whether crop diversification is a desired strategy for agricultural growth in bangladesh abstract this study aimed at examining the merit of crop diversification as a strategy for agricultural growth in bangladesh specifically the existence of economies of diversification scale economies and diversification efficiencies at the farm level were examined using a stochastic input distance function approach the results reveal strong evidence of diversification economies amongst most crop enterprises except the combination of modern rice and modern wheat enterprises ray economies of scale exist in bangladeshi cropping system also significant are efficiency gains made from diversification among cropping enterprises the key policy implication is that crop diversification should be a desired strategy for agricultural growth in bangladesh development of the rural infrastructure is also essential as this will not only improve technical efficiency but may also synergistically promote crop diversification by opening up opportunities for technology diffusion marketing storage and resource supplies

a simple auction mechanism for the optimal allocation of the commons efficient regulation of the commons requires information about the regulated firms that is rarely available to regulators e g cost of pollution abatement this paper proposes a simple mechanism that implements the first best for any number of firms a uniform price sealed bid auction of an endogenous number of transferable licenses with a fraction of the auction revenues given back to firms paybacks which rapidly decrease with the number of firms are such that truth telling is a dominant strategy regardless of whether firms behave non cooperatively or collusively the mechanism also provides firms with incentives to invest in socially optimal r d jel d44 d62 d82 q28 regulatory authorities generally find that part of the information they need for implementing an efficient regulation is in the hands of those who are to be regulated regulating externalities such as access to common resources e g clean air water streams fisheries etc is a good example environmental regulators for example know little about firms pollution abatement costs so without communicating with firms they would be unable to establish the efficient level of pollution a number of mechanisms have been proposed for inducing firms to reveal their private information but for different reasons

a solution to the problem of externalities when agents are well informed the author describes a class of simple two stage mechanisms that implement efficient allocations as subgame perfect equilibria for economic environments involving externalities these mechanisms known as compensation mechanisms solve a wide variety of externalities problems including implementation of lindahl allocations regulation of monopoly and efficient solutions to the prisoner s dilemma copyright 1994 by american economic association

pollution control by options trading abstract for pollution control with imperfect information about aggregate abatement costs we propose a combination consisting of free permits and a menu of call options for additional permits with different striking prices by appropriately choosing permits and corresponding striking prices the regulator can approximate the marginal damage function arbitrarily well

output based allocations in pollution markets with uncertainty and self selection we study pollution permit markets in which a fraction of permits are allocated to firms based on their output output based allocations which are receiving increasing attention in the design of carbon markets around the world e g europe california new zealand are shown to be optimal under demand and supply volatility despite the output distortions they may create in a market that covers multiple sectors the optimal design combines auctioned permits with output based allocations that are specific to each sector and increasing in its volatility when firms are better informed about the latter or must self select the regulator resort to some free i e lump sum allocations to sort firms out numerical exercises illustrate the policy relevance of our results the gains from considering output based allocations can be substantial

agricultural diversification and integrated pest management in bangladesh we study factors associated with a shift toward diversified high valued vegetable crops and the incentives associated with the use of ipm methods for vegetable producers in bangladesh the primary objective is to measure how ipm technologies affect the crop and technology choices of low income rice farmers a three season household optimisation model is used to study crop and technology choice under price and yield uncertainty the model is parameterised using data from vegetable farms and experimental ipm trials conducted in bangladesh simulation results show that access to ipm technology and ipm availability combined with access to credit increase household welfare and lead to higher rates of vegetable adoption off farm employment opportunities work against vegetable cultivation and ipm use by risk averse farmers implications for policy and extension efforts are highlighted

agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction a propensity score matching analysis for rural bangladesh this study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies it does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change of the green revolution type and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural bangladeshi regions as technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is self selection into treatment the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the causal effect of technology on farm household wellbeing through the non parametric p score matching analysis it pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line it finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in directly contributing to poverty alleviation 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

