the pricing of durable exhaustible resources partial or total durability characterizes a large class of exhaustible resources hotelling s r percent rule will apply to a durable resource produced in a competitive market but will not apply if the resource is produced in a monopolistic market however the r percent rule does not mean that price is steadily rising it is shown that in general the competitive market price will fall initially as the stock in circulation increases and later will rise as the stock decreases and eventually depreciates toward zero after production ceases accounting for durability may thus help explain the u shaped long term price profiles observed for many resources 11 references 3 figures

coping with change a study of local irrigation institutions in taiwan abstract this paper examines how taiwan s local irrigation institutions have evolved and changed amid rapid political economic development in the last decade based upon the literatures of institutional analysis and common pool resource management i discuss and compare how local irrigation institutions in three areas in the country have responded or failed to respond to the changing environment a major finding is that local self governing irrigation institutions are not doomed to fail amid economic development several variables affect the incentives and capacity of farmers to redesign their local institutions to cope with the changes in the macro setting particularly flexible status quo institutions and a conductive governance regime can better facilitate farmers rule crafting efforts

bribes lobbying and development paign contributions or influence buying through other means as an activity that is aimed at changing existing rules or policies we view bribery in contrast as an attempt to bend or get around existing rules or policies the analysis contrasts these two means of influencing politics we use the labels lobbying and bribery for convenience and not because they are perfect defini tions for the two rent seeking activities we study in reality bribery and lobbying differ in several di mensions first lobbying is a legal and regulated activ ity in many countries whereas bribery is not second a change in the rules as a result of lobbying often af fects an entire industry whereas the return to bribery is more firm specific third a government that ponders a change in the rules might have quite different concerns than a bureaucrat considering a bribe our model cap tures all these differences possibly the most important difference however and the driving assumption in the model is that bending the rules is only temporary bu reaucrats can seldom commit to not asking for bribes in the future because corrupt deals are not enforceable in courts and because firms deal with different officials over time a legislative change on the other hand al ters the status quo and is therefore likely to last longer although policies and politicians also change over time our key assumption is that changing the rules is long lasting relative to bending them 2

political donations and the allocation of public procurement contracts abstract we study whether and when firms donations to political parties induce favouritism in public procurement allocations our analysis builds on a unique comprehensive dataset covering all public procurement contracts and all corporate donations to major political parties in the czech republic over the period from 2007 to 2014 and exploits changes in political control over regional governments within this period for identification purposes we find that firms donating 10 more to a political party gaining losing power witness an increase decrease in the value of their public procurement contracts by 0 5 0 6 importantly and in line with theoretical expectations these effects only arise for contracts allocated under less restrictive procurement allocation processes assessing the underlying mechanisms we show that donating firms receive more small contracts allocated under less regulated procurement procedures face less competition in more regulated and open procurement procedures and tend to win with bids further above the estimated cost of the procurement contract

modeling individual preferences for energy sources the case of iv generation nuclear energy in italy the planned re introduction of nuclear energy in italy was abandoned in the aftermath of the fukushima nuclear accident twenty years earlier soon after the chernobyl accident italians had also voted against nuclear energy however a new nuclear energy technology i e fourth generation is under research and development this paper investigates its social acceptance by means of a robust methodology employing 1 choice experiments 2 structural equation modeling and 3 information treatments within an online nation wide survey results show a great deal of preference heterogeneity the majority of the sampled respondents oppose new nuclear plants in italy with some not willing to accept any monetary compensation at all however another segment of respondents more confident that fourth generation nuclear energy goals will be achieved show a modest support towards the implementation of new nuclear projects additional variables were found to affect opposition

egyptian consumers willingness to pay for carbon labeled products a contingent valuation analysis of socio economic factors abstract carbon emissions from products contribute to anthropogenic climate change because of the growing concern over the environmental impact of production and consumption of consumer goods carbon footprint information started to appear on labels of several products in this paper we use both parametric and non parametric econometric models in order to estimate egyptian consumers willingness to pay wtp for carbon labeled products contingent valuation methods based on log logistic log normal and weibull regression models revealed that consumers in egypt are willing to pay a price premium of approximately 75 egyptian pounds ep for carbon labeled products based on the single bound dichotomous choice sbdc model and up to 90 ep based on the double bound dichotomous choice dbdc model from a socio economic perspective results have also revealed that income age gender and educational level have a significant influence on the respondent s wtp implications of this study highlight the fact that understanding consumers preferences for eco friendly products may play an important role in formulating environmental policy changes to face complex problems as diverse as environmental pollution or global climate change

urban bias revisited in his book why poor people stay poor the author has argued that urban bias is the moving force behind needlessly slow and inequitable growth in contemporary developing countries this claim is defended against three main criticisms that the methods chosen to test it are not appropriate that the evidence tendered is not relevant or sufficient and that the rural urban polarity is not clear cut or does not represent the prime conflict within contemporary developing countries

institutional design of public agencies and coproduction a study of irrigation associations in taiwan abstract the provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen users this paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements several principles for institutional design including a careful definition of the scope of farmers participation complementarity of interests between individuals reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in taiwan

evaluating the public perceptions of nuclear power in china evidence from a contingent valuation survey national natural science foundation of china 71303199 71373218 ministry of education foundation of china 13yjc790123 11jbgp006 13jzd010 fundamental research funds for the central universities 201122g008 2014221001 national social science foundation of china 13zd167

