This study uses conjoint analysis to examine the preferences of buyers for Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wild horses based on physical attributes of wild horses and individual characteristics of the buyers. Generalized ordered logit models and multinomial logit models are used to study the impact of the buyers’ demographic characteristics such as age, gender, knowledge about wild horse care, and number of wild horses previously adopted on physical attributes of the horses such as color, age, height, training status, temperament, conformation, and unique markings. Using a choice experiment, taken together, these attributes determine buyer’s preferences for a wild horse. This study reveals that characteristics of buyers have significant effects on their preferences for wild horses. Their gender, age, knowledge about wild horse care, and the number of horses previously adopted influence the importance that buyers place on physical attributes of a wild horse in their decision to purchase a wild horse.

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Šis darbas skirtas Italijos verslininkų pasitenkinimo darbu analizei, naudojantis kokybinių požymių daugiamatės statistikos metodais. Duomenys yra iš Italijos Veneto regiono verslininkų tyrimo, kurį 2006 metais pradėjo Padujos universiteto Statistikos departamentas. Imtį sudaro 1216 stebėjimų iš beveik 113000 Veneto regiono (Šiaurės rytų Italija) verslininkų populiacijos. Priklausomasis kintamasis, t.y. pasitenkinimas darbu, išmatuotas ranginėje keturių taškų Likert skalėje su šiomis kategorijomis: „nepatenkintas“, „nei patenkintas, nei nepatenkintas“, „pakankamai patenkintas“ ir „patenkintas“. Paaiškinamuosius kintamuosius sudaro demografinės, firmos charakteristikos, tapimo verslininku motyvus, darbą, laisvalaikį ir ateities perspektyvas atspindintys kintamieji. Beveik visi kintamieji, taip pat ir priklausomasis, yra kategoriniai. Todėl pagrindinis šio darbo tikslas yra išsirinkti geriausiai tokio tipo duomenims tinkantį modelį. Aptariama galimybė naudotis tiesine regresija, atlikus optimalųjį matavimo skalės transformavimą (optimal scaling), logistine regresija, prieš tai apjungus priklausomojo kintamojo rangus, daugianariu logit modeliu, analizuojant kiekvienos kategorijos tikimybę atskirai ir rangine regresija su logit ir cloglog sąryšio funkcijomis. Potencialių pasitenkinimo darbu veiksnių skaičius- pakankamai didelis (daugiau negu 30), todėl itin svarbus uždavinys yra parinkti aiškinančiuosius kintamuosius, vengiant multikolinearumo problemos. Siekiant sumažinti... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The paper presents job satisfaction analysis among Italian entrepreneurs using multivariate statistical techniques. Data are taken from Veneto region (North-East part of Italy) businessmen research started by Department of Statistics of Padova University at 2006. Sample consists of 1216 observations (real population is almost 113 000 entrepreneurs at this region). The outcome variable for the job satisfaction is measured on an ordered, categorical, four-point Likert scale – „dissatisfied‘“, „neither satisfied nor dissatisfied“ , „quite satisfied“ and „satisfied“. Explanatory variables include demographic items, firm characteristics, variables representing the reasons of having started the own business, items associated with work, leisure activities and future perspectives. Quite all variables, as well as the dependent one, beeing categorical, the main objective of this work is to select an appropriate model for such type of data among possible alternatives. Discussions are made on possibility to applicate linear regression with optimal scaling, binary logit for dichotomized dependent variable, multinomial logit for analysis of every single category and ordinal logistic regression with several link functions (logit and cloglog). The number of possible determinants of job satisfaction beeing quite large (there were more than 30 questionnaire items associated with job satisfaction) it was of a great importance choosing which explanatory variables should be included in the models... [to full text]

