smallholders land access in sub saharan africa a new landscape while scholars long recognized the importance of land markets as a key driver of rural non farm development and transformation in rural areas evidence on the extent of their operation and the nature of participants remains limited we use household data from 6 countries to show that there is great potential for such markets to increase productivity and equalize factor ratios while rental markets transfer land to land poor and labor rich producers their operation and thus impact may be constrained by policy restrictions their functioning may also be constrained by ill defined or insecure rights that may arise from failure to fully compensate existing rights in cases of expropriation a failure to implement more broadly land policies or to do so in a gender sensitive manner methodological and substantive conclusions are derived

reevaluation and renegotiation of climate change coalitions a sequential closed loop game approach abstract major international environmental problems can be characterized as stock externality phenomena long term international environmental coalitions are subject to unexpected shocks certain shocks might have strong impacts on regional environmental policies and their commitments to the coalition the open loop solutions in optimal control problems and differential games cannot capture regions reactions to those shocks in this paper we develop a feasible modeling approach that uses the closed loop strategies to study the issues of reevaluation and renegotiation of climate change coalitions for the purpose we design an algorithm that decomposes a closed loop strategy into a sequence of open loop equilibria and implement the algorithm in the rice model am econ rev 86 1996 741 an integrated assessment model of climate change and economies we analyze policy and methodological implications of the closed loop strategies through simulations of the rice model

avoiding an ecological regime shift is sound economic policy we extend the shallow lake model by adding the capital stock of an industry a government can mitigate the effects of pollution arising from industrial activities by imposing the requirement to abate emissions within this framework two scenarios are examined in the social optimal benchmark the social planner optimally allocates investment in the competitive equilibrium market forces determine the investment in capital but the government can still abate emissions we find that irreversible environmental regime shifts are avoided in the competitive equilibrium by means of a static level of abatement when it is socially optimal to do so

reverse channel design the case of competing retailers the economical and environmental benefits of product remanufacturing have been widely recognized in the literature and in practice in this paper we focus on the interaction between a manufacturers reverse channel choice to collect postconsumer goods and the strategic product pricing decisions in the forward channel when retailing is competitive to this end we model a direct product collection system in which the manufacturer collects used products directly from the consumers e g print and copy cartridges and an indirect product collection system in which the retailers act as product return points e g single use cameras cellular phones we first examine how the allocation of product collection to retailers impacts their strategic behavior in the product market and we discuss the economic trade offs the manufacturer faces while choosing an optimal reverse channel structure when a direct collection system is used channel profits are driven by the impact of scale of returns on collection effort whereas in the indirect reverse channel supply chain profits are driven by the competitive interaction between the retailers subsequently we show that the buy back payments transfered to the retailers for postconsumer goods provide a wholesale pricing flexibility that can be used to price discriminate between retailers of different profitability

dynamic nonpoint source pollution control policy ambient transfers and uncertainty when a regulator cannot observe or infer individual emissions corrective policy must rely on ambient pollution data assuming this kind of environment we study a class of dierential games of pollution control with prot functions that are polynomial in the global pollution stock given an open loop emissions strategy satisfying mild regularity conditions an ambient transfer scheme is exhibited that induces it in markov perfect equilibrium mpe proposed transfers are a polynomial function of the dierence between actual and desired pollution levels moreover they are designed so that in mpe no tax or subsidy is ever levied their applicability under stochastic pollution dynamics is studied for a symmetric game of polluting oligopolists with linear demand we discuss a quadratic scheme that induces agents to adopt markovian emissions strategies that are stationary and linearly decreasing in total pollution total expected ambient transfers are non positive and their magnitude is linearly increasing in physical volatility the size of the economy and the absolute value of the slope of the inverse demand function however if the regulator is interested in inducing a constant emissions strategy then in expectation transfers vanish the total expected ambient transfer is compared to its point source equivalent

tipping points and business as usual in a global commons abstract this paper analyzes a dynamic strategic model of resource extraction from a global commons countries derive benefits from both direct extraction and aggregate conservation of an open access resource each period a country s output depends both on its resource usage and on the global stock of the resource stored within the ecosystem leading examples are ocean fisheries habitat preservation forestry and land carbon biomass the production coefficients on these inputs vary across countries and evolve stochastically over time a business as usual bau equilibrium characterizes each country s resource usage in the absence of an effective international agreement under non concave resource dynamics depletion of the resource in a bau equilibrium may reach a tipping point below which the stock spirals downward toward a steady state of marginal sustainability under the assumptions of the model the tipping points emerge endogenously if the number of extractors exceeds some fixed finite bound the commons always tips regardless of the initial stock we find that countries will accelerate their rates of extraction the closer they are to reaching the low end steady state by contrast in the socially efficient plan the commons never tips if the initial stock is large

gender social norms and household production in burkina faso abstractempirical studies of intrahousehold allocation have revealed that in many instances gender is an important determinant in the allocation of resources within the household yet within the theoretical literature why gender matters within the household remains an open question in this article we propose a simple model of intrahousehold allocation based on a particular social institution for the organization of agricultural production practiced among certain ethnic groups in west africa we highlight how this institution while resolving certain problems of commitment and informational asymmetry can also lead to a gendered pattern in the allocation of productive resources and consumption within the household using a survey of agricultural households in burkina faso we show consistent with this theory that plots owned by the head of the household are farmed more intensively and achieve higher yields than plots with similar characteristics owned by other household members male and female fam

electricity demand by time of use an application of the household aids model in this study we estimated the price and expenditure elasticities of peak and off peak electricity consumption using a micro data set on 220 households living in 19 swiss cities the household version of the almost ideal demand system model aids was used as a framework to incorporate household characteristics the aids model was expanded by specifying the intercept as a linear function of household characteristics variables results indicate that demand for peak and off peak electricity is elastic and that cross price effects are positive as well as the elasticity of substitution therefore peak and off peak electricity are substitutes in the hicks allen sense