legal standards enforcement and corruption stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials corruption in contrast to the tollbooth view of regulation the standard chosen by a self interested government is a non monotonic function of officials corruption and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator international evidence on environmental regulation shows that standards correlate positively with per capita income and negatively with corruption consistent with the model s predictions for benevolent governments jel d73 k42 l51

enforcement for sale lobbying for water in pakistan s indus basin abstract surface irrigation is a common pool resource subject to over exploitation by upstream users we ask to what extent state enforcement of de jure water allocations designed to ensure adequate irrigation to downstream users is up for sale unique data on the land ownership of nearly a quarter million irrigators in pakistan s vast indus basin watershed provide a measure of political influence consistent with an influence driven model the decline in water availability and land values from head to tail is accentuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the head and attenuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the tail our paper shows how power disparities can be leveraged through the administrative state to capture valuable common resources

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

rent seeking and gender in local governance abstract the paper examines the relationship between corruption and gender in the context of local government in india using a logit model recent debates about women s participation in electoral politics suggests that the presence of more women in government will engender public policy and also tends to reduce corruption the evidence we examined indicates that gender is not a significant factor in explaining levels of corruption although nearly 40 per cent of the elective positions in the institutions of local government are occupied by women there is no significant gender difference in attitudes towards rent seeking or in actual levels of corruption between male and female representatives

competition among officials and the abuse of power traditional economic theory suggests that competition among officials providing government goods tends to reduce corruption however empirical evidence does not yet support this view in this paper i show that a corrupt and powerful central authority can use competition among officials to amass resources for itself while competition reduces corruption at the lower level of government corruption at the higher level of government is increased to avoid widespread theft from the central authority competing officials are monitored more intensively than a monopolist hence even though competition among officials generates more consumer surplus it may reduce welfare

the effects of periodic quotas limiting the stock of imports of durables abstract analyses of trade quotas typically assume that the quota restricts the flow of some nondurable good many real world quotas however restrict the stock of durable imports we consider the cases where 1 anyone is free to export against such quotas and where 2 only those allocated portions of the total quota are free to export against such quotas recent econometric investigations of such quotas have focused on the price of the durable as an indicator of tightness induced by the quota we show why this is an inappropriate indicator and suggest alternatives

the eclipse of the state reflections on stateness in an era of globalization the economic logic of the current international economy does not predict the eclipse of the state economic globalization does restrict state power but transnational capital needs capable states as much or more than does domestically oriented business national success in the current global political economy has been associated not with minimal states but with states that are capable active and engaged pressure for eclipse flows from the conjunction between transnational economic forces and the political hegemony of an anglo american ideology that in j p nettl s words simply leaves no room for any valid notion of the state even this combination of economic and political pressure is unlikely to eclipse the state but it is likely to put public institutions on the defensive eclipsing any possibility of the embedded liberalism described by john ruggie a leaner meaner state is the likely outcome the possibility of a more progressive alternative outcome would depend in part on whether current zero sum visions of the relation between the state and civil society can be replaced by a more synergistic view

voluntary export restraints on automobiles evaluating a trade policy the authors evaluate the voluntary export restraint that was initially placed on exports of automobiles from japan in 1981 they evaluate the impact this policy had on u s consumer welfare firm profits and foregone tariff revenue from its initiation through 1990

institutional development the world bank and india s new agricultural extension programme the new world bank sponsored and funded training and visit system of agricultural extension represents a major attempt by the bank to promote institutional development the very considerable investment has in fact resulted in little change or improvement in the quality of extension the reasons lie in failure to analyse the cause of the weakness of the previous extension systems inherent defects of the training and visit system and the way in which it has been introduced into india these failures in turn can be explained by the interests and the politics underlying the programme

the management of irrigation systems how to evoke trust and avoid prisoner s dilemma abstract the performance of canal irrigation systems depends partly on trust by farmers in the good faith and abilities of irrigation officials in india this trust is typically lacking there is instead a prisoners dilemma type syndrome of anarchy under the canals in which farmers lack the confidence that if they refrain from taking water out of turn they will get water on time and officials lack the confidence that if they work conscientiously to deliver the water on time farmers will refrain from rule breaking in east asia this syndrome of irrigation anarchy scarcely exists the reasons for the difference are partly to do with agro climatic conditions but they are also related to policy relevant variables of physical design and organizational arrangements within the constraints of agro climatic conditions features of east asian design and organization might usefully be transferred to indian conditions including break point reservoirs irrigation scheduling and monitoring separation of construction organization from operations and maintenance organization and catchment based operating agencies with their own revenue base

bureaucracy intermediaries corruption and red tape abstract intermediaries that assist individuals and firms with the government bureaucracy are common in developing countries although such bureaucracy intermediaries are anecdotally linked with corruption and welfare losses few formal analyses exist we introduce a model in which a government license can benefit individuals we study the net license gain when individuals get the license through the regular licensing procedure through bribing or through intermediaries for a given procedure individuals using intermediaries are better off than if intermediaries and corruption had not existed then we study the incentives of corrupt bureaucrats to create red tape bureaucrats implement more red tape and individuals are unambiguously worse off in a setting with intermediaries than with direct corruption only intermediaries can thus improve access to the bureaucracy but also strengthen the incentives to create red tape a potential explanation why licensing procedures tend to be long in developing countries

