towards a political economy approach to the convention on biological diversity international conventions are seldom reviewed in the literature devoted to environmental policy instruments however coordination is needed at a global level for global environmental problems characterised by scientific controversies uncertainty irreversibility long term impacts economic and geopolitical dimensions the convention on biological diversity is a good illustration in this regard the rules it promotes are clearly inspired by mainstream economics it has therefore been celebrated as a textbook example of sound environmental policy however its success has been limited so far and its position within the international conservation regime is challenged we argue that an alternative analytical approach to environmental global policies is needed and that the french theories of conventions and regulation open up promising prospects in this respect

a note on the extinction of renewable resources abstract this paper presents two sets of conditions under which a sole owner of a renewable resource stock who maximizes a nonlinear benefit function would find it more profitable to harvest the stock to extinction than follow a continuous harvesting strategy when the minimum viable resource stock is positive extinction is optimal as long as the initial resource stock is sufficiently small regardless of the discount rate when the minimum viable resource stock is zero and the discount rate exceeds the growth potential of the species extinction is optimal for sufficiently small initial stocks

deforestation and the rule of law in a cross section of countries relationships between deforestation and population pressure income growth and insecure property rights are examined with data from 120 countries insecure property rights are hypothesized to arise from two sources government instability or inability to enforce ownership and an absence of government accountability the former source is captured by measures of general lawlessness such as guerrilla warfare revolution and frequent constitutional change the latter is proxied by variables indicating the type of government executive frequency of political purges and the existence of an elected legislature general support is indicated for the property rights hypothesis and for the effects of population growth

bio cooperation and the benefits of crop genetic resources the case of mexican maize abstract concern for equity and conservation has prompted the creation of bio prospecting contracts for biological resources from less developed countries one potential type of contract is between farmers who provide crop genetic resources and seed companies or agencies that use these resources theoretically bio contracts will reward peasant farmers for preserving genetic resources and balance equities between farmers and seed companies using maize from mexico as a case study this paper concludes that contracting is problematic on both efficacy and equity grounds bio cooperation is presented as an alternative institutional support and licensing agreements that support human capital development are proposed as alternatives

changing the economics of environmental degradation in madagascar lessons from the national environmental action plan process abstract this paper examines the economic logic and implicit assumptions used to develop and support the national environmental action plan neap process in madagascar the study focuses on three key issues how were the costs of the main environmental problems identified and estimated what underlying factors were identified as causing these problems and how is the neap implementation strategy designed to change these underlying factors the most difficult tasks for neaps will continue to be identifying the key specific underlying factors causing the problem and determining which of these factors are actually feasible for a neap process to change the analysis of the madagascar makes clear that key environmental problems are driven by land use decisions of large numbers of geographically dispersed rural and urban inhabitants these problems are not easy or even feasible targets for specific environmental policy changes if this is the case as it seems to be in madagascar then it is perhaps unrealistic to hope that neaps as constituted can provide a framework for both understanding and alleviating a country s key environmental problems

trade related intellectual property rights to biological resources socioeconomic implications for developing countries abstract the uruguay round of the general agreement on tariffs and trade proposed conferring trade related intellectual property rights trips to international firms on a variety of life forms and on biotechnology this proposal has been denounced by developing countries many developing countries have relied heavily on indigenous biotechnology from several decades in the area of high yielding seeds bio pesticides and fertilizers herbal medicines and household consumables this study analyzes the social economic and preservation implications of trips for three types of biological resources physically nonexhaustible resources physically exhaustible resources under current use and physically exhaustible potential future resources the study concludes that each of these resources may require different degrees of intellectual property right ipr protection for their sustained use further establishing ipr to products derived from genetic and biochemical resources is certainly necessary but not sufficient for biodiversity prospecting and the long term survival of these resources along with the ipr protection developing countries have to develop suitable institutions and policies governing the use of their open access biological resources and enabling local communities to receive partial benefits of biodiversity conservation and prospecting