price of anarchy in a linear state stochastic dynamic game abstract we consider a linear state dynamic game played over an event tree and determine analytically the price of anarchy poa which is given by the ratio of player s outcome in the cooperative game to her outcome in the noncooperative game next we illustrate our findings in the context of a pollution control problem we conduct a sensitivity analysis to assess the impact on poa and its lower and upper bounds of varying the different parameter values

potential disasters can turn the tragedy into success this paper presents a novel experimental design that allows testing how users of a common pool resource respond to an endogenously driven drastic drop in the supply of the resource we show that user groups will manage a resource more efficiently when confronted with such a non concave resource growth function compared to groups facing a logistic growth function even among cooperative groups there is a significant behavioral difference although theory predicts there should not be we argue that effectiveness of communication is endogenous to the problem the threat of reaching a critical tipping point beyond which the growth rate will drop drastically triggers more effective communication within the group enabling stronger commitment for cooperation and more knowledge sharing which together explains the results we argue that the insights generated by this study can be seen as one of many but nevertheless important contributions towards an increased understanding of the interactions between human behavior and the environment in common pool resource systems

trade in and save a two period closed loop supply chain game with price and technology dependent returns abstract consumers evaluate the convenience of changing their products according to the price paid as well as the technology quality level when the consumers wish to capitalize the products residual value they should return them as early as possible accordingly we develop a model of closed loop supply chain clsc where consumers seek to gain as much as possible from their returns and the return rate is a function of both price and quality we model a two period stackelberg game to capture the dynamic aspects of a clsc where the manufacturer is the channel leader we investigate who namely manufacturer or retailer should collect the products in the market thus we identify the best clsc structure to adopt when the return rate is both price and quality dependent our results demonstrate that it is always worthwhile for companies to collect products and adopt an active return approach for returns we investigate the effect of retail competition in both forward and backward channels and show the impact of eliminating the double marginalization on market outcomes

international pollution control cooperative versus noncooperative strategies abstract international pollution control involving two neighboring countries is modeled as a simple two player dynamic game each country produces a good that is consumed by domestic households production of each consumption good results in emissions of pollutants households in each country derive utility from the consumption of the domestically produced good but incur costs through the total stock of pollution stock externality in this setting we characterize cooperative as well as noncooperative pollution control strategies of the governments of the two countries that maximize the discounted stream of net benefits of a representative consumer it turns out that when the governments are restricted to use linear strategies noncooperative behavior results in overall losses for both countries if on the contrary governments use nonlinear markov perfect strategies and the discount rate is small enough a pareto efficient steady state pollution stock can be supported as a differentiable subgame perfect equilibrium thus the emergence of first best solutions cooperative outcomes does not require any institutional arrangements threats retaliation etc but can be brought about through the use of nonlinear markov perfect equilibrium strategies

the option value of renewable energy the case of climate change decision makers receive mixed signals from the investment literature on when it is appropriate to develop renewable energy technology substitutes for fossil fuels this question is becoming more important as attention has become focused on climate change with the assumptions that information is revealed as time passes and the new technologies take a long time to develop renewable energy alternatives are more attractive than they appear on the basis of the net present value criterion that ignores option value option value represents the value of flexibility to use or discard new technologies

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed

tenure insecurity gender low cost land certification and land rental market participation in ethiopia abstract there is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in africa this paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in ethiopia in the late 1990s four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern ethiopia are analysed showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of potential tenant and landlord households especially those that are headed by females

feedback nash equilibria for non linear differential games in pollution control abstract dynamic problems of pollution and resource management with stock externalities often require a differential games framework of analysis in addition they are represented realistically by non linear transition equations however feedback nash equilibrium fbne solutions which are the desired ones in this case are difficult to obtain in problems with non linear quadratic structure we develop a method to obtain numerically non linear fbne for a class of such problems with a specific example for shallow lake pollution control we compare fbne solutions by considering the entire equilibrium trajectories with optimal management and open loop solutions and we show that the value of the best fbne is in general worse than the open loop and optimal management solutions

nonlinear strategies in dynamic duopolistic competition with sticky prices abstract we discuss nonlinear strategies in an infinite horizon duopoly game with sticky prices where firms maximize their discounted sum of profit we construct a stationary feedback equilibrium without guessing value functions and feedback strategies that solve the hamilton jacobi equation for this purpose we study the auxiliary equation that is derived from the hamilton jacobi equation we show that the domain of the state space plays an crucial role in characterizing feedback equilibria and discuss several implications of this observation in particular we find that when the upper bound of the state space is not very high previously unknown feedback equilibria emerge

a stochastic programming approach to power portfolio optimization we consider a power portfolio optimization model that is intended as a decision aid for scheduling and hedging dash in the wholesale power market our multiscale model integrates the unit commitment model with financial decision making by including the forwards and spot market activity within the scheduling decision model the methodology is based on a multiscale stochastic programming model that selects portfolio positions that perform well on a variety of scenarios generated through statistical modeling and optimization when compared with several commonly used fixed mix policies our experiments demonstrate that the dash model provides significant advantages

cadillac desert revisited property rights public policy and water resource depletion to alleviate arizona s dependence on groundwater the federal government subsidized construction of the central arizona project cap to import water from the colorado river in exchange for the subsidy arizona reformed its groundwater law to eliminate common property pumping and to ban groundwater mining after the year 2025 we build a model of water resource development in which imported water is a capacity constrained backstop the model is applied to quantify the welfare effects of alternative cap construction dates and arizona groundwater laws we reach two general conclusions first cap was completed 86 years too early in 1987 at a deadweight loss of 2 612 billion ironically construction in 1987 yielded lower surplus than never constructing cap second the political exchange of reform for subsidy introduced a greater loss 2 612 billion than it corrected 0 810 billion the exchange was worse than doing nothing at all