farmer training in off season vegetables effects on income and pesticide use in bangladesh the cultivation of crops outside the regular cropping calendar when supply is low and prices are high can give farmers better profits and consumers more choice however off season production may increase pesticide risk if crops are more affected by pests and diseases and farmers do not handle pesticides correctly this study quantified the effect of training in off season tomato production on the income and pesticide use of smallholder vegetable farmers in southwestern bangladesh the study uses farm level data from 94 trained and 151 non trained farm households and applies propensity score matching and inverse probability weighting to correct for selection bias for the average smallholder vegetable farmer training increased net household income by about 48 we found that 31 of the trained farm households who had initially adopted the technology continued its use in the second year but farm households who discontinued using the technology also experienced significant income gains from the training there was a significant increase in pesticide use 56 and although there was an improvement in pesticide handling practices trained farmers may have been more exposed to pesticide health risk the policy implication is that while off season vegetable production can create dramatic income improvements it is important to emphasize safe and sustainable pest management methods as part of policies promoting it

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

the impact of improved maize varieties on poverty in mexico a propensity score matching approach summary this study examines the adoption of improved maize germplasm in oaxaca and chiapas in mexico it employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze the impact of the adoption of improved maize varieties on household income and poverty reduction using cross sectional data of 325 farmers from the two regions the findings reveal a robust positive and significant impact of improved maize variety adoption on farm household welfare measured by per capita expenditure and poverty reduction specifically the empirical results suggest that adoption of improved maize varieties helped raise household per capita expenditure by an average of 136 173 mexican pesos thereby reducing their probability of falling below the poverty line by roughly 19 31

implementing optimal taxes using tradable share permits abstract this paper presents a simple system for efficient regulation under asymmetric information each firm s income is controlled by a tax that depends on the firm s own output and on a parameter construed as a share permit these shares of total expected output lower a firm s tax burden and are acquired in a competitive market by employing this scheme the planner only requires knowledge of marginal damage to induce the first best outcome relative to a traditional cap and trade approach the system increases expected social welfare

agricultural pesticides and land use intensification in high middle and low income countries abstract we study levels and trends in agricultural pesticide use for a large cross section of countries using fao data for the period 1990 2009 our analysis shows that a 1 increase in crop output per hectare is associated with a 1 8 increase in pesticide use per hectare but that the growth in intensity of pesticide use levels off as countries reach a higher level of economic development however very few high income countries have managed to significantly reduce the level of intensity of their pesticide use because decreases in insecticide use at higher income levels are largely offset by increases in herbicide and fungicide use the results also show very rapid growth in the intensity of pesticide use for several middle income countries such as brazil mexico uruguay cameroon malaysia and thailand complementing our analysis with data from the rotterdam convention on prior informed consent pic we show that hazardous pesticides covered in the pic procedure are more weakly regulated in lower than in higher income countries we discuss the policy challenges facing developing countries with a rapid growth in pesticide use and recommend a four pronged strategy including an environmental tax on pesticides with revenues allocated to long term investments in awareness building the development of integrated crop management methods and the setting of food safety standards the interactions between these measures should help contribute to the effectiveness of the overall strategy package

the judgement policies of negotiators and the structure of negotiation problems the structure of negotiation problems refers to characteristics of their feasible settlement spaces and efficient frontiers these characteristics are determined by the joint distribution of negotiators utilities across possible settlements variations in negotiators judgment policies i e how they judge the utility of potential settlements may result in distinctly different negotiation problem structures depending on the structure of the negotiation problem settlements that are efficient maximize joint utility and minimize inequality are sometimes possible sometimes not when such settlements are possible different strategies may be necessary to reach them they sometimes can be reached only by a compromise strategy in which the disputants split their differences on each issue sometimes only by a horsetrading strategy involving trade offs among extreme values on issues sometimes by either and sometimes by neither strategy settlements on the efficient frontier that yield equal utility to both negotiators will sometimes leave both relatively well satisfied sometimes not when equal valued settlements yield low levels of utility negotiators are likely to feel dissatisfied and may presume that the other negotiator must be comparatively better satisfied even seemingly simple negotiation problems often pose a high degree of cognitive complexity in the face of uncertainty about the nature of the problem structure negotiators may resort to simple bargaining tactics e g incrementally offering concessions on the issue for which the marginal rate of loss of utility is least for many commonly encountered problem structures such tactics lead toward satisfactory settlements but not always analyses of the judgment policies of negotiators and resultant negotiation problem structures will contribute to better understanding of negotiation processes and help to inform the design of negotiation support systems