agricultural policy and development in cuba abstract this essay provides an overview of cuba s socialist agricultural transformation since 1959 and its effect on the peasantry first pre 1959 agrarian structures and ownership patterns and their relation to the cuban economy are discussed second early agricultural policies and their impact on land tenure as well as economic performance are treated third agricultural development since the mid 1960s is analyzed with emphasis on performance and social conditions of the peasantry shifting and flexible policies along with heterogeneous structures have characterized the evolution of cuban agriculture and have contributed to its growing success

the political viability of free market experimentation in cuba evidence from los mercados agropecuarios abstract this paper examines the origins effectiveness and especially the likely future of cuba s contemporary experiment with free farmers markets emphasis is on comparing this experiment with the earlier failed experiment the problems created by the earlier effort which led to their abrupt closure inequality the inability to eliminate the black market and the illegal diversion of state resources are also present in the contemporary scene also as with the first key elements in the cuban leadership especially castro are openly suspicious and hostile toward it three alternative scenarios about the future are evaluated

a test of the theory of optimal taxation for the united states 1869 1989 a popular theory of optimal tax policies suggests that tax rates should follow a random walk this paper extends the existing empirical literature in three ways first the impact on the marginal utility of consumption when the government chooses a tax plan to smooth the distorting impact of taxes is considered second exogenous changes in the real rate of interest are incorporated into the government s optimal tax plan finally the tax elasticity of output is not constant over time allowing for these changes there is evidence that the government discounts the future attempts to smooth the distorting impact of taxes on the marginal utility of consumption and that the tax elasticity of output moves predictably during wars copyright 1993 by mit press

intellectual property rights violations and spillovers in north south trade abstract the article examines the role of technological spillovers when northern and southern firms compete in quantities on the common world market and when only the northern firm is supposed to conduct innovative activity the intensity of spillovers is interpreted as an indicator of the strength of intellectual property rights ipr protection in this light the paper reconsiders the questions raised in the recent economic analysis of ipr protection in north south relations when and whether the southern countries benefit in welfare terms from protecting ipr how the north fares in this story how large is the conflict between the north and south and what is the optimal level of ipr protection at the world level the paper shows that the common belief that the south generally benefits from relaxing ipr protection while the north is worse off does not carry over in the applied duopoly model with spillovers in this respect the congruence of interests between north and south with respect to southern ipr protection regime should not be an exceptional or even impossible state of affairs

trips trade and technology transfer a north south model of unintentional technology transfer is developed where the stringency of southern patent protection provides the institutional backdrop for a strategic game in a high tech goods market the appropriability regime is set endogenously and combines elements of imperfect southern patent protection with the protection afforded by market made northern technology masking less stringent protection of northern intellectual property can work much like other strategic trade policies therefore developed countries appear to be right in demanding discussion of intellectual property rights in gatt

property rights issues involving plant genetic resources implications of ownership for economic efficiency the economic theory of property rights is applied to the issue of the conservation of plant genetic diversity an issue often discussed in terms of benefit sharing in order to demonstrate that the assignment of property rights is important for reasons of efficiency as well as for equity given the existence of transaction costs within an industry the location of a property rights assignment is a crucial factor determining the incentives for efficient levels of investment at various levels of that industry in the context of plant genetic resources this means that property rights that are located at the retail end of the pharmaceutical and plant breeding industries may not have sufficient effect to generate the incentives to supply adequate amounts of plant genetic resources to the research and development sectors at the base of these industries

on biodiversity access intellectual property rights and conservation abstract recent international agreements such as the convention on biological diversity and the trade related intellectual property rights have called for increased mutual transfer of biodiversity and biotechnology between poor and rich countries these agreements also call for the protection of intellectual property rights ipr on biotechnology transferors in the receiving countries this paper examines the biodiversity conservation implications of providing physical access and ipr protection to foreign consumers of biodiversity an integrated model of optimal resource extinction and shared resource harvesting game is presented the model results show that as foreign and indigenous users compete for the same open access resource optimal extinction may occur as a noncooperative equilibrium under certain bioeconomic conditions extinction may be prevented by forging successful cooperation between consumers initiating a joint harvesting process depending upon the model parameters even under cooperation increased patent protection and physical access either promotes the conservation of biodiversity or enhances its physical exploitation patent protection and resource access must therefore be developed carefully by biodiversity rich countries to successfully balance their domestic conservation and socioeconomic goals

