the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

forward looking assessment of the ghg abatement cost application to china abstract evaluation of abatement costs is critical in setting reduction goals and devising climate policy however reliable forward looking assessment of the short term effects of climate policy remains a major challenge using panel data of 30 chinese provinces during 1997 2015 we first estimate the marginal co2 abatement costs using a novel data driven approach convex quantile regression based on the marginal abatement cost estimates and china s plans regarding carbon intensity reduction and economic growth we present a forward looking assessment of the abatement costs for chinese provinces for 2016 2020 our main finding is that all the chinese provinces have a negative abatement cost which means these provinces can benefit from an increase in the absolute level of co2 emissions despite the constraint on carbon intensity the magnitudes of economic benefits exhibit a significant regional disparity because some provinces can increase more co2 emissions than others however there is still costly carbon intensity abatement relative to a counterfactual where the provinces meet their economic growth targets but in the absence of the intensity reduction constraints policy implications have been proposed to enhance the efficiency and fairness of climate policy in china

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis reply to fare and grosskopf fare and grosskopf this issue claim that a single abatement factor suffices for modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production models and that the kuosmanen 2005 technology that uses multiple abatement factors is larger than necessary this article demonstrates by a numerical example that a single abatement factor does not suffice to capture all feasible production plans and that its use leads to the violation of convexity one of the maintained assumptions of the model we also prove that the kuosmanen technology is the correct minimum extrapolation technology under the stated axioms

ethnic parties and public spending new theory and evidence from the indian states social scientists largely see ethnic politics as inhibiting public goods provisioning within developing democracies such parties are thought to uniformly rely on distributing excludable benefits t

why do corrupt governments maintain public support this article addresses an issue often neglected by the current literature on political corruption why do citizens support corrupt governments the authors argue that people in countries where gove

directional shadow price estimation of co2 so2 and nox in the united states coal power industry 1990 2010 abstract shadow prices also termed marginal abatement costs provide valuable guidelines to support environmental regulatory policies for co 2 so 2 and no x the key contributors to climate change this paper complements the existing models and describes a directional marginal productivity dmp approach to estimate directional shadow prices dsps which present substitutability among three emissions and are jointly estimated we apply the method to a case study of co 2 so 2 and no x produced by coal power plants operating between 1990 and 2010 in the united states we find that dsp shows 1 1 times the maximal shadow prices estimated in the current literature we conclude that estimating the shadow prices of each by product separately may lead to an overestimation of the marginal productivity and an underestimation of the shadow prices

keeping the public purse an experiment in windfalls taxes and the incentives to restrain government it is widely believed that natural resource wealth foreign aid and other types of windfall revenue increase corruption and undermine accountability a predominant claim in political science is that windfalls free politicians from the need to tax resulting in a more politically quiescent population yet there is surprisingly little evidence to substantiate not only whether taxation has this eect but also why i use novel experiments to provide the rst micro level causal test of claims that 1 taxes motivate citizens more than windfalls to hold politicians accountable and 2 citizens care more about wasted revenue when they pay taxes the experiments were embedded in a public awareness campaign conducted with 1 863 citizens in a resource rich district in indonesia the results measured through a survey and a postcard campaign show that taxes made participants more willing to monitor government and hold politicians accountable than windfalls primarily because of a stronger sense of ownership over public funds yet when better information on government spending is made available the windfall group proved just as intolerant of misspent revenue these ndings have important implications for understanding not only how taxation motivates political action but also how revenue shapes the ways in which citizens acquire and process information on government spending

