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Browsing by Author "Graff, Gregory, committee member"

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    Examining efficiency gains through combining revealed and stated preferences, and issues related to scope with contingent valuation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Gebben, David J., author; Loomis, John B., advisor; Seidl, Andrew, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member
    An increase in the statistical efficiency for non-market valuation techniques is often desired in order to narrow the confidence intervals and provide better policy recommendations for resource managers. This is important to assist the managers in conducting benefit-cost analysis for the scare resources at their disposal. This dissertation examines the gains that come from combining revealed and stated preference data, exploring how estimation techniques can reduce the variance of a WTP amount. This first parts of this dissertation looks at why resource managers would be interested in methods of combining Revealed and Stated preference data and measurement of the gains. One chapter does this by combining DC CVM with an MNL travel cost study. The following chapter examines the role anchoring can play in DB CVM studies for an onsite user of a beach resource. The final part of this dissertation studies the issue of scope in CVM studies through a meta-analysis. This dissertation finds that, in organizing the collected survey data, there are low cost methods to increase the efficiency of estimators that provide a significant reduction in variance. This reduction is critical for the resource manager wanting to examine if the project or policy would pass a benefit cost test. It also finds that the key factors necessary to reflect scope require more research with CVM.
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    Not so sweet: potential economic implications of restricting U.S. sugar imports from Mexico
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Sinclair, Wilson James, author; Countryman, Amanda, advisor; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Cutler, Harvey, committee member
    In December 2014, the U.S. and Mexican governments signed a bilateral agreement constraining Mexico's ability to export sugar to the U.S. because of dumping allegations by U.S. producers. This restriction came after six years of unlimited, tariff-free access to the U.S. market for Mexican sugar producers through the North American Free Trade Agreement. This analysis employs a twenty-eight country partial equilibrium model to estimate the price and welfare impacts of this bilateral trade agreement. Estimates suggest that the agreement successfully increases U.S. price by curbing imports from Mexico. These results translate to an average annual increase in producer surplus of approximately $620 million and decrease in consumer surplus of $1.48 billion across the five-year period simulated.
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    Rural prosperity initiative: propensity-score analysis of income and crop production effects from a comprehensive micro-irrigation program in Zambia
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Nicoletti, Christopher Kevin, author; Kroll, Stephan, advisor; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Weiler, Stephan, committee member
    This study seeks to expand the current literature of the impacts of technology adoption for smallholder farmers. It does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between micro-irrigation technology investment, farmer-group enrollment and five key income and crop-production indicators of smallholder farmer-households in four rural Zambian regions. Micro-irrigation technologies were purchased by farmer-households, and were not randomly assigned. As such, the paper utilizes a propensity-score matching methodology to reduce self-selection bias, thereby estimating the causal effects of micro-irrigation technology investment on household incomes and crop production. By stratifying the sample, impacts were estimated for six combinations of treatment using three distinct matching algorithms. Regional and gender-specific treatment effects were estimated for the impact of farmer-group enrollment with micro-irrigation investment, and for the incremental impact of micro-irrigation investment when the farmer-household is already enrolled in a farmer-group. The study finds robust and positive effects of micro-irrigation investment and farmer-group enrollment on total crop incomes and total crop revenues, for the whole sample. Regional impacts of technology investment are less robust because of sample size limitations, but remain positive and significant in two of the four intervention areas. Female- and male-headed households both had positive and robust impacts on crop incomes, but female-headed household treatment effects were larger in magnitude. The findings of this study suggest that investment in micro-irrigation technologies and enrollment in a farmer-group lead to higher crop incomes for smallholder farmers in Zambia, and may reduce gender gaps in farmer earnings.