New Zealand is internationally renowned for having some of the finest and most challenging trout fishing in the world. However, due to continuing development and angling pressure many fishing sites are showing signs of environmental degradation and over fishing. This trend is almost certain to continue into the future given continued population and economic growth. Understanding the determinants of site choice, preference heterogeneity and anglers’ substitution patterns is fundamentally important to fishery managers who have the difficult task of maintaining quality angling experiences on a number of fishing sites, managing angling pressure and maintaining license sales. Recent advances in simulation techniques and computational power have improved the capability of discrete choice models to reveal preference heterogeneity and complex substitution patterns among individuals. This thesis applies and evaluates a number of state-of-the-art discrete choice models to study angler site choice in New Zealand. Recreation specialisation theory is integrated into the analysis to enhance the behavioural representation of the statistical models. A suite of models is presented throughout the empirical portion of this thesis. These models demonstrate different ways and degrees of explaining preference heterogeneity as well as identifying anglers’ substitution patterns. The results show that North Canterbury anglers’ preferences vary considerably. Resource disturbances such as riparian margin erosion, reduced water visibility and declines in catch rates can cause significant declines in angler use of affected sites, and at the same time non-proportional increases in the use of unaffected sites. Recreation specialisation is found to be closely related to the types of fishing site conditions, experiences and regulations preferred by anglers. Anglers’ preference intensities for fishing site attributes, such as catch rates, vary across different types of fishing sites. This location specific preference heterogeneity is found to be related to specialisation. Overall, the empirical findings indicate that conventional approaches to modelling angler site choice which do not incorporate a strong understanding of angler preference heterogeneity can lead to poorly representative models and suboptimal management and policy outcomes.

Les crises monétaires sont les premières crises financières de l'histoire économique. Elles se traduisent par l'élimination ou la substitution des monnaies nationales. L'objectif de cette thèse est de poser les fondements théoriques et empiriques des crises monétaires, mais également de proposer un cadre de prévention de ce type de crise qui sévit en zone euro depuis 2008. Les débats économiques et politiques actuels autour des questions de désintégration monétaire témoignent de la persistance et de l'ampleur de la crise, où la légitimité et la souveraineté de la monnaie unique est menacée à moyen long terme. Les divers plans de sauvetage et les politiques d'austérité dans les pays-membres en difficulté ne sont que les conséquences et les coûts directs d'une telle crise. Ces derniers doivent interpeller les autorités de supervision à une plus grande vigilance, ainsi qu'à une politique de prévention plus avisée. L'objectif de cette thèse est double : dans une première partie, nous analysons le concept, les fondements historiques et théoriques des crises monétaires, puis dressons une typologie de celles-ci. Dans une seconde partie, nous apportons une contribution empirique relative aux déterminants des crises monétaires en zone euro et proposons un outil de prévention des crises monétaires, grâce à la mise en place d'un système d'alerte avancée (Early Warning System), par l'approche économétrique de type logit multinomial. Pour ce faire, la détection et la mesure des mésalignements des taux de change réels à l'intérieur de la zone euro est cruciale, puisqu'il constitue l'indicateur premier des crises monétaires. L'estimation des taux de change d'équilibre permettent ainsi d'apprécier la sur ou sous-évaluation des monnaies, indispensable à la mise en place d'un système d'alerte avancée, à des fins de prévention des crises monétaires. / Monetary crises are the first financial crises in economic history, which result in the elimination or substitution of national currencies. The aim of this thesis is to study the theoretical and empirical foundations of monetary crises. Furthermore, a framework for the prevention of such crises, raging in the Euro zone since 2008, is provided. The current economic and political debates about this issue reflect the persistence and the extent of this crisis, in which the Euro's legitimacy and sovereignty is threatened in the medium term. The various rescue plans and austerity policies in troubled member states are direct consequences and costs of this crisis. Consequently, supervisory authorities need to be more vigilant in strengthening their prevention policy. The purpose of this thesis is twofold: in the first part, we analyze the concept, the historical and theoretical foundations of monetary crises, and then develop a typology of them. In the second part, we provide an empirical contribution on the determinants of monetary crises in the euro area and propose a tool for preventing currency crises by setting up an Early Warning System, through the econometric approach of the multinomial logit model. As the primary indicator of monetary crises, the detection and measurement of real exchange rate misalignments within the euro area is decisive. The equilibrium exchange rates estimation allows the assessment of currency over- or undervaluation, which is essential for the implementation of an early warning system

