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on Environmental Economics |
| By: | Marcello Basani; Barry Reilly; Jonathan Isham |
| Abstract: | Using cross-sectional household-level data from seven provincial Cambodian towns, we estimate a water demand equation for households connected to the network, and provide an empirical measurement of the economic value of tap water connection. The use of a two-step econometric procedure allows us to analyse issues relating to household access to water and to the volume of household water consumption. We estimate that the connection elasticity with respect to the one-off initial cost of connection is -0.39; the price elasticity of water demand for the connected households lies in a range between -0.4 and -0.5; and the welfare effects of water connection are approximately 17 percent of the actual expenditure of the poor unconnected households. Furthermore, providing a network connection to all households in the sample would have the distributional consequences of decreasing the estimated Gini coefficient by three percentage points and the poverty head-count ratio by six percentage points. |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0429&r=env |
| By: | Jay Shimshack |
| Abstract: | Mercury exposure has emerged as one of the most prominent environmental health and food safety concerns. The primary danger is the consumption of contaminated fish by young children, nursing mothers, and pregnant women. To mitigate the risks, in January 2001 the FDA issued a national advisory urging at-risk consumers to limit fish consumption. Did the FDA advisory reduce mercury exposure to at-risk groups? We find that consumers most likely to be aware of and understand the advisory did significantly reduce fish consumption relative to a control group. Both education and newspaper readership are important determinants of consumption response among at-risk groups, suggesting that information acquisition and assimilation are key factors for risk avoidance. Some newspapers readers not specifically targeted by the advisory also responded. Disturbingly, we do not find a response to the mercury advisory among the relatively large group of at-risk households which met neither the education nor readership criteria. |
| Keywords: | Consumer Economics, Empirical, Analysis, Government, Policy, Regulation, Public, Health, Water, Pollution |
| JEL: | D12 I18 Q53 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0423&r=env |