Environmental Economics

Non-sequitur of the Day: Predatory journals at their best

From the inbox:

We had a glance at your published article Reply to "Comment on: A revealed preference approach to valuing non-market recreational fishing losses from the deepwater horizon oil spill and its corrigendum".

We found your article very innovative, insightful & interesting; we really value your outstanding contribution towards Scientific Community. The time and attention you devoted in presenting a realistic and pragmatic article was really appreciated.

With the theme of ‘Serving Scientific Community for a better mankind’,

International Journal of Poultry and Fisheries Sciences is publishing articles dealing with all aspects of etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of liver diseases.

Challenge:  Define a logical path from recreational fishing losses to liver disease.

Go.

A short comment on a discrete choice experiment in the AER*

A cool new paper is the first (?) to use a discrete choice experiment in the AER:

Mas, Alexandre, and Amanda Pallais. 2017. "Valuing Alternative Work Arrangements." American Economic Review, 107(12): 3722-59.

Abstract: We employ a discrete choice experiment in the employment process for a national call center to estimate the willingness to pay distribution for alternative work arrangements relative to traditional office positions. Most workers are not willing to pay for scheduling flexibility, though a tail of workers with high valuations allows for sizable compensating differentials. The average worker is willing to give up 20 percent of wages to avoid a schedule set by an employer on short notice, and 8 percent for the option to work from home. We also document that many job-seekers are inattentive, and we account for this in estimation.

I might be in too deep (ya think?) but there are some questionable statements made on the quality of stated preference data. Before I go on, let me emphasize that this is a cool paper. Stated preference research can push the frontier in many fields besides environmental economics. The problem is that environmental economic stated preference researchers must run the 110 high hurdles while this paper gets entered into the 100 dash (to use a track analogy). 

On page 3724:

In this paper we report estimates of worker valuations over alternative work arrangements from a field experiment with national scope. The experiment elicits preferences on work arrangements by building a simple discrete choice experiment into the application process for a national call center. In this way we employ a method that can flexibly back out a willingness to pay (WTP) distribution from close to real market transactions.⁹

I don't consider something a "field experiment" unless there is a real monetary transaction.

Here is footnote 9: 

Discrete choice experiments are an extension of the contingent valuation literature whereby rather than directly asking people for valuations over an attribute (the stated preference method), people are given the choice of two or more scenarios and are asked to choose their preferred option. These scenarios usually vary the attributes and the prices and WTP can be estimated using random utility models (McFadden 1973; Manski 1977). Choice experiments have been shown to have better properties relative to stated preference valuation methods (Hanley, Wright, and Adamowicz 1998). A question is whether these experiments, which are usually survey-based, correspond to actual market behavior. This is something we can overcome by embedding the choice in a real market setting. Diamond and Hausman (1994), who critique stated preference valuation methods, hypothesize that the problem with the approach is not methodological but due to “an absence of preferences” over the attributes they are being asked to value. This is far less of a concern here since we are asking people to make choices over realistic work arrangements.

Is this the sort of lazy assertion that flies in labor economics papers at the AER? It wouldn't fly at JEEM, JAERE, Land Econ, Env and Res Econ, Res and Energy Econ, MRE, and etc (basically any environmental and resource economics journal). 

So:

• "Choice experiments have been shown to have better properties relative to stated preference methods" Huh? See "CVM surveys suck so we're using choice experiments, Q.E.D. (#174)".
• A "discrete choice experiment" is one type of "stated preference method" and choice experiments have lots of problems just like contingent valuation. See "What is Contingent Valuation?".
• Market experience does not eliminate hypothetical bias. See Morgan et al. (2016) for the case of oyster demand. The same problem can be found in the context of trip taking decisions and voting. 

Here is one of the hypothetical situations:

This question might be inconsequential (i.e., your choice will not affect anything whatsoever). If so, there is little reason for respondents to take it very seriously. See Groothuis et al. (2017).

The authors collect more data in online survey. Here is one scenario (parenthetical added):

Imagine that you are applying for a new job in your [current line of work, same line of work as your last job], and you have been offered two positions. Both positions are the same as your [current/last] job in all ways, and to each other, other than the work schedule and how much they pay. Please read the descriptions of the positions below. 

Position 1) This position is 40 hours per week. The work schedule is Monday–Friday 9 am–5 pm. This position pays the same as your [current/last] job.

Position 2) This position is 40 hours per week. The work schedule in this position varies from week to week. You will be given your work schedule one week in advance by your employer. The hours can be morning through evening, weekdays and weekends, but not nights. This position pays “X” (e.g., "15% more than") your [current/last] job.

Which position would you choose?

Another hypothetical question for those having a "flexible job" is:

Suppose your primary employer gives you the option of working a fixed work schedule, Monday-Friday during the daytime. Under this arrangement you would continue to work your usual number of hours but once your schedule is set you may not change the times and days of work. In exchange for having this fixed rather than flexible schedule you would get [2/5/10/20/35]% higher pay. Would you agree to this arrangement if given the choice?

Labor markets are characterized by negotiation. It is difficult to imagine that every survey respondent did not see these questions as the opening round of a negotiation. In both questions, for example, the respondent might be saying I choose position 2 but will only take the job if I can negotiate higher pay. Market researchers face the same issues in a market setting. If you are asked to purchase a new and improved product at a higher price you might answer no, thinking that the product might be offered anything and your signal will result in a lower price. 