urban bias a fresh look focusing on non conforming cases the articles in this special issue abandon the method of stylised facts and highlight instead variation over space and time in so doing they detect errors of commission and omission in the earlier literature on urban bias they call for a focus on the economic role of political institutions the political role of markets for assets and the political significance of technical change

cap and trade programs under delayed compliance consequences of interim injections of permits virtually every analysis of cap and trade programs assumes that rms must surrender permits as they pollute however no program existing or proposed requires such continual compliance some e g the acid rain program limiting so2 emissions require compliance once a year others e g the regional greenhouse gas initiative limiting co2 emissions require compliance every three years the paths of emissions and permit prices would be invariant to compliance timing holland moore 2013 if the government never injected additional permits between successive compliance dates however virtually all emissions trading programs require such injections through either 1 interim permit auctions or 2 sales from cost containment reserves intended to cap permit prices in such cases analyses which abstract from delayed compliance may mislead policy makers for example a cost containment reserve judged sucient to cap prices at a ceiling over a year may sell out in a single day

residential willingness to pay for deep decarbonization of electricity supply contingent valuation evidence from hong kong abstract motivated by the government s proposed target of reducing co2 emissions by 30 of the 2005 level in the year 2020 we estimate the residential willingness to pay wtp for deep decarbonization of hong kong s electricity supply which is heavily dependent on coal fired generation our contingent valuation survey conducted in 2016 of 1460 households yields dichotomous choice data based on the respondents answers to a series of closed ended questions such data are less susceptible to the strategic bias that often plagues self stated wtp data obtained by direct elicitation via open ended questions using binary choice models we find that average wtp is 48 51 relative to current bills if the decarbonization target is achieved via natural gas generation and renewable energy however estimated wtp declines to 32 42 when decarbonization entails additional nuclear imports from china as the projected bill increase caused by the target s implementation is 40 our wtp estimates support the government s fuel mix policy of using natural gas and renewable energy to displace hong kong s coal generation

appraising alternatives for allocating and cost recovery for irrigation water in egypt abstract alternative approaches to allocating and recovering costs for water on egyptian farms are proposed and evaluated in accordance with the societal objectives of allocative efficiency equity of income distribution and cost recovery a linear programming model of a study area in egypt s northern delta predicts farmers response to the proposed cost sharing instruments over a range of water supply conditions transactions costs for each charging instrument are estimated and incorporated into the allocative efficiency analysis flat land charges supplemented by water quotas in the event of increasing water scarcity best achieve societal objectives in the current and prospective egyptian situation volumetric charging instruments were judged to be somewhat less desirable due to higher tangible and intangible costs of implementation the results highlight the importance of transactions costs the degree of water scarcity and other governmental revenue raising policies in determining an appropriate charging mechanism

the political realities of african management abstract amidst the outburst of concern for public management in africa there is frequently a failure to distinguish among its components policy making leadership general internal administration and bureaucratic hygiene accounting procurement the merit system etc each of these four areas is different in the importance that it has for project performance the knowledge base that is available for improving it and the way in which it is affected by african political and social structures as a consequence those seeking to improve public management on the continent frequently are mistaken in the priorities that they establish and import inappropriate management technologies

post fukushima public acceptance on resuming the nuclear power program in china abstract this study investigates social perceptions electricity preference management instruments towards nuclear power in china and evaluates the extent of opposing nuclear power by estimating public willingness to pay wtp to prevent a nuclear power plant from being constructed in their local cities and the neighboring cities it is pretty important to understand the public sentiment towards recommencement of nuclear programs since public acceptance of nuclear energy is one of the determinants for government establishment of a new nuclear project especially the chinese government has resumed the approval of new nuclear power plants and planned to expand this industry in the post fukushima world the findings show that most of the respondents care about the development of nuclear power in china the publics are a bit skeptical about the security of nuclear power since they are worried about nuclear accidents in addition the government is requested to improve policy transparency which is seen as an essential way of alleviating the public nuclear anxieties in china

the impact of corruption on investment predictability matters abstract this paper argues that it is not only level of corruption that affects investment but also the nature of corruption corruption regimes that are more predictable in the sense that those seeking favors from government do obtain those favors have less negative impact on investment than those that are less predictable using the data collected by world bank in preparing the world development report of 1997 we provide empirical support for the conjecture

the success of a policy model irrigation management transfer in mexico abstract the mexican policy of irrigation management transfer has been widely propagated as a success and has become a model for other countries seeking to improve the performance of their irrigation systems while also cutting public expenditures this article analyses the process of policy making that has generated the policy model and follows the practices means and events through which it has achieved increasing transnational circulation popularity and support the main argument of this article is that the success of a policy model is only a success within the cultural and ideological understandings of a policy network and given the means practices and events that generate and disseminate it this particular case further suggests that success in policy making rather than being based on straightforward evidence of improved management performance is often part of a cultural performance

