the ambivalent impact of coffee certification on farmers welfare a matched panel approach for cooperatives in central kenya certification is promoted to improve rural welfare through better market access and improved agricultural practices we compare net effects of fairtrade and utz certified coffee production in central kenya using a matched panel from 218 farm households that belong to three cooperatives and were visited twice in 2009 and 2013 we distinguish between effects at field farm household cooperative community and market levels both certification regimes improved coffee returns but fairtrade was more effective in coffee processing whereas utz contributed to productivity under stagnating coffee prices fairtrade farmers increased their coffee specialization while utz farmers reduced coffee areas but increased yield

does informative media commentary reduce politicians incentives to pander abstract elections sometimes give policy makers incentives to pander i e to implement a policy that voters think is in their best interest even though the policy maker knows that a different policy is actually better for the voters pandering incentives are typically attenuated when voters learn prior to the election whether the policy chosen by the incumbent truly was in their best interest this suggests that the media can improve accountability by reporting to voters information about whether an incumbent made good policy choices we show that although media monitoring does sometimes eliminate the incumbent s incentive to pander in other cases it makes the problem of pandering worse furthermore in some circumstances incumbent incentives are improved when the media acts as a yes man suppressing some information that indicates the policy maker made the wrong choice we explain these seemingly paradoxical results by focusing on how media commentary affects voters tendency to apply an asymmetric burden of proof to the incumbent based on whether she pursues popular or unpopular policies

the development of a market for sustainable coffee in the netherlands rethinking the contribution of fair trade in recent years researchers have observed the process of mainstreaming fair trade and the emergence of alternative sustainability standards in the coffee industry the underlying market dynamics that have contributed to these developments are however under researched insight into these dynamics is important to understand how markets can develop to favor sustainability this study examines the major developments in the market for certified coffee in the netherlands it finds that in the creation of a market for sustainable coffee decisions that significantly influence market creation are made in the lead companies retailers and coffee roasters these decisions are made possible by the availability of multiple systems of sustainability standards and by the existence of a small segment of loyal fair trade customers that ensured that sustainability remained an issue on the coffee market in the years before the market creation took off fair trade did not become the new rule in this process but it became the benchmark against which companies could compare themselves and the basis upon which they built in adopting or developing new standards that would be more feasible in their business models

artisanal gold and transformational exchange toward a public private partnership in tanzania abstract human rights abuses environmental predations and governance failures plague artisanal gold mining in tanzania gold s exchange value and the illegality of most artisanal gold product challenge the traditional fair trade model a potential solution additionally memories of the government s earlier failed effort to serve as a sole purchaser of artisanal gold undercut enthusiasm for statist interventions this paper presents an alternative a public private partnership ppp that would engage one or more private banks an agency within the ministry of energy and minerals and ngos or international initiatives specifically aimed at improving conditions for artisanal mine operators the concept of transformational exchange wherein a set of business transactions substantially affects societal expectations modifies behavior and promotes sustainable mechanisms frames the proposal

a model of public opinion management abstract policymakers often motivate their decisions using information collected by government agencies while more information can help hold the government to account it may also give policymakers an incentive to meddle with the work of bureaucrats this paper develops a model of biased information gathering to examine how different disclosure rules and the degree of independence of government agencies affect citizen welfare disclosure rules and agency independence interact in subtle ways we find that secrecy is never optimal and yet insulating the agency from political pressure so that its information is always unbiased may also not be socially optimal a biased information gathering process can benefit the government by helping it to shape public opinion but it can also benefit the public by curbing the government s tendency to implement its ex ante favored policy thus mitigating the agency conflict between policymakers and the public

the globalization of organic agro food networks summary this article analyzes the booming world trade in organic agro foods such as tropical products counterseasonal fresh produce and processed foods research focuses on expanding south north networks linking major us and european markets with major production regions particularly in latin america employing a commodity network approach i analyze organic production distribution and consumption patterns and the roles of social political and economic actors in consolidating international trade organic certification proves central to network governance shaping product specifications production parameters and enterprise participation my analysis identifies key contradictions between mainstream agro industrial and alternative movement conventions in global organic networks 2004 published by elsevier ltd

