Presidential Executive Order 12,866 requires federal agencies to design “cost-effective” regulations and to assess “costs and benefits” of these regulations on the basis of “the best reasonably obtainable scientific, technical, economic, and other information.” Benefit transfers are...

We develop a nonparametric approach to meta-analysis and use it to identify modeling decisions that affect benefit transfer errors. The meta-data describe the results from 31 empirical studies testing the convergent validity of benefit transfers. They evaluated numerous methodological...

This note presents a new solution to the classic problem with using hedonic price functions to recover demand curves. Unexpected changes in the composition of a differentiated product can generate instruments that support a simple reduced-form approach to demand estimation.

The hedonic property value model is among our foremost tools for evaluating the economic consequences of policies that target the supply of local public goods, environmental services, and urban amenities. We design a theoretically consistent and empirically realistic Monte Carlo study of whether...

This paper addresses the issue of transparency in structural modeling by investigating how the assumptions of a structural model contribute to its identification of non-market values. Assumptions about the form of the utility function, the depiction of preference heterogeneity, and the...

Pest-management technologies have had to adapt to address evolving pesticide resistance problems and changes in regulations driven by environmental and human health concerns. Integrated pest management, founded in the University of California, is an important example. Using California as a case...