collective action and group heterogeneity voluntary provision versus selective incentives several studies have concluded that heterogeneity within a group facilitates the initiation of collective action however a recent analysis found that heterogeneity can either facilitate or impede collective action depending on factors like the strength of the temptation to free ride reconciling these conclusions is difficult because the earlier studies assumed that public goods are provided voluntarily whereas the later analysis assumed that selective incentives like norms or laws can mandate cooperation i examine the link between group heterogeneity and collective action in three regimes voluntary systems in which actors make unrestricted decisions to participate in collective action compliance systems in which actors create and enforce norms that compel others to participate in public goods production and balanced systems in which actors can create and enforce compliance norms or oppose such norms the analysis reveals a complex link among group heterogeneity collective action and the type of regime by fostering the organization of previously atomized groups and weakening the cohesion of highsolidarity groups heterogeneity in contribution costs and valuation of the public good can reduce social power differentials

germany s dash for coal exploring drivers and factors abstract the german electricity sector has recently seen extensive planning and construction of new coal fired power plants within a period of only a few years new investments amounting to around 15 of the total sector capacity were brought on the way and plans for a multitude of additional projects are pending this dash for coal in germany has raised considerable public concern especially as it risks to undermine recent political attempts to combat global warming yet the question of why the dash for coal has emerged has not yet been addressed in a thorough analysis this article attempts to close this research gap while at the same time contributing as a case study to the general understanding of investment patterns in liberalized electricity markets it finds that the main reasons for the dash have been 1 replacement requirements due to the nuclear phase out 2 the onset of a new investment cycle in the power market 3 favorable economic and technological prospects for coal compared with natural gas in the long run 4 a status quo bias of investors in regard to future renewable deployment 5 explicit political support for coal and 6 the ineffectiveness of public protest in hampering new projects

the ambiguous impact of inequality on local resource management abstract the impact of inequality on the ability of human groups to undertake successful collective action is investigated with special reference to overexploitation of common property resources in voluntary provision problems on the one hand inequality has an ambiguous impact on the feasibility of the efficient outcome even though better endowed agents contribute more to collective action in regulated settings on the other hand inequality tends to reduce the acceptability of available regulatory schemes and therefore to make collective action more difficult

institutions governance and incentives in common property regimes for african rangelands the general distinctions between open access state property common property and private property are now well established in the academic literature when applied to african rangelands however common property admits a wide variety of resource management regimes to formulate effective policies it is necessary to understand the structure and operations of particular regimes in this paper we discuss three examples of common property regimes two from the southern african nation of lesotho and one from the west african nation of senegal to illustrate some of the key characteristics of common property regimes in particular it is important to understand the structure of governance the types of institutions that govern behavior and the compatibility between governance institutions and individual incentives a common property regime can only be effective if its institutions are compatible with the structure of governance the extent of its effectiveness also depends upon the incentives and expectations of individuals expected to enforce the rules of the institutions or comply with their terms at present most african governments lack the organizational capacity and political will necessary to implement state property regimes official regulations on resource use or individual property rights for rangelands resources in many cases it is more appropriate for governments to define and enforce group rights to particular resources then help to establish conditions in which internal group dynamics yield efficient resource management outcomes

credit market constraints consumption smoothing and the accumulation of durable production assets in low income countries investments in bullocks in india in this paper we formulate and estimate a finite horizon structural dynamic model of agricultural investment behavior that incorporates the major features of low income agricultural environments income uncertainty constraints on borrowing and rental markets and the use of investment assets to generate income and smooth consumption the model is fit to longitudinal indian household data on farm profits bullock stocks and pump sets the estimated structural parameters are used to assess the effects on the life cycle accumulation of bullocks agricultural profits and welfare associated with complete markets and bullock liquidity and with second best policies that provide assured sources of income to farmers and weather insurance

tenure security and land related investment evidence from ethiopia the authors use a large data set from ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land related investment and its possible impact on productivity while they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees this is not the case for terraces transfer rights are unambiguously investment enhancing the large productivity effect of terracing implies that even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security this may not be socially efficient in ethiopia government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity

what explains collective action in the commons theory and evidence from the philippines summary i examine the factors that influence collective action in the commons using econometric analyses on a data set of 1958 irrigation associations in the philippines i find that collective action is associated with water scarcity proximity to markets group size farm size and governance structure water scarcity has a curvilinear effect on collective action and is mediated by the governance structure the results suggest the need for a diagnostic approach in the analysis of institutional arrangements in diverse socio ecological settings these also suggest that collective action in the commons is more complex than is conventionally assumed in the decentralization literature

transaction costs collective action and survival of heterogeneous co management institutions case study of forest management organisations in west bengal india abstract cost effective natural resource management is important for equity and efficiency yet transaction costs of cooperation may pose a challenge to heterogeneous co management institutions we conducted a survey in seven forest protection committees of west bengal india to examine this hypothesis empirically we find that 1 among several factors caste heterogeneity distance to forest political heterogeneity land inequality and trust systematically influence transaction costs and collective action and 2 robust institutions bear less costs of cooperation the implication is that transaction costs related to heterogeneity may exert significant influence on successes or failures of co management

common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources abstract the literature on common property based resource management comprises many important studies that seek to specify the conditions under which groups of users will self organize and sustainably govern resources upon which they depend using three of the more comprehensive such studies and with an extensive review of writings on the commons this paper demonstrates that the enterprise of generating lists of conditions under which commons are governed sustainably is a flawed and impossibly costly research task for a way out the paper examines the relative merits of statistical comparative and case study approaches to studying the commons it ends with a plea for careful research design and sample selection construction of causal mechanisms and a shift toward comparative and statistical rather than single case analyses such steps are necessary for a coherent empirically relevant theory of the commons

risk and insurance in a rural credit market an empirical investigation in northern nigeria credit contracts play a direct role in pooling risk between households in northern nigeria repayments owed by borrowers depend on realizations of random shocks by both borrowers and lenders the paper develops two models of state contingent loans the first is a competitive equilibrium in perfectly enforceable contracts the second permits imperfect information and equilibrium default estimates of both models indicate that quantitatively important state contingent payments are embedded in these loan transactions but that a fully efficient risk pooling equilibrium is not achieved the research is based on a year long survey in zaria nigeria conducted by the author

inequality social sanctions and cooperation within south african fishing communities abstract we explore the effect of income inequality and social attitudes on cooperation and sanctioning in nine south african fishing communities where allocation of fishing rights via quota and permits have been unequal and controversial we use a linear public goods experiment design with heterogeneous endowments and peer sanctioning in the punishment treatment aggregate contributions towards the public good are significantly higher amongst unequal groups with low endowment players contributing the greatest endowment share sanctioning is significantly lower in unequal groups but demand for punishment is similar irrespective of differences in relative costs free riding drives punishment but retaliation is another important motivator specifically in unequal groups in equal groups antisocial punishment of cooperators is more common the effect of real wealth and inequality on contributions and punishment is less salient possibly due to real wealth not being discernible in the experimental context interestingly social attitudes are important in explaining sanctioning behavior indicating that distrust in formal institutions and specifically in the top down quota allocation process may have a significant impact on behavioral outcomes and the effectiveness of community sanctioning mechanisms

a theory of the critical mass i interdependence group heterogeneity and the production of collective action collective action usually depends on a critical mass that behaves differently from typical group members sometimes the critical mass provides some level of the good for others who do nothing wh

on the unequal inequality of poor communities important differences exist between communities with respect to their needs capacities and circumstances as central governments are not able to discern these differences fully they seek to achieve their policy objectives by relying on decentralized mechanisms that use local information however household and individual characteristics within communities can also vary substantially a growing theoretical literature suggests that inequality within communities can influence policy outcomes and that this influence could be harmful or helpful depending on the circumstances empirical investigations into the impact of inequality have to date largely been held back by a lack of systematic evidence on community level inequality the authors use household survey and population census data to estimate per capita consumption inequality within communities in three developing countries ecuador madagascar and mozambique communities are found to vary markedly from one another in terms of the degree of inequality they exhibit the authors also show that there should be no presumption that inequality is less severe in poor communities they argue that the kind of community level inequality estimates generated in this paper can be used in designing and evaluating decentralized antipoverty programs