tracking the quality premium of certified coffee evidence from ethiopia summary certification of voluntary sustainability standards vss is rapidly increasing in global value chains while consumers mostly in developed countries are willing to pay significant premiums for the certification of such standards it is not well understood how effectively these incentives are transmitted to producing countries we study vss more in particular fair trade and organic certification in ethiopia s coffee sector the country s most important export commodity using a unique census of transaction data at the export level and large scale data at the production level we find that transmission of export quality premiums to coffee producers is limited with only less than one third of this premium being passed on and we find limited evidence of effects due to communal investments moreover as quality premiums are small and average production levels in these settings are low we estimate that these premiums would only lead to an increased income for coffee farmers of 22 usd per year even with a perfect transmission scenario and therefore would have little impact on the welfare of the average coffee farmer given that the vss studied are characterized by the highest premiums among vss schemes it can be assumed that even lower benefits from other vss certification schemes trickle down to producers

partisanship and the effectiveness of oversight abstract we examine the welfare effects of partisanship in a model of checks and balances an executive makes a policy proposal and an overseer then decides whether or not to veto the executive s proposal both the executive and the overseer have private information as to the correct policy to pursue and both are motivated by the desire to appear competent a partisan overseer is one who in addition to seeking to promote her own reputation cares how her decision will impact the executive s reputation our main result is that partisanship can improve the efficacy of an oversight regime as the distortions caused by a partisan overseer s desire to affect the executive s reputation can offset the distortions caused by her desire to enhance her own our results provide a new rationale for divided government as partisan considerations are often necessary to prevent the overseer from rubber stamping all executive proposals

independent auditors bias and political agency abstract this paper analyzes political agency with endogenous information collection and revelation by third party auditors while increasing incentives for auditors to provide information straightforwardly improves political control a small amount of pro incumbent bias can also be useful for maintaining high levels of control when the equilibrium level of control is high most investigations uncover positive information about the incumbent since positive information increases reelection rates mildly pro incumbent auditors are willing to work harder than unbiased auditors in these equilibria for moderate levels of control pro incumbent auditors are again useful due to their extra effort even though they may suppress some negative information in equilibrium only when market incentives are low so equilibrium control is weak are unbiased or anti incumbent biased auditors better for voters than mildly pro incumbent auditors

persistent media bias abstract the news media plays an essential role in society but surveys indicate that the public views the media as biased this paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit maximizing news organizations and rivalry from other news organizations bias has two effects on the demand for news first rational individuals are more skeptical of potentially biased news and thus rely less on it in their decision making this skepticism reduces demand and leads the news organization to set a lower price for its publication the greater is the bias it tolerates lower quality news thus commands a lower price second bias makes certain stories more likely than others given their private information journalists may bias their stories if their career prospects can be advanced by being published on the front page news organizations can control bias by restricting the discretion allowed to journalists but granting discretion and tolerating bias can increase profits if it allows journalists to be hired at a lower wage bias is not driven from the market by a rival news organization nor by a news organization with an opposing bias and the profits of a high bias news organization can be higher than the profits of a low bias one moreover bias can be greater with competition than with a monopoly news organization if individuals collectively choose regulation in place of their individual decision making bias increases the expected stringency of regulation

revealing information in electoral competition electoral competition between two expert candidates may lead to inefficient platform choices the present paper studies electoral competition between two experts and a third uninformed candidate the latter behaves populistically this seemingly useless candidate restores efficiency the paper then endogenizes information acquisition if the information acquisition costs are low then equilibria with i three expert candidates or ii two experts and one uninformed candidate may arise there are costs such that the latter equilibrium is the only pure strategy equilibrium in which information is transmitted