the impact of global warming on agriculture a ricardian analysis reply we measure the economic impact of climate on land prices using cross sectional data on climate farmland prices and other economic and geophysical data for almost 3 000 counties in the united states we find that higher temperatures in all seasons except autumn reduce average farm values while more precipitation outside of autumn increases farm values applying the model to a global warming scenario shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming on u s agriculture than the traditional production function approach and in one case suggests that even without co sub 2 fertilization global warming may have economic benefits for agriculture 16 refs 5 figs 5 tabs

how much of the labor in african agriculture is provided by women the contribution of women to labor in african agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60 to 80 percent using individual disaggregated plot level labor input data from nationally representative household surveys across six sub saharan african countries this study estimates the average female labor share in crop production at 40 percent it is slightly above 50 percent in malawi tanzania and uganda and substantially lower in nigeria 37 percent ethiopia 29 percent and niger 24 percent there are no systematic differences across crops and activities but female labor shares tend to be higher in households where women own a larger share of the land and when they are more educated controlling for the gender and knowledge profile of the respondents does not meaningfully change the predicted female labor shares the findings question prevailing assertions regarding substantial gains in aggregate crop output as a result of increasing female agricultural productivity

impact of some parameters on investments in oligopolistic electricity markets abstract it is seldom the case that one has the opportunity to compare investments as projected by a long term multi period model to what is eventually realized in practice further although sensitivity analysis is of common use in any optimization setting the impact of some parameters on strategic investments is not yet fully assessed in the context of the deregulated electricity industry starting with a benchmark model of the finnish industry we precisely explore the impact on equilibrium investments of varying such parameters as direct and cross price elasticities length of the planning horizon and the depreciation rate of capacity we run the model with different parameter values and compare the predicted equilibrium with what companies have actually done the model is a stochastic dynamic game involving three players and played over a ten year period our results show the depreciation rate and the planning horizon have a notable effect on investment levels whereas price elasticities seem to play a lesser role although the model s results are rather well aligned to total industry investments it diverges from individual levels this may be due to the cost parameter used and or to the open loop information structure adopted in the computations in any event these results should be of methodological and practical interest to scholars and practitioners involved in strategic investment in the electricity industry

economic implications of climate change for u s agriculture assessing recent evidence recent studies estimate potential economic impacts of climate change on u s agriculture while results are not directly comparable several big picture lessons can be drawn these broader findings are developed and put into a policy context while the estimated impacts on u s agriculture and the u s economy do not yet justify costly adaptation or mitigation strategies some regional and environmental impacts could be quite severe current policy efforts should focus on reducing climate change uncertainties and increasing farm sector flexibility from a national perspective future agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions could be partially met through adjustments of farm practices

gender differences in the relationship between land ownership and managerial rights implications for intrahousehold farm labor allocation abstract recent research has increased interest in the intersection of land tenure and gender roles in african agriculture while formalization of land ownership has been found to have important gender impacts time use and management remain critical to both the productivity of agricultural operations as well as the welfare of household members thus it is important to understand how gender intersects with the relationship between the ownership and operation of plots we use plot level data from nationally representative household surveys in ethiopia and malawi to characterize the structure sole male sole female or joint and domain plot ownership plot management or output management of control over land in each household we then answer the following research questions 1 are there any gender gaps in the degrees of the concordance among different domains of controls and 2 how does the structure of ownership and managerial rights affect labor allocations on plots we find that for both males and females sole managerial rights are most likely to occur in plots owned exclusively by either gender however on jointly owned plots instances of sole planting rights are almost exclusively male we also find that while females supply more of their own labor to plots they control the pattern of own gender bias in labor allocation varies with each structure domain combination the heterogeneity suggests gender inequality analyses related to land rights are sensitive to the choice of domain of control

incentive and production decisions for remanufacturing operations we consider a manufacturer producing original products using virgin materials and remanufactured products using returns from the market where the amount of returns depend on the incentive offered by the manufacturer we determine the optimal value of this incentive and the optimal production quantities in a stochastic demand setting with partial substitution we analyze 3 different models in centralized and decentralized settings where the collection process of the returns is managed by a collection agency in the decentralized setting we also analyze contracts to coordinate the decentralized systems and determine the optimal contract parameters finally we present our computational study to observe the effect of different parameters on the system performance

the impact of lead time on capital investments abstract we study equilibrium investment strategies of firms competing in stochastic dynamic market settings and facing two types of investment structures investment with significant lead time or time to build and investment without or minor lead time we investigate how investment behavior changes when investment is subject to time to build versus when it is not we characterize equilibrium investment strategies under several information structures and compare results to the social optimum we offer some new results the model predicts that controlling for demand and production and investment costs investments and outputs can be higher in progressive industries which often exhibit time to build than in fast paced industries where time to build is insignificant furthermore for both investment types investment with or without time to build we offer a novel equilibrium in which firms incrementally invest this behavior is driven by demand uncertainty and capacity constraints also expected outputs are lower than cournot outputs as firms face uncertainty moreover the amount of uncertainty has different effects over investment types

on the optimal taxation of common pool resources recent research developments in common pool resource models emphasize the importance of links with ecological systems and the presence of non linearities thresholds and multiple steady states in a recent paper kossioris et al 2008 develop a methodology for deriving feedback nash equilibria for non linear differential games and apply this methodology to a common pool resource model of a lake where pollution corresponds to benefits and at the same time affects the ecosystem services this paper studies the structure of optimal state dependent taxes that steer the combined economic ecological system towards the trajectory of optimal management and provides an algorithm for calculating such taxes