wealth based trust and the development of collective action interpersonal trust is one possible mechanism by which wealth inequality affects the success of efforts in cooperation specifically the presence of perceived economic differences between members of small agricultural cooperatives in northwest ecuador s agricultural frontier encourages trust in the wealthy thus facilitating co op development during the initial stage of cooperative formation but such inequality and exclusive trust may later negatively affect co op success these generalizations are only possible through refinement of frameworks currently used in the study of heterogeneity and common pool resource management this refinement is made possible by paying closer attention to the operationalization of variables and by synthesizing already existing hypotheses

power distribution the external environment and common property forest governance a local user groups model abstract this paper presents a recursive model that links power distribution imbalances with collective benefits and costs related to local common property forest governance using cross sectional analysis of 38 local common property forest user groups ejidos and comunidades in la sierra tarahumara mexico we test the impacts of power inequalities on different common property forest governance outcomes three measures of power inequality are used intra group power disparities links between the ejido authority and external political forces and asset disparities between the authority and the group average the proxies of power were found to be a key determinant of forest change and other collective action related variables the findings provide evidence in favour of the hypothesis that with greater power inequalities within the group agents with more power are able to impose higher costs on those with less power powerful leaders may provide positive externalities to the group in the form of norms however results indicate that greater power inequality tends to lead to more illegal logging and more forest degradation

cooperation in common property regimes under extreme drought conditions empirical evidence from the use of pooled transferable quotas in spanish irrigation systems the success of a common property regime can be partially judged on the basis of its ability to handle extreme events that stress its capacity for cooperation this paper compares the performance of 38 irrigation associations in a large irrigation area in spain during a severe drought as a test of hypotheses derived from property right theories the case is particularly interesting because it contains a transferable quota institution that can potentially strengthen the effectiveness of common property regimes in scarcity conditions according to the results the use of transferable quotas across associations can contribute to cooperation and drought performance in this context performance is higher when the associations enjoy 1 effective monitoring systems 2 experience and legitimate leaders and 3 facilitative biophysical conditions like soil water holding capacity the analysis also suggests that biophysical properties like soil water holding capacity may compensate for weaker monitoring or leadership and vice versa

the effects of migration on collective action in the commons evidence from rural china summary over the past three decades scholars have studied the effects of more than three dozen factors on collective action in the commons but little is known about the effects of rural to urban migration we examine this question with the case of china which has the world s most extensive levels of rural to urban migration using ols logit and probit models and data from a survey of 1 780 households from 18 provinces we find that migration has a statistically significant adverse effect on collective irrigation controlling for a large number of theoretically relevant variables the effects of migration on collective action in the commons are possibly mediated by a number of factors frequently identified in the literature including leadership social capital sense of community economic heterogeneity and dependence on resources we speculate that massive out migration partly explains the significant drop in the use of collective canal irrigation and exacerbated the significant increase in groundwater irrigation since the start of reforms in 1980s these findings have important policy implications for commons governance in china given that massive rural to urban migration will continue in the next decade because of the increasing rural to urban migration worldwide especially in developing countries the findings could also partly explain the deteriorating state of rural village infrastructure natural common pool resources and ecological systems in many developing countries

economic heterogeneity and the commons effects on collective action and collective goods provisioning summary the question of how economic and socio cultural heterogeneity impacts commons management has been receiving increasing attention but without resolution however the issue is increasingly important in a globalizing world this paper builds upon recent theoretical works to provide a clearer understanding of the conditions under which we might expect economic inequality to have positive or negative effects of critical importance to the argument is the distinction between the problem of collective action and the problem of providing collective goods a synthetic set of predictions is subsequently developed and tested with a comparative analysis of case studies of fisheries and irrigation systems