corporate leadership multilevel enforcement and biodiversity regulation globalization incentives the rise of non state actors in unprecedented ways along with the creation of transnational arenas which are neither international intergovernmental nor national domestic but transborder political processes where firms non governmental organizations ngos states and social communities set up rules and provide governance mechanisms to enforce those at local level the article is anchored in the idea that public private governance matters where the primary driver is the market incentive we test the hypotheses that public private cooperation at local level is based on shared knowledge and expertise among firms civil society and state authority dealing with a natural resource which comes from the brazilian biodiversity ngos and companies have developed the ability to act as enforcers as they interpret the public international national regulation and develop an expertise through best practices that are applied to enforce biodiversity regulation at the local level through a multilevel system that operates transnationally

political accountability and sequential policymaking abstract we develop a model of political accountability with sequential policymaking when a bureaucrat s actions are transparent his overseer faces a political time inconsistency problem she is tempted to revise her retention rule in the middle of the policymaking process as a result the bureaucrat s equilibrium behavior overemphasizes later tasks if the overseer knows the technology by which policies translate into outcomes then she can eliminate these distortions using task specific budget caps however if the overseer is uncertain about this technology such budget caps introduce ex post inefficiency when uncertainty is sufficiently large and consequential the overseer prefers an institutional environment with a fungible budget and no transparency such an environment allows the overseer to exploit the bureaucrat s expertise though at the cost of weaker overall incentives

government interventions in sustainable supply chain governance experience in dutch front running cases numerous multi actor governance systems have recently emerged ensuring sustainability of international traded products business and civil society actors play a dominant role in initiating and governing sustainable supply chain governance systems sscg systems within specific product markets we see the emergence of various competing sscg systems this has led to debates on effectiveness transparency and legitimacy of these forms of self governance in the market these developments also call for a debate on appropriate roles for national governments most of the academic literature in this field focuses on methodologies for supply chain governance and their impacts but hardly addresses the roles taken on by governments and effectiveness of possible government interventions this article combines analysis of market dynamics in the timber and coffee product chains with policy analysis integrating approaches from the research fields of sustainable business and policy analysis the article shows how competition between various sustainable supply chain governance systems in the netherlands has resulted in recent market breakthroughs while initially government interventions were very limited and diverse the article suggests an approach for more systematic analysis of these dynamics and the roles of various actors by identifying both the public policy cycle and the private policy cycle

the latte revolution regulation markets and consumption in the global coffee chain abstract coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries the global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation new consumption patterns and evolving corporate strategies from a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations a relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal unstable and unequal through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances

fair trade organic coffee rural livelihoods and the agrarian question southern mexican coffee families in transition summary we use a random sample of coffee producing households in southern mexico to compare opportunities associated with government subsidies and migration to the role of fair trade organic coffee in household livelihoods although land and labor returns among fair trade organic coffee growers are higher than for conventional growers differences in yields are more important than price premiums moreover investment in education and labor opportunities outside coffee dominate those in fair trade organic coffee the results highlight the value of an integrated approach to the agrarian question that improves productivity and prices and supports other pathways for improving incomes

governance and trade in fresh vegetables the impact of uk supermarkets on the african horticulture industry production of fresh vegetables for export has grown rapidly in a number of countries in sub saharan africa over the last decade this trade brings producers and exporters based in africa together with importers and retailers in europe large retailers in europe play a decisive role in structuring the production and processing of fresh vegetables exported from africa the requirements they specify for cost quality delivery product variety innovation food safety and quality systems help top determine what types of producers and processors are able to gain access to the fresh vegetables chain and the activities they must carry out the control over the fresh vegetables trade exercised by uk supermarkets has clear consequences for inclusion and exclusion of producers and exporters of differing types and for the long term prospects for the fresh vegetables industry in the two major exporting countries studied kenya and zimbabwe

