Cattle Farmers’ Preferences for Disease‐Free Zones in Kenya: An application of the Choice Experiment Method

Management of livestock diseases is important in ensuring food safety to consumers in both domestic and export markets. Various measures are prescribed under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS) agreement of the World Trade Organization. In order to prevent the spread of trans‐boundary cattle diseases, the SPS agreement recommends the establishment of Disease‐Free Zones (DFZs). These have been implemented successfully in some major beef‐exporting countries, but in Kenya are still at a pilot stage. To understand Kenyan farmers’ preferences on the type of DFZ that would be readily acceptable to them, a choice experiment was conducted using a D‐optimal design. Results show that farmers would be willing to pay to participate in a DFZ where: adequate training is provided on pasture development, record keeping and disease monitoring; market information is provided and sales contract opportunities are guaranteed; cattle are properly labelled for ease of identification; and some monetary compensation is provided in the event that cattle die due to severe disease outbreaks. Preferences for the DFZ attributes are shown to be heterogeneous across three cattle production systems. We also derive farmers’ preferences for various DFZ policy scenarios. The findings have important implications for policy on the design of DFZ programmes in Kenya and other countries that face similar cattle disease challenges.     

Animal Welfare and Eggs – Cheap Talk or Money on the Counter?

Our estimate revealed willingness to pay for animal welfare using a panel mixed logit model. We utilise a unique household level panel, combining real purchases with survey data on perceived public and private good attributes of different types of eggs. We estimate willingness to pay for organic eggs controlling for trust in a positive connection between the public good animal welfare and the organic label and the private good food safety also connected to the label. Our results suggest that in the real world, animal welfare plays a minor role in the demand for agricultural products.     

What Do Farmers Want From Agri‐Environmental Scheme Design? A Choice Experiment Approach

Agri‐environmental schemes (AES) have had a limited effect on European agriculture due to farmers’ reluctance to participate. Information on how farmers react when AES characteristics are modified can be an important input to the design of such policies. This article investigates farmers’ preferences for different design options in a specific AES aimed at encouraging nitrogen fixing crops in marginal dry‐land areas in Spain. We use a choice experiment survey conducted in two regions (Aragón and Andalusia). The analysis employs an error component random parameter logit model allowing for preference heterogeneity and correlation amongst the non‐status quo alternatives. Farmers show a strong preference for maintaining their current management strategies; however, significant savings in cost or increased participation can be obtained by modifying some AES attributes.     

A Balancing Act: Disproportionate Sampling of Organic Foods

When exploring decision making in food marketing, particular events are often unequally represented in the data. Concerns over bias can confuse public policy or strategy interpretation if samples are unbalanced. This occurs when researching organic food marketing. A small share of the market (～4%) and of product innovations (～7%) are organic. Caution is advised when predicting trends based on this disproportionately small sample of organic products. This study demonstrates that there is little statistical difference, and even a net gain in predictive power, when using a balanced sample to test factors that influence a firm’s decision to market organic food. Marginal probabilities for the smaller, balanced sample are biased by a constant factor. Thus ex post adjustment is easy and recommended to enhance predictive power.     

Study on mobile phone use while driving in a sample of Iranian drivers

The use of cell phone is a significant source of driver distraction. Phone use while driving can impair a number of factors critical for safe driving which can cause serious traffic safety problems. The objective of this paper was to investigate the frequency of using cell phones while driving in Iran's roads through an observational survey with a random sample of drivers, to recognize contributing factors to cell phone usage and to understand the magnitude of the problem. A total of 1794 observations were collected from 12 sites at controlled intersections, entrance and exit points of highways. The cell phone use rate among drivers (talking or texting) was estimated at 10% which is significantly higher than that in other countries such as Australia, USA and Canada. Rate of cell phone use among younger drivers (14.15%) was higher in comparison with other groups. In order to identify factors affecting cell phone use while driving, a binary logit model is estimated. Variables which significantly contribute to the rate of using cell phone were found to be the age of driver, number of passengers, presence of kids under the age of 8, time of observation, vehicle price and type of car.     

Geopolitical risks and recessions in a panel of advanced economies: evidence from over a century of data

This paper uses a panel of 17 advanced countries over the annual period of 1899–2013, to analyze for the first time, the role played by geopolitical risks in predicting recessions. After controlling for other standard predictors based on a logit model, we find that while aggregate geopolitical risks do not have any predictive ability, geopolitical acts enhance the probability of future recessions, with geopolitical threats reducing the same.     

MARKET STRUCTURE AND PRICING STRATEGY OF CHINA'S AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY*

In this study, using market‐level data on quantities, prices' and automobile characteristics from 1995 to 2001, we conduct a market analysis of the Chinese automobile industry under imperfect competition. On the demand side, we apply a nested multinomial logit model to the national market share data in order to ascertain the demand features of China's automobile market. On the supply side, we assume Bertrand behavior to uncover the markups set by automobile manufacturers. Our empirical results suggest that some large automobile manufacturers set high markups, indicating their strong market power in China's automobile market. However, their declining markups in the late 1990's imply a reduction in market control by the major producers.     

REGIONAL VARIATION IN LIVELIHOOD STRATEGIES IN MALAWI

We identified livelihood strategies at the household level as a function of assets held using survey data from Malawi. We only included endowments that we expected to be predetermined. As expected, land, household size, age and primary education are important determinants of livelihood strategies. It also turned out to be significant regional variation in livelihood strategies, with more diversification in the southern region, and with regional variation in the role of ethnic and religious identity as determinants of livelihood strategies. In particular, we found that households from the Chewa community have more livelihood opportunities in the south, where they are in a minority.     

Information Spillovers and the Choice of Export Destination: A Multinomial Logit Analysis of Spanish Young SMEs

Does having more firms around exporting to a particular destination improve the chances of exporting to that destination (e.g. through information spillovers)? We answer this question implementing a multinomial logit model of whether a firm exports to a particular country. To identify the source of information spillovers, we construct indicators of geographical concentration of exporters selling to a specific destination: within industry, multinationals and across industries. In our application with data for Spanish new small sized firms, only within-industry agglomeration of exporting domestic firms significantly affects the probability of small sized firms exporting to the same destination. The significance of localisation economies is robust to a barrage of controls including destination specific characteristics, gravitational factors (distance and level of development), firm heterogeneity (size) and regional differences.