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux décisions de production des agriculteurs et plus particulièrement des producteurs de thé au Vietnam. Plus précisément, le Chapitre 1 donne un aperçu rapide de l’évolution observée dans le monde et au Vietnam. Le Chapitre 2 porte sur l’analyse de l'efficacité technique de la production de thé au Vietnam. Il permet de conclure que l'efficacité technique moyenne de la production de thé est très faible (seulement 41\%). Le Chapitre 3 de cette thèse présente un modèle théorique analysant les décisions d’agriculteurs dans le cadre d’une conversion à la production biologique. Il s'agit de déterminer les conditions optimales pour la conversion compte tenu des contraintes concernant l'allocation des terres pour les produits conventionnels et biologiques. Il montre notamment l'importance de (i) la quantité disponible de terres consacrées aux produits biologiques, (ii) la productivité de la technologie de production de produits biologiques, (iii) les mécanismes d'incitation et enfin (iv) les contraintes inhérentes à la production de produits biologiques. Le Chapitre 4 compare deux modèles économétriques, l'un avec une hétérogénéité individuelle non observable et l'autre sans hétérogénéité. Les résultats obtenus révèlent certains facteurs importants qui influent sur l'adoption des différentes variétés de thé: le revenu, la présence de personnages âgées au sein du ménage, la taille du ménage et l'usage d'engrais biologique. Le Chapitre 5, enfin, s'intéresse aux impacts des relations politiques sur le revenu total et le revenu issu de la production de thé des ménages. Nos résultats soulignent le rôle important des relations politiques sur l'amélioration des revenus des agriculteurs. / The aim of this thesis is to identify and investigate some limits regarding recent empirical and theoretical contributions in the field of farmers' behavior as related to tea production in Vietnam. Chapter 1 provides a quick overview about tea production in the world and in Vietnam. Chapter 2 in our thesis analyzes the technical efficiency of the tea production in Vietnam. This study finds that the average technical efficiency of tea production is very low (only about 41\%). Chapter 3 presents a theoretical model in order to figure out the farmer's decision to adopt for organic production. The decision concerns the allocation of lands for conventional and organic products.It shows the importance of (i) the available quantity of land devoted to agricultural plants, (ii) the productivity of the organic products, (iii) the incentive mechanism, and finally (iv) the constraints on output of organic products. In Chapter 4, we compared two version of econometric model: a model with household's unobserved heterogeneity and a model without unobserved heterogeneity. We found that the former model is preferred. The results revealed that some important factors which influence the adoption of tea varieties included tea income, presence of elderly, household size and use of organic fertilizers. In Chapter 5, we focus on investigating the impacts of political connections both farmer's total income and tea income. The findings indicate the significant role of political connection on improving farming households' income.

Managed lane refers to the application of various operational and design strategies on highway facilities to improve system efficiency and mobility by proactively allocating traffic capacity to different lanes. One of the key elements to understand the behavior changes and underlying causalities in user responses to managed lanes is to examine the value of time (VOT) and value of reliability (VOR). The breadth of this dissertation encompasses two major dimensions of VOT and VOR estimation – distributions or variations across different users and under different circumstances; and influences of unobserved attitudinal characteristics on roadway pricing valuation. To understand travelers’ choice behavior regarding the usage of managed lanes, combined revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) data were used in this study. Mixed logit modeling was applied as the state of the art methodology to capture heterogeneity in users’ choice behavior. The model revealed an average value of $10.68 per hour for VOT and $13.91 per hour for VOR, which are reasonable considering the average household income in the region, and are well within the ranges found in the literature. In terms of user heterogeneity, the mixed logit model was further enhanced by adding interaction effects of variables, which helped recognize and quantify potential sources of heterogeneity in user sensitivities to time, reliability, and cost. The findings indicated that travelers were likely to exhibit higher willingness to pay when they were female, younger (years), older (>54 years), had higher income (> 50 K), driving alone, and traveled on weekdays. Attitudinal aspects are rarely incorporated into roadway pricing analysis. The study herein presents an effort to explore the role of attitudinal factors in drivers’ propensity toward using managed lanes. Model results boded for a significant contribution of attitudinal parameters in the model, both in terms of coefficients and model performance. This study provides a robust approach to quantify user heterogeneity in VOT and VOR and capture the impacts of attitudinal attributes in pricing valuation. The results of this study contribute to a better understanding on what attributes lead to higher or lower VOT and VOR and to what extent.

