental and natural resource issues. In an effort to reduce household waste various policy instruments such as kerbside charges, deposit-refund schemes, integrated sales tax exemptions and virgin material taxes, have been proposed and/or implemented. This article reviews the economics literature that has addressed household waste management. It is argued that a comprehensive modelling framework is necessary if the complex policy environment is to be accurately described.     

Complementing EMU: Rethinking Cohesion Policy

Under EMU, the less competitive regions of the EU—usuallyassumed to be peripheral—have been widely expected tolose ground, yet it is the core of the EU that, so far, hasappeared to have suffered from the advent of the euro. Thispaper looks at the processes behind regional divergence in theEU, and presents evidence on recent and prospective trends asEMU is consolidated. Bearing in mind that the imminent enlargementof the EU will radically change the political economy of theEU's efforts to assure ‘cohesion’, policy issuesare then discussed. Looking forward to the next renegotiationof the Structural Funds, it is argued that difficult decisionshave to be taken about the extent and character of EU policy.The option of an open method of coordination for cohesion policyis put forward as a means of resolving some of the hard choices.     

Livelihoods and farm efficiency in rural Georgia

This study contributes to the literature on the role of livelihood strategies in rural growth and poverty reduction. It distinguishes between livelihood diversity strategies that contribute to sustainable growth in household incomes, and those that mainly have a ‘coping’ function. It suggests that typically, the contribution of livelihood diversity to growing household income is through relaxing dependence on credit for access to capital. In this scenario, livelihood diversity would lead to higher technical efficiency in agriculture via investment and thereby to higher household incomes. Survey data from Georgia are introduced and used to test these hypotheses using a Bayesian stochastic frontier approach. The findings are relevant to defining more clearly the scope and aims of policies to stimulate the rural non-farm economy in developing and transition countries.     

Food choice,health information and functional ingredients: An experimental auction employing bread

In this paper we present the results of an experimental auction conducted to examine the influence of health and nutritional information on food choice and in particular estimate consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for bread that contains functional ingredients. Employing a sandwich we find that consumers are WTP more for a whole grain and whole grain granary bread sandwich than other bread types including white bread that contains a functional ingredient. We also find that consumers react positively to the provision of nutritional and health benefit information but that this effect occurs regardless of whether we supply specific or non-specific health benefit information. We discuss information provision and health policy implications that emerge from our analysis for bread products in the sandwich market.     

An application of maximum entropy estimation: the demand for meat in the United Kingdom

In many econometric studies of demand relationships the design matrix is frequently subject to severe collinearity. In this paper the Generalized Maximum Entropy methodology is introduced and used to estimate a set of demand relationships. The ability of Generalized Maximum Entropy to estimate economic relationships that are typically subject to a high degree of collinearity among the explanatory variables, thus potentially causing traditional methods of estimation to be unreliable, is explained. The results derived by this alternative method of estimation, for a UK meat demand data set, are analysed and examined. The potential for this emerging estimation methodology is discussed.     

Racing To Invest? The Dynamics of Competition in Ethical Drug Discovery

Recent advances in the theoretical literature have greatly expanded our understanding of the forces that shape the competitive dynamics of research and development, but a paucity of sufficiently detailed empirical data has left these insights relatively untested. We draw on unusually detailed qualitative and quantitative infernal data provided at the research program level by 10 major pharmaceutical firms to explore the usefulness of the modern literature as a source of insight into the dynamics of competition in ethical drug discovery. Our analysis focuses on one particularly compelling aspect of the literature: the suggestion that in “winner take all situations,” competition in R&D becomes a Prisoner's Dilemma, leading to overinvestment in research. Without adequate measures of the social return to innovation, we can say nothing about whether there is “too much” or “too little” research undertaken by the industry, but our results do not support the suggestion that R&D investment in drug discovery is driven by the “tit-for-tat” or simple reaction function models hinted at by the institutional literature. First, R&D investment is only weakly correlated across firms once common responses to exogenous shocks are accounted far, and second, rivals' R&D results are positively correlated with own research productivity, which we interpret as evidence for extensive R&D spillovers rather than the depletion externality implied by “winner take all” models. These results are not, of themselves, sufficient to reject the hypothesis that investment behavior in the industry is driven by strategic considerations since there is theoretical support for a wide variety of observable behavior as equilibrium outcomes of strategic interaction. Nonetheless, they suggest that the more extreme forms of rent dissipation identified in the literature are probably poor characterizations of the reality of competition in pharmaceuticals. Our results point both to the need to develop theories that incorporate richer models of possible payoff structures, adjustment costs, and firm heterogeneity and to the need to collect empirical data that is comprehensive enough to enable one to test them.     

Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis Using Latent and Manifest Variables

The relative virtues of quantitative and qualitative research have been vigorously debated. Several researchers recommend combining methodologies but there is little evidence in the literature to suggest how different research methods might be integrated (Bryman, 1988). The current study addresses this deficiency in the research by examining the use of latent variables in quantitative and qualitative research as a means of blending the two approaches. A study of entrepreneurial Locus of Control where quantitative and qualitative data were available illustrates the methodological issues. Analysis of quantitative data was conducted using LISREL (7.20) and qualitative data were categorised using NUD.IST (Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorising computer software). Detailed comparisons are made between the methods described in this paper and other approaches to content analysis.     

Anti‐microbial hand washes for domestic use – their effectiveness in vitro and in normal use

The killing or removal of microbes from the hands is a critical factor in food safety as many studies have shown the hands to be both an important source of microbes and powerful agents of cross‐contamination in hospital and domestic situations. In response to this concern, a number of novel hand‐washing products have appeared on the market. These products contain anti‐microbial agents and claim to be more effective at removing bacteria than soap bars and conventional liquid soaps. This study attempts to test these claims by comparing the effectiveness of a conventional soap bar, a conventional liquid soap and an anti‐microbial liquid soap containing triclosan. In vitro tests demonstrate that the anti‐microbial liquid soap is more effective than conventional liquid soaps in reducing the viability of six bacterial species and that this effect is both time and dose dependent. However, when the three soaps were compared for their ability to reduce microbial counts on the hands no differences were observed between the three products. For all three soaps, counts after washing sometimes went up and sometimes down when compared with pre‐wash counts. This was the case both when the soaps were used ‘normally’– that is, with great variation in the time taken, water and soap volumes used and method of washing and after a standardized, rigorous wash recommended in clinical situations. Furthermore, reduction in microbial counts from hands contaminated by handling raw meat was no greater for the anti‐microbial than for the conventional liquid soap.