The main goal of this paper is to obtain evidence on the preferences on consumption of local amenities by workers resident in the Brazilian Metropolitan Regions (MRs). Based on the amount that workers are willing to pay for these amenities, the MRs are ranked with respect to the "quality" of the climate. A discrete choice model approach, the mixed logit, is applied the evaluate the amenities and three hypotheses of the traditional hedonic approach are relaxed: i) the assumption of representative agent (TRAIN, 2003), ii) the assumption of free mobility of workers (BAYER, 2006) and iii) the assumption that the researcher is able to observe all important attributes of the housing (VILLAS-BOAS and WINER, 1999). The analysis is performed for nine Brazilian RMs: Belém, Fortaleza, Recife, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Curitiba and Porto Alegre. The results suggest that consumers have heterogeneous preferences for the consumption of amenities and that the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro is best served with the amenities considered in the analysis.
Amenity Quality Index; Local Quality of Life Ranking; Hedonic Approach; Discrete Choice Methods; Mixed Logit