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

a new pricing scheme for a multi period pool based electricity auction a new pricing scheme is proposed for determining the social welfare distribution in a centralized pool based auction in the context of solving the unit commitment problems under competition a significant contribution of this paper over previous publications on this subject is the inclusion of the price responsive demand side for the multi period auctions with dynamic commitment characteristics the model allows every thermal unit and every consumer to obtain individual maximum profits and at the same time it gives the market coordinator an adequate tool for solving the ensuing technologically constrained unit commitment problem with fair market clearing the pricing model is in the form of a mixed linear programming model that minimizes the sum of the compensation costs the accompanying case study illustrates the approach proposed

the optimal reverse channel choice under supply chain competition abstract this note extends the model of savaskan et al 2004 to examine the impact of supply chain competition on the optimal reverse channel choice of manufacturers who remanufacture their own products even for two identical supply chains asymmetric equilibria of strategic reverse channel choices may arise in which one prefers retailer managed collection and the other prefers manufacturer managed collection there exists a prisoner s dilemma in which the pareto optimal solution is for both manufacturers to use manufacturer managed collection but retailer managed collection is a dominant strategy

inefficiency of male and female labor supply in agricultural households evidence from uganda this article analyzes the efficiency of the intra household allocation of female and male labor inputs in agricultural production in a collective household model spouses optimal on farm labor supply is such that the marginal rate of technical substitution between male and female labor is equated over different crops using the uganda national household survey 2005 06 we test whether this condition holds by estimating production functions and controlling for endogeneity using a method proposed by gandhi navarro and rivers 2009 we find that women are less productive than men that there is more female labor input on low productivity parcels and that men are relatively more productive on female controlled plots compared with male controlled plots total farm output could be higher and pareto improvements could be possible if male labor was reallocated to female controlled plots and or female labor was reallocated to male controlled plots

land tenure and agricultural productivity in africa a comparative analysis of the economics literature and recent policy strategies and reforms summary this paper examines the convergence and divergence of results from economic studies of the relationships between land tenure security and agricultural productivity in africa and how these results have been incorporated into recent agricultural poverty alleviation and land policy documents the paper finds that there are both areas of convergence and divergence in the economics literature similarly the attention given to land tenure and its perceived effects on productivity varies considerably in the policy literature the significant heterogeneity in findings itself suggests that policy responses must pay attention to local context and the overarching macro and sectoral conditions within which tenure systems operate

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

channel coordination when retailers compete this paper explores channel coordination by a manufacturer that sells through competing retailers and that treats these retailers equally as required by the robinson patman act the authors show that in general there exists no single two part tariff with a constant per unit charge that will duplicate the behavioral results i e prices quantities and channel profits that are obtained by a vertically integrated system that is the channel cannot be coordinated except in the trivial cases of identical or noncompeting retailers however an appropriately specified quantity discount schedule will enable the channel to earn the same profits generated by a vertically integrated system conditions are derived under which a manufacturer will prefer to offer various two part tariffs with constant per unit charges instead of the channel coordinating quantity discount schedule the authors also establish the existence of a menu of two part tariffs that mimics all results of a vertically integrated system however only under stringent conditions will retailers select the appropriate tariff from the menu when these conditions are not satisfied the channel is worse off than in the case of a single second best tariff it is also demonstrated that under a wide range of parametric values the manufacturer will prefer to offer the second best two part tariff rather than a menu of two part tariffs that could maximize channel profits

an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration this paper investigates the effect of product substitutability on nash equilibrium distribution structures in a duopoly where each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer which may be either a franchised outlet or a factory store static linear demand and cost functions are assumed and a number of rules about players expectations of competitors behavior are examined it is found that for most specifications product substitutability does influence the equilibrium distribution structure for low degrees of substitutability each manufacturer will distribute its product through a company store for more highly competitive goods manufacturers will be more likely to use a decentralized distribution system this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 2 pages 161 191 in 1983

gender agricultural production and the theory of the household virtually all models of the household assume that the allocation of resources is pareto efficient within many african households agricultural production occurs on many plots controlled by different members of the household pareto efficiency implies that factors should be allocated efficiently across these plots i find in contrast that plots controlled by women are farmed much less intensively than similar plots within the household controlled by men the estimates imply that about 6 percent of output is lost because of inefficient factor allocation within the household the paper suggests a new approach to modeling intrahousehold allocation consistent with the empirical results

technology selection and capacity investment under uncertainty abstract we analyze the problem of technology selection and capacity investment for electricity generation in a competitive environment under uncertainty adopting a nash cournot competition model we consider the marginal cost as the uncertain parameter although the results can be easily generalized to other sources of uncertainty such as a load curve in the model firms make three different decisions i the portfolio of technologies ii each technology s capacity and iii the technology s production level for every scenario the decisions related to the portfolio and capacity are ex ante and the production level is ex post to the realization of uncertainty we discuss open and closed loop models with the aim to understand the relationship between different technologies cost structures and the portfolio of generation technologies adopted by firms in equilibrium for a competitive setting to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first not only to explicitly discuss the relation between costs and generation portfolio but also to allow firms to choose a portfolio of technologies we show that portfolio diversification arises even with risk neutral firms and technologies with different cost expectations we also investigate conditions on the probability and cost under which different equilibria of the game arise

shared savings contracts for indirect materials in supply chains channel profits and environmental impacts there are many materials for which the quantity needed by a firm is at best indirectly related to the quantity of final product produced by that firm such as solvents in manufacturing processes or office supplies for any such indirect materials an inescapable incentive conflict exists the buyer wishes to minimize consumption of these indirect materials while the supplier s profits depend on increasing volume both buyer and supplier can exert effort to reduce consumption hence making the overall supply chain more efficient however no supplier will voluntarily participate unless contract terms are fundamentally revised this can be done through a variety of shared savings contracts where both parties profit from a consumption reduction this paper analyzes several such contracts currently in use for chemicals purchasing we show that such contracts can always increase supply chain profits but need not lead to reduced consumption we analyze equilibrium effort levels consumption and total profits and show how these change with the contract parameters we find that the goals of maximizing joint profits and minimizing consumption are generally not aligned also surprisingly a decrease in a cost parameter can lead to a decrease in profits it may be necessary but is always possible to renegotiate the shared savings contract to reap the benefits of a cost decrease

