market access well being and nutrition evidence from ethiopia summary we use a unique data source from a rural area in northwestern ethiopia to analyze the relationship between household individual well being nutrition and market access we find that households residing in relatively more remote areas consume substantially less than households nearer to the market they are more food insecure and their school enrollment rates are lower although their diets are also less diverse we find no significant differences in mother and child anthropometric measures part of the differences in well being that we do observe can be attributed to lower household agricultural production in remote areas nonetheless agricultural production differences alone do not account for all the differences in household consumption levels for remote households an additional contributing factor is the terms of trade for remote households that negatively affect both the size of the agricultural surplus that these households market and the quantity of food items that they purchase reducing transaction costs for remote households and facilitating migration could help equalize well being among more or less favored locations

the solution to the tullock rent seeking game when r 2 mixed strategy equilibria and mean dissipation rates in tullock s rent seeking model the probability a player wins the game depends on expenditures raised to the power r we show that a symmetric mixed strategy nash equilibrium exists when r 2 and that overdissipation of rents does not arise in any nash equilibrium we derive a tight lower bound on the level of rent dissipation that arises in a symmetric equilibrium when the strategy space is discrete and show that full rent dissipation occurs when the strategy space is continuous our results are shown to be consistent with recent experimental evidence on the dissipation of rents

infrastructure and aggregate agricultural productivity international evidence a relationship has long been recognized between a country s agricultural development and its investment in infrastructure capital such as transportation and communication facilities that is not directly related to the agricultural production process the relevant literature spans adam smith s proposition that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market the work of von thtinen numerous studies by historians and economic historians and the work of economists such as schultz kuznets wharton owens and johnston and kilby to mention a few despite the apparently widespread recognition and acceptance that a relationship exists between agricultural development and infrastructural development few if any empirical studies test this as a hypothesis and provide estimates of the magnitude of such a relationship 2 the aim of this paper is to utilize 1965 aggregate agricultural production data and the concept of the aggregate production function to study the effects of transportation and communication infrastructure on aggregate agricultural productivity the aggregate data come from 47 less developed countries ldcs and 19 developed countries dcs the sample countries are listed in the appendix the use of intercountry comparisons for development studies dates to clark and the pioneering work of kuznets and it has been exploited econometrically by chenery 3 an important contribution to the study of international agricultural productivity was made by hayami and ruttan who showed that an aggregate agricultural production function that accounts for intercountry differences in resource endowments technical modern inputs and human capital can explain a large proportion of the variation in aggregate agricultural output across more and less developed agricultures 4 evenson and kislev modified hayami and ruttan s model by including a variable measuring each country s investment in agricultural research 5 essentially the same

tournaments with midterm reviews in many tournaments investments are made over time the question whether to conduct a review once at the end or additionally at points midway through the tournament is a strategic decision if the latter course is chosen then the designer must establish both a rule for aggregating the results of the different reviews and a rule for determining compensations we first study the case of a fixed exogenously given prize and then extend the analysis to the case where the prize is not fixed but may vary with the tournament s outcome it is shown that 1 it is always optimal to assign a higher weight to the final review 2 this weight increases with the dominance of the first stage effort in determining the final review s outcome when the prize is not fixed the optimal design generates an asymmetric tournament in the second stage that favors the winner of the midterm review

governance and agricultural productivity a cross national analysis abstract in this study we examine the relationship between governance and agricultural performance by employing the world bank s aggregate governance indicators based on a cross country panel sample two methods are employed to test the hypothesis that better governance fosters agricultural productivity the empirical results of both methods support the hypothesis as for the first method the estimation results of the widely used inter country aggregate agricultural production function show that a country with better governance can produce more agricultural outputs given the same amounts of agricultural inputs the same education level and the same climate condition as for the second method the empirical results of a structural equation model reveal that given the same amounts of agricultural capital stock and land an agricultural worker in a country with better governance produces more better governance can indirectly improve agricultural productivity by driving agricultural capital accumulation our empirical work lends support to the claim of hayami and ruttan hayami y ruttan v 1985 agricultural development an international perspective john hopkins university press baltimore that governance is a basic factor explaining the poor economic performance of many developing countries in order to improve the agricultural performance of many developing countries apart from physical and education investments more emphasis should be placed on improving the governance infrastructure of these countries

rent seeking and rent dissipation a neutrality result abstract we consider rent seeking contests between at least two agents who might value the prize differently we capture a wide range of institutional aspects of contests by analyzing a class of contest success functions fulfilling several properties the main properties are anonymity and a condition on the elasticity of a rent seeker s win probability with respect to her effort we show the existence of a mixed strategy equilibrium and establish equilibrium payoffs in this equilibrium complete rent dissipation holds our results imply a partial robustness result for the all pay auction

the effect of distance and road quality on food collection marketing margins and traders wages evidence from the former zaire abstract food price variation is typical of the food economies of many low income countries the presence or absence of road infrastructure is perceived to be one of the main determinants of this variation this analysis shows that in the case of the former zaire food price dispersion is significant both across products and across regions it is demonstrated that transportation costs explain most of the differences in food prices between producer regions and that road quality is an important factor in the transportation costs however food prices decrease relatively faster than transportation costs increase and traders wages are higher on bad roads

on the salience of ethnic conflict ray acknowledges support from the national science foundation under grants 0421852 and 0617827 esteban is a member of barcelona economics xrea and is grateful for support from the generalitat de catalunya and the cicyt sej 2006 00369 this research is part of the polarization and conflict research project cit2 ct 2004 506084 funded by the european commission dg research sixth framework program

pitfalls in the measurement of real exchange rate effects on agriculture abstract studies of the effects of real exchange rates on agriculture commonly assume that these effects can be identified as those which pertain to traded goods in the standard australian model of an open economy further it is common to assume that the indirect effects of changes in the real exchange rate have the same impact on the various production activities within agriculture this paper discusses the extent to which these stylized facts reflect reality focusing in particular on the extent of tradibility in agricultural markets the irrelevance of results based on free trade equilibria to policy analyses and the importance of the characteristics of crop production functions in estimating the effects of real exchange rate changes ignoring these considerations can cause errors in the measurement of policy effects on agricultural incentives

strategic competition in sequential election contests this paper studies a sequential election contest such as theamerican presidential primary in which several electionsoccur one at a time until a single winner emerges theconventional wisdom is such a system benefits a candidatefavored in the initial elections because of momentum thispaper uncovers a potentially opposing force if participationis costly and candidates exit when they have unfavorablefuture prospects a candidate with friendly elections at theend of the contest will typically benefit from the resultinggame theoretic competition tension between this strategic effect and momentum helpsexplain several empirical regularities of presidentialprimaries

election goals and the allocation of campaign resources this paper compares the equilibrium behavior and outcomes in a model of two party competition for legislative seats under two different assumptions about the parties goals 1 parties maximize the expected number of seats won and 2 parties maximize the probability of winning a majority of the seats the two goals may lead to qualitatively different behavior and studying the differences yields insights into the relationship between the goals and the role of assymetries between the parties

sent seeking with private values we study a rent seeking contest in which the players valuations of the prize are private information we determinea bayesian equilibrium and give conditions under which theequilibrium exists although players are ex ante symmetric increased possibilities for ex post lopsidedness lead toless aggressive bidding lopsidedness increases as players values become less positively correlated or as the variationin possible values increases we also compare theprivate information contest to a related public informationcontest in which the realizations of values are commonknowledge the contests are equally efficient and players areindifferent between the two but risk averse sellers of theprize are not

a new view of agricultural productivity in sub saharan africa and economic growth in sub saharan africa despite this recognition little is known about the issue a few studies have presented rudimentary analyses of agricultural productivity in africa but the more analytically sophisticated studies of cross country productivity have essentially ignored africa part of the problem has been the lack of an appropriate output aggregate for african agriculture in the present paper i develop such an aggregate and present a new view of cross country agricultural productivity in africa contrary to previous findings i find evidence of a notable recovery of african agricultural productivity during the 1980s although the sustainability of that recovery is in question