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

optimal path for controlling co2 emissions in china a perspective of efficiency analysis this paper examines the optimal control of co2 emissions from a perspective of efficiency analysis several centralized data envelopment analysis dea models are introduced to study the optimal allocation of co2 emissions under spatial temporal and spatial temporal allocation strategies respectively the models have been used to determine the optimal paths for controlling co2 emissions at provincial and regional levels in china a sensitivity analysis of the optimal path on the emission control coefficient under spatial temporal allocation strategy is further carried out our empirical results show that more developed regions should take emission reduction responsibility earlier than less developed regions in china of the three allocation strategies spatial temporal allocation strategy seems to be a better choice for achieving the optimal control of co2 emissions at country level since it is more encompassing by allowing both timing and spatial substitutions it is also found that there exists an inverted u shape relationship between the aggregate optimal gdp and the emission control coefficient which shows that modest emission reduction policy might be more appropriate for china in order to achieve the joint goals of economic development and co2 emission reduction

a new approach to measuring shadow price reconciling engineering and economic perspectives abstract shadow price is one of the most important pieces of information in environmental decision making two different approaches namely economic and engineering have been applied to obtain the shadow price of undesirable outputs while using different methodological backgrounds and perspectives the current study proposes a new conceptual framework and an economic estimation model to reconcile the shadow price estimates derived via the two approaches we also suggest a new mapping rule that incorporates the concept of abatement level which is a basic element in the engineering approach as a result the proposed model generates continuously changing estimates i e comprising a shadow price curve based on the abatement level we further investigate the determinant factors of shadow price by using second step regression the suggested methodology is used to investigate the shadow price of carbon emissions in south korean electricity generating plants thus yielding relevant policy implications

a literature study for dea applied to energy and environment abstract this study systematically summarizes previous research efforts on data envelopment analysis dea applied to energy and environment in the past four decades including concepts and methodologies on dea environmental assessment industrial developments are very important for all nations in terms of their economic prosperities a problem is that the development produces various pollutions on air water and other types of contaminations all of which are usually associated with our health problems and climate changes thus it is necessary for us to consider how to make a balance between economic success and pollution mitigation to maintain a high level of social sustainability in the world it is widely considered that dea is one of the methodologies to examine the level of sustainability this study examines a recent research trend on dea applications from 1980s to 2010s nowadays many researchers have paid serious attention on how to combat various difficulties in the areas of energy and environment as a result the number of articles on dea applications on energy and environment has dramatically increased particularly after 2000s however it is true that dea has strengths and drawbacks in the applications therefore it is very important for us to carefully use dea for guiding large policy issues and business strategies such as the global warming and climate change an underlying premise of this study is that technology innovation in engineering and natural science may solve various problems by linking it with political and managerial efforts the use of dea provides a methodological linkage among them so enhancing the practicality in mitigating problems due to climate change and environmental pollutions this literature study along with a summary on conceptual and methodological developments provides us with guidelines for our future research works on dea on energy and environment issues

a nonparametric method to estimate a technical change effect on marginal abatement costs of u s coal power plants the literature usually assumes that technical change reduces marginal abatement cost however recent results suggest that precisely the opposite occurs this paper proposes a nonparametric method to determine the effect of technical change on marginal abatement cost the method decomposes nox marginal abatement cost changes in 2000 2004 and in 2004 2008 for 325 boilers operating in 134 u s bituminous coal power plant into technical and non technical change effects we find that technical change reduces the nox marginal cost about 28 3 in 2000 2004 and 26 5 in 2004 2008 however more stringent regulations enacted the nox budget program results in lower nox emission levels as plant operators install more advanced nox abatement equipment which in turn causes an overall increase in marginal abatement cost

co2 emission abatement cost and its decomposition a directional distance function approach accurately estimating carbon dioxide co2 abatement costs and effectively identifying the factors impacting those costs can improve the applicability and effectiveness of policy implementation this paper proposes a new method to estimate co2 abatement costs cac based on the directional distance function the method theoretically decomposes cac into carbon productivity and output elasticity of substitutions this decomposition can identify the types of cac the method also investigates the effects of development mode selection on cac by selecting different directional vectors following the theoretical discussion an empirical study is presented focusing on high energy consumption firms in the united states u s the results were as follows 1 in sustainable development mode changes in the average cac of all firms were caused both by carbon productivity and output elasticity of substitution carbon productivity dominated cac differences among different firm types 2 in general the amelioration potential of firm technology and environmental management was gradually explored by firms during sample period corresponding environmental regulatory strategies are needed for firms with different cac characteristics 3 firms selecting different development modes will realize significant differences in cac firms in the sustainable development mode had the highest cac levels however this mode was best for achieving a win win between economic benefits and environmental protection