the convention on biological diversity a conventionalist approach the erosion of biological diversity pertains to the category of problems that are brought to the fore in debated universes there are scientific controversies about their definition import and possible solutions and they involve opposing economic interests and political strategies a convention commonly shared values set of definitions rules and norms implying a compromise among various actors and groups is needed to define and enforce policies the convention on biological diversity can be seen as an attempt to define such a middle ground the rights and policy orientations it promotes are however challenged by overlapping norms and rules enacted in other arenas such as the wto the purpose of this paper is to take up a conventionalist stance on the complex international regime that governs biodiversity management and conservation policies

farmer s rights and genetic conservation in traditional farming systems abstract crop genetic resources are concentrated in some of the world s poorest farming systems these resources have been used by industrial countries without compensating farmers concerns for equity and conservation have led to proposals to protect crop genetic resources as intellectual property this paper argues that conventional intellectual property regulations e g utility patents and plant variety protection should not be used to protect crop genetic resources it suggests that farmers rights as an alternate form of intellectual property rights be used to indirectly compensate farmers by supporting genetic conservation it examines methods of in situ conservation for crop genetic resources

capturing the pharmaceutical value of biodiversity in a developing country the conservation of biodiversity is increasingly being defined as a process made up of three components saving studying and sustainably using biodiversity if the conservation of process is expanded to incorporate the need for both the protection of biodiversity either in situ or ex situ and the generation of valuable information about biodiversity an important issue is the correct balance of investment in these two types of activities this paper explores this issue by focusing on efforts in a developing country to capture the pharmaceutical potential of biodiversity and species information a model of biodiversity investment choice is developed and an analysis of royalty returns to effort in biodiversity protection taxonomic information and the collection of biotic samples is conducted based on data from costa rica the results suggest that although a country can be adequately compensated for its investment in the generation of taxonomic information it is unlikely that pharmaceutical prospecting alone will cover the high opportunity costs of biodiversity protection

trade related intellectual property rights north south trade and biological diversity in the trade related intellectual property rights trips agreement of gatt 1 january 1995 it was agreed to harmonise intellectual property rights ipr on an international level and to include the option for patent protection for all life forms such as plants and animals article 27 3 b patenting however leads to considerable conflicts between international trade and protection of biological diversity which can be illustrated by the example of seed production we make use of a three stage game to show the strategic incentives for implementation of two different property rights regimes patents and farmers rights on competition and biodiversity we show that the southern government has no incentive to acknowledge international patents even if farmers rights do exist the northern producer will always dominate in the output market if patents are applied but without farmers rights biodiversity will not be maintained by the southern government thus total payoff of the northern firm is maximized if both ipr regimes are implemented however if only farmers rights are valid biodiversity will be maximal

the biodiversity bargaining problem we employ cooperative bargaining theory and nash s rational threats idea to cast light on the biodiversity bargaining problem the problem of global environmental negotiations is argued to be of the nature of a bargaining problem in which bargainers must agree on the distribution of cooperative surplus in order to move to the bargaining frontier we discuss the importance of both efficiency bargaining frontier and fairness recognition of characteristics of bargainers in the choice of the appropriate contract we show that the incremental cost contract used to resolve the biodiversity bargaining problem is of the form of an extreme point contract that fails to recognise the contributions of the south to the production of cooperative surplus a rational response to such a contract is the use of threats of biodiversity destruction contracts must evince both efficiency and fairness in order to represent lasting solutions

welfare effects of global patent protection this paper uses a simple model of invention and patent protection to examine the welfare effects of extending patent protection from the country where invention takes place to another country that is only a consumer of invented products it is shown that while the welfare of the inventing country certainly rises with the extension of patent protection that of the other country probably falls and may well fall by more than the increase in welfare of the inventing country in particular as patent protection is extended to a larger and larger portion of the world the effect on the welfare of the world as a whole of extending it to the rest of the world becomes negative