a note on feedback sequential equilibria in a lanchester model with empirical application we study in this paper dynamic equilibrium advertising strategies in a duopoly with asymmetric information structure and sequential play the advertising model of lanchester is used in a game where the relevant solution concept is feedback stackelberg equilibrium which is subgame perfect an algorithm is devised for the computation of this equilibrium and numerical results are reported and discussed using a data set from the cola market we obtain the resulting advertising strategies and provide a comparison with closed loop and open loop nash equilibria

vertical strategic interaction implications for channel pricing strategy this paper examines two strategic pricing decisions within channels using foresight i e price leadership and considering category implications i e product line pricing are price leadership and product line pricing always the best pricing strategies for a channel member if not when does this occur and why by investigating these questions we address some major concerns of both marketing practitioners and scholars interested in channel management issues in addition this study provides an indepth discussion on why previous analytic studies produced answers to these questions that depend upon the choice of the form of demand functions as such this study should significantly resolve the debate among analytic marketing modelers about the right demand specification at the core of our discussion lies the concept of vertical strategic interaction which is defined in terms of the direction of a channel member s reaction to the actions of its channel partner within a given demand structure specifically if a channel member s best reaction is to reduce its margin when its channel partner increases its margin the type of vertical strategic interaction is referred to as vertical strategic substitutability vss if the best reaction is to increase the margin the environment is referred to as vertical strategic complementarity vsc if the best reaction is no margin change it is referred to as vertical strategic independence vsi using a game theoretic approach we demonstrate that these three types of vertical strategic interactions represent a key driving force for optimal decisions on channel price leadership and product line pricing our investigation involves mathematical analyses of an industry model composed of two manufacturers selling competing products both carried by two competing retailers as such the model allows for retailer product line pricing as well as manufacturer and retailer level competition in addition this general model can be used to analyze three more restrictive industry settings often found in the channels literature i e a bilateral monopoly jeuland and shugan jeuland abel steven m shugan 1983 managing channel profits marketing sci 2summer 239 72 two competing manufacturers selling through competing franchised retailers mcguire and staelin mcguire timothy w richard staelin 1983 an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration marketing sci 2spring 161 92 and two competing manufacturers selling through one common retailer using product line pricing choi choi s chan 1991 price competition in a channel structure with a common retailer marketing sci 10fall 271 96 unlike many other channel studies most of our analyses are performed without assuming particular functional forms of demand curves thus this paper provides greater assurance that the insights from this stream of research are broadly applicable not only across industry structures but also across demand conditions the paper starts out by defining three different rules for how prices are set the manufacturer uses foresight the retailer uses foresight and neither channel member uses foresight we then show a one to one mapping between the type of vertical strategic interaction and the optimality of channel price leadership specifically a channel member finds it profitable to be a price leader for vss but prefers to be a follower for vsc for vsi channel members are indifferent to the channel price leadership issue as it has no effect on channel member profits we also show that there exist conditions under which a retailer might see a reduction in profits when it changes its policy from non product line pricing to product line pricing such conditions arise when the retailer is not a price leader and the environment is characterized by vss or vsc at a more general level this study suggests not only the value but also the cost to a firm for using superior knowledge i e foresight and or product line pricing in making strategic marketing decisions in this way ignorance can be bliss we also explore the link between demand characteristics and the three types of vertical strategic interaction we show that the type of vertical strategic interaction present in a given environment is closely related with the convexity of the demand curve and the level of demand for a given price interestingly we find that linearity of demand is not a necessary condition for any of the three types of vertical strategic demand function consequently in evaluating the robustness of analytic analyses it may be more important to determine the type of vertical strategic interaction assumed instead of whether the demand is linear or nonlinear finally our results are limited to situations where the channels are not coordinated and the retailer s precommitment to particular pricing policy and decision is credible although such situations still capture a significant portion of reality we acknowledge that the insights from this study might not be applicable in all situations

climate engineering under deep uncertainty abstract climate engineering and in particular solar radiation management srm is attracting increasing attention as a climate policy option however its potentially strategic nature and unforeseen side effects provide major policy and scientific challenges we study the role of srm in a two country model with the notable feature of deep uncertainty modeled as model misspecification of srm side effects we find that deep uncertainty leads to a reduction in srm deployment under both global cooperation and strategic nash behavior and that the effect is larger if countries act strategically furthermore we demonstrate that if countries have different model confidence about srm impacts then the more confident country will engage more strongly in using srm leading this country to free drive

a game theoretic model for generation expansion planning problem formulation and numerical comparisons this paper presents an application of noncooperative game theory to generation expansion planning gep in a competitive electricity industry the authors apply the cournot model of oligopoly behavior to formulate a gep model that may characterize expansion planning in a competitive regime particularly in pool dominated generation supply industries numerical experiments are conducted on a test system to analyze generation investment and market participation decisions of candidate expansion units that vary in costs and forced outage rates the numerical results point to 1 greater industry expansion and system reliability under cournot competition than under centralized expansion planning and 2 higher probabilistic measures of reliability from multi player expansion than from expansion by a traditional monopolist with an equivalent reserve margin requirement furthermore the authors summarize analytical results involving a simplified version of the gep game

the roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in africa this article reviews the past and potential future roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in sub saharan africa ssa as responses to population growth in the process of land use intensification and livelihood transformation the farm size distribution and the existence of an inverse relationship ir between farm size and land productivity in ssa and the implications of this relationship for efficiency and equity are investigated more secure property rights and removal of restrictions on land markets have the potential to create both efficiency and equity benefits but there are high risks of elite capture of large land areas with inefficient and inequitable outcomes this situation is the case not only in land abundant areas but also in urban and peri urban areas where increasingly larger proportions of people will make their living increasing population pressure in densely populated rural areas contributes to more rapid rural urban migration and creating alternative livelihood opportunities for the migrating youth population is essential to achieving economic development with social stability