capital and opposition in africa coalition building in multiethnic societies under what conditions can opposition politicians with ethnic constituencies form electoral coalitions in africa s patronage based political systems incumbents form coalitions by using state resources to secure the endorsement of politicians from other ethnic groups opposition politicians however must rely on private resources to do the same this article presents a political economy theory to explain how the relative autonomy of business from state controlled capital influences the formation of multiethnic opposition coalitions it shows that the opposition is unlikely to coalesce across ethnic cleavages where incumbents use their influence over banking and credit to command the political allegiance of business the largest potential funder of opposition in poor countries liberalizing financial reforms in freeing business to diversify political contributions without fear of reprisal enable opposition politicians to access the resources needed to mimic the incumbent s pecuniary coalition building strategy a binomial logistic regression analysis of executive elections held across africa between 1990 and 2005 corroborates the theoretical claim greater financial autonomy for business as proxied by the number of commercial banks and the provision of credit to the private sector significantly increases the likelihood of multiethnic opposition coalitions being formed

the control of politicians in divided societies the politics of fear autocrats in many developing countries have extracted enormous personal rents from power in addition they have imposed inefficient policies including pervasive patronage spending i present a model in which the presence of ethnic identities and the absence of institutionalized succession processes allow the ruler to elicit support from a sizeable share of the population despite large reductions in welfare the fear of falling under an equally inefficient and venal ruler that favours another group is enough to discipline supporters the model predicts extensive use of patronage ethnic bias in taxation and spending patterns and unveils a new mechanism through which economic frictions translate into increased rent extraction by the leader these predictions are consistent with the experiences of bad governance ethnic bias wasteful policies and kleptocracy in post colonial africa

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

neoclassical versus frontier production models testing for the skewness of regression residuals the empirical literature on production and cost functions is divided into two strands 1 the neoclassical approach that concentrates on model parameters 2 the frontier approach that decomposes the disturbance term to a symmetric noise term and a positively skewed inefficiency term we propose a theoretical justification for the skewness of the inefficiency term arguing that this skewness is the key testable hypothesis of the frontier approach we propose to test the regression residuals for skewness to distinguish the two competing approaches our test builds directly upon the asymmetry of regression residuals and does not require any prior distributional assumptions

relative income effects on subjective well being in the cross section abstract recent work suggests that a person s subjective well being swb depends to a large degree on relative income focusing on the underlying identification this paper makes four contributions to this literature it describes the aggregation problem with past studies implements an estimation strategy to overcome this problem finds micro level evidence in support of the hypothesis that relative income does matter in individual assessments of swb and uses cross section estimates to replicate the aggregate time series the evidence further indicates that relative income effects may be smaller at low income levels the results are obtained from ordered probit techniques and the general social survey gss

returns to scale and damages to scale under natural and managerial disposability strategy efficiency and competitiveness of petroleum firms environmental assessment recently becomes a major policy issue all over the world this study discusses how to use data environment analysis dea for environmental assessment for planning corporate strategy and international competitiveness an important feature of dea environmental assessment is that it classifies outputs into desirable good and undesirable bad outputs because all private and public entities produce not only desirable outputs but also undesirable outputs as a result of their production activities this study proposes the two types of output unification for dea environmental assessment by using a non radial model one of the two output unifications is that it considers a decrease in an input vector along with a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs this type of unification is referred to as natural disposability the other unification considers an increase in an input vector but a decrease in the vector of undesirable outputs this type of strategy is referred to as managerial disposability both unifications increase the vector of desirable outputs after developing the two concepts on disposability this study theoretically explores how to measure returns to scale rts under natural disposability and damages to scale dts under managerial disposability to document the practicality of the proposed approach this study applies it to compare the performance of national oil firms with that of international oil companies this study identifies four important findings on the petroleum industry first national oil companies outperform international oil companies in the unified efficiency under natural disposability second international oil companies outperform national oil companies in the unified efficiency under managerial disposability third national oil firms exhibit a mixed result on rts while international oil firms exhibit decreasing rts finally both national and international oil companies exhibit increasing dts implying that all oil firms need to decrease their operational sizes for improving their environmental performance on co2 emission as an alternative strategy the result suggests that they need to introduce technology innovation e g clean air technology into their business operations the technology based strategy has more practicality than the size reduction in their operations