coping with asymmetries in the commons self governing irrigation systems can work many analysts presume that the appropriators of a common pool resource are trapped in a hobbesian state of nature and cannot themselves create rules to counteract the perverse incentives they face in managing the resource the logical consequence of this view is to recommend that an external authority the government take over the commons but considerable empirical evidence from field and experimental settings holds that appropriators frequently do constitute and enforce their own rules and that these rules work our research agenda is to develop a coherent understanding of the set of conditions that enhance or detract from self organizing capabilities when individuals differ substantially from one another for the sake of concreteness this paper focuses on the asymmetry present in most irrigation systems between those who are physically near the source of water the head enders and those who are physically distant from it the tail enders this paper first explores the interaction between head end and tail end farmers particularly their decisions about whether to devote resources to the upkeep of the irrigation system and how bargaining between the parties can benefit all sides finally we examine empirical evidence from a study of irrigation institutions in nepal and discuss the broader practical significance of our findings

coping with the tragedy of the commons game structure and design of rules the paper provides an assessment of some recent results of the large amount of new institutional economics analyses investigating a common pool resource setting with a specific focus on game theory models most of the studies have used a non cooperative approach in order to explain how under provision for the resource or its over use the so called tragedy of the commons can be avoided within given management rules they show how the characteristics of the game payoff matrix repetition or of the users group size wealth heterogeneity and moral norms may give incentives for the latter to play in a way that benefits all users by contrast much fewer articles have used a formalized approach to assess the possibility for players to design new rules to overcome the initial tragedy of the commons the article ends with some proposals of directions for future research

wealth weather risk and the composition and profitability of agricultural investments despite the growing evidence that farmers in low income environments are risk averse there has been little empirical evidence on the importance of risk in shaping the actual allocation of production resources among farmers differentiated by wealth the authors use panel data on investments in rural india to examine how the composition of productive and nonproductive asset holdings varies across farmers with different levels of total wealth and across farmers facing different degrees of weather risk income variability is a prominent feature of the experience of rural agents in low income countries the authors report evidence based on measures of rainfall variability that the agricultural investment portfolio behavior of farmers in such settings reflects risk aversion due evidently to limitations on consumption soothing mechanisms such as crop insurance or credit markets the authors results suggest that uninsured weather risk is a significant cause of lower efficiency and lower average incomes a one standard deviation decrease in weather risk measured by the standard deviation of the timing of the rainy season would raise average profits by up to 35 percent among farmers in the lowest wealth quartile moreover rainfall variability induces a more unequal distribution of average incomes for a given distribution of wealth wealthier farmers are willing to absorb significant risk without giving up profits to reduce production risk smaller farmers have to invest their limited wealth in ways that reduce their exposure to risk at the cost of lower profit rates the authors found that at high levels of rainfall variability differences in rates of profit per unit of agricultural assets were similar across classes of wealth but over the sample range of rainfall variability these rates of profit were always higher for the poorer farmers than for the wealthier ones suggesting that the disadvantages of small farmers in risk diffusion are more than offset by their labor cost advantage

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

conservation versus equity can payments for environmental services achieve both this paper investigates the trade off between conservation and equity considerations in the use of payments for environmental services pes that implicitly incorporate different distributive justice principles using a public good experiment with heterogeneous participants we compare the effects on additional area conserved and distribution of earnings of two pes schemes an equal payment and a payment based on rawls distributional principle which we refer to as maxi min payment scheme the main findings of the framed field experiment conducted in jambi province indonesia indicate that the introduction of a maxi min pes scheme can function as a multi purpose instrument it realigns the income distribution in favor of low endowed participants and does not necessarily need to be compromised by lower environmental additionality at the group level

