Under expected utility theory, compound lotteries can be valued by "iterating" expectations: the expected utility of a compound lottery is the expected value of a simple lottery over prizes that are certainty equivalents to follow-up lotteries. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for a...

Because hydro dams are complex to design and usually involve long-term planning, they are particularly susceptible to cost and time overruns. The controversy surrounding their development remains an unresolved issue in the energy policy debate. This study re-examines the cost issues associated...

This paper reports on a cost-effectiveness analysis of four types of water heating systems operating in a situation where there is an unreliable water supply. These systems are electric water heating, a solar water heating system (SWHS) with electricity back-up, the SWHS with an LPG water...

The cluster robust variance estimator (CRVE) relies on the number of clusters being large. A shorthand "rule of 42'' has emerged, but we show that unbalanced clusters invalidate it. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that rejection frequencies are higher for datasets with 50 clusters proportional to...

This research examines households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved electricity service. Households’ WTP is estimated using the contingent valuation (CV) method on data from 350 in-person interviews in North Cyprus. In order to avoid the cost of outages, households are willing to...

This paper is a quantitative, equilibrium study of the insurance role of severance pay when workers face displacement risk and markets are incomplete. A key feature of our model is that, in line with an established empirical literature, job displacement entails a persistent fall in earnings upon...

Based on recent evidence of fractional cointegration in commodity spot and futures markets, we investigate whether a fractionally cointegrated model can provide statistically and/or economically significant forecasts of commodity returns. Specifically, we propose to model and forecast commodity...

We propose a new methodology for estimating the demand and cost functions of differentiated products models when demand and cost data are available. The method deals with the endogeneity of prices to demand shocks and the endogeneity of outputs to cost shocks, but does not require instruments...

This paper is mainly concerned with weighted average measures of the social discount rate, where the components of the average are the marginal productivity of investment (measured by its gross-of-tax rate of return), and the marginal rate of time preference (measured by the net-of-tax yield of...

We look at the role of credit ratings when assets are issued in a primary market and sold by dealers into a secondary, over-the-counter market in order to study regulatory proposals for rating agencies. Credit ratings are used to overcome a lemons problem. When the lemons problem is moderate,...