is more always better a survey on positional concerns abstract we use survey data to provide some empirical information about concerns regarding relative standing respondents chose between a world where they have more of a good than others and one where everyone s endowment of the good is higher but the respondent has less than others questions asked about education attractiveness and intelligence for one s child and oneself income vacation time approval and disapproval from a supervisor and papers to write half of the respondents preferred to have 50 less real income but high relative income concerns about position were strongest for attractiveness and supervisor s praise and weakest for vacation time

estimating the shadow prices of so2 and nox for u s coal power plants a convex nonparametric least squares approach abstract weak disposability between outputs and pollutants defined as a simultaneous proportional reduction of both outputs and pollutants assumes that pollutants are byproducts of the output generation process and that a firm can freely dispose of both by scaling down production levels leaving some inputs idle based on the production axioms of monotonicity convexity and weak disposability we formulate a convex nonparametric least squares cnls quadratic optimization problem to estimate a frontier production function assuming either a deterministic disturbance term consisting only of inefficiency or a composite disturbance term composed of both inefficiency and noise the suggested methodology extends the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned described in kuosmanen and kortelainen 2011 applying the method to estimate the shadow prices of so 2 and no x generated by u s coal power plants we conclude that the weak disposability stoned method provides more consistent estimates of market prices

the relevance of relative distribution favoritism information and vote choice in africa relative distribution whether one is favored or disfavored by government seems to matter to voters in many african countries but why i demonstrate theoretically that voters who do not have inform

issue in pollution control interplant cost differences and economies of scale debate on interplant pollution control cost differences focuses on the question of whether a system of taxes or transferable discharge permits should require those plants with low treatment costs to control a higher share of effluents another issue under debate is whether those industries with a large minimum size may be effectively barred by pollution control requirements evidence of the inefficiency of present institutional arrangements is shown by studying production function estimations of 30 pulp and paper mills in wisconsin and michigan a more efficient reallocation of pollution control resources could be effected with more market oriented regimes 58 references 6 tables dck

nash marginal abatement cost estimation of air pollutant emissions using the stochastic semi nonparametric frontier abstract emissions trading or cap and trade is a market based approach providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants marginal abatement costs mac also termed shadow prices of air pollution emissions provide valuable guidelines to support environmental regulatory policies for co2 so2 and nox the key contributors to climate change smog and acid rain this study estimates the marginal abatement cost of undesirable outputs with respect to the nash equilibrium on the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned in an imperfectly competitive market considering an endogenous price function of electricity the mixed complementarity problem micp is formulated to identify the nash equilibrium in a production possibility set the proposed model addresses the four issues of mac estimation in the existing literature applying the proposed method to an empirical study of 33 coal fired power plants operating in china in 2013 shows that stoned provides a robust frontier that is not sensitive to the outlier and the proposed interval of mac estimation validates the shadow prices corresponding to the nash equilibrium in an imperfectly competitive market

the shadow prices of co2 and so2 for chinese coal fired power plants a partial frontier approach abstract shadow prices are widely employed in guiding environmental policies this paper contributes to the literature by developing a novel partial frontier approach for estimating shadow prices the proposed method is advanced in handling outliers and provides a precise estimation of the marginal rate of substitution along the production frontier to cope with the different disposability characteristics of undesirable emissions so2 is treated as an environmental input that is strongly disposable because most different undesirable outputs are jointly reduced this study is the first to use directional derivatives instead of partial derivatives and proposes a new separation method that separates individual directional shadow price from the cost of joint reduction of multiple undesirable outputs we apply the proposed method to a sample of 93 coal fired power plants covering six years the estimated average shadow prices of co2 and so2 are 69 tonne and 2525 tonne under the newly developed partial frontiers when assuming some undesirable output to be strongly disposable both shadow prices fall 20 32 tonne and 1018 23 tonne the present paper suggests the estimated shadow prices will be much different across different levels of disposability the cost of joint reduction is calculated as 91 05 unit given the current production level which leads to a directional shadow price for the two undesirable outputs of 91 32 tonne and 1250 06 tonne the estimated shadow prices for both undesirable outputs dispersed widely under the partial frontiers spatial distribution of estimated shadow prices shows that coastal provinces and municipalities have higher co2 shadow prices but lower so2 shadow prices whereas the northeast provinces are the opposite the co2 shadow price is comparatively stable over the study period while the so2 shadow price fluctuates policy implications are discussed

