This dissertation consists of three papers on land use economics and policies. The first two papers focus primarily on local land use policies and urban development. The third paper addresses the question how environmental amenities affect households' residential choices in a metropolitan area. In the first paper, an option value...
Policy analysts designing programs to improve the
efficiency and expand the use of water in the irrigation of
farm lands often enlist benefit-cost analysis as a means of
assessing impacts and feasibility. While on-site comparisons
of costs and benefits are important factors in project
assessment, other dimensions such as risk,...
Essential to the testing of propositions in economic theory is the estimation of the parameters involved in relationships among economic variables. Probably the most widely used method of estimation is ordinary least squares (OLS). However, severe multicollinearity or near linear
dependence of the explanatory variables can cause the OLS estimates...
An econometric model of the canned tuna market is used to evaluate biased and unbiased estimators. Four methods for improving mean square error when multicollinearity is present in a regression equation are examined and compared with the results of ordinary least squares (OLS). Exact and inexact prior information methods are...
Local government officials and county planners may find descriptive information concerning the economic structure of each Oregon county useful for planning for future economic development. Specifically, citizens of counties and planning districts need to know whether industries in their area are growing or declining and in which industries a comparative...