the biodiversity conservation game with heterogeneous countries biodiversity is an essential resource which we classify as conditionally renewable in order to achieve conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity virtually all nation states signed the united nations convention on biological diversity in this paper we investigate how the heterogeneity of countries in regard to ecosystems and wealth influences the stability of international biodiversity conservation agreements both without and with transfers we further examine the effect of different degrees of ecosystem substitutability we model a coalition formation game with players that have a continuous conservation choice the conservation benefit is dependent on wealth and ecosystem quality aggregation of global benefits respects differences in ecosystem substitutability in case of transfers a fund redistributes coalition benefits according to a sharing rule the main finding is that in the absence of transfers compared to the homogeneous situation heterogeneity in ecosystems and wealth reduces the size of a stable coalition the destabilising effect is stronger the higher the ecosystem substitutability optimal transfers facilitate a large stable coalition

biodiversity poverty and development biodiversity is crucial for the production of a range of marketed and non marketed ecosystem goods and services this paper reviews the empirical evidence for the role of terrestrial biodiversity and biodiversity conservation in economic development and poverty at both the macro e g country and micro e g farm scales it first examines general relationships between biodiversity and economic development before showing how biodiversity influences ecosystem services second future scenarios and challenges for biodiversity and development are examined given projections for further changes in global population economic growth and consumption third the relationship between biodiversity protection and incomes is investigated two specific policies protected areas and bioprospecting are reviewed with respect to their impacts on the welfare of the resource dependent poor in conclusion improvements in policy design and implementation could help minimize the possibility of earth s sixth mass extinction event at least within a few generations while ensuring that the poor are not made worse off as a result of policy implementation

optimal taxation and oecd labor taxes abstract we derive simple expressions for optimal labor taxes under different assumptions about government bond markets we use these to examine oecd labor taxes estimate the excess burden of taxation and assess the ability of optimal tax models to match the data optimal labor taxes are driven by i a term reflecting ramsey considerations which makes labor taxes vary positively with employment and ii a martingale component reflecting the excess burden of tax which shows persistent responses to shocks to the government s intertemporal budget constraint under complete markets when governments can issue a full set of contingent securities only the first factor is relevant we find substantial evidence that incorporating incomplete markets into the optimal taxation model is critical for empirical success however we find strongest support for the martingale component and only weak evidence for the ramsey component

state intervention in cuban agriculture impact on organization and performance abstract as the state intervention decreases over cuba s agricultural production units the quantity and quality of output seem to increase despite a decreasing access to factors of production and other resources the degree of perishability of the commodity the need for immediate refrigerated storage or further processing work against on assumed scale of preferences for farmers and appear to be responsible for some discrepancies found in statistics concerning productivity in the state and nonstate sectors the recent creation of basic units of cooperative production on former state farms is an implicit recognition of the failure of this type of agricultural organization the next step ought to be a liberalization policy concerning markets and prices that could solve cuba s agricultural production crisis

the convention on biological diversity and agriculture implications and unresolved debates1 summary the convention on biological diversity addresses two controversies that surround plant genetic resources pgrs one debate has been over property rights governing pgrs and the distribution of benefits from their use the second has been over the adequacy of measures to maintain crop genetic diversity this paper examines how these two debates are linked and reviews previous multilateral attempts to address them the convention signals wider international acceptance of stricter property rights over pgrs and the need for multilateral assistance for pgr conservation however current proposals to implement the convention appear too limited in scope to achieve their stated conservation objectives while several areas of controversy remain these include debates over i intellectual property protection for biological inventions ii control over pgrs in international gene banks iii the international biosafety protocol regulating biotechnology iv mechanisms to finance pgr conservation and v the allocation of funds between in situ and ex situ conservation q 1998 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

opportunism and ngos entrepreneurship and green north south transfers abstract through the lens of entrepreneurship this paper applies the new institutional economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations ngos in latin america to clarify their political economic roles southern ngos that rely on northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods these nonprofit ngos take their place alongside for profit firms as contributors to economic production employment institutional innovation and technology transfer the theoretical framework proposed assumes that self interested behavior coexists with loyalty commitment and altruism as well as opportunism