what is the best practice for benchmark regulation of electricity distribution comparison of dea sfa and stoned methods electricity distribution is a natural local monopoly in many countries the regulators of this sector apply frontier methods such as data envelopment analysis dea or stochastic frontier analysis sfa to estimate the efficient cost of operation in finland a new stoned method was adopted in 2012 this paper compares dea sfa and stoned in the context of regulating electricity distribution using data from finland we compare the impacts of methodological choices on cost efficiency estimates and acceptable cost while the efficiency estimates are highly correlated the cost targets reveal major differences in addition we examine performance of the methods by monte carlo simulations we calibrate the data generation process dgp to closely match the empirical data and the model specification of the regulator we find that the stoned estimator yields a root mean squared error rmse of 4 with the sample size 100 precision improves as the sample size increases the dea estimator yields an rmse of approximately 10 but performance deteriorates as the sample size increases the sfa estimator has an rmse of 144 the poor performance of sfa is due to the wrong functional form and multicollinearity

fighting corruption to improve schooling evidence from a newspaper campaign in uganda what are the most effective ways to increase primary school enrollment and student learning we argue that innovations in governance of social services may yield the highest return since social service delivery in developing countries is often plagued by inefficiencies and corruption we illustrate this by using data from an unusual policy experiment a newspaper campaign in uganda aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools parents with information to monitor local officials handling of a large education grant program the campaign was highly successful and the reduction in capture had a positive effect on enrollment and student learning jel d73 i22 o12

the environment as a factor of production the authors develop a model of environmental resource use in production with an empirical analysis of how electric power companies consume and bank sulfur dioxide pollution permits the model considers emissions fuels and labor as variable inputs with quasi fixed inputs of permits and capital incorporating information from permit markets allows the authors to distinguish between user costs and asset shadow values their findings indicate that firms are holding stocks of pollution permits for reasons other than short term cost savings the results also reveal substantial substitution possibilities between emissions permits stocks and other factors of production the authors speculate that anticipated secondary markets for carbon offset inventories related to the flexibility mechanisms of the kyoto protocol will have similar effects for greenhouse gas emitting firms

intertemporal efficiency analysis of sales teams of a bank stochastic semi nonparametric approach abstract the primary role of a bank branch is evolving from a service provider towards a sales channel previous branch level studies of sales efficiency consider a static setting of a single time period ignoring the stochastic nature of sales outcomes in this paper we examine efficiency and performance of sales teams in a bank branch network over time taking into account the changing demand and operational conditions as well as random disturbances the intertemporal sales frontier is estimated from the panel of monthly data over the years 2007 2010 using the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned method the efficiency scores of sales teams and the trajectories of performance over time allow managers and the sales force to learn from past events and to develop the managerial and work practices across the network while this study focuses on the case of a specific bank some of the innovative features of our approach are applicable to sales efficiency assessment in other banks and financial institutions as well as other network based sales organizations

