A large body of literature suggests individuals behave differently when responding to hypothetical valuation questions than when actual payment is required. Such findings have generated a great deal of skepticism over the use of the contingent valuation method and benefit measures derived from it. Recently, a new method, cheap talk, has been proposed to eliminate the potential bias in hypotheti...

While contingent valuation remains the only option available for measurement of total economic value of nonmarketed goods, the method has been criticized due to its hypothetical nature. We analyze field experimental data to evaluate two ex ante approaches to attenuating hypothetical bias, directly comparing value statements across four distinct referenda: hypothetical, “cheap talk,” “consequent...

An attractive property of attribute-value grammars is their reversibility. Attribute-value grammars are usually coupled with separate statistical components for parse selection and fluency ranking. We propose reversible stochastic attribute-value grammars, in which a single statistical model is employed both for parse selection and fluency ranking.

Should an informed seller lead with the best or worst good in a sequential auction? Considering the sale of two stochastically equivalent goods over two periods, we show that if second period buyers can observe the rst period price, the seller has an incentive to lead with the best good so as to send a positive signal about the quality of the following good. This result holds even though the go...

In 1980, Chile began financing public and most private schools with vouchers. This paper uses 1997 data on over 150 000 Chilean eighth-graders to compare Spanish and mathematics achievement in six types of public and private schools, including voucher schools operated by Catholic and non-religious institutions. Initial findings suggest that Catholic voucher schools have a small advantage over m...

while ignoring income distribution and estimating aggregate demand generally leads to aggregation bias and thus, does not reflect households’ demand properly, yet aggregation bias is rarely considered in empirical demand studies and simply is ignored in most cases. the objective of the present study is to estimate aggregation bias in households’ demand for various types of meats and to evaluate...

Existing studies of congressional influence on Supreme Court decision making have largely failed to recognize the fact that the Court has a discretionary docket. We model the effects of congressional preferences on the certiorari decision and find strong evidence that the Court’s constitutional agenda is systematically influenced by Congress. The Court’s docket is significantly less likely to c...