threatening thresholds the effect of disastrous regime shifts on the non cooperative use of environmental goods and services abstract this paper presents a tractable dynamic game in which agents jointly use a resource the resource replenishes fully but collapses irreversibly if the total use exceeds a threshold the threshold is assumed to be constant but its location may be unknown consequently an experiment to increase the level of safe resource use will only reveal whether the threshold has been crossed or not if the consequence of crossing the threshold is disastrous i e independent of how far the threshold has been exceeded it is individually and socially optimal to update beliefs about the threshold s location at most once the threat of a disastrous regime thereby facilitates coordination on a cautious equilibrium if the initial safe level is sufficiently valuable the equilibrium implies no experimentation and coincides with the first best resource use the less valuable the initial safe value the more the agents will experiment for sufficiently low initial values immediate depletion of the resource is the only equilibrium when the regime shift is not disastrous but the damage depends on how far threshold has been exceeded experimentation may be gradual

process innovation product differentiation and channel structure strategic incentives in a duopoly in this paper we analyze the joint implications of two effects a inserting independent profit maximizing retailers into thechannel system provides buffering to the manufacturers from price competition when their products are highly substitutable and intrachannel contracts are observable as shown by mcguire and staelin 1983 under the assumption of constant marginal production costs and b lack of channel coordination results in a reduction in manufacturer s incentives to invest in efforts to reduce production costs as shown by jeuland and shugan 1983 for the case of bilateral monopoly we show that both these results are robust in the sense that the first holds even in the presence of the vertical externality of manufacturer s effort reduction in a noncoordinated channel and the second holds regardless of the degree of substitutability between the competing channel s products specifically we analyze a four stage game with two manufacturers and two retailers where the intrachannel contracts are linear and observable and manufacturers make investments in process improvements to reduce their production costs we find that the optimal channel structure decision depends on interactions between two parameters the degree of substitutability between products and the level of investments required to achieve production cost reduction these parameters represent what have been widely interpreted in the management literature as the two primary generic strategies that most organizations follow in order to gain competitive advantage cost leadership and product differentiation porter 1980 thus our analysis brings out the strategic and interdisciplinary nature of the channel structure decision that can significantly affect firm profitability our main results are as follows first we find that decentralized noncoordinated channels appear as more profitable equilibrium than integration or perfectly coordinated channels at high product substitutability even when process innovation dimension is accounted for in agreement with the literature however the range of substitutability over which decentralization is an equilibrium strategy is smaller the easier it is to reduce production costs intuitively the easier the cost reduction the larger the cost penalty that the channel incurs as a result of not coordinating investment and pricing decisions between channel members and thus smaller the range over which decentralization is an equilibrium this implies that there is an explicit tradeoff between efficiency and strategic incentives in distribution channel design second we show that decentralized manufacturers invest less in process innovation than integrated manufacturers do regardless of the structure of the competing channel and the degree of substitutability between products consequently a decentralized channel has higher costs charges higher prices and produces lower quantities than an integrated channel does moreover these differences get larger the easier the cost reduction the effect on manufacturer profits however is not that clear manufacturers make higher profits by decentralizing if products are highly substitutable inagreement with mcguire and staelin 1983 and coughlan and wernerfelt 1989 however we also find that the relative profitability of decentralization at high substitutability and of integration at low substitutability increases the easier the cost reduction moreover the range of substitutability over which decentralization is more profitable than integration is itself larger the easier the cost reduction though decentralization is an equilibrium strategy over a smallerrange thus process innovation accentuates the profit difference between integrated and decentralized channels andmakes the prisoner s dilemma situation worse in the choice of distribution channel structure finally we analyze two examples of coordinated decision making in a channel a divisional integrated system and franchising in the first case we find that decentralization can emerge as a unique and more profitable equilibrium at high product substitutability in contrast to mcguire and staelin 1983 in the second case we find that decentralization is not always a unique equilibrium and it is not always more profitable than integration in sharp contrast to the results by coughlan and wernerfelt 1989 thus franchising does not provide a sure way of achieving channel coordination when marginal production costs are not constant in sum this paper highlights the importance of simultaneously considering both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of interorganizational relations on one hand and on the other paying attention to cross functional interactions across marketing and operational decisions to better understand the underlying incentives that shape firm and market structures conventional focus of marketing on demand side effects and of operations on cost side effects can lead to suboptimal decisions

land tenure and investment incentives evidence from west africa abstract the existing literature on the relationship between property rights in land and agricultural investment in africa has given results that are often confusing and contradictory i make two clarifying contributions to this literature first i pull together existing studies and investigate whether the results they find have been affected by research methods or local contexts studies with small sample sizes those that use binary investment measures and those that control for household fixed effects are less likely to find a statistically significant link between land tenure and investment self reported tenure security has been a poor predictor of investment outcomes second i test for a relationship between land tenure and agricultural investment in nine data sets from west africa while the link between tenure and investment is significant for fallow and tree planting it is less robust for labor use and other inputs such as manure or chemical fertilizer

land markets and land access among female headed households in northwestern tanzania summary land markets can potentially improve land access for female headed households if markets exhibit less restrictive gender norms around land ownership as compared with non market based systems of allocation at the same time land markets may not operate in a gender neutral manner with restrictions beyond the market continuing to influence the options of female headed households using both qualitative data and household survey data collected in 2014 and 2015 this paper explores the extent and manner in which female heads participate in the sales and rental markets in northwestern tanzania a qualitative analysis reveals that female heads do engage with the market although they find it most difficult to mobilize the necessary capital to participate as buyers or renters women also seem to face unique restrictions on selling land regression results show that female heads use the market to augment a small land endowment left from their marriage and this is particularly true for divorced or separated women however female headed households remain somewhat marginalized in terms of market participation our study shows that female heads in tanzania are far from sidelined in the land market though the rules of market engagement are decidedly nuanced

