Estimating the willingness to pay and value of risk reduction for car occupants in the road environment

In recent years there has been a re-focus on the valuation of a statistical life from the ex post or human capital method to an ex ante willingness to pay (WTP) approach. This is in part a recognition that we may have been undervaluing the cost of fatalities and injuries to society associated with crashes, but also a strong belief in the need to focus on establishing the amount, ex ante, that individuals are willing to pay to reduce the risk of exposure to circumstances that might lead to death or degree of injury on the road network. This study has developed a framework in which to identify the degree of preference heterogeneity in willingness to pay by individuals who are drivers or passengers in cars to avoid being killed or injured. A stated choice experiment approach is developed. The empirical setting is a choice of route for a particular trip that a sample of individuals periodically undertakes in Australia. The particular trip is described in enough detail to provide the respondent with a familiar market environment, providing all the relevant background information required for making a decision. Mixed logit models are estimated to obtain the marginal (dis)utilities associated with each influence on the choice amongst the attribute packages offered in the stated choice scenarios. These estimates are used to obtain the WTP distributions for fatality and injury avoidance, which are then aggregated to obtain estimates of the value of risk reduction (VRR), of which the fatality class is also known as the value of a statistical life (VSL).     

Valuing cargo flexibility in oil transportation

The seaborne oil transportation market is served by two main types of vessels—crude oil tankers and product tankers. Product tankers are designed to move refined oil products, yet they can also opportunistically carry ‘dirty’ products such as crude and heavy fuel oil, subject to the cost of tank cleaning when re-entering the clean products trade. We apply an entry-exit real option model with a stochastic freight rate differential to derive optimal triggers for switching between the two cargo types and estimate the value of the switching option. We show that the value of active switching has grown over time, and generally exceeds the additional construction cost of a product tanker. Our findings are important both from a practical point of view and for our understanding of market integration in the tanker freight market. Specifically, shipowners can use our model as a basis for optimizing chartering policy for clean product tankers. We also show that there are periods where the dirty market is persistently stronger, and discuss the possible reasons for such apparent inefficiencies.     

柔性路面车辙预估的粘弹性方法

沥青混合料的粘弹性流动导致沥青路面产生永久变形(车辙)。对于粘弹性体系,永久变形与材料的弹性参数无关,但可通过采用粘性参数的线弹性模型预估出来。为了确定沥青混合料在较大环境变化条件下的粘性,该文引入了一个新的基于常规试验数据的简单理论方法,并将根据此方法得到的车辙预估深度与法国新近的一个足尺试验数据进行对比,结果表明此线性车辙模型的适用性较好。     

泉州印度教石刻艺术的比较研究

泉州拥有的大量印度教石刻,在中国古代宗教石刻中非常罕见.不论其创作者是中国人还是印度人,这些石刻的风格来源一直困扰20世纪的艺术史研究.如果没有新的考古成果出现,这一问题将永远是个谜.本文认为泉州印度教石刻的艺术风格可能源自南印度朱罗王朝.笔者将泉州的每一方石刻与南印度的相应石刻进行了比较,它们是泉州石刻源自南印度朱罗时期的艺术风格,但出自当地艺术家之手的有力证据.