how trade related are intellectual property rights abstract there is little empirical evidence about whether differing international levels of patent protection influence trade flows if a nation strengthens its patent laws it could experience higher or lower imports we specify an empirical model in which deviations of bilateral sectoral imports from anticipated levels are related to income trade barriers and patent laws patent regulations in the importing country are corrected for endogeneity through the use of instrumental variables the results of the final equations indicate that increasing patent protection has a positive impact on bilateral manufacturing imports into both small and large developing economies

technology transfer licensing contracts and incentives for further innovation technology licensing is common in agricultural and natural resource sectors an important characteristic of technology licenses is that they provide incentives for further innovation on the part of the buyer this paper develops a risk sharing model to analyze how risk preferences and expectations about further innovation possibilities alter technology payments and the incentives for complementary local innovation higher buyer risk aversion which is associated with lower fixed payments reduces the technology buyer s level of innovation sellers are generally better off when innovation is anticipated but buyers are generally better off when innovation is unanticipated although less innovation may be realized

the political economy of international trade enduring puzzles and an agenda for inquiry a similar set of concepts has been central to the literatures on the formation of trade policy coalitions and the new economics of institutions the political and economic consequences of the degree to which assets are specific to a particular economic activity in this survey the authors take the necessary first step of summarizing the main findings of these two literatures and then suggest ways in which the issue might be joined in addition to providing a more coherent understanding of the findings of these two literatures and some new directions for them the authors show that many puzzles remain in the field of trade politics puzzles for which there are no appealing answers or where there are answers no strong evidence in support of them this essay then in addition to being a theoretical review of the literature puts forward an agenda for future study of international trade politics

markets markets everywhere understanding the cuban anomaly abstract cuba has made exceptionally little use of markets compared with other centrally planned economies only in the 1970s did the cubans begin to experiment with a state controlled parallel market and in 1980 with a free peasant market six years into the experiment this market was closed as it produced tensions common to other socialist experiences with market mechanisms high prices growing income and consumption inequality and the illegal redirection of resources from the planned to market sphere the free market was replaced with a more limited market mechanism an expanded parallel market in both agricultural procurement and food distribution considered more compatible with the cuban commitment to egalitarianism

property rights genetic resources and biotechnological change it is well recognized that wild genetic resources the genetic constitutions of plants and animals have substantial social and economic value as repositories of genetic information today genetic information provides direct and indirect inputs into plant breeding programs the development of natural products including drugs and pharmaceuticals and increasingly sophisticated applications of biotechnology 2 recognition of the potential of wild genetic resources in the development of drugs has led the national cancer institute to initiate a massive plant collection project 3 which is a follow up to an earlier 1970s project that sought to identify drugs effective against a variety of cancers and to look at the immune system effects of various drugs it is estimated that 70 percent of the 3 000 species known to have anticancer properties are found in the tropical forests 4 in recent years a number of widely used drugs have been developed from plants including two important anticancer drugs derived from the rosy periwinkle found in tropical madagascar with the recent major breakthroughs in biotechnology the future potential of these resources seems limitless species that have no current commercial application have useful natural chemicals or are as yet undiscovered never

intellectual property rights and the mode of technology transfer abstract transferring technology in an environment where patent protection is uncertain can pose significant risks to an innovating firm s ability to appropriate rents this paper incorporates asymmetric information in a screening game where the innovating firm has the choices of licensing a new product at arm s length to a foreign firm exporting it or licensing it to a subsidiary subsidiary production avoids the risk of imitation but involves higher costs for the innovating firm the gains to the southern country from the lack of intellectual property right protection may be offset by strategic behavior by northern firms who opt for technology transfer via subsidiary or monopoly production

u s states the medicaid program and tax smoothing this paper tests the tax smoothing theory by focusing on its implication that a change in permanent government spending should result in an equal sized change in the tax rate the effect of medicaid a state administered federal and state funded medical insurance program for the poor on state tax rates is investigated the medicaid program provides a natural experiment for this test as states are required to cover certain groups in order to receive federal matching money additionally during the 1980s a series of federal mandates greatly increased state medicaid expenditures two stage least squares is used on a panel of u s states 1978 1994 to test whether changes in permanent state medicaid expenditures resulted in equal sized tax rate changes tax smoothing as a positive theory of state government behavior is rejected additionally it is found that this rejection cannot be attributed to the stringency of balanced budget rules