an analysis of the impact of climate change on crop yields and yield variability this paper develops an econometric model of stochastic production functions to quantify the impacts of climatic variables on the mean variance and covariance of crop yields the estimates of the production function parameters and their elasticities are utilized to analyse the impacts of the projected climate change on agriculture the results show that the climate change will have modest effects on the mean crop yields but will significantly reduce the variance and covariance for most of the crops considered the results have implications for allocations of agricultural land among crops and for crop production mix

note the role of returns policies in pricing and inventory decisions for catalogue goods manufacturers often use returns policies to encourage retailers to stock and price items more aggressively we focus on the effect that such policies have on both a retailer s and a manufacturer s profits when the retailer must commit prior to the selling season to both a stocking quantity and a price at which to sell an item such a commitment is often necessary for retailers who sell primarily through catalogues

competitive advantage through take back of used products abstract motivated by a recent antitrust ruling against hill rom one of the two dominant american suppliers of hospital beds we develop a stylized model to investigate the consequences of used product take back on firms industry and customers our findings suggest that by taking back and reselling refurbished products a manufacturer can increase both profit margins and sales to the detriment of a non interfering competitor in our model customers are always better off under product take back but it depends on the degree of competition whether firms use the benefits of take back primarily to increase their margins or to pass them on to the customers by lowering their prices the first firm to offer take back in some cases can deter its competitors from following this profitable strategy especially if it has an existing advantage in terms of lower production cost or higher market share contrary to the claim of hill rom s competitor we find a legitimate business justification for hill rom s reduction of new product prices

the impact of global warming on agriculture reply in our paper with daigee shaw mendelsohn et al 1994 henceforth mns we developed a new approach to measuring the impact of global warming on agriculture we call this approach ricardian because it relies upon standard rent theory as a way of identifying the impact of changes on net economic welfare we compared the ricardian approach with the traditional production function approach which uses agricultural production functions but has great difficulty identifying all the other adjustments that farmers make in response to changing external conditions the ricardian approach is particularly well suited to a tremendously heterogeneous sector because it can rely upon reduced form estimation and does not require the impossible task of constructing structural models of hundreds of crops in thousands of locations estimating the model using cross sectional data on climate farm land prices and other economic and geophysical data for almost 3 000 counties in the united states the ricardian approach shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming than the traditional productionfunction approach indeed our preferred statistical approach showed modest benefits of climate change in his comment on mns in this issue of the review william r cline 1996 raises three concerns first he notes that the analysis assumes that output prices remain constant second he asserts that the analysis assumes that the supply of water for irrigation is perfectly elastic third he calls for testing the results of the model on alternative climate scenarios from general circulation models gcm s his first and third points are useful additions while the second is incorrect our ricardian approach assumes that the existing pattern of agricultural land rents and land prices reflects the long run equilibrium economic effect of climate and other geophysical and economic variables standard economic reasoning shows that by calculating the estimated effects of perturbing the climatic variables we can project the impact of climate change on economic welfare we do so in a partial equilibrium approach which assumes that output prices are invariant to the climate and cline is correct to point out that this might lead to biased estimates because the partialequilibrium estimates tend to underestimate damages and overestimate benefits in fact the bias is small given standard parameters for agricultural demand and supply functions we illustrate this point using linear supply and demand functions for agricultural crops let demand be given by qd ao a1p while supply is q po pi p where q and p are output and price and ai and i are parameters in equilibrium at the old climate market outcomes are qo and po now suppose that global warming contracts supply so that

competition under industry stock driven prevailing market price environmental consequences and the effect of uncertainty abstract we address competition between several firms that cause pollution when producing fully substitutable products these firms comprise the industry and each individual firm charges for its products the market price determined by the difference between cumulative market supply and demand i e by the industry s stock we find that although the greater the number of firms competing for the same primary market the lower the market price and the higher the industry inventory surplus the reduction in price at market equilibrium is insufficient to stimulate greater aggregate sales that is greater competition does not necessarily induce higher industry output and pollution furthermore we show that commitment production pollution strategies compared to contingent strategies do not necessarily result in lower pollution especially when the number of competing firms is not high market uncertainty is low and proportional pollution taxation is high

how does the choice of the gender indicator affect the analysis of gender differences in agricultural productivity evidence from uganda summary we use ols and decomposition techniques to investigate gender differences in agricultural productivity in uganda using nationally representative surveys from years 2009 2012 the analysis applies different gender dummies female head of household female plot holder and female plot manager to investigate how the variable of choice affects the calculation of the gender gap our analysis obtains different results depending on the gender variable of choice the study finds that regardless of the variable of choice the gender gap in agricultural productivity decreases or disappears when factors of production and crop choice are controlled for the conditional gender gap is about 10 and significant when using female plot manager as the gender variable while we find no conditional gender gap when using the other gender variables the use of time fixed effects and decomposition contributes evidence that the typically available gender variables are insufficient for identifying how gender and decision making of different household members play a role in productivity this finding is problematic for targeting effective interventions to increase agricultural productivity and reduce gender inequalities in agriculture finally we find that the older status of female heads holders and manager of plots child dependency ratio and limited access to adult male labor are factors decreasing productivity in female plots in uganda

noncooperative decision making in the household evidence from malawi this paper proposes a novel test of productive efficiency in the household that also allows a test of noncooperative decision making i extend the collective model chiappori 1988 1997 to allow labor choices to affect future bargaining power by raising the value of outside options even if household consumption sharing is efficient labor choices are no longer efficient using data on malawi where there is predetermined variation in land rights that determine outside options in marriage i show that individuals spend more time on agricultural labor and less time on wage labor when household land is theirs they also have lower overall income and consumption the results are inconsistent with the fully efficient collective model but consistent with a noncooperative model with limited commitment where individuals allocate their labor supply to maximize future bargaining power limited commitment can lead to inefficient allocations that reduce household welfare

