What drives agrifood firms to register for an Environmental Management System?

This paper examines empirically which factors determine voluntaryadoption of Environmental Management System (EMS) certification(ISO 14001 or EMAS) by agrifood industries. A discrete-choicemodel of EMS certification is applied to a sample of 1,000 Frenchagrifood firms. The findings suggest that management-relatedfactors drive certification more strongly than economic incentivesand provides a new perspective on Porter's theory of the doublebenefit of certification.     

The Structure of Municipal Water Supply Costs: Application to a Panel of French Local Communities

Network losses and returns are importantissues for water resource management, that are addressed in thispaper by modeling the structure of production for municipal waterutilities with two outputs: water sold to final customers andwater network losses. We propose a measure of economies of scopeto assess the benefit associated with joint production of waterfor final customers and water losses, and several measures ofreturns to evaluate potential gains in exploiting technologicalflexibility of water networks. We estimate the cost structureof water utilities using a GMM procedure with a Translog costfunction and panel data. Estimation results reveal a positivedegree of economies of scope, and short-run returns to productiondensity and returns to customer density that are not significantlydifferent from 1. Significant economies of scale indicate thatlocal communities may benefit from merging into water districts.     

LE RENOUVELLEMENT PÉRIODIQUE DES CONTRATS DE CONCESSION: LE CAS DES SERVICES DE L'EAU

RESUME ** :  Le renouvellement régulier des contrats de concession apparaît nécessaire pour bénéficier de concurrence dans certains secteurs, comme l'eau. Nous décrivons les contrats et la règle de renouvellement optimaux dans ce contexte. Ils arbitrent entre les diminutions de coûts, en cas de changement de concessionnaire, et les incitations à investir à long terme du concessionnaire en place. La meilleure information du concessionnaire en place sur des éléments constituant une valeur commune de la concession est importante. Nous montrons que ses conséquences diffèrent fortement du cas des enchères de biens.     

Correlated risks and the value of information

A decision maker faces two correlated risks and can obtain information on only one of them. Intuition suggests that the existence of a high correlation (in absolute value) between the risks should increase total information value. Indeed in such a case information about one risk induces a relevant information on the other one. Using a simple example, we show that this intuition is often correct, but that it can also be mitigated by other factors.     

Regulation of Public Utilities under Asymmetric Information

We consider the relationship between a localcommunity and a private operator in charge ofthe water utility. An important feature of themodel is the possibility of water networklosses that are costly to the operator. Wecompute the first-best and asymmetricinformation solutions to the optimal contract,with private information on the operator'stechnology. Based on an econometric estimationof production cost and water demand for a panelof French local communities, we simulate theoptimal contract solutions and show thatasymmetric information has importantconsequences for the regulation of water publicutilities.     

A proposal for social pricing of water supply in Côte d'Ivoire

We consider the design of a nonlinear social tariff for residential water in Côte d'Ivoire, which is a case of a monopolistic private operator supplying a population of heterogeneous consumers. The proposed optimal tariff includes an initial “social” block with a low unit price, and higher consumption blocks with a monopoly pricing rule. This optimal nonlinear tariff is calibrated using econometric estimates of a panel-data residential water demand equation. Welfare changes associated with moving from the actual tariff to approximations of the optimal pricing system are computed under different tariff scenarios. We find that gains in consumer welfare would outweigh losses in producer surplus in a majority of Ivorian local communities.     

Valuing cultural world heritage sites: an application of the travel cost method to Mont-Saint-Michel

This article, using the zonal version of the travel cost method (ZTCM), provides the first economic valuation of recreational trips to Mont-Saint-Michel (MSM). The MSM was designated as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site in 1979, and is the most visited coastal site in France. The potential effects on consumer surplus (CS) estimates of some aspects of the ZTCM are considered, namely the treatment of the multiple purpose/destination (MP/D) trips, the inclusion of the opportunity cost of time (OCT) in the recreation demand model and the heterogeneity in the preferences. The heterogeneity in the preferences is examined through a random parameters Poisson model (RPPM). The RPPM generalizes the standard Poisson model (SPM) by allowing coefficients of explanatory variables to vary randomly across geographical units rather than being fixed. Our results show that (1) substantial CS values are associated with the MSM; (2) excluding/ignoring MP/D trips result in biased CS estimates; (3) omitting OCT does not substantially bias CS estimates; (4) the RPPM provides richer information about the impact of explanatory variables on the demand for trips than the SPM, but (5) leads to statistically similar CS estimates than the SPM.     

Cost-effectiveness analysis on the use of fidaxomicin and vancomycin to treat Clostridium difficile infection in France

Background: Fidaxomicin is a macrocyclic antibiotic with proven efficacy against Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in adults. It was licensed in France in 2012, but, due to higher acquisition costs compared with existing treatments, healthcare providers require information on its cost/benefit profile.

Objective: To compare healthcare costs and health outcomes of fidaxomicin and vancomycin, as reference treatment for CDI.

Methods: A Markov model was used to simulate the treatment pathway, over 1 year, of adult patients with CDI receiving fidaxomicin or vancomycin. Several patient sub-groups (severe CDI; recurrent CDI; concomitant antibiotics; cancer; renal failure; elderly) were evaluated. Cost-effectiveness was analyzed based on cure and recurrence rates derived from published randomized clinical trials comparing fidaxomicin and vancomycin, and costs calculated from the payer perspective using French hospitalization data and drug cost databases. Model outputs included costs in euros (reference year 2014) and health outcomes (recurrence; sustained cure rates). Alternative scenario and sensitivity analyses were performed using data from other clinical trials in CDI, including one conducted in real-life clinical practice in France.

Results: Drug acquisition costs were €1,692 higher in fidaxomicin-treated patients, but this was offset by the lower hospitalization costs with fidaxomicin, which were reduced by €1,722. The reduction in the cost of hospitalization was driven by the significantly lower number of recurrences in fidaxomicin-treated patients, offsetting the acquisition cost of fidaxomicin in all sub-groups except recurrent CDI and concomitant antibiotics.

Conclusion: This study demonstrated that, despite higher acquisition costs, the lower recurrence rate with fidaxomicin resulted in cost savings or low incremental costs compared with vancomycin.     

Bargaining Over Environmental Budgets: A Political Economy Model with Application to French Water Policy

In decentralized water management with earmarked budgets financed by user taxes and distributed back in the form of subsidies, net gains are often heterogeneous across user categories. This paper explores the role of negotiation over budget allocation and coalition formation in water boards, to provide an explanation for such user-specific gaps between tax payments and subsidies. We propose a bargaining model to represent the sequential nature of the negotiation process in water districts, in which stakeholder representatives may bargain upon a fraction of the budget only. The structural model of budget shares estimated from the data on French Water Agencies performs well as compared with reduced-form estimation. Empirical results confirm the two-stage bargaining process and provide evidence for systematic net gains from the system for agricultural water users.