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Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Economics
Valuing Improvements To Coastal Waters Using Choice Experiments: An Application To Revisions Of The Eu Bathing Waters Directive, Stephen Hynes, Dugald Tinch, Nick Hanley
Valuing Improvements To Coastal Waters Using Choice Experiments: An Application To Revisions Of The Eu Bathing Waters Directive, Stephen Hynes, Dugald Tinch, Nick Hanley
Working Papers
Planned changes to the European Union’s Bathing Waters Directive (2006/7 EC) will force member states to produce improvements in a number of parameters of coastal water quality. This study uses the choice experiment method to estimate the economic benefits attached to such improvements, based on a sample of recreationalists on beaches in Ireland. The analysis indicates that improvements in all of the bathing water related attributes studied result in positive willingness to pay, and also show evidence of scope effects. Using random parameters and latent class modelling techniques, potential heterogeneity in preferences is then investigated and shown to be present …
What Is The Optimal Subsidy For Exercise? Informing Health Insurance Companies' Fitness Reimbursement Programs, Molly E. Frean
What Is The Optimal Subsidy For Exercise? Informing Health Insurance Companies' Fitness Reimbursement Programs, Molly E. Frean
Economics Honors Projects
Health care costs account for 17% of US GDP and many programs and policies seek to reduce these costs. This paper focuses on exercise as preventive care due to its immense physiological benefits. I model the profit-maximizing choice of health insurance companies to subsidize exercise and the utility-maximizing choice of individuals to engage in exercise using a traditional principal-agent framework. I then use principles from behavioral economics and psychology to critique these models and provide further insight into understanding our underconsumption of such preventive services. I end with an evaluation of current programs and suggestions for improvement using empirical findings.