premediation analysis of the energy taxation dispute in finland abstract this paper illustrates a real application of negotiation and decision analytic techniques to a long continued dispute between industry and the environmentalists in finland specifically we applied the so called premediation analysis to discover efficient compromise solutions for finland s future energy taxation problem the author s role was to act as a neutral mediator the premediation included the elicitation of the fundamental objectives of the disputants as well as their preferences relating to the issues under negotiation the quantitative analysis pointed out several efficient compromise solutions to the dispute implying that it was worth negotiating rather than unilaterally seeking to influence the state authorities this induced the participants to start unofficial face to face negotiations mediated by the author the compromise achieved together with the contacts created during the post analysis negotiations contributed immediately to the finnish government s first move towards a real ecological tax reform later on the government implemented a refund scheme for the industry that resembled by and large the one outlined in the post analysis negotiations this study thus provides a clear indication of the usefulness of the premediation concept in an unsettled conflict situation where the disputants have not earlier tried to resolve their disagreements by negotiating

identifying pareto optimal settlements for two party resource allocation negotiations abstract we explore models to identify pareto optimal outcomes in two party multiple program resource allocation post settlement settlement negotiations the approximation of the contract curve that is the set of pareto optimal outcomes is also discussed we consider the case where the parties split a shared hard resource an application of the models to a resource allocation problem in a finnish university is also discussed

estimating the benefit incidence of an antipoverty program by propensity score matching this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled estimating the benefit incidence of an antipoverty program by propensity score matching conducted between 1997 and 1998 in argentina the study observed that the average direct gain to the participant is found to be about half the gross wage over half of the beneficiaries are in the poorest decile nationally and 80 percent are in the poorest quintile the propensity score matching psm estimator is reasonably robust to a number of changes in methodology participants are more likely to be poor than non participants participants are less well educated live in poorer neighborhoods and are more likely to be members of neighborhood associations and political parties average gains are similar between men and women but are higher for younger workers funding for the study derives from the world bank research committee

food aid targeting in ethiopia a study of who needs it and who gets it abstract the need for systematic empirical analysis of food aid targeting and impacts is overwhelming especially given the large numbers of people concerned and volume of funds allocated to the problem of feeding ethiopia s food insecure this research examines the efficiency of food aid targeting in rural ethiopia based on empirical evidence from a nationally representative survey of 4166 farm households a key finding of the study is that there is no significant association between household food insecurity vulnerability and food aid receipts a result of high errors of exclusion and inclusion at both the wereda and household levels four factors are identified as causes of the high level of targeting error 1 the primary beneficiaries of food aid programs are found to be households at the extremes in terms of food availability those with the least and those with the most food available 2 a disproportionate number of female and aged heads of households received food aid irrespective of their food needs 3 an inability of the food aid system to reach households outside of the historically deficit areas and 4 a disproportionate concentration of food aid in the region of tigray

efficiency in pollution control in the short and long runs a system of rental emission permits efficiency in pollution control in the short and long runs a system of rental emission permits author s robert a collinge and wallace e oates source the canadian journal of economics revue canadienne d economique vol 15 no 2 may 1982 pp 346 354 published by blackwell publishing on behalf of the canadian economics association stable url http www jstor org stable 134787 accessed 05 05 2008 21 07