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

food policy in africa political causes and social effects food policy in africa is derived policy it is developed in an effort to solve the political and economic problems of persons other than fanners food policy is employed to obtain peaceful relations between governments and their urban constituents and to secure the allegiance of powerful elites a major consequence is the transformation of social and economic patterns in the countryside

welfare effects of criminal politicians a discontinuity based approach abstract this paper uses unique data on the criminal records of indian bureaucrats to examine the relationship between politicians criminality and consumption crime and corruption the identification relies on a regression discontinuity design by which individuals living in districts where a criminal politician was barely elected are compared with individuals living in districts where a criminal politician barely lost the results show that criminal politicians decrease consumption by vulnerable sections of society the monthly per capita expenditure of scheduled castes scheduled tribes or other backward classes decreases by 19 percent this paper suggests that the effect of criminal politicians on criminality and corruption may explain this result

modules for modernisation colonial irrigation in india and the technological dimension of agrarian change water control is central to the political economy of water distribution in large scale irrigation in india the changes in water distribution irrigation technology and agrarian development through the introduction of the block system technical devices called modules and volumetric water pricing in the nira left bank canal bombay presidency in the period 1900 40 are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control technical managerial and socio political this analysis points to the crucial but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management the debate on the success of the block system continues to the present day but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution the article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations and agricultural price regimes relevant to wa

seeking rents by setting rents the political economy of rent seeking in recent years there has been a large number of papers on the subject of rent seeking most such works on rent seeking have taken the rent as exogenously determined by regulators regulators howeve r may also be expected and indeed have been shown to be rent seeke rs and hence the determination of the rent itself should be endogeniz ed to reflect the fact that the rent setters are themselves rent se ekers in this paper the authors do this by presenting an analysis o f the interaction of regulators firms and consumers within a rent s eeking framework where all three groups are assumed to be self motiva ted the analysis is carried out under alternative assumptions regard ing the nature of the market and the reaction functions of the partic ipants policy implications are drawn where appropriate copyright 1987 by royal economic society

an efficiency and welfare classification of rationing by waiting in the presence of bribery abstract governments often allocate commodities at low prices and on a first come first served basis rationing by waiting while bureaucrats who distribute the commodities usually take bribes a model is developed to classify the efficiency implications of bribery and socially optimal pricing schemes in rationing by waiting if the rationed good and individual income spent on other goods other income are complements then bribery may enhance allocative efficiency and a dual pricing scheme can augment social welfare however if the rationed commodity and other income are substitutes then bribery may not improve allocative efficiency and distributing the rationed commodity free is socially optimal

is there an alternative for irrigation reform summary poor performance of government managed irrigation systems persists in developing countries despite numerous policy interventions over the last four decades we argue that many of these interventions have failed because they did not recognize irrigation bureaucracies as prime actors in policy change this paper examines the varied actors and agendas within irrigation bureaucracies highlighting the dichotomy between hydraulic missions on the one hand and direct service provision to farmers on the other to increase the significance of future reform bureaucracies must be considered as explicit actors and reform efforts should derive from better understanding of the farmer agency interface

obtaining a driver s license in india an experimental approach to studying corruption we conduct two experiments to understand the process of obtaining a driver s license in india in the first experiment we randomly assign license candidates to one of three groups bonus offered a financial reward if they could obtain their license fast lesson offered free driving lessons upfront and control the control group alone illustrates bureaucratic failures 71 of the license getters in that group avoided the mandated driving test and 62 failed a surprise driving test the system responds to private needs there are more license getters in the bonus group but at a social cost there are more license getters who cannot drive in the bonus group the system however also appears to respond to social considerations as there are more license getters in the lesson group large extra legal payments are made by license getters those in the control group pay 2 5 times the official fee more of these extra legal payments take place in the bonus group surprisingly these extra legal payments are not direct bribes to bureaucrats but instead payments to agents in the second experiment we perform an audit study to better understand the role of agents the audit shows that agents can provide licenses to individuals even if they cannot drive but the audit also shows that agents cannot as easily circumvent all other rules we argue that our findings are most consistent with agents being the channel for corruption in this system we also report some suggestive evidence that bureaucrats create red tape possibly to induce more license candidates to use agents

locational asymmetry and the potential for cooperation on a canal abstract illegal water diversions and lax rule enforcement are common on irrigation canals we present a mathematical programming model of a watercourse calibrated to a canal in maharashtra on which farmers voted to cooperate to control water theft the model solution computes the crop choices and profits of individually optimizing farmers who differ in their location it reveals the spatial distribution of gains and losses from cooperation it illuminates why voluntary bargaining will rarely achieve an efficient water allocation it also shows that landless laborers might well be against local cooperation if the expropriated water nurtures labor intensive crops

eight questions about corruption this paper will discuss eight frequently asked questions about public corruption 1 what is corruption 2 which countries are the most corrupt 3 what are the common characteristics of countries with high corruption 4 what is the magnitude of corruption 5 do higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption 6 can competition reduce corruption 7 why have there been so few recent successful attempts to fight corruption 8 does corruption adversely affect growth

south south technology transfer the case of china s kpatawee rice project in liberia abstract despite the call for more technical cooperation between developing countries tcdc as spearheaded by the united nations development program the literature contains few examples of actual cases of tcdc kpatawee farm was developed during 1978 1989 by the people s republic of china as a state owned rice seed plantation in rural liberia the article analyzes this experience of tcdc it concludes that technical cooperation between developing countries may offer unexpected problems in this case operating kpatawee as a state farm effectively transferred china s own difficulties with state controlled overmechanized and uneconomic production privatizing kpatawee is unlikely to improve its performance even china s small scale irrigation techniques when considered separately from the rainfed area of the state farm appear at best only marginally competitive with imports and offer limited promise as a viable farming system for rural liberia