These are issues that stated preference folks get hassled about over and over again. In contrast, Ivy leaguers write a dismissive footnote and get an AER**. Ok, the whine is over. 

 

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*I've been enjoying my semester long sabbatical from blogging (and teaching and dressing like a grown-up) ... until this. 

**And they compare their "field experiment" surveys to the online survey results to deal with a referee who thinks that Diamond's adding up test is a paper killer. Here is footnote 43:

Diamond (1996) recommends testing for internal consistency in contingent valuation surveys. We go further in Section IV by comparing WTP estimates in the market setting to estimates from a nationally representative survey.

Do you think BP is going to let you get past the adding up test by asking some more hypothetical questions? I think not!

I thought we had already discovered all of the lands there were to discover

It looks like there is more cropland available for food production worldwide than we previously thought.  A lot more…at lease according to the US Geological Survey:

There’s more agricultural land in the world than previously thought, and India rather than the U.S. or China is now believed to have the biggest acreage of any country, according to new study aimed at improving food and water security.

Global cropland totals 1.87 billion hectares (4.62 billion acres), 15 percent to 20 percent higher than earlier estimates, according to a map released Tuesday by the U.S. Geological Survey. The increase is due to the assessment of areas previously mapped inaccurately, or left unmapped, the USGS said in a statement.

India has the largest cropland of any country at 179.8 million hectares, compared with 167.8 million in the U.S. and 165.2 million in China. Russia ranks fourth, while South Asia and Europe are labeled “agricultural capitals of the world,” as cropland accounts for more than 80 percent of some countries in those regions. In comparison, only about a fifth of land in U.S. and China is dedicated to growing food.

Why do we care how much land is available and in production? As the agricultural community deals with population growth, globalization, integration of markets, aberrant weather events and climate change, knowing where and how much farmland is in and available for production, and where that land is, can have important economic, social and political ramification. 

“It is invaluable to know the precise location of croplands and their dynamics to lead to informed and productive farm management,” USGS research geographer Prasad Thenkabail said in the statement.

"Senior NOAA appointee calls for retraction of paper on illegal fishing"

It sounds like there may be some problems with this paper:

A top US official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was recently appointed by President Donald Trump, has called for the retraction of a paper that suggests the country exports a significant amount of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

The paper, published July 6 in Marine Policy, estimated that in 2015 approximately one-fifth of Alaska pollock exports to Japan were either illegal, unreported, or unregulated — a value of as much as $75 million.

In an Oct. 11 letter (first reported by IntraFish), Chris Oliver, NOAA assistant administrator for fisheries, criticized the paper’s methodology for calculating the illegal hauls.

Oliver wrote to the journal’s editor-in-chief to say that the National Marine Fisheries Service:

Strongly objects to the authors’ claims regarding US seafood exports to Japan and doubts the validity of the methodology used to make such estimates. The allegations made in the paper absent any transparency regarding the data and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions. Without significantly more information and transparency regarding data sources and methodologies applied, the paper should be retracted in its entirety.

Oliver has some expertise in Alaskan fisheries: Prior to joining NOAA in June, the official oversaw commercial fishing throughout Alaska as Executive Director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, one of eight federally established organizations that manage the country’s fisheries.

A spokesperson for NOAA said neither Oliver nor the agency had anything further to say about the call to retract the paper.

First author Pramod Ganapathiraju, a fisheries consultant at IUU Risk Intelligence in Toronto, and last author, Gopikrishna Mantha, of King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, did not respond to our request for comment.

Hance Smith, editor-in-chief of Marine Policy, did not respond our question about whether he planned to retract the paper; however, he told us:

Upon receiving these [letters] we normally anticipate debate in the pages of Marine Policy, but do not otherwise comment.

[...]

via retractionwatch.com

However, no one should go around demanding that peer-reviewed journal articles be retracted (especially an official in the Trump Administration -- use twitter and call the authors funny names instead!). The more normal procedure is to write a comment on the paper and, if it has merit and the editor isn't afraid of the embarrassment that something wrong slipped through his/her the peer review process, it will be published. The authors will then have a chance to reply. If you don't like how the comment/reply goes, you can find another outlet to voice your concerns. There are plenty of options relative to bullying authors and journal editors. 

Just another day around here

If you hold your breath, air quality doesn't matter either

And then there's this...

Citing the risk of conflicts of interest, the EPA administrator instituted a sweeping change to the agency’s core system of advisory panels on Tuesday, restricting membership to scientists who don’t receive EPA grants.

In practice, the move represents “a major purge of independent scientists,” Terry F. Yosie, chair of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board during the Reagan administration, told the Washington Post. Their removal paves the way for a fresh influx of industry experts and state government officials pushing for lax regulations.

The advisory boards are meant to ensure that health regulations are based on sound science, but that role may be changing. As of Tuesday, the new chair of the Clean Air Safety Advisory Committee is Tony Cox, an independent consultant, who has argued that reductions in ozone pollution have “no causal relation” to public health.

The new head of the Science Advisory Board is Michael Honeycutt, the head toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who has said that air pollution doesn’t matter because “most people spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors.”

The figureheads of science denial were on hand to celebrate Pruitt’s announcement. Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, called the move a “special occasion.”