food aid dependency in northeastern ethiopia myth or reality summary food aid dependency among ethiopian farmers frequently is claimed with serious policy impacts this article explores this assertion with reference to south wollo ethiopia one of the country s largest recipients of food aid it uses household economic and ethnographic data from the 1999 2000 and 2002 03 droughts when food aid imports were very high by examining patterns of food aid distribution and resource allocation among groups of food aid recipients and non recipients the article suggests that food aid has not encouraged dependency like behaviors it suggests that few farmers would be foolhardy enough to significantly alter their actions since food aid delivery is too uncertain and poorly timed

impact of cooperatives on smallholders commercialization behavior evidence from ethiopia this article examines the impact of marketing cooperatives on smallholder commercialization of cereals using detailed household data in rural ethiopia we use the strong government role in promoting the establishment of cooperatives to justify the use of propensity score matching to compare households that are cooperative members to similar households in comparable areas without cooperatives the analysis reveals that although cooperatives obtain higher prices for their members they are not associated with a significant increase in the overall share of cereal production sold commercially by their members however these average results hide considerable heterogeneity across households in particular we find that smaller farmers tend to reduce their marketed output as a result of higher prices whereas the opposite is true for larger farmers

implementing the efficient allocation of pollution we provide simple mechanisms to implement the efficient allocation of pollution first assuming complete information across firms and then allowing for incomplete information both mechanisms operate by inducing firms to monitor one another using firms reports to determine pollution allotments and transfers the complete information mechanism determines a firm s transfer according to a linear pollution price set by other firms both mechanisms can be modified to be budget balanced in and out of equilibrium the complete information mechanism implements the efficient allocation even when firms are allowed to use mixed strategies under a single crossing condition the same holds for the incomplete information mechanism this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

searching for joint gains in multi party negotiations abstract we develop a constructive approach to multi party negotiations over continuous issues the method is intended to be used as a mediator s tool for step by step creation of joint gains in order to reach a pareto optimal agreement during the mediation process the parties are only required to answer relatively simple questions concerning their preferences they do not have to reveal their utility functions completely the method generates jointly improving directions to move along and it is a non trivial generalization of the recently proposed two party methods we give a mathematical analysis together with a numerical example but also a practical basis for negotiation support in real world settings

efficient pollution regulation getting the prices right this paper argues for efficient environmental regulations that equate the mar ginal damage of pollution to marginal abatement costs across space the paper estimates the source specific marginal damages of air pollution and calculates the welfare gain from making the current sulfur dioxide allowance trading pro gram for power plants more efficient the savings from using trading ratios based on marginal damages are between 310 and 940 million per year the potential savings from setting aggregate emissions efficiently and from includ ing more sources of air pollution are many times higher jel h23 q53 q58

the impact of a food security program on household food consumption in northwestern ethiopia a matching estimator approach abstract with the financial support from various development partners ethiopia has designed and implemented several programs to improve household food security yet food insecurity is still a major challenge to several millions of people in the country and it is questionable whether the different food security programs implemented over the past years have been successful using a propensity score matching method to control for pre intervention differences this study examined the impact on household food calorie intake of an integrated food security program ifsp which had been implemented in northwestern ethiopia by two non governmental organizations as a case study the estimated results provide evidence that ifsp has a positive and statistically significant effect on food calorie intake in particular ifsp has raised physical food calorie intake by 30 among the beneficiary households however we also found that ifsp has differential impact depending on family size landownership and gender of head of household overall the paper provides evidence that supporting integrated food security programs is important to improve food security in rural areas

determinants of food security in southern ethiopia at the household level in the early 1980s a paradigm shift occurred in the field of food security following amartya sens 1981 claims that food insecurity is more of a demand concern affecting the poor s access to food than a supply concern affecting availability of food at the national level despite the wide acceptance of sen s thinking many controversies including the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in causing and solving food insecurity have remained in academic and policy circles this study develops a recursive household food security model within the framework of consumer demand and production theories following singh et al 1986 and parses out the relative importance of supply side versus demand side variables in determining household food security in southern ethiopia based on results of a test of full reduced model and the magnitude of changes in conditional probabilities of food security we conclude that the supply side variables are more powerful determinants of food security than the demand side variables