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    The impact of armed conflict on agricultural production the case of Libya: 1970-2017
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Bdawi, Elbahlul, author; Hoag, Dana, advisor; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Kling, Robert, committee member; Boone, Randall, committee member
    I examine the long-term impacts of a recent civil war on the agricultural sector within Libya. Due to the associated destruction and market disruption, armed conflict affects the agricultural sector in complex ways including reducing future growth potential by eroding physical and environmental capital. Libya, with its arid climate, low soil fertility and low agricultural productivity, represents an underdeveloped sector that minimizes the inherent complexity to investigate this impact. However, governmental interest in the agricultural sector has been inconsistent as the dominant oil revenue compensates for agricultural deficits through large subsidies. This absence of attention and oversight has resulted in a lack of quality agricultural data, making it difficult to develop beneficial policies to improve sector growth. Based on its simplicity and ease of interpretation, a Cobb-Douglas style production function with Solow-Swan modification is used to characterize the agricultural sector. Though limited, data was collected from FAO and ILO on land, irrigation, fertilizer, machinery, and labor in Libya spanning from 1970 to 2017 covering periods of stability and conflict in order to estimate agricultural sector growth compared to the status quo. To account for the long-term impacts of conflict on growth, inputs are divided into environmental capital, physical capital, and labor. Next, elasticity parameters are estimated through an OLS regression of the Cobb-Douglas production function before and after conflict. A Chow/QLR test is used to confirm the existence and timing of the structural break in the production function arising at the onset of the 2011 conflict. Finally, the impact of post-conflict growth rates are compared using the pre-conflict and conflict regression parameters. Changes in the estimated parameters from the start of the conflict were significant at the 5% level for both the labor and physical inputs, while the environmental elasticity parameter change was not significant. The conflict elasticity estimates were -0.518, -0.803, and -18.9 for the Physical, Environmental and Labor inputs, compared to their pre-con ict values of 0.107, 0.146, and 1.315, respectively. The two key questions are whether the growth path can recover to pre-conflict levels and the associated production losses resulting over the period the sector takes to return to those pre-conflict rates. A preliminary cost-analysis was applied to estimate the required investment to generate an increase in agricultural GDP. The most cost-efficient way to increase the production after conflict (under the assumption of a return to pre-conflict elasticities) is to increase the quantity/quality of fertilizer used. Increasing machinery is the least efficient way to grow the sector GDP. This may reflect two realities in Libya: weak soil quality and inefficient use of machinery, due to diseconomies of size with smaller plots. Lessons from conflicts in other post-conflict countries suggest that a necessary but insufficient condition is the application of good agricultural policies to rebuild the sector. New policies could improve agricultural returns to surpass losses due to conflict if post-conflict productivity is improved. These policies must be combined with good management and reliable data to effect positive changes within the sector. In Libya's case, the primary post-conflict policies should include improving data collection and focusing on increased education and training to enhance the agricultural sector's rehabilitation. I estimated 3 specific scenarios of the post-conflict future consisting of business-as-usual (BAU), a scenario with convergence between the pre-conflict and post-conflict growth paths within 50 years, and another with a convergence of 20 years. Based on the experiences of other post-conflict countries, Libya's agricultural production will likely converge back to the pre-conflict agricultural GDP trajectory within 10-15 years, so long as there is a minimal transition period and agricultural policies are consistent and well managed. The expected cost to the economy is measured by the discounted difference between the pre-conflict trajectory GDP and the estimated post-conflict GDP until the convergence point. For the likely 20 year convergence, there is an estimated opportunity cost of USD2010 25.0 billion. Should the sector return to business-as-usual, the present discounted value of the conflict is USD2010 49.0 billion. The impact of the conflict is lessened by poor productivity before the conflict. It appears that the conflict slowed business-as-usual, but did not significantly erode environmental capital, which would further cripple the recovery.
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    Valuation of freshwater resources and sustainable management in poverty dominated areas
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Shah, Syed Attaullah, author; Hoag, Dana, advisor; Loomis, John, committee member; Von Fischer, Joe, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member
    To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.
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    Valuing economic benefits of water's ecosystem services with non-market valuation methods and regional input-output model
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Ng, Kawa, author; Loomis, John, advisor; Goldstein, Joshua, committee member; Graff, Gregory, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee member
    Colorado has the highest trout angler participation rate in the United States, but the economic benefits of the state's anglers were last estimated more than two decades ago. Using survey data sampled in Colorado's stocked public reservoirs in 2009, Chapter one showed that trout anglers' net economic benefits were more than twice as much as non-trout anglers'. Values estimated from Travel Cost Method produced angler day consumer surpluses of US$191.60 and $61.68 for trout and non-trout anglers respectively. Values from Contingent Valuation Method are $196.48 (trout) and $73.84 (non-trout) for the mean consumer surplus, while the median are $164.53 (trout) and $56.78 (non-trout). Thus the relative values of fishing for trout versus other species are robust to non-market valuation methods, and the two valuation methods show convergent validity. Chapter two investigates the change in angler trips as a response to current season stocking level, in order to calculate the net economic benefit per fish stocked for selected hatcheries-stocked reservoirs in Colorado. Besides the unique objective to derive a marginal fish value for stocked trout in Colorado's reservoirs, this study also differs from existing studies in that it does not arbitrarily assume the proportion of stocked fish caught by anglers. As an alternative, this study utilized the relationships among catchable trout stocking level, angler catch rate, annual trips and valuation estimates to derive economic values of stocked fish: $0.38 for trout and $1.88 for non-trout. National forests contribute a substantial portion of water to the public supply in western states. In particular, units in the national forest system in Colorado are estimated to provide 68% of the water supply originating in Colorado in an average year. Chapter three used a customized value-added approach along with a state-wide input-output model to derive the marginal economic contributions to each economic sector in the state of Colorado. The approach used in this chapter differed from the traditionally applied method, in that it avoided over-estimating the value of water from implicitly assigning zero opportunity cost to all non-water inputs. Instead, the gross absorption coefficients for the water supply sector were used for adjusting the economic impacts. A method of calculating the economic contributions attributable Colorado's national forest water to each sector in the state economy was demonstrated. On an average year, summing across all sectors, water originating from Colorado's national forests contributed to a total of 4,738 jobs, $215,473,985 in labor income, and $264,485,290 in value-added for Colorado's economy.