The overall goal of this study was to analyse the welfare effect of improved wastewater treatment with the view of making policy recommendations for sustainable urban and peri-urban irrigation agriculture in Kenya. This goal was achieved by investigating three specific objectives. The first objective was to assess the farmers’ awareness of health risks in urban and peri-urban wastewater irrigation. Second objective was to analyse the factors that affect the choice of low-risk adaptations in reuse of untreated wastewater for irrigation. The third objective was to estimate the value that urban and peri-urban farmers who practice wastewater irrigation impute to improvements in specific characteristics of the wastewater input in agriculture. In order to achieve the first objective, an ordered probit model was used to identify the factors that influence farmers’ awareness of health risks in untreated wastewater irrigation. The model was fitted to data collected from a cross-sectional survey of 317 urban farm households in the Kibera informal settlement of Kenya. Results of this study show that gender of household head, household size, education level of household head, farm size, ownership of the farm, membership to farmers’ group, and market access for the fresh produce significantly affect awareness of farmers about health risks in wastewater irrigation. Therefore, there is need for awareness programs to promote public education through regular training and local workshops on wastewater reuse in order to improve the human capital of the urban and peri-urban farmers. To achieve the second objective, the study used a multinomial logit model to analyse the farmers’ choice of low-risk adaptations in untreated wastewater irrigation. A survey of 317 urban and peri-urban farmers was conducted and measures for risk-reduction in wastewater reuse were analysed. The urban and peri-urban farmers were found to have adopted low-risk wastewater irrigation techniques such as cessation of irrigation before harvesting, crop restriction and safer application methods. Results of the study show that adoption of risk-reduction measures is significantly influenced by the following factors: household size, age of the household head, education of household head, access to extension, access to media, access to credit, farmers’ group membership, and risk awareness. Also, marginal analysis of the coefficients confirmed the socio-economic characteristics are key determinants in adoption of low-risk measures in wastewater reuse. The study recommends that policies in support of low-risk urban and peri-urban irrigation agriculture should disaggregate farmers according to their socio-economic and institutional characteristics in order to achieve their intended objectives. To achieve the third objective, the study employed the discrete choice experiment approach to estimate the benefits farmers impute to improvements in attributes of the wastewater irrigation input, whose aim is to reduce the health risks associated with untreated wastewater irrigation. Urban and peri-urban farmers who practice wastewater irrigation drawn from Motoine-Ngong River in Nairobi were randomly selected for the study. A total of 241 farmers completed the presented choice cards for the choice model estimation. A random parameter logit model was used to estimate the individual level willingness to pay for wastewater treatment. The results show that urban and peri-urban farmers are willing to pay significant monthly municipality taxes for treatment of wastewater. Conclusion of this study was that, quality of treated wastewater, quantity of treated wastewater and the riverine ecosystem restoration are significant factors of preference over policy alternative designs in wastewater treatment and reuse. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted

Artificial Intelligence in form of Machine Learning classifiers is increasingly applied for travel choice modeling issues and therefore constitutes a promising, competitive alternative towards conventional discrete choice models like the Logit approach. In comparison to traditional theory-based models, data-driven Machine Learning generally shows powerful predictive performance, but often lacks in model interpretability, i.e., the provision of comprehensible explanations of individual decision behavior. Consequently, the question about which approach is superior remains unanswered. Thus, this paper performs an in-depth comparison between benchmark Logit models and Artificial Neural Networks and Decision Trees representing two popular algorithms of Artificial Intelligence. The primary focus of the analysis is on the models’ prediction performance and its ability to provide reasonable economic behavioral information such as the value of travel time and demand elasticities. For this purpose, I use crossvalidation and extract behavioral indicators numerically from Machine Learning models by means of post-hoc sensitivity analysis. All models are specified and estimated on synthetic and empirical data. As the results show, Neural Networks provide plausible aggregate value of time and elasticity measures, even though their values are in different regions as those of the Logit models. The simple Classification Tree algorithm, however, appears unsuitable for the applied computation procedure of these indicators, although it provides reasonable interpretable decision rules for travel choice behavior. Consistent with the literature, both Machine Learning methods achieve strong overall predictive performance and therefore outperform the Logit models in this regard. Finally, there is no clear indication of which approach is superior. Rather, there seems to be a methodological tradeoff between Artificial Intelligence and discrete choice models depending on the underlying modeling objective.

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