asymmetric all pay auctions with incomplete information the two player case abstract we prove existence and uniqueness of bayesian equilibrium for a class of generally asymmetric all pay auctions with incomplete information due to its importance in applications some prominence is given to the first price all pay auction for which a detailed characterization of equilibrium and an approximation to equilibrium of its well studied complete information version are supplied furthermore we relate our uniqueness result to the well known multiplicity of equilibria in the war of attrition second price all pay auction which emerges as a limit point of the class of two player auction games considered journalof economic literature classification numbers d44 c62 c72

racing with uncertainty and strategic interaction between competitors as the race unfolds most of the existing literature examines one or other of these features but not the two combined our aim is to see how the efforts of competitors in a race vary with the intensity of rivalry between them in our principal model whch is of a one dimensional race it is shown that the leader in the race makes greater efforts than the follower and efforts increase as the gap between competitors decreases under certain conditions the same results hold in our second related model which is of a two dimensional race

transportation costs agricultural productivity and cross country income differences i document large difierences in domestic transport costs and transportation infrastructure across nations the richest countries have 5 times lower transport costs and 32 times more infrastructure per capita than the poorest countries of the world are these difierences a source of aggregate labor productivity difierences across nations using a three sector two region general equilibrium model i show that high transport costs can distort the allocation of resources not only across geographically dispersed production units within sectors but also between agriculture and non agriculture taking as given the observed difierences in transportation costs and transportation infrastructure per capita i quantify the role of transportation for cross country income difierences the calibrated model produces an income disparity of 7 5 between the 5 rich and 5 poor countries this corresponds to an improvement of 50 relative to the disparity predicted by a two sector model of agriculture and non agriculture furthermore the efiects of advancements in transportation are non linear the elasticity of aggregate labor productivity with respect to transport labor productivity in the poorest nations is 6 times higher than in the richest ones the efiects of transport frictions are even more pronounced when restrictions to regional migration are introduced

human capital infrastructure and the productivity of indian rice farmers abstract along with investments in agricultural research extension and education limited investment in transportation and communication infrastructure is often identified as an important constraint on the diffusion and use of new agricultural technology yet there are few systematic studies of the relationship between agricultural infrastructure and agricultural productivity and there do not appear to be any studies which model and measure the productivity effect of infrastructure at the farm level the aim of this paper is to fill this theoretical and empirical hiatus by investigating how human capital and infrastructure constrain the choice of technology and hence productivity the effects of these capital constraints are translated into a variable coefficient production function to measure their productivity effects on indian rice farmers the findings indicate that productivity is a function of the farmer s schooling extension programs transportation and communication infrastructure irrigation availability the utilization of high yielding varieties and climatic factors these findings thus support the hypothesis that agricultural productivity is a function of transportation and communication infrastructure and suggest that infrastructure development is important to both growth and equity concerns in policy planning

unpacking the meaning of market access evidence from rural kenya summary this paper critically examines the dimensions of market access using farm panel survey data from kenya we investigate changes in ten indicators of market access during the 1997 2010 post liberalization period we find major improvements in certain market access conditions and little change in others there is generally low correlation between alternative indicators of market access all purpose indicators may not accurately reflect specific market access conditions of interest distances to physical infrastructure are often not representative of farmers access to markets changes in specific market access conditions may have more to do with the behaviors of marketing agents we consider the implications of these findings for agricultural marketing policies and for research methods

choosing rural road investments to help reduce poverty the author examines how rural road investment projects should be selected and appraised when the objective is poverty reduction after critically reviewing past and current practices the author develops an operational approach grounded in a public economics framework in which concerns of equity and efficiency are inseparable information is incomplete in important ways and resources are limited she addresses a key problem that an important share of the benefits to the poor from rural roads cannot be measured in monetary terms the selction formula she proposes aims to identify places where poverty and economic potential are high and access is low she illustrates the method using data for and project experience in vietnam among the advantages of proceeding as outlined in her proposal this approach holds the hope of building capacity and is participatory it extracts local information that may not be readily available to the central government and it appears to be feasible because it relies on local authorities participating in the appraisal of subprojects

the intercountry agricultural production function another view factor productivity in agriculture is estimated from repeated observations on a sample of fifty eight countries under the assumption that all countries have access to the same technology technology is viewed as a collection of techniques each technique is represented by a production function the choice of the implemented techniques is determined by the state variables which represent the physical and economic environment within which the firms operate the statistical model is that of varying coefficients and it is estimated by a method which utilizes principal components and multiple comparisons

interim performance feedback in multistage tournaments the optimality of partial disclosure workers competing in a tournament for a prize e g a promotion often perform sequentially in multiple stages when the firm is privately informed about the workers performance it can sharpen incentives by strategically disclosing the intermediate results but the policies that enhance final stage effort may dampen incentives at the intermediate stage in our model the optimal disclosure policy has a simple form disclose only if all workers perform poorly this result offers a novel justification for partial disclosure in performance feedback also it contrasts with the existing literature that focuses on the extreme policies of full disclosure and no disclosure

team contests with multiple pairwise battles abstract we consider a multi battle team contest in which players from two rival teams form pairwise matches to fight in distinct component battles which are carried out sequentially or partially

collective rent dissipation the theory of rent seeking was initiated by tullock 1967 1980 followed by krueger 1974 and posner 1975 and more recently extended in various directions by allard 1988 appelbaum and katz 1986a b c gradstein and nitzan 1989 hillman and katz 1984 1987 hillman and samet 1987 hillman and riley 1989 katz et al 1990 long and vousden 1987 ursprung 1990 and varian 1989 the purpose of this paper is to extend this theory by introducing the possibility of collective group rent seeking with voluntary individual decisions regarding their extent of participation in the collective rent seeking efforts

endogenous structural breaks public investment in agriculture and agricultural land productivity in taiwan using time series data for taiwan s agricultural sector and with the government s public investment in the agricultural sector serving as a proxy variable for nonfarm current inputs aside from the original labour and capital input variables usually taken into consideration this article examines the relationship between public investment in agriculture public investment land and agricultural land productivity output land in taiwan our main findings are as follows first the cointegration test reveals that public investment in agriculture and the productivity of agricultural land exhibit a significant positive relationship in the long run where the elasticity of land productivity in relation to public investment in agriculture is 0 55 second when controlling for endogenous structural breaks the long run equilibrium relationship for the productivity of the agricultural land model is still supported third the results of the weak exogeneity test indicate that a causal relationship exists in the lo

biological technology and land productivity fertilizers and food production in india abstract this paper attempts to develop for the first time a rigorous and innovative definition of biological technical change btc btc for which fertilizers are used as proxy and land labor substitution are quantified by the method of indirect least squares from aggregate time series data on wheat and rice production in india the conclusion that emerges from this analysis is that the contribution of btc more specifically fertilizers to foodgrain production in india is quite low this raises important policy questions related to finding alternatives to widely held beliefs on how to increase food production and alleviate world hunger

the optimal allocation of prizes in contests we study a contest with multiple not necessarily equal prizes contestants have private information about an ability parameter that affects their costs of bidding the contestant with the highest bid wins the first prize the contestant with the second highest bid wins the second prize and so on until all the prizes are allocated all contestants incur their respective costs of bidding the contest s designer maximizes the expected sum of bids our main results are 1 we display bidding equlibria for any number of contestants having linear convex or concave cost functions and for any distribution of abilities 2 if the cost functions are linear or concave then no matter what the distribution of abilities is it is optimal for the designer to allocate the entire prize sum to a single first prize 3 we give a necessary and sufficient conditions ensuring that several prizes are optimal if contestants have a convex cost function

the philippines roll on roll off policy and its impact on household income abstractour paper captures the immediate impact of the roll on roll off policy that offered an alternative system of inter island transfer within the philippines it provides evidence on the effect

international productivity patterns accounting for input quality infrastructure and research in this paper we present measures of land and labor productivity for a group of ninety eight developed and developing countries using an entirely new data set with annual observations spanning the past three decades the substantial cross country and intertemporal variation in productivity in our sample is linked to both natural and economic factors we extend previous work by dealing with multiple sources of systematic measurement error in conventional agricultural inputs the mix of conventional inputs indicators of quality of agricultural inputs and the amount of publicly provided infrastructure are all significant in explaining observed cross sectional differences in productivity patterns

principal challenges confronting smallholder agriculture in sub saharan africa summary this paper uses small scale farm survey data from five countries of eastern and southern africa to highlight four under appreciated issues i how land distribution patterns constrain the potential of crop technology and input intensification to enable many small farms to escape from poverty ii why most smallholders are unable to produce more than a marginal surplus or participate meaningfully in commodity markets iii why most farmers are directly hurt by higher grain prices and iv why the marketed agricultural surplus is exceedingly concentrated among a small group of relatively large smallholders policy and public investment options are reviewed in the light of these findings there is no one future for small farms in africa much depends on government policy and investment decisions

isolation and agricultural productivity this article examines the mechanisms that transmit isolation into productivity in particular we study the effect of isolation and transport infrastructure on welfare and agricultural productivity in the case of madagascar madagascar is a good case study given the bad shape of its infrastructure and therefore the significant variation in isolation based on comprehensive household survey data combined with a census of communes we discover a strong poverty isolation relationship further we find the inverse relationship between agricultural productivity and isolation to be surprisingly strong we isolate the following reasons why productivity might decline with isolation i transportation induced transaction costs ii the inverse relationship between plot size and productivity iii increasing price variability and extensification onto less fertile land and iv insecurity

asymmetric all pay auctions with interdependent valuations abstract i show that a unique equilibrium exists in an asymmetric two player all pay auction with a discrete signal structure correlated signals and interdependent valuations the proof is constructive and the construction can be implemented as a computer program and be used to derive comparative statics i also characterize the set of equilibria when a reserve price is introduced

the meta production function approach to technological change in world agriculture abstract an alternative meta production function for agriculture is estimated with the cross section data for 43 countries and three years 1960 1970 and 1980 constructed and used by kawagoe hayami and ruttan and hayami and ruttan in their studies by allowing for country specific efficiency factors and using a flexible functional form the transcendental logarithmic production function strikingly different results from those of kawagoe hayami and ruttan are obtained in particular it is found that elasticity of output with respect to machinery is variable and the degree of local returns to scale is not constant and increases with the usage of machinery

on the formation of alliances in conflict and contests this paper examines the problem of the formation of alliances in conflict and more generally in contests with three players each player possesses an exogenous strategic endowment e g arms efforts rent seeking activity the outcome of contests including those between any alliances of players is governed by a contest success function csf in the three person one cake problem an alliance between two players against the third one will form if and only if the csf has an increasing returns characteristic when an alliance forms there is a tendency to be formed by the weaker players against the strongest player similar tendencies exist in other three person problems that i examine

sources of agricultural productivity growth and stagnation in sub saharan africa this paper examines sources of agricultural growth in sub saharan africa growth in the stock of traditional inputs land labor livestock remains the dominant source of output growth growth in modern input use was of secondary importance but still accounted for a 0 2 0 4 annual growth rate in three of four sub regions econometric results support earlier studies that suggest that land abundance may be a constraint on land productivity growth growth in agricultural exports and historic calorie availability had positive impacts on productivity these latter results suggest that positive feedback effects exist between export performance and food security on one hand and agricultural productivity on the other

the intercountry agricultural production function and productivity differences among countries abstract the sources of differences in labor productivity in agriculture between developed countries dc s and less developed countries ldc s are identified by estimating an aggregate agricultural production function based on cross county data for 1960 1970 and 1980 the production function was found to be stable over the entire period agriculture in the dc s was characterized by increasing returns and in the ldc s by constant returns to scale the results imply that unfavorable man land ratios do not represent an immediate barrier to rapid agricultural development in the low income ldc s but they may create a serious agricultural adjustment problem as those countries advance into the middle income range

institutional and socioeconomic constraints on the second generation green revolution a case study of basmati rice production in pakistan s punjab these developments are setting the stage for a second generation green revolution unlike the first green revolution any new growth in agricultural productivity will be based on improving institutional and socioeconomic setups for the purpose of enhancing resource use efficiency this second generation revolution will not push modern inputs as a strategy growth in productivity will depend on the efficient use of these inputs this article investigates the constraints on the second generation green revolution by quantifying the causes of resource use inefficiency and variation in input use in agriculture a case study is presented describing socioeconomic conditions institutional setting and physical environment in two representative rice growing villages in the pakistan punjab and their role in formulating the farmers productionrelated characteristics and farm management practices in the sequence

structure of public support for national agricultural research systems a political economy perspective abstract this paper initiates development of a set of stylized facts concerning the structure of public support for national agricultural research systems nars within a neoclassical political economy framework the aim is to place public funding of nars in the broader context of the overall level of direct government assistance to agriculture using a newly constructed data set on nars expenditures over the 1970 1985 period we observe a growing disparity in agricultural research intensity ratios which measure the level of public support for nars in relation to agricultural gross domestic production aggdp between low and high income countries this growing disparity appears to be driven by much larger increases in support for agricultural research by high income countries coupled with a significantly slower growth in the size of their agricultural sector despite the propensity of low and middle income countries to increase real support to agricultural research as per capita incomes rise the public agricultural expenditure ratio which measures public expenditures on agriculture relative to the size of the agricultural sector aggdp increases substantially public expenditures on agriculture were indexed on agricultural and non agricultural populations to give a rough indication of the increasing incentives for rural distributional coalitions to seek a redistribution of public expenditures in their favor a relative research expenditure rre ratio is developed which measures the proportion of total public expenditure on agriculture spent on agricultural research it provides an indication of the relative importance given to research on agriculture within the constraints imposed by overall public spending on agriculture in contrast to the agricultural research intensity ratios the rre ratios suggest that agricultural research appears to command as large a share of the public purse devoted to agriculture in low and middle income countries as it does in high income countries expectations derived from the neoclassical political economy literature that research may have fared relatively better in high compared with low income countries were not supported by the data

public investment social services and productivity of chinese household farms this article examines the impact of village sponsored infrastructural investment and social services on the productivity of chinese farm households using detailed farm level data for the period 1986 90 the main findings are that the public facilities and services provided by village collectives augmented productivity growth of farm households and that the expenditures on public good activities in the sample villages were below the optimal level the problems of under investment in public projects were particularly acute in low income villages

relative export competitiveness of agricultural commodities and its determinants some evidence from india abstract in this paper we derive time varying relative export competitiveness rec of india s top agricultural exports rice wheat cotton and sugar against india s share of world agricultural exports rec wa and world exports rec we from 1961 to 2012 we reveal that india s exports of all four commodities became relatively competitive over time but these were not as competitive as the top or selected emerging exporters of the four commodities we also examine the determinants of rec in these four commodities focusing on factors including crop specific and aggregate factor endowments domestic price export prices and gdp per capital preferential trade agreements export restrictions and bans and india s green revolution the regression analysis was mainly confined to the 1981 2012 due to data constraints we find that the time series regression results are similar in sign and significance for rec we and rec wa our key findings suggest the rec in wheat rice and cotton deteriorated as a result of export restrictions capital had negative effects on cotton rec labor and farm size did not influence the rec in the commodities the green revolution improved the rec in rice and cotton in phase 3 the wto had a positive effect on the rec in rice the south asian free trade area safta agreement adversely affected the rec in wheat and rice but strengthened the rec in cotton and sugar higher domestic price reduced the rec in cotton higher per capita income strengthens the rec in wheat with a lag we explain these results and suggest policy implications

ict and agricultural productivity evidence from cross country data this article carries out agricultural production function estimations based on data for the period 1995 2000 on 81 countries to present empirical evidence on the relationship between the adoption of information and communication technology ict and agricultural productivity it is found that new ict has a significantly positive impact on agricultural productivity the evidence suggests that the adoption of modern industrial inputs in agricultural production relies on the information and communication infrastructure however the empirical evidence from this study also suggests that new ict could be a factor for the divergence between countries in terms of overall agricultural productivity not only do we find that the ict adoption levels of the richer countries are much higher than those of the poorer countries but also that returns from ict in agricultural production of the richer countries are about two times higher than those of the poorer countries a plausible explanation for the poorer countries relatively low productivity elasticity of ict is the lack of important complementary factors such as a substantial base of human capital

contests with stochastic abilities we consider the properties of perfectly discriminating contests in which players abilities are stochastic but become common knowledge before efforts are expended players whose expected ability is lower than that of their rivals may still earn a positive expected payoff from participating in the contest which may explain why they participate we also show that an increase in the dispersion of a player s own ability generally benefits this player it may benefit or harm his rival but cannot benefit the rival more than it benefits himself we also explore the role of stochastic ability for sequential contests with the same opponent multibattle contests and with varying opponents elimination tournaments and show that it reduces the strong discouragement effects and holdup problems that may otherwise emerge in such games high own ability dispersion selects such players into the contest and favors them in elimination contests jel d72 d74 i introduction manytournamentsarecharacterizedbymultiple rounds with or without the elimination of some candidates in earlier stages of the process of determining a final winner in the political context electionprocessesthatdetermineparty leadersorpoliticalleadersmoregenerallyconsist ofmultipleconteststages intheracefortheu s presidency severalcompetitionstagesgradually narrowdownthenumberofcompetitors 1 inter

collective contests for commons and club goods abstract this paper focuses on collective contests for commons and club goods our main objective is to examine in this context the effect of group size on its performance the main results specify conditions for the existence non existence of the group size paradox namely the situation where a larger group is less more effective in pursuing its interest because of despite the combined effect of the incentives that result in the free riding problem and the tragedy of the commons the paper also explains under what circumstances there exists a bias towards excessive or inadequate winning group size finally it examines the effect of restricted excludability of the commons good within the winning group on the relationship between group size and its winning probability

a cross cultural study of made in concepts cross cultural studies of the perceptions of countries of origin by industrial users have been few but they are important because of their managerial implications for multinational firms this study uses data obtained from american and french directors of purchasing of major industrial firms concerning their perceptions of 5 major made in concepts after the data were corrected for response bias results show both how the respondents perceive the made in concepts and the differences between the american and french perceptions

agricultural pricing and public investment abstract aggregate agricultural supply is price inelastic but responsive to investment in agricultural infrastructure irrigation roads research extension thus the government should tax agriculture and finance infrastructure although unlikely to pay for itself directly it will increase taxable agricultural surplus but by raising rural living standards and therefore the supply price of urban labour it reduces urban tax revenue its marginal social product is therefore overstated when measured at world prices though understated at distorted agricultural prices with scale economies in industry the case for taxing and investing in agriculture is strengthened it may allow the economy to escape stagnation

exploring the widening food gap an international perspective using data for a long panel of 90 developed and developing countries this article explores the effects of research and development r d and fixed capital stock on agricultural land productivity over the period 1961 2012 instruments are used for r d to deal with feedback effects and measurement errors the results show very high social returns to investment in r d and to fixed capital stock suggesting that increasing investment in these factors are promising ways of arresting the increasing food prices due to increasing demand for animal protein population growth desertification salinization soil erosion climate change and decreasing growth in land productivity