economic structure and the politics of sectoral bias east asian and other cases governments of poor countries generally practise urban biased policies that penalise the agricultural sector to the advantage of non agriculture conversely governments of rich countries generally practise rural bias as south korea and taiwan have become relatively wealthy over recent decades they have also shifted from urban biased to rural biased policies adherents of the rational choice approach to political analysis claim to provide an explanation of the causes of this pattern this explanation is based on changing patterns of political interests and coalition forming possibilities induced by the changes in economic structure characteristically associated with economic growth an evaluation of this claim in the light of the south korean and taiwanese cases suggests that a it has considerable validity although its explanatory power is easily exaggerated b a satisfactory rational choice approach would encompass a wider range of political actors than has been incorporated in existing analy

zimbabwe s maize based green revolution preconditions for replication abstract the green revolution was launched in 1960 in zimbabwe five years before it got underway in india since zimbabwe s green revolution was spearheaded by white commercial farmers however it was ignored by africa s new leaders in the 1960s as they experimented with state farms from moscow communal farms from china and land settlement schemes from israel at zimbabwe s independence in 1980 the new majority ruled government introduced a number of programs to help smallholders increase food and cash crop production drawing on a backlog of hybrid maize varieties expanded access to credit higher guaranteed government maize prices and marketing subsidies smallholders doubled maize production during 1980 1986 zimbabwe s maize based green revolution challenges those who allege that hybrid maize cannot compete with sorghum in low rainfall areas and that it is unsuitable for resource poor farmers because of the need to purchase new seed each year today virtually 100 of zimbabwe s maize area is under hybrids and short season hybrids are outcompeting other foodgrains in many low rainfall areas zimbabwe s biggest challenge is to develop cost effective marketing policies and institutions to sustain its maize based green revolution countries trying to replicate zimbabwe s success story should focus on fulfilling four interrelated preconditions political technological economic and institutional

measuring the social value of nuclear energy using contingent valuation methodology abstract as one of the promising energy sources for the next few decades nuclear energy receives more attention than before as environmental issues become more important and the supply of fossil fuels becomes unstable one of the reasons for this attention is based on the rapid innovation of nuclear technology which solves many of its technological constraints and safety issues however regardless of these rapid innovations social acceptance for nuclear energy has been relatively low and unchanged consequently the social perception has often been an obstacle to the development and execution of nuclear policy requiring enormous subsidies which are not based on the social value of nuclear energy therefore in this study we estimate the social value of nuclear energy consumers willingness to pay for nuclear energy using the contingent valuation method cvm and suggest that the social value of nuclear energy increases approximately 68 5 with the provision of adequate information about nuclear energy to the public consequently we suggest that the social acceptance management in nuclear policy development is important along with nuclear technology innovation

trust in a rent seeking world health and government transformed in northeast brazil abstract this article draws lessons from a set of innovative programs carried out by a state government in brazil now widely acclaimed for excellence in public management key to the high performance was strong worker commitment to the job and what the state did to elicit a topic of little note in the development literature but of central importance in the literature of industrial performance and workplace transformation in the industrialized countries the state created an unusual sense of calling among the program s workers new prestige in the communities where they worked and an informed citizenry that both monitored the workers and trusted them

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

environmental valuation and rationality economic valuation of the envi structuring the empirical model or adding ronment is disputed in part due to the number auxiliary hypotheses the presumption is of anomalies reactions to these anomalies have that consistent preferences are there just included adding new auxiliary hypotheses to the to be uncovered thus errors are mea core model or dismissing the whole undertaking surement this paper takes a third route and uses observa biases to be corrected by retions made in valuation studies to improve choice fined methods mitchell and carson theory the paper covers the information prob 1989 certainly many studies can be critlem the issue of preference formation and under icized for being of low quality still the lines the role of the social sphere in defining what development of concepts like starting becomes individually rational while the findings point bias posit ion bias question ormay not simplify theory they may help us be der bias yea saying protest bids come more realistic and to understand errors pro and part whole bias all seem very ad duced by illegitimate simplifications

contingent valuation controversies and evidence contingent valuation cv has become one of the most widely used non market valuation techniques cv s prominence is due to its flexibility and ability to estimate total value including passive use value its use and the inclusion of passive use value in benefit cost analyses and environ mental litigation are the subject of a contentious debate this paper discusses key areas of the debate over cv and the validity of passive use value we conclude that many of the alleged problems with cv can be resolved by careful study design and implementation we further conclude that claims that empirical cv findings are theoretically inconsistent are not generally supported by the literature the debate over cv however has clarified several key issues related to nonmarket valuation and can provide useful guidance both to cv practitioners and the users of cv results

