Browsing by Author "Russell Lamb, Committee Member"

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    The Effects of Changes in Subsidies and Trade Interventions on the Sheep Industry
    (2003-06-23) Deese, William Franklin; Peter Bloomfield, Committee Member; Walter Thurman, Committee Chair; Matt Holt, Committee Member; Russell Lamb, Committee Member
    The purpose of this research is to analyze the dynamic response of an industry to production subsidies and to trade restrictions on a competing product. Specifically I examine the U.S. sheep industry and compare the effects of a production intervention similar to the Wool Act and to a tariff-rate quota. I begin with a dynamic profit function and derive an Euler equation. I use the iterated generalized method of moments to estimate the demand for slaughter lambs, the Euler equation, and the demand for domestic wool. These equations are estimated separately using instrumental variable techniques to adjust for the endogenous right hand side variables and for future-dated variables, in which the number of instruments exceeds the number of parameters. In each case, the iterated generalized method of moment estimator converges and produces reasonable estimates. Separately I estimate the demand for imported lamb meat using regression with autocorrelated errors. I then generate equilibrium slaughter lamb prices and breeding stock levels for a base case, for the production-subsidies case and for the tariff-rate quota case. The equilibrium quantities and prices are generated from the solution to a variable-coefficient difference equation. A feature of the model is the effects of joint outputs, slaughter lambs and wool, are included in the model. Results are that re-imposition of the Wool Act increases breeding stock levels relative to the base case, although breeding stock levels continue to decline, and slaughter lamb prices also initially increase. Implementation of the tariff-rate quota raises slaughter lamb prices and lowers breeding stock levels relative to the base case. Effects of the tariff-rate quota are small compared with the re-imposition of the Wool Act.
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    Estimation of Recreation Demand Models Using Dual Approaches
    (2003-08-18) Wang, Yang; Matthew Holt, Committee Co-Chair; Russell Lamb, Committee Member; Raymond Palmquist, Committee Member; Daniel Phaneuf, Committee Co-Chair
    The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate dual approaches to corner solutions that are both tractable and flexible in recreation demand. Two structural models are estimated using data from the Iowa wetlands survey in the incomplete demand system context. This dissertation expands existing economic literature on recreation demand in several respects, including 1) combining incomplete demand system framework with corner solution estimation, 2) advancing knowledge on estimating utility consistent recreation models allowing for corner solutions, 3) presenting feasible computational techniques for the use in recreation demand estimation. The results show that parameter estimates under the models studied have a similar pattern with the expected signs. However, the two models predict different correlation patterns among error terms across recreation sites and have different behavioral interpretations. I also construct welfare measures under various scenarios and find that the welfare measures are consistent with the expected signs and are of reasonable magnitudes.
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    Fire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: An Examination of the Effects of Wildfire on Residential Property Markets.
    (2004-08-12) Huggett, Robert James Jr.; Subhrendu Pattanayak, Committee Member; Daniel Phaneuf, Committee Member; Russell Lamb, Committee Member; Raymond Palmquist, Committee Chair
    Housing markets near forests and wildland should capitalize into prices the value of forest amenities such as recreational opportunities, attractive scenery, and clean air. The expanding wildland-urban interface has made wildfire a frequently discussed and contentious public policy issue over the past decade. As residential communities expand into natural areas, more lives and property are placed at risk of death and destruction from wildfire. Housing markets are impacted by both the mere presence of fire risk as well as the damage to forest amenities and property that accompanies a wildfire. The purpose of this research is to empirically identify these responses. A data set comprised of residential housing sales from 1992-1996 in Chelan County, Washington was used to determine how the market responded to the 1994 fires in the Wenatchee National Forest that burned over 180,000 acres. The results indicate a decrease in the willingness to pay to live near the burned area for a six-month period in early 1995. There is no change in the willingness to pay to live near areas of relatively higher fire risk defined by higher fuel levels, which can be interpreted as a lack of support for collective protective measures that would reduce fuels. Additionally, the hedonic price for a fire-resistant roof increases gradually for 18 months before dropping to pre-fire levels in the second half of 1996. This result indicates that the subjective or perceived risk of property damage from wildfire behaved in a similar fashion and suggests either a risk threshold below which the household disregards the risk of fire or a general lack of awareness of risk.