cooperative and noncooperative r d in duopoly with spillovers contrary to the usual assumption made in most oligopoly models relations among firms are seldom of a wholly cooperative or noncooperative type in many situations they compete in some fields while they cooperate in others an important example is the case of cooperative research efforts bringing fierce competitors together two types of agreement are observed first r d cooperation can take place at the so called precompetitive stage companies share basic information and efforts in the r d stage but remain rivals in the market place 1 a second type of agreement involves an extended collusion between partners creating common policies at the product level the usual justifications of this extension are the difficulties of protecting intellectual property the idea is then to allow partners who have achieved inventions together to also control together the processes and products which embody the results of their collaboration in order to recuperate jointly their r d investments 2 what could be expected from these types of agreement is a reduction in r d expenditures because of less wasteful duplication and a reduction of total production because of more reprinted from the american economic review 78 5 1133 1137 1988 center for operations research econometrics 1348 louvain la neuve belgium we are grateful to jean

is the secularization hypothesis valid a panel data assessment for taiwan the secularization thesis is based on the idea that a country becomes more secular as it becomes richer and more industrialized in order to investigate whether this hypothesis is valid we examine the relationship between religion in taiwan and economic development across 23 counties by adopting the panel data approach for the period 1998 to 2003 we select six religious activity proxy variables and five economic development variables in a cross county panel data framework the evidence indicates that the ratio of females to males has a significantly positive effect and that the literacy rate and population density each have a significantly negative effect on the religious variables finally except for the christian culture the unemployment rate has a positive effect on the religious variables our findings thus support the view that the religious secularization hypothesis is valid in taiwan

are church and state substitutes evidence from the 1996 welfare reform abstract churches provide community services similar to those provided by the government but there has been no convincing analysis of the extent to which church activity can substitute for government activity to address this important issue this paper uses a new panel data set of presbyterian church usa congregations to regress both church member donations and a church s community spending on a number of variables including government welfare expenditures a provision of the 1996 welfare law that decreased the availability and use of welfare services by non citizens serves as an instrument to identify the causal effect of government spending on church activity the results show that church activities substitute for government activities extrapolating the findings to all denominations the estimated crowd out effect lies between 20 and 38 cents on the dollar the results are subjected to a number of robustness tests

empirical investigation of the long term movement of resource prices a preliminary report abstract this note reports the results of an investigation into the long run movements of natural resource prices and their relationship to interest rates and extraction costs the results do not support the equilibrium type hotelling rule but rather a more general asset market approach

imports domestic production and transnational vertical integration a theoretical note suppose a developing country has the choice of importing cars i or producing them at home in a subsidiary s of a transnational company or in a domestic firm under a licensing l contract from a transnational which ties the import of components from the latter if the criterion of national benefit is given by consumer surplus under i or s and by consumer surplus plus the profits of the domestic firm under l we compare the benefits from the alternative regimes i s or l under different market structure assumptions in most cases the regime s seems to dominate the conclusions are then modified by pointing to factors excluded from the basic model

the role of information sharing in cooperative research and development abstract this paper develops a model in which r d cooperation enables firms to increase the probability of discovering a new product by sharing information about research strategies and outcomes numerical computations of equilibrium show that cooperation tends to increase in the underlying probability of research success total surplus generally increases as more firms cooperate and cooperation in equilibrium never exceeds that which maximizes total surplus however when the probability of an innovation s success is relatively low no cooperation occurs nor will much be socially desired finally self imposed limits on membership in the cooperative entity tend to reduce total surplus

scarcity efficiency and disequilibrium in resource markets possible interpretations of the concept of scarcity in extractive resource markets are presented and then related to traditional economic ideas of efficient patterns of resource use sources of inefficiency in resource markets are then considered with the main emphasis being on disequilibrium various simple models of disequilibrium suggest that resource markets are more stable if traders expectations are based on quantity rather than price information so that the provision of such information increases efficiency