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

efficient spatial allocation of irrigation water in the presence of conveyance losses the efficient quantity of water applied falls with distance from the water source but the amount of water sent including conveyance losses actually increases with distance from the source except toward the tail end of the inigation system this implies that if marginal cost pricing were implemented farmers at the middle and lower reaches of the system would have to pay more money for less water received the model is illustrated and alternative financing schemes compared for an empirically derived demand function for imgation water despite massive public investments in irrigation infrastructure ex post evaluations of irrigation projects in developed and developing countries indicate that actual benefits are substantially below projected levels considerable evidence suggests that these low benefits are largely the result of poor on farm water use efficiencies and rent seeking activities that result from water charges that are low and often unrelated to water use chaudhry repetto bowen and young for example farmers near the system headworks are said to consume a disproportionate share of irrigation water while tail farmers are left with scanty and unreliable residual supplies reidinger wade many governments faced with increasing political pressure to conserve water and reduce fiscal deficits are considering higher water charges to decrease waste and increase cost recovery from project beneficiaries there is also increased awareness that low water charges and loosely enforced water rationing guidelines lead to environmental damages and excessive mining of groundwater resources in general the problems of water allocation and low user charges contribute to derivative problems in achieving efficiency equity fiscal stability and environmental sustainability

what drives infrastructure spending in cities of developing countries there exists a dearth of empirical studies on what determines infrastructure spending in cities of developing countries this in part can be attributed to the absence of quality data and the tendency for researchers to gloss over variations in infrastructure expenditure in or across developing world cities in the general belief that investment in infrastructure is generally low using the united nations human settlements programme s global urban indicators database this paper examines variations in infrastructure spending across cities in developing countries with a view to identifying the factors that explain these differences the empirical analysis identifies substantial intercity variations in infrastructure spending both across and within the regions of africa asia the middle east latin america and the caribbean and the economies in transition further analysis suggests that intercity variations in infrastructure spending are accounted for by differences in the macroeconomic environment urban g

on some aspects of irrigation drainage in india in recognition of the critical role irrigation plays in agricultural production and in alleviating poverty and reducing inequality in income distribution in rural areas equity in irrigation distribution is now commonly adopted by almost all of the developing countries and is recognized by irrigation professionals across different disciplines as one of the most important objectives reidinger 1974 bromley taylor and parker 1980 bromley 1982 coward 1980 sampath 1984 dhawan 1986 in spite of the wide acceptance of this objective there is a dearth of both conceptual and empirical work done in developing countries to understand the problem of inequity in irrigation distribution in fact this author is not aware of a single macro inequity analysis of irrigation development in any of the asian countries though there are a number of empirical studies that have looked at inequity in distribution in terms of farm location on the water course and farm size in particular project contexts bromley et al 1980 and references therein

the vulnerability of price stabilization schemes to speculative attack this paper examines the effects of government attempts to stabilize the prices of commodities by use of buffer stocks agricultural goods subject to supply uncertainty as well as depletable resources are considered in each case it is shown that the resulting rational expectations competitive equilibrium contains a speculative attack a situation where the entire government stock is suddenly purchased by previously inactive speculators the analysis is applied to the historical attempt to peg the gold price which caused the attack of 1968 the insights gained and the methodology developed also apply to the various international agreements to impose bans on commodity prices which have been proposed by the united nations conference on trade and development

irrigation reform in conditions of populist anarchy an indian case abstract it is true that the performance of india s canal irrigated agriculture could be substantially and cheaply improved by change in canal operating and maintenance procedures but current procedures allow some farmers and state officials to capture disproportionate benefits for themselves through a well institutionalised system of corruption these beneficiaries of the status quo make up powerful interes groups against reform the paper illustrates just how intensely political irrigation reform can be by tracing what happened when an attempt was made to carry out an apparently simple improvement in water allocation rules under a south indian canal the events suggest a wider process of cumulative causation making for low rates of growth of food production and weaker political authority the process is not inevitable however and the paper ends with some suggestions about how in the irrigation context public policy might help to offset the decline

decentralized corruption or corrupt decentralization community monitoring of poverty alleviation schemes in eastern india democratic decentralization and community participation often stand at the center of an agenda of good governance that aims to reduce corruption and increase the state s accountability to its citizens however this paper suggests based on empirical studies on the employment assurance scheme in rural west bengal that the strength of upward accountability especially to political parties is as crucial as downward accountability to communities when these vertical accountabilities are weak horizontal accountability structures between local civil society and officials can mutate into networks of corruption in which community actors become accomplices or primary agents

public policy reform and informal institutions the political articulation of the demand for work in rural india summary the emphasis on rights that individual citizens can claim from the state represents a significant institutional development for poverty alleviation policies in india important legislation was passed in 2005 to guarantee rural households 100 days of work paid at a statutory wage rate this right to work legislation has enabled the implementation of the world s largest public works program the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme or nregs this study explores variation in policy outcomes under nregs within a rural district of north india uttar pradesh it finds that this variation is the product of the interaction between formal and informal institutions as such the demand for work benefits does not emerge spontaneously from self selecting rural citizens but is articulated by local elected officials who are pressurised to accommodate demands for rents from the bureaucracy specifically local elected officials are compelled to proceed to a selective activation of the demand for benefits to ensure the generation of a surplus which will form the basis of bureaucratic rent payments the study relies on qualitative data specifically interviews with past beneficiaries of the scheme bureaucrats tasked with policy implementation and elected village leaders the gram pradhans in the indian state of uttar pradesh to document the conditions under which a surplus is extracted and rent payments made the study shows that caste and political leadership structures at the local level affect the generation of surpluses and the payment of rents by gram pradhans to the bureaucracy while the right to work legislation represents progress for poverty alleviation policies such as nregs that emphasize rights and the expression of a demand for benefits need to consider more carefully the conditions under which this demand emerges as well as the ways in which discretionary authority can thwart the goals of public policy