research among copycats r d spillovers and feedback strategies abstract we study a stochastic dynamic game of process innovation in which firms can initiate and terminate r d efforts and production at different times we discern the impact of knowledge spillovers on the investments in existing markets as well as on the likely structure of newly forming markets for all possible asymmetries in production costs between firms while an increase in spillovers may improve the likelihood of a competitive market it may at the same time reduce the level to which a technology is developed we show that the effects of spillovers on investments and surpluses crucially depend on the stage of technology development considered in particular we show that high spillovers are not necessarily pro competitive as they can make it harder for the laggard to catch up with the technology leader

the response of small and medium size business customers to time of use tou electricity rates in israel this paper reports on the methodology data and results of the israeli time of use tou electricity pricing experiment in the industrial commercial sector we concentrate on the estimation of the demand functions for electricity under tou and the net welfare gains which result from applying tou rates to small and medium size business customers in israel this experiment which was preceded by a 15 month load research study to allow an optimal sample design was concluded in june 1992 the analysis yielded four major conclusions 1 the estimated gains of small and medium size customers in israel from tou rates are sufficient to justify investment in tou metering technology 2 there have been small but noticeable shifts of electricity from the peak to the mid peak if relevant and to the off peak periods during all seasons of the year and particularly during the winter 3 the structure and number of labour shifts during the day and weather are important factors in determining the response of business customers to the tou rates 4 price elasticities vary substantially over the seasons and across sic groups they do not vary with customer size

optimal return and rebate mechanism in a closed loop supply chain game abstract within a closed loop supply chain clsc framework we study several consumer return behaviors for the used products which are based on the product prices and rebates consumers evaluate the rebate they receive as well as the price of the new product before deciding whether to dump a return therefore the number of used products returned is examined under two types of rebates a fixed rebate and a variable rebate we search for the optimal rebate mechanism and find that the clsc profits are higher under an variable rebate policy this finding justifies the industry practices that employ a rebate mechanism based on both the value and the price of used item we offer two types of solution concepts to the clsc games open loop stackelberg solution and markov perfect stackelberg solution which are commonly employed in the dynamic games literature while we mainly employ markovian equilibrium we also allow firms to utilize open loop strategies so as to assess the impact of precommitment on the market outcomes therefore we offer a comprehensive analysis of all possible market equilibrium solutions under different strategic considerations and the commitment deliberations we show that under the fixed rebate regime open loop solution coincides with markov perfect solution furthermore we show how consumer return behavior impacts the dynamic nature of the game we find that the time frame is irrelevant if firms offer a fixed rebate in contrast the game will be fully dynamic when firms offer a variable rebate

gender inequalities in ownership and control of land in africa myth and reality lack of clarity behind measurement and interpretation of statistics on gender and land leads to an inability to clearly articulate a policy response to the potential inequalities faced by women and men this article sets out to explore conceptually and empirically the levels and relative inequalities in land rights between women and men in african countries the first section of the article engages in a conceptual discussion of how to measure gendered land outcomes what ownership and control mean in different contexts and why attention to these factors is important for the development of gender and land statistics the second section of the article systematically reviews existing evidence from microlevel large sample studies to summarize recent trends in land access ownership and control by sex the third section presents new statistics from a variety of nationally representative and large scale unpublished data on gender and land in africa results provide not only a nuanced understanding of the importance of measuring land indicators for gendered development in africa and globally but also new statistics on a variety of land outcomes to aid stakeholders in the discussion of gender land inequalities

heterogeneous beliefs and climate catastrophes we study how heterogeneous beliefs about the causes and extent of global warming affect local mitigation and adaptation strategies and therefore global climate dynamics local policies are determined by expectations of policy makers about future climate there are three types of expectations strong skeptic weak skeptic and science based strong skeptics deny human induced climate change and a possibility of a climate catastrophe weak skeptics believe that industrial emissions cause global warming but deny catastrophic climate change science based policy makers considering the warning of the scientific community account for both human influence on climate and possible catastrophic shifts aggregate behavior of policy makers determines the total emission level which influences global climate dynamics the paper argues that even if there are only skeptical policy makers the climate catastrophe can still be avoided

the eu regulation on cross border trade of electricity a two stage equilibrium model the regulation on cross border exchanges of electricity in the european union is meant to enhance the trade of electricity between member states by facilitating access to the network and improving the management of congestion at the interconnections this paper presents a computational model that embeds these two features the problem is cast in the form of a two stage equilibrium between regional regulators in the first stage they decide on the allocation of their regional network costs between generators and customers either they maximise their regional welfare non cooperatively nash equilibrium or they centralise the decision as a super regulator leading to a cooperative equilibrium in the second stage equilibrium the consequences of first stage s decisions are assessed by modelling the energy market as the result of imperfect competition equilibrium on competitive market coupled with regulated pricing on the domestic less competitive markets the rules that come out of the first stage game largely influence the final equilibrium we illustrate this on an extensive numerical example showing that the model behaves properly and identifying policy issues worth of further investigations c 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

international aspects of pollution control pollution is a by product of production is only gradually dissolved by the environment and crosses national borders the market outcome ignores the adverse effects of pollution and thus yields higher levels of output and pollution than would prevail under a supranational social planner which does care about pollution in practice governments often do not cooperate and this leads to outcomes of pollution and production in between the market outcomes and the outcomes under supra national social planning absence of precommitment leads to lower emission charges less cleaning up activities and more pollution appropriate levels of emission charges under the various outcomes are a result of this analysis attention is also paid to investment in clean technology the debate between optimists who believe that higher production is compatible with sound environmental policy and pessimists can be analysed in this way