east west joint ventures and buyback contracts abstract contractual joint ventures cjvs and the buyback form of countertrade are popular methods that socialist countries use to attract foreign investment in this paper we explore some reasons why this is so and also explain two predominant characteristics of these contracts the existence of sharing rules and minimum standard requirements on inputs the model stresses the incentive problems involved when a socialist host country which does not allow foreign direct investment uses a cjv to obtain the fruits of some knowledge based production process from a multinational enterprise

entrepreneurship social mobility and income redistribution in south india development economists have been preoccupied with the problem of increasing the size of the gnp pie to the relative neglect of its distribution despite the recent disenchantment with the viewpoint that all classes share in the benefits of industrial growth empirical data on the distribution of income business opportunity and economic power are in short supply many of the studies on entrepreneurship and economic development when they are not apologetics for ruthless capitalist exploitation as paul baran suggests extol the achievements of the capitalist entrepreneur without examining class origins and monopoly advantage joseph schumpeter sees entrepreneurs irrespective of class origin as heroic figures with the dream and will to found a private kingdom to conquer adversity to achieve success for its own sake and to experience the joy of creation for gustav papanek 1967 the private entrepreneur who is frugal diligent far sighted remarkably able and willing to take political risks is in large part responsible for the success of pakistan in achieving rapid industrialization

the economics of joint ventures in less developed countries the paper examines the microeconomic partial equilibrium behavior of joint ventures established between transnational corporations and domestic partners in less developed countries it focuses on issues relating to resource allocation and profit distribution under various institutional scenarios the analysis places special emphasis on the role of bargaining power transfer pricing stock ownership and profit shares of the parties and the responsiveness of joint ventures to national development goals some of the results apply to wholly owned subsidiaries of transnational corporations local firms and licensing arrangements which emerge as special cases

host country policy transfer pricing and ownership distribution in international joint ventures a theoretical analysis abstract this paper develops a simple model of an international joint venture in which the ownership shares are endogenously determined as the outcome of nash bargaining between a multinational firm and a host firm it shows how tax subsidy policy by the host country s government and transfer pricing of inputs by the multinational firm may influence the equity distribution of the joint venture insofar as the optimal level of these policies is dependent on the primitives the model generates empirical hypotheses regarding the impact of the primitives on the equity distribution

risk rationality and religious portfolios i introduction this paper builds on two assumptions the first self evident the second more controversial together they yield a provocative theory of religious behavior and organization the first assumption is that religion involves a great deal of risk those who engage in religious acts cannot know that their efforts will have the desired effects religious acts thus have the character of risky investments exacting resource costs in return for uncertain rewards the second assumption is that people choose their religious behavior rationally weighing the costs and benefits of religious behavior and seeking to limit the risk associated with religious choices churches and other religious firms employ a variety of institutional arrangements that mitigate religious risk most arrangements follow one of two major risk management strategies which in turn give rise to two different styles of religion one centers on collective production the other on private production and diversified consumption collective religion is congregationally oriented and tends to employ exclusivity and costly prohibitions to limit free riding and maintain high levels of commitment private religion is less susceptible to free rider problems but also less capable of generating commitment private religion tends to center on client practitioner relationships or fee for service transactions and consumers tend not to form exclusive attachments to a single religious firm outright payments for goods and services overshadow costly demands for an austere deviant or sacrificial life style a large body of descriptive historic and anecdotal evidence confirms these predictions and illustrates their range of application the concluding sections of the paper apply the proposed theory to a series of contrasts asian versus western religion mainstream churches versus exclusive sects new age versus standard american religion and greco roman paganism versus judeo christian monotheism ii religious commodities and the problem of risk economic models of religious behavior typically begin by assuming that individuals allocate their time and money so as to maximize their utility from religious commodities r and all other secular commodities s the production of religious commodities depends on personal inputs of time and money but may also depend on past experience religious human capital styles of behavior such as diet dress and sexual practices and the time and money inputs of others such as fellow church members see azzi and ehrenberg 1975 sullivan 1985 and iannaccone 1992 for formal analyses and empirical tests with the exception of durkin and greeley 1991 and montgomery 1992 previous models take belief as given thereby sidestepping the issue of risk but religious commodities do involve risk sermons and scriptures do emphasize the need for faith and people do wrestle with and often yield to doubt insights from secular markets and the economics of uncertainty explain a broad range of behaviors and institutions that arise in response to religious risk in particular they highlight two different risk reducing strategies one of which centers on exclusivity and collective production the other centers on diversification and private production managing risk through collective action religious congregations the would be believer faces a situation not unlike the would be used car buyer used cars are classic experience goods nelson 1970 since potential buyers are hard pressed to determine car quality in advance of purchase sellers thus have an incentive to overstate the value of their merchandise and to disguise its true nature used car buyers in turn are aware of the sellers incentive to misrepresent their products and so will attempt to increase their stock of information and or reduce their risk in many ways they may demand guarantees seek information from third parties investigate the seller s reputation and so forth

price expectations ore quality selection and the supply of a nonrenewable resource abstract economic models of depletion imply that the present value price of a resource and the quality of extracted ore should be directly related the empirical evidence is that in the short run the average quality of extracted ore and in some cases metal output decline in response to a price increase this paper examines a model of extraction with heterogeneous ore quality within a deposit and revised price expectations in which this seemingly paradoxical supply response is rationalized as the outcome of ore quality selection which maximizes the present value of the mine

an investment model of natural resource markets over the last decade there has been an increasing interest in natural resource economics to some extent this can be ascribed to a general concern with the environment but an important cause was the large price increases for resources in the early 1970s the observed price jumps can be understood as a belated recognition of the scarcity of resources but they can also be viewed as shortor medium term phenomena arising from demand shocks and in the case of petroleum cartelization in markets with slow supply responses a jump in demand or a drop in foreign supplies would result in a sharp immediate price increase even in the absence of any long term resource scarcity the purpose of the present analysis is to try and assess the absolute and relative importance of these two potentially distinctive features of resource markets depletability and slow supply adjustment most of the empirical analysis in the literature examines resource markets from the hotelling 1939 asset market perspective by comparing observed price paths to the equilibrium price path in its simplest form the hotelling model leads to the rule of equality between interest rates and rates of resource price growth however the seminal empirical study by barnett and morse 1963 was not supportive of the hotelling rule and later studies by heal and barrow 1980 1981 smith 1981 and feige and geweke 1979 have provided only limited support the current study provides an alternative approach to testing for depletability in a formulation that also allows for consideration of the inelasticity of supply in the short and intermediate term we do this by concentrating upon the production side of the market and using an adjustment cost1 or investment model of resource production the resulting model seems fairly successful in describing the behaviour of at least three of the metals considered with evidence for both the adjustment cost hypothesis and for depletability there is however also evidence for a technological progress effect that has in the past outweighed the depletability effect and can explain the failure of resource prices to follow the hotelling path section i of the paper develops the adjustment cost model and section ii presents the empirical analysis section iii considers the policy implications of the depletability and adjustment factors

an economic theory of church strictness this paper introduces spatial location models into the economics of religion we offer a new explanation for the observed tendency of state monopoly churches to locate toward the low tension end of the strictness continuum obtained through the conjunction of benevolent preferences denominations care about the aggregate utility of members and asymmetric costs of going to a more or less strict church than one prefers we derive implications regarding the relationship between religious strictness and membership religious market interactions and asymmetric costs of membership highlight new explanations for some well established stylised facts opening the way to new empirical comparisons with more traditional explanations

pay or pray the impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance abstract the economic argument for subsidizing charitable giving relies on the positive externalities of charitable activities particularly from the religious institutions that are the largest recipients of giving but the net external effects of subsidies to religious giving will also depend on a potentially important indirect effect as well impacts on religious participation religious participation can be either a complement to or a substitute with the level of charitable giving understanding these spillover effects of charitable giving may be quite important given the existing observational literature that suggests that religiosity is a major determinant of well being among americans in this paper i investigate the impact of charitable subsidies on a measure of religious participation attendance at religious services i do so by using data over three decades from the general social survey as well as confirming the impact of such subsidies on religious giving using the consumer expenditure survey i find strong evidence that religious giving and religious attendance are substitutes larger subsidies to charitable giving lead to more religious giving but less religious attendance with an implied elasticity of attendance with respect to religious giving of as much as 1 1 these results have important implications for the debate over charitable subsidies they also serve to validate economic models of religious participation

the private provision of public goods altruism and voluntary giving abstract a unique data set on exact giving by individual households for the support of a rural health care facility is used to examine the determinants of charitable giving including the role of altruism we examine whether a household s decision to give or not give and the amount it gives are influenced in the same or different ways by the household s characteristics and economic circumstances we also examine whether a household s altruistic history affects its current giving decisions

a theory of joint venture life cycles abstract in this paper we provide a dynamic theory of joint venture life cycle that relies on synergy organisational learning and moral hazard we demonstrate that depending on parameter values the outcome may involve any one of the following stable joint venture formation joint venture formation followed by breakdown or cournot competition in all the periods we also provide some interesting welfare results

returns to scale adjustment costs and the optimal investment of the mining firm abstract this paper analyses the optimal investment programme of a competitive mining firm for two different technologies and capital adjustment costs in the first part the case of a variable proportions technology with decreasing returns to scale is studied and it is concluded that under the assumption of a constant mineral price a first stage in the exploitation period of the deposit will occur in which capital stock is increasing in the second part the optimal investment programme is determined when there are constant returns to scale and hotelling s rule governs the dynamics of the mineral price

are wholly foreign owned enterprises better than joint ventures abstract this paper provides a general equilibrium model for examining the individual as well as the joint effects of export requirements and local equity controls of multinational firms the results suggest that for a small open economy under tariff protection the desirable policy is 100 foreign ownership of subsidiaries coupled with an export share requirement

the economics of regional variation in religious attendance developments in modelling the demand for religion have identified both religious human capital and religious market structure as fundamental determinants of levels of formal religious practice in this paper these theories are confronted with survey data drawn from 163 regions across 16 countries although there are clearly political historical and other country specific factors that affect levels of participation in organized religion estimates from modified logit regression equations demonstrate the empirical significance at the regional level of variables suggested by recent innovations in the economics of religious behaviour

adjustment costs uncertainty and the theory of investment the case of non renewable natural resources abstract this paper examines the effects of mineral price and extraction cost uncertainty on the investment program of a competitive resource extracting industry that faces convex costs of adjustment the results show that depletion of mineral reserves will slow down if the marginal adjustment cost function is concave or linear whereas the effect will be ambiguous if the function is convex

deregulating religion the economics of church and state traditional religious research fails to recognize religion as a market phenomenon it especially overlooks supply side factors that shape the incentives and opportunities of religious firms emphasizing instead demand side shifts in the perceptions tastes and needs of consumers this paper reviews the effects of government actions that alter religious supply a longer version appears in economic inquiry 40 2 april 1997

introduction to the economics of religion after a very long hiatus economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion this article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity the characteristics of religious groups and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets

simultaneous determination of church contributions and church attendance in a standard model of household allocation of time and income church attendance and church contributions are determined simultaneously there are life cycle aspects to both attendance and contributions as azzi and ehrenberg 1975 and ehrenberg 1977 have argued and contributions behavior is affected by tax treatment and by a potential free rider problem as well this paper motivates an econometric specification which recognizes these features and estimates the parameters with a data set of over 2000 protestant church members

religious freedom and the unintended consequences of state religion 1 introduction a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion so wrote justice hugo black in the majority opinion in engel v vitale 1 a 1962 school prayer case decided by the united states supreme court today church state issues continue to rise to the forefront of american politics in recent years alone disputes have arisen over public school vouchers and prayers the phrase under god in the pledge of allegiance the display of the ten commandments in public meeting halls and courthouses and the proper scope of president bush s recent faith based and community initiative across the atlantic william carey the recently retired archbishop of canterbury argued in april 2002 that establishment strengthens the church of england by allowing it to build a comprehensive network of parishes throughout the entire country and he denied that establishment has constrained the prophetic voice of the church 2 in contrast carey s successor rowan williams who became archbishop of canterbury in july 2002 has in the past advocated the disestablishment of the church of england 3 in sweden where the church of sweden had been the state church since 1593 the parliament passed a statute providing for the formal disestablishment of the church on january 1 2000 4in the united states the strongest advocates for giving religion a more prominent role in governmental settings have often been religious conservatives whereas the strongest opponents are often political liberals for example in the recently decided cleveland school voucher case 5 christian organizations like focus on the family the christian legal society the ethics and religious liberty commission of the southern baptist convention the national association of evangelicals and the united states conference of catholic bishops filed briefs in support of the program which allowed public funds to pay tuition in private schools including religious schools among the organizations filing briefs in opposition to the program were the naacp and various public education lobbies whereas the american civil liberties union people for the american way and americans united for separation of church and state provided legal representation for some of the plaintiffs challenging the voucher program interestingly however several religious organizations also filed briefs in opposition to the voucher program including the american jewish committee the jewish council for public affairs the baptist joint committee on public affairs the national council of churches of christ in the usa ncc and two regional seventh day adventist organizations except for the ncc these organizations represent the interests of religious groups that are or in the case of the baptists once were distinctly in the religious minority a growing body of research suggests that any positive benefits to the church with direct support from the state are outweighed by indirect effects that undermine the church s autonomy and its authority with the general populace for an excellent introduction to this research see stark and finke 2000 chapter 9 if such research is correct then the advocates of governmental endorsement of religion may be undermining the very institutions they seek to support in this article we use cross country survey responses to assess the impact of religious freedom and the separation of church and state on the health of religion throughout the world using survey responses on the frequency of attendance at religious services we find that government establishment of state religion reduces religious attendance whereas enduring constitutional protection of religion increases religious attendance adam smith recognized that establishment could ultimately undermine the state religion in the wealth of nations smith discussed the impact of establishing a religion on the fervor and effectiveness of the clergy in that religion the teachers of religion in the same manner as other teachers may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country may entitle them such as a landed estate a tythe or land tax an established salary or stipend

the impact of charitable subsidies on religious giving and attendance evidence from panel data the literature documents that charitable giving is responsive to tax subsidies but often ignores the spillover effects of such policies this paper investigates the spillover effects of charitable subsidies on religious participation using individual level panel data the results show that religious giving and participation are complements the implied cross price elasticity of religious participation with respect to the after tax price of giving is 0 27 furthermore a 1 increase in the amount of religious contributions is associated with a 0 4 increase in religious attendance these results are robust under several different specifications and highlight the positive externalities created by charitable subsidies

church attendance in great britain an ordered logit approach the church attendance decision of individual economic agents is analysed within a becker style allocation of time framework using an ordered logit model with data derived from the british household panel study bhps separate attendance equations are estimated for males and females the empirical results in line with previous north american studies suggest that labour income variables do account for some of the variation in attendance in addition attendance is found to be correlated with factors such as denominational affiliation educational attainment and intensity of belief

the impacts of religion political ideology and social capital on religious and secular giving evidence from the 2006 social capital community survey using a double hurdle model and data from the 2006 social capital community survey sccs2006 we examine religious and secular giving focusing on the impacts of religion political ideology and social capital our main results indicate that greater participation in religious activities positively impacts religious and secular giving the intensity of religious belief increases religious giving at the expense of secular giving religious giving by very conservative individuals is higher than for other ideological groups and measures of social capital are very important in raising the level and likelihood of philanthropic giving