Browsing by Subject "Discrete Choice"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Reducing the Risk of Pesticide Resistance: Economic and Behavioral Factors Affecting U.S. Farmers’ Pesticide Use and Resistance Management
    (2018-05) Sun, Huichun
    In a 2017 off-target blast of dicamba, an herbicide used to control broadleaf weeds in grain crops in the U.S., news concerning possible herbicide toxicity and herbicide commercialization processes headlined the popular media and intensified academic discussions. What brought on this issue in the first place? The answer is weed resistance to multiple groups of herbicides. This dissertation deals with different challenges related to farmers’ decision making in resistance management. More precisely, questions including how farmers respond to economic and behavioral factors associated with adoption of weed management practices (Chapter 2), and how farmers value GE traits in crop seed varieties when the traits are bundled in different ways (Chapter 3) are addressed in two separate chapters. Each of them is explained in greater detail below. The theory predictions in Chapter 2 indicate that farmers’ resistance management decisions are closely related to the strategic relations between farmers’ and neighboring farmers’ management efforts. So are other factors, such as subjective beliefs of the likelihood of solutions to the resistance problem. The empirical analysis in Chapter 2 takes a broad behavioral and economic perspective to examine farmers’ weed management decision. The results, together with the conceptual analysis are of particular use in guiding crop consultants and advisors to provide farmers with efficient and effective assistance. Adopting weed resistance practices after resistance happens is not enough for long-run agricultural development, which provides a starting point for Chapter 3. It is motivated by a highly practical problem: when is the best time to introduce different types of seed products. In this case, the evaluations of farmers’ willingness to pay for different trait bundles enables researchers to proceed with analysis linking seed demand to resistance evolution.
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    Technology, ecology and agricultural trade
    (2013-12) Heerman, Kari E.R.
    I present a methodology for parameterizing and solving a probabilistic Ricardian model with two tradable sectors based on Eaton and Kortum (2002), henceforth EK. I make two changes that generate correlation in product-specific agricultural comparative advantage across agro-ecologically similar countries and deliver trade elasticities that are increasing in this correlation. First, I add product heterogeneity stemming from agro-ecological characteristics to the independently distributed productivity differences in production technology advanced by EK. Second, I allow trade costs to vary across products. As in EK, I estimate trade costs using bilateral trade flow data. However, to account for the additional heterogeneity, I use the simulated method of moments estimator pioneered by Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes (1995). The modified model successfully generates large differences in an exporter's elasticity with respect to its close competitors versus those that produce a very different set of agricultural products. This produces substantial differences in the model's predictions for changes to production and trade patterns in response to agricultural liberalization compared to those predicted by EK.
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    What are Network Breadth and Keeping Your Health Plan Worth?: Evidence from Covered California
    (2018-07) Drake, Coleman
    The Health Insurance Marketplaces have received considerable attention for their narrow network health insurance plans. Yet, little is known about consumer tastes for network breadth and how it affects health plan selection. I estimate demand for health plans in California’s Marketplace, Covered California. Using 2017 individual enrollment data and provider network directories obtained from Covered California, I develop a geospatial measure of network breadth that reflects the physical locations of households and in-network providers. I find that households are sensitive to network breath in their plan choices, and that they tend to stay with their plan from the previous year (i.e., inertia). Overall willingness to pay (WTP) to switch from a narrow to a broad network plan is $21.94 in monthly premiums. Variation in this WTP by age indicates that a selection mechanism exists whereby older households sort into broader network plans. I also find that Covered California households are highly premium sensitive, which may be a result of plan standardization regulations in Covered California. Furthermore, I find that switching costs, as measured by the willingness to pay to stay in the same plan in a subsequent year, are $437.86 in monthly premiums on average, indicating that inertia impacts plan choice in the individual health insurance market despite relatively high churn and plan exit.