the management of common property resources collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources many writers on collective action and common property are sweepingly pessimistic about the ability of the people who face problems of common property to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves this paper shows with reference to prisoners dilemma garett hardin s tragedy of the commons and mancur olson s logic of collective action that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak in many situations of village based common property resource use there can thus be no general presumption that the collective action route to common property resource management will fail any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work the paper suggests a number of general factors to do with the characteristics of the resources the user group and group state relations on which chances of success depend

a closer look at small hydropower projects in india social acceptability of two storage based projects in karnataka abstract associated with being green clean and small scale small hydroelectric power shp projects generally enjoy a positive image in india shp promises answers to issues such as meeting a growing electricity demand facilitating lucrative investment opportunities and climate change considerations the features of being green clean and small scale have contributed to the assumption of shp as an essentially uncontested technology empirical studies questioning this assumption are scarce research on shp has so far remained rather hypothetical and policy level focused this article investigates the social acceptability of small hydroelectric plants in india by empirically looking at how people engage with these plants it thereby underlines the importance of studying technologies in their local context based on a detailed case study analysis of two shp projects in karnataka india the article shows how shp projects are contested on the local level the engagement of local people played a crucial role in the contestation of the plants and led to significant and unexpected outcomes and effects the article highlights the importance of having a broader perspective in the development of shp that goes beyond a mindset of technological fixes this includes taking account of existing water infrastructure and a broader range of water users the article shows that the implementation of shp projects does not take place in a void rather complex existing physical and social realities on the ground matter for the development and performance of shp

maize is life malawi s delayed green revolution abstract the pattern of maize seed development in malawi demonstrates the importance of farmers capacity to articulate their interests through collective action and institutions despite the vital significance of maize as a wage good in malawi limited effective demand for maize seed research prolonged the period of technical stagnation analysis of the institutional factors shaping the demand for maize seed research complements previous work on malawi s political economy the supply of seed technology and adoption with implications for current political changes in that nation the importance of farmers organizations and state commitment to agricultural research in sub saharan africa

efficient estimation methods for closed ended contingent valuation surveys closed ended contingent valuation surveys can be very useful in the evaluation of nonmarket resources respondents merely state whether they would accept or reject a hypothetical threshold amount either as payment for giving up access to the resource or as a fee for its use the authors develop a maximum likelihood procedure which exploits the variation in the threshold values to allow direct and separate point estimates of regression like slope coefficients and error standard deviations without truncation bias their illustration uses data from a survey of recreational fisherman to examine factors which influence individuals willingness to pay copyright 1987 by mit press

why do foresters plant trees testing theories of bureaucratic decision making in central india summary there is growing awareness of the problems of applying blueprint approaches to public sector management in developing countries however scholars lack tools for context specific policy advice this paper develops an organitoring focuses on the short term sizing framework for theories of bureaucratic action and applies this theory to indian forest departments tree planting programs tree planting is implemented successfully in the central indian regions of maharashtra and andhra pradesh states but does not protect ecosystems or reduce poverty this partial success is driven by interplay between the self regarding behavior of bureaucrats and a professional logic of appropriateness and is a challenge to single issue reformers

urban bias of consequences classes and causality choice theoretic accounts of urban bias ub in ldcs are popular because they also explain rural bias in richer countries such misguided elegance notwithstanding class theoretic not simply marxist productionist accounts are preferable why 1 ub alleges persistently inefficient and or unfair i anti rural outcomes ii intra rurally biases towards rural elites who in return deliver surpluses townwards 2 if ub declines for one outcome it must increase for others unless pro urban classes weaken relative to pro rural thus farm price ub fell in 1975 90 in many ldcs but with urban rural class power balances little changed public expenditure ub rose to compensate 3 yet long term development transforms such balances shifting many outcomes from ub to rural bias 4 explaining 2 and 3 involves understanding urban rural class relations when and to obtain which outcomes do rural elites seek rural rather than urban alliances choice game coalition theories help but only within i

traveling agents political change and bureaucratic turnover in india abstract we develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns and the consequent implications for bureaucrats career investments unique microlevel data on indian bureaucrats support our key predictions politicians use frequent reassignments transfers across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats high skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts we find evidence of two alternative paths to career success officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill but caste affinity to the politician s party base also helps secure important positions

the fruits and fallacies of neoliberalism the case of irrigation policy abstract neoliberal doctrine provides the analytic basis for a convincing explanation and critique of irrigation policy in the third world there is a strong case for subjecting capital and recurrent decisions to the discipline of scarcity pricing however it is rarely practicable to apply scarcity pricing rigorously because of the economic and technical infeasibility of volumetric water pricing in most third world irrigation schemes the taiwanese experience illustrates that political and institutional mechanisms for promoting managerial performance can be effective where the neoliberal prescription fails

an evaluation of indian government rice policy in tamil nadu abstract the indian government procures rice from wholesalers or producers at a price below the market price and then distributes it to low income consumers at a subsidized price this paper uses a simulataneous equations econometric model to evaluate the effects of this policy on supply demand of rice in the state of tamil nadu between 1956 and 1985 results show that production is more responsive to power for irrigation and fertilizer prices than to output prices because supply is inelastic producers bear the burden of the tax imposed by procurement even though rice is procured from the wholesaler rice distributed by the government displaces rice demanded in the open market and thus the government distribution of rice has not increased the total consumption of rice

government action social capital and development reviewing the evidence on synergy abstract instead of assuming a zero sum relationship between government involvement and private cooperative efforts the five preceding articles argue for the possibility of state society synergy that active government and mobilized communities can enhance each others developmental efforts this article draws on these articles to explore the forms and sources of state society synergy i argue that synergy usually combines complementarity with embeddedness and is most easily fostered in societies characterized by egalitarian social structures ard robust coherent state bureaucracies i also argue however that synergy is constructable even in the more adverse circumstances typical of third world countries

private storage of common property abstract many resources extracted under the rule of capture are not utilized immediately but are stored instead for later use oil is stockpiled fish are frozen groundwater is bottled rivers are dammed land deforested as the way to establish title remains uncultivated we examine the positive and normative effects of such storage privatization of common property through storage may eliminate inefficiencies altogether but the accelerated extraction it induces may also exacerbate them even if rapid extraction does not reduce ultimate recovery once storage commences extraction accelerates until the open access reserves are drained in limiting cases these speculative acquisitions are instantaneous the naturally occurring analogue of policy induced speculative attacks studied in the international finance literature when some reserves are privately owned while others are open access the order of extraction no longer follows the progression from lowest to highest per unit cost first noted by o c herfindahl in extractive resources and taxation m gaffney ed univ of wisconsin press madism 1997 instead the common property may be extracted in its entirety before any private reserves are extracted even if it has the higher per unit extraction cost

can analytic narrative inform policy change the political economy of the indian electricity irrigation nexus abstractagricultural electricity subsidisation has led to high electricity demand groundwater depletion and public financial burdens the policy persists although paralleled by fundamental changes in electricity governance how can lock in and policy trajectories be explained theories of institutional public choice and regulation are reviewed two game models are built to analyse narratives based on interviews and secondary historical data the findings reveal path dependencies inherent in the existing action situations resolving the current equilibrium requires changes outside the political or regulatory process such as the electricity distribution level where coordination failure impedes infrastructure improvements contributing to resistance among the agricultural electorate

eliciting public preference for nuclear energy against the backdrop of global warming one of the most important issues related to sustainability is to reduce the use of fossil fuels due to the reduction in greenhouse gases ghg emission nuclear power results in low carbon emissions and is thus important to mitigating the adverse effects of global warming and climate change however the downside of nuclear power cannot be overlooked and consequently nuclear power is a controversial issue in many countries around the world thus an important question concerns how people should support nuclear power do the climate and energy security benefits of nuclear power outweigh its risks and costs therefore we use a modified double bounded contingent valuation model to explore the attitudes and the willingness to pay wtp of a country in order to demonstrate its implications for policy we confirm that supporters and opponents of nuclear power are balanced both in terms of their numbers and in terms of their wtp the policy implication is that people do not support any dramatic increase or reduction in nuclear power and that nuclear power should still be an important means of generating electricity in taiwan the current share of nuclear power in electricity generation of 20 should be maintained in the near future

product differentiation and oligopoly in international markets the case of the u s automobile industry this paper develops and estimates a model of the u s automobile industry on the demand side a discrete choice model is adopted that is estimated using micro data from the consumer expenditure survey the estimation results are used in conjunction with population weights to derive aggregate demand on the supply side the automobile industry is modelled as an oligopoly with product differentiation equilibrium is characterized by the first order conditions of the profit maximizing firms the estimation results are used in counterfactual simulations to investigate two trade policy issues the effects of the ver and exchange rate pass through

politics and public goods in developing countries evidence from the assassination of rajiv gandhi abstract this paper employs an instrumental variables strategy to identify the effect of party ideology on policy outcomes exogenous variation in party representation is generated by the assassination of the leader of the congress party which occurred midway through india s national elections in 1991 and dramatically increased the probability of congress victory for a subset of constituencies representation by the congress party leads to a substantial increase in the provision of public goods favored by the poor consistent with the party s expressed populist agenda among the salient changes are increases in the availability of drinking water and primary education and declines in agricultural and industrial electrification and telephone coverage i compare these effects to those obtained using a regression discontinuity design and find that the latter yields little effect of congress representation on public goods allocations

the market for public office why the indian state is not better at development abstract how and why officials are transferred from one post to another can in india does have far reaching consequences for the effectiveness of public service organizations such as irrigation agriculture forestry and soil conservation departments the transfer mechanism used in many departments of indian states involves a kind of internal labor market a truer market than in the way that term is often used by labor market economists it allows pressures for corrupt behavior to bear down on the incumbents of certain posts and itself amplifies those pressures frequently the pressures on officials to be corrupt cause them to behave in ways contrary to the ostensible objectives of their departments why is the indian state not better at promoting development to an important degree because of the corruption transfer mechanism and its effects on bureaucratic initiatives

development studies findings frontiers and fights abstract very low incomes and relatively low mobility in ldcs limit the scope for lessons for dcs three areas remain however analogues interactions and above all conceptual transfers development studies have moved away from adding up individual responses to change towards examining interactions that produce systemic outcomes examples are analyzed from the evolving debates about a peasant response as related to tenure and risk b farm systems vs village systems analysis c impact of the green revolution on the poor d unemployment development studies show analysts of developed countries especially in case d above that adding up approaches ignoring interactions and total systems produce very misleading results