participatory exclusions community forestry and gender an analysis for south asia and a conceptual framework abstract the idea of people s participation has long been part of development thinking but today the management of local natural resources by village communities is widely accepted as an institutional imperative it is therefore essential to examine how these institutions perform especially from the perspective of the more disadvantaged based on extensive fieldwork among community forestry groups in india and nepal and existing case studies this paper demonstrates how seemingly participatory institutions can exclude significant sections such as women it provides a typology of participation spells out the gender equity and efficiency implications of such exclusions and analyzes what underlies them it also outlines a conceptual framework to help analyze the process of gender exclusion and how it might be alleviated

high value forests hidden economies and elite capture evidence from forest user groups in nepal s terai abstract this paper argues that the policy on decentralised forest management in nepal informed by experiences from the middle hills overlooks the complexity and conflictual potential of establishing effective and equitable user groups in the terai our case study evidence from west central terai suggests that the combination of high forest value and weak institutional control mechanisms create opportunities for local elites to siphon off substantial shares of the benefits generated by valuable local forests the rents created by autonomous fug policies give rise to stark distributional biases a scramble for control and institutional instability we estimate the extent of elite capture and argue that institutional reform needs are intimately linked to controlling what we call the hidden economy of forest user groups

the paradox of group size in collective action a theory of the critical mass ii many sociologists incorrectly believe that larger groups are less likely to support collective action than smaller ones the effect of group size infact depends on costs if the costs of collective goods rise with the number who share in them larger groups act less frequently than smaller ones if the costs vary little with group size larger groups should exhibit more collective action than smaller ones because larger groups have more resources and are more likely to have a critical mass of highly interested and resourceful actors the positive effects of group size increase with group heterogeneity and nonrandom social ties paradoxically when groups are hetero geneous fewer contributors may be needed to provide a good to larger groups making collective action less complex and less expensive

rural forest management in sierra leone the role of economic in equality in facilitating collective action while significant theoretical developments have been made in the research on common pool resources heterogeneity remains a contested issue focusing on economic inequality one particular aspect o

the effects of well management and the nature of the aquifer on groundwater resources we compare groundwater use under collective well management in china where village leaders allocate water among households and under private well management where farmers either pump from their own wells or buy water from wells owned by other farmers villages are divided into connected or isolated groups depending on whether there are lateral groundwater flows between aquifers underlying a village and neighboring ones in rural china households under collective well management use less water even under collective management households located in connected villages use more water indicating that the connectedness of the aquifers may undermine leaders incentives to conserve water

collective action for local commons management in rural yunnan china empirical evidence and hypotheses using evolutionary game theory this paper presents hypotheses regarding collective actions for irrigation management with the help of evolutionary game theory data for the analysis were collected by the author from the irrigation system of rural yunnan china an econometric analysis reveals that collective action will be forthcoming in rural communities where few nonfarm job opportunities are provided the degree of income disparity is quite small and resource restrictions are moderately problematic the finding that communities without local government intervention outperform those with intervention supports the proverbial view that external agencies should delegate significant parts of the control rights of common pool resources to immediate stakeholders

income and the environment in rural india is there a poverty trap we study the relationships between rural income distributions and changes in environmental conditions in southern western and central india between 1994 95 and 2000 01 other than the relatively rich we find that all income strata benefit from an improved environment and intermediate expenditure households benefit more than the very poor in absolute terms higher median consumption expenditures and richness are estimated to increase environmental decline but we do not find a significant impact of income poverty on local environmental health the results do not support the poverty trap conjecture with environmental degradation driving expenditure reductions that promote offsetting aforestation which benefits the poor

currency inconvertibility trade taxes and smuggling abstract in the classic analysis of smuggling importers choose the optimal mix of legal and illegal trade given trade taxes and the technology of detection this paper introduces an inconvertible currency in the framework so that illegal trade is valued at a rate higher than the fixed official exchange rate sections 2 and 3 show how the smuggling ratio and the domestic price markup for the import and export good are simultaneously determined with balanced legal and illegal trade changes in the long run black market premium are a weighted average of changes in trade taxes whereas changes in the smuggling ratios depend on the ration of trade taxes thus an import tariff and an export subsidy rising at the same rate would keep smuggling ratios constant but imply a rising black market premium sections 4 and 5 to determine the quantity of exports and imports a model of the economy is presented in section 6 featuring the production of exports and non traded goods and the consumption of imports and non traded goods as well as a government confiscating the amounts of traded goods unsuccessfully smuggled then export production may fall and welfare may rise if trade taxes have a negative effect on the relative price of exports and imports stronger than the positive effect on smuggled exports and imports which is always welfare reducing section 7 introduces the short run determination of the black market premium via portfolio balance in this case rising trade taxes may be associated with a premium rising even faster if there is unreported capital flight and conversely