political polarization and the electoral effects of media bias abstract we develop a model in which profits of media firms depend on their audience ratings and maximizing profits may involve catering to a partisan audience by suppressing information that the partisan audience does not like hearing while voters are rational understand the nature of the news suppression bias and update appropriately important information is lost through bias and can lead to electoral mistakes we characterize those conditions that give rise to electoral mistakes showing that heightened political polarization and asymmetric distributions of voter ideologies make electoral mistakes more likely even if the median ideology is a centrist and centrist voters gain access to unbiased news media bias can generate excessive cross over voting which in turn can lead to the election of the wrong candidate

manipulated news model electoral competition and mass media abstract this paper investigates the relationship between media manipulation the strategic suppression of relevant information by mass media and self mediatization the strategic exploitation of media coverage by candidates in elections in the model a voter cannot directly observe the policies proposed by two office motivated candidates the voter learns this information through media reports before voting takes place while the media outlet suppresses some of this information because the voter s decision making could be incorrect direct distortion the candidates have an incentive to win the election by influencing the media coverage through policy settings indirect distortion as a result policy convergence to the voter s ideal policy occurs if and only if the media bias is sufficiently small we then characterize the set of equilibria in terms of the degree of distortion the results suggest that if either strategic media manipulation or competition among the candidates is omitted then the distortion is nonnegligibly misspecified

a theory of yes men this paper illustrates an incentive for workers to conform to the opinion of their supervisors when firms use subjective performance evaluation this desire to conform arises endogenously from the firm s need to induce the worker to exert effort the author shows that firms may optimally eschew the use of incentive contracts to retain workers incentives for honesty the author illustrates that the incentive to conform implies inefficiencies even when workers are risk neutral and is likely to lead to more centralized decision making than in the absence of the desire to conform copyright 1993 by american economic association

reputation concerned policy makers and institutional status quo bias abstract we study the policy choice of an office holding politician who is concerned with the public s perception of his capabilities the politician decides whether to maintain the status quo or to conduct a risky reform the reform s success depends critically on the politician s capabilities which are privately known to the politician the public observes both his policy choice and the outcome of the reform and assesses his competence we show that the politician may engage in socially detrimental reform in order to be perceived as more capable we investigate the institutional remedy that balances the gains and costs when the policy maker is subject to reputation concerns conservative institutions that thwart beneficial reform may potentially improve social welfare

external market conditions competitiveness diversification and ldcs exports ldcs trade policies in the post war period have been influenced greatly by trade pessimism theory increasingly however the assumptions underlying the pessimists analysis and the wisdom of their policy prescriptions have been challenged this paper attempts to construct a model which may be used to investigate the determinants of export performance for individual developing countries and the determinants of relative performance across the sample of twenty seven countries the results obtained both for individual countries and across the sample tend to support the emphasis placed by the opponents of trade pessimism on the importance of supply side factors

the cambridge group and the developing countries the policy prescriptions of the cambridge economic policy group cepg for the united kingdom are well known they involve all round protection of british industry that would allegedly permit reaching simultaneously higher output levels lower unemployment rates and lower inflation rates since first presented in february 1975 the views of the cambridge group have been several times and have been repeatedly subjected to criticism 1

herding and anti herding a model of reputational differentiation abstract we analyze a model related to the strategic herding literature where a second expert maximizes his expected second period value by conforming with a first expert herding in contrast to the herding literature we assume that an agent is most valuable if he is the only smart agent if the value of being the only smart agent is sufficiently large the second expert always opposes its predecessor s report otherwise herding may result

mainstreaming fair trade coffee from partnership to traceability summary this article analyzes the recent growth of fair trade and the mainstreaming of this previously alternative arena focusing on coffee i identify a continuum of buyers ranging from mission driven enterprises that uphold alternative ideas and practices based on social ecological and place based commitments to quality driven firms that selectively foster fair trade conventions to ensure reliable supplies of excellent coffee to market driven corporations that largely pursue commercial industrial conventions rooted in price competition and product regulation using a commodity network approach my analysis illuminates the impacts of diverse buyer relations on producer groups and how relations are in some cases shifting from partnership to traceability

ethical objections to fairtrade the fairtrade movement is a group of businesses claiming to trade ethically the claims are evaluated under a range of criteria derived from the utilitarian ethic firstly if aid or charity money is diverted from the very poorest people to the quite poor or the rich there is an increase in death and destitution it is shown that little of the extra paid by consumers for fairtrade reaches farmers sometimes none it cannot be shown that it has a positive impact on fairtrade farmers in general but evidence suggesting it harms others is presented many of the weaknesses are due to an attempt to impose political views on farmers and others secondly the unfair trading criteria require that sellers do not lie about their product nor withhold information that might alter the decisions of a substantial proportion of buyers it is argued that the system only can exist because of the failure of the fairtrade industry to give the facts on what happens to the money and what it can be proved it achieves this unfair trading compromises the reputation of charities in general much of the trading may constitute the criminal offence of unfair trading in the eu

engel curves for fair trade consumption and development perspectives for producers evidence from data on real fairtrade purchases while fairtrade sales have exhibited two digit growth rates over recent decades their capacity to become large enough to generate substantial gains for producers is still uncertain estimating fai

are fair trade goods credence goods a new proposal with french illustrations in the literature fair trade ft goods are usually associated with other products differentiated by process attributes such as organic food genetically modified gm food or child labour free clothing all of these products are regarded as credence goods this classification refers to the simplified definition of credence goods which describes product attributes which consumers cannot evaluate even after having consumed the good focusing on the characteristics of ft goods this article proposes a reassessment of the link between ft goods and credence properties as defined by darby and karni we first demonstrate that 1 the usual classification masks important particularities of ft goods compared to other goods with process attributes and 2 the full definition of credence goods may even provide a better description of the quality of ft goods however and this is our second theoretical contribution the lack of consensus among experts concerning ft standards and their level of efficiency encourage us to consider ft goods as indeterminate goods as defined by lupton this result leads us to suggest a new typology of product attributes summarized in an innovative diagram it sheds light on how competition between the different ft approaches works and why the ft market is still confined to a niche if not threatened with collapse we mainly illustrate our theoretical analysis with observations relating to the french ft market and institutions

mapping research topics and theories in private regulation for sustainability in global value chains the globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited as an alternative private regulation developed and administered by companies industry associations and nongovernmental organizations has emerged to safeguard economic environmental and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain the academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade but currently few major reviews of the research have been undertaken this paper examines peer reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to december 2011 our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature we conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation in a global value chain context is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world s economy we also conclude that agriculture forestry and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors in contrast other sectors such as the information communication and technology with their complex global value chains and often problematic environmental and social conditions are understudied

mass media competition political competition and public policy if better informed voters receive favourable policies then mass media will affect policy because mass media provide most of the information people use in voting this paper models the incentives of the media to deliver news to different groups the increasing returns to scale technology and advertising financing of media firms induce them to provide more news to large groups such as taxpayers and dispersed consumer interests and groups that are valuable to advertisers this news bias alters the tradeoff in political competition and therefore introduces a bias in public policy the paper also discusses the effects of broadcast media replacing newspapers as the main information source about politics the model predicts that this change should raise spending on government programmes used by poor and rural voters

standards as a new form of social contract sustainability initiatives in the coffee industry abstract in the former age of national capitalism the achievement of market fairness was embedded in a normative framework generated by government labor unions and perhaps religious authority in the current age of global capitalism new actors such as ngos industry associations and public private partnerships provide the normative framework that corporations use for social legitimacy in this context standard setting processes operate as new forms of social contract where the state rather than being directly involved between the parties provides a form of basic guarantee while more or less accountable ngos and firms are in charge of hammering out the bargains this article examines the dynamics of this new configuration through the case study of sustainability initiatives in the coffee sector it addresses four questions 1 are these standards effective in communicating information and creating new markets 2 to what extent do they embed elements of collective and private interests 3 is sustainability content actually delivered to their intended beneficiaries and 4 what is the role of public policy in addressing their shortcomings

institutional emergence in an era of globalization the rise of transnational private regulation of labor and environmental conditions1 why have systems of transnational private regulation recently emerged to certify corporate social and environmental performance different conceptions of institutional emergence underlie different answers to this question many scholars argue that firms create certification systems to solve problems in the market a view rooted in a conception of institutions as solutions to collective action problems the author develops a different account by viewing institutions as the outcome of political contestation and by analyzing conflict and institutional entrepreneurship among a wide array of actors using a comparative case study design the analysis shows how these arguments explain the formation of social and environmental certification associations both theoretical approaches are needed but strong versions of the market based approach overlook an important set of dynamics that the author calls the political construction of market institutions the analysis shows how both problem solving in markets and

the wrong kind of transparency in a model of career concerns for experts when is a principal hurt from observing more information about her agent this paper introduces a distinction between information on the consequence of the agent s action and information directly on the agent s action when the latter kind of information is available the agent faces an incentive to disregard useful private signals and act according to how an able agent is expected to act a priori this conformist behavior hurts the principal in two ways the decision made by the agent is less likely to be the right one discipline and ex post it is more difficult to evaluate the agent s ability sorting the paper identifies a necessary and sufficient condition on the agent signal structure under which the principal bene ts from committing not to observe the agent s action the paper also shows the existence of strategic complementarities between information on action and information on consequence the results on the distinction between action and consequence are then used to interpret existing disclosure policies in delegated portfolio management in particular they are consistent with hitherto puzzling evidence that mutual funds systematically overperform pension funds

hierarchical accountability in government abstract this paper studies a setting where a relatively uninformed voter holds a policymaker accountable through an informed intermediary in equilibrium the voter uses the intermediary to insulate the policymaker from pandering incentives when the voter s policy expertise is low or the policymaker s congruence is high the voter can thus enjoy the benefits of bureaucratic expertise without forfeiting electoral responsiveness we examine the model s predictions using u s city level data and find that hierarchically accountable managers reduce popular city employment and adjust it more flexibly than electorally accountable mayors the estimated incentive effects are smaller in cities with high voter expertise and larger during election years and are robust to instrumentation by precipitation shocks that influenced early 20th century manager government adoptions for reasons obsolete today

industrialization and resource allocation in a developing country the case of recent experiences in tanzania abstract this paper examines the problem of allocation of resources in the industrial sector in tanzania during the balance of payments crises since the mid 1970s it is argued that the slow growth of industrial output in the 1970s was aggravated by the failure to shift the utilization of foreign exchange away from capital goods imports for capacity expansion in favour of intermediate inputs for capacity utilization consequently society benefited only moderately from considerable new investments of the 1970s this aspect of misallocation of resources is explained in terms of the role of foreign finance on the one hand and the weak link between macro level and micro level planning on the other

are biased media bad for democracy this paper assesses the normative and positive claims regarding the consequences of biased media using a political agency framework with a strategic voter polarized politicians and news providers my model predicts that voters are always better informed with unbiased than biased outlets even when the latter have opposite ideological preferences however biased media may improve voter welfare contrary to several scholars fear partisan news providers are not always bad for democracy my theoretical findings also have important implications for empirical analyses of the electoral consequences of changes in the media environment left wing and right wing biased outlets have heterogeneous effects on electoral outcomes which need to be properly accounted for existing empirical studies are unlikely to measure the consequences of biased media as researchers never observe and can rarely approximate the adequate counterfactual elections with unbiased news outlets

faith and fair trade the moderating role of contextual religious salience normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products that said the question of how religion influences organizational decision makers to purchase fair trade products in a business to business context has remained largely unaddressed this research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual s willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product when buying on behalf of an organization findings from two experimental studies involving 75 and 87 working individuals respectively reveal that the effect of a decision maker s religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization is moderated by the contextual salience of religion specifically when religion is highly salient in the organizational context religious commitment is positively related to the decision maker s willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product when contextual religious salience is low religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated implications for theory and practice are presented