environmental efficiency and abatement cost of china s industrial sectors based on a three stage data envelopment analysis abstract china has gained the reputation of global factory due to its phenomenal industrial growth over the past decades at the same time its industrial energy consumption has resulted in serious environmental problems accordingly there is an urgent and critical need to reduce industrial carbon emissions at a minimum cost without hampering the country s economic development the dual targets for carbon emission intensity and amount from the 12th five year 2011 2015 plan make it necessary to investigate the environmental efficiency and reduction costs of different sectors this study employs a three stage data envelopment analysis model based on a directional distance function approach with radial and non radial slacks of desirable and undesirable outputs considered to measure the environmental efficiency and marginal co2 emission abatement costs of china s 37 two digit industries during 2005 2014 based on the environmental efficiency and abatement cost of the industrial sectors we reached the following conclusions first the adjusted estimates differ significantly from the results that do not consider the influence of environmental factors and it is essential to consider the heterogeneity of industries in proposing emission reduction strategies in addition the stimuli for the smelting and pressing of metal industries result in cost reduction and the supervision on the top nine emitters and the equipment manufacturing industries should be strengthened finally the industrial sectors with large abatement potential are classified into short term and long term key target industries according to the emission abatement cost analyses

stochastic semi nonparametric frontier estimation of electricity distribution networks application of the stoned method in the finnish regulatory model abstract electricity distribution network is a prime example of a natural local monopoly in many countries electricity distribution is regulated by the government many regulators apply frontier estimation techniques such as data envelopment analysis dea or stochastic frontier analysis sfa as an integral part of their regulatory framework while more advanced methods that combine nonparametric frontier with stochastic error term are known in the literature in practice regulators continue to apply simplistic methods this paper reports the main results of the project commissioned by the finnish regulator for further development of the cost frontier estimation in their regulatory framework the key objectives of the project were to integrate a stochastic sfa style noise term to the nonparametric axiomatic dea style cost frontier and to take the heterogeneity of firms and their operating environments better into account to achieve these objectives a new method called stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data stoned was examined based on the insights and experiences gained in the empirical analysis using the real data of the regulated networks the finnish regulator adopted the stoned method in use from 2012 onwards

welfare and sustainability effects of dietary recommendations the paper develops a framework combining a model of rational behaviour under dietary constraints an epidemiological model of diet related mortality and a life cycle analysis model of environmental impact which permits the ex ante assessment of dietary recommendations in multiple sustainability dimensions i e taste cost welfare effect deaths avoided reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and acidification it is applied to compare in a french context the relative effects and efficiency of six popular sustainable diet recommendations the results confirm the synergies between the health and environmental dimensions healthy eating recommendations usually have a positive effect on the environment although some exceptions exist most of the sustainable diet recommendations appear highly cost effective but those most commonly promoted on health grounds e g targeting consumption of salt fruits and vegetables and saturated fat rank highest in terms of overall efficiency moreover the valuation of benefits indicates that in most cases health benefits are significantly larger than environmental benefits overall the analysis reveals some under investment in the promotion of sustainable diet recommendations in france the general lack of enthusiasm in policy circles for informational measures promoting behavioural change may reflect unrealistic expectations about the speed and magnitude of dietary change rather than an objective assessment of the efficiency of those measures

weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis with undesirable outputs environmental economics and natural resources group at wageningen university in the netherlands weak disposability of outputs means that firms can abate harmful emissions by decreasing the activity level modeling weak disposability in nonparametric production analysis has caused some confusion this article identifies a dilemma in these approaches conventional formulations implicitly and unintentionally assume all firms apply uniform abatement factors however it is usually cost effective to abate emissions in those firms where the marginal abatement costs are lowest this article presents a simple formulation of weak disposability that allows for non uniform abatement factors and preserves the linear structure of the model

clientelism and voting behavior evidence from a field experiment in benin the author conducted a field experiment in benin to investigate the impact of clientelism on voting behavior in collaboration with four political parties involved in the 2001 presidential elections clientelist and broad public policy platforms were designed and run in twenty randomly selected villages of an average of 756 registered voters using the survey data collected after the elections the author estimated the effect of each type of message by comparing voting behavior in the villages exposed to clientelism or public policy messages treatment groups with voting behavior in the other villages control groups the author found that clientelist messages have positive and significant effect in all regions and for all types of candidates the author also found that public policy messages have a positive and significant effect in the south but a negative and significant effect in the north in addition public policy messages seem to hurt incumbents as well as regional candidates finally the evidence indicates that female voters tend to have stronger preference for public policy platforms than male voters