collective action within the household insights from natural resource management summary households face many collective action situations with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods but neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so drawing on the institutional analysis and development framework based in the natural resource management literature this paper explores the factors that encourage and inhibit collective action and provides insights into how to understand collective action problems within the household as dynamic multi actor situations with outcomes that can be evaluated by multiple criteria not just efficiency

economic freedom and productivity growth in resource rich economies summary the focus of this paper is to test whether free market institutions that protect property rights and support freedom of choice and voluntary exchange can change the curse of natural resources into a blessing to examine the above question this paper uses the fraser institute s economic freedom index and its five sub indices namely government size property rights access to sound money freedom to trade and setting proper regulations using data from 99 sample countries over the period 1970 2010 the system gmm estimates suggest that the negative growth effects of resource rents may turn positive in countries with greater economic freedom

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

public goods provision and redistributive taxation abstract this paper studies the relationship between redistributive taxation and tax deductible charitable contributions redistribution has two opposite effects on voluntary giving the price of charitable giving decreases with the degree of redistribution and this has a positive effect on the total amount of giving substitution effect however redistribution leads to lower consumption for the contributors and therefore has a negative effect on contributions to the charity income effect the theoretical model developed in this paper demonstrates that under a general class of utility functions the substitution effect dominates the income effect hence charitable giving increases with the tax rate in purely egalitarian societies the public good is provided efficiently and the total welfare is maximized independent of the ex ante income inequality however the positive impact of taxation on charitable giving and welfare may disappear if individuals generate their income levels in anticipation of taxation and redistribution does not take into account the cost of effort

the differential impact of user heterogeneity in resource management a case study from india abstract this paper analyses the heterogeneous users decision to participate in co management which is an institutional alternative proposed in the wake of state s failure in managing the cochin estuarine fisheries in kerala india since a collective action under co management require not only user s active participation in terms of their labor but also involve various types of organizational and managerial costs the users were given the following choices on co operation firstly the users had the choice to contribute their labor in conservation activities which would ensure sustainability of the fisheries secondly they could make a voluntary contribution towards meeting the organizational costs of collective action thirdly they could contribute in terms of labor as well as in monetary terms finally they had the choice not to participate at all keeping in view the problems of free rider and the chances for adoption of strategic behavior by users some incentives were given for each of the above ways of co operation a multinomial logit analysis of the decision of about 369 sample fishermen to participate in co management as defined above shows the differential impact of user heterogeneity in resource management while heterogeneity in terms of the present legal status of the users motivate them for contributing their labor even in the absence of any additional economic incentives heterogeneity in economic status and membership in formal organizations matters when it comes to making monetary payments in addition to these the overall optimism of the users motivates them to both physically engage in conservation activities as well as make monetary payments adoption of strategic behaviors by at least some users cannot however be ruled out on the whole it is seen that the heterogeneous fishermen s decision to participate depends upon their anticipation of the distribution of benefits from co operation however one must be cautious that those who anticipate disproportionate benefit from co operation are likely to take a lead role therefore care must be taken to prevent them from deciding the rules of the game in such a manner that they are disproportionately in their favor

socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies on heterogeneous agricultural households nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme in principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation however concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods to study the effect of government policies on forest use an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in nepal was developed the model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income employment and income inequality the results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies this study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment and widen income inequalities within communities compared to alternative policies certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households ability to meet survival needs the findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry s contribution to production are accounted for the study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs