effluent regulation and long run optimality a regulator faced with free entry of firms is concerned not only with the implications of public policy for the discharges from a representative firm but also with the total pollution observed at the long run market equilibrium the regulator must take into account not only the effects of regulations upon the net marginal returns of the firm but must also consider the total profit of the firm and incentives for entry and exit this paper shows that effluent charges and tradeable effluent permits lead to long run optimality with entry of small firms the difference between firm payments and environmental damages is interpreted as the rent accruing to the environmental resource this result applies only to the competitive case with small polluters the analysis presented here allows a comparison and clarification of the literature on small and large polluters in a multi input framework with social damages dependent upon total effluents effluent charges are shown here to result in socially optimal entry confirming an assertion of baumol and oates 2 p 179 fn 161 and the important result of schulze and d arge 15 by taking average as well as marginal damages into account the effluent charge results in optimal firm scale levels and the correct input mix at the free entry market equilibrium the firm subject to an effluent tax will operate above or below the private minimum efficient scale depending upon whether average external costs exceed or are less than marginal external costs since public policy to reduce effluents is often directed at reducing the effluentgenerating activity some policy recommendations include a tax on the final output of the polluting firm in some theoretical analyses a relation between the output of the firm and the effluent level is identified and a pigouvian output tax is applied this approach should not be followed by policymakers since an output tax does not provide firms with the correct incentives for either input substitution or market entry it is shown that while a lump sum transfer is needed to provide correct entry incentives when a pigouvian output tax is applied no such transfer is needed if the tax is correctly applied to effluents contrary to 5 even if optimal firm scale and i thank the referees for helpful suggestions the support of the national science foundation under grant ses 82 19121 is gratefully acknowledged any errors are my responsibility 103

input versus emission taxes environmental taxes in a mass balance and transaction costs perspective the standard policy recommendation to limit pollution is to use taxes or tradeable quotas on emissions a general emphasis on emissions does not however take proper account of the characteristics of the material flow through the economy an analysis of the relationships between transaction costs and features of this flow shows that it may be less costly to tax inputs into the economy the paper focuses on the advantages of a mass flow perspective in environmental economics the trade off between the precision of an environmental regulation and its implementation costs and develops criteria for choosing between input and emission related instruments

on strong independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods abstract we extend bergstrom and cornes 1983 to show that for strong independence of efficient allocations from distribution in a public goods economy the utility functions of all consumers must identically be of the form a y x i where y and x i are respectively the quantities of public good and private good for consumer i and a is some arbitrary function this implies that for an economy with heterogeneous consumer preferences it is impossible to ensure that any redistribution of private goods will remain efficient especially for boundary pareto optima

emission standards and stochastic waste load empirical work regarding the impact of environmental regulations on firm behavior has been developed under the assumption that emissions of pollutants are deterministic the implication is that the regulation is effective only when the constraint is exactly satisfied in real life however it is seldom the case that emission constraints are exactly satisfied the purpose of this paper is to find out whether regulation schemes are ineffective or whether the structure is an optimal reaction to random fluctuations in emissions the swedish pulp and paper industry is used as an empirical illustration

a cournot mechanism for pollution control under asymmetric information the contribution of this paper is to show that a simple nonlinear tax can achieve a long run socially optimal level of pollution without the regulator knowing marginal abatement costs firms are charged their differential contribution to total damages evaluated at the upper margin of current emissions this induces a cournot game in pollution levels we show that the nash equilibrium exists corresponds to the socially optimal long run output and emission levels and number of firms is stable and can be reached by iterative computations where conjectures are formed using a linear estimator based on past emission levels

heterogeneity returns to scale and collective action i analyze the effects of resource inequality and valuation heterogeneity on the provision of public goods with increasing or decreasing returns to scale in production the existing literature typically takes the agents characteristics as given and known to the researcher in contrast this paper compares collective action provision across groups of agents with resources and valuations for the public good drawn from different known joint distributions specifically i characterize the expected equilibrium public good level as function of various distributional properties and moments a resource valuation distribution that first order stochastically dominates another distribution always results in higher expected public good provision level independent of the production technology with decreasing returns to scale in the public good production higher resource inequality results in higher expected provision with increasing returns the same result holds when the mean resource level is relatively low but expected provision decreases in inequality when the mean resource level is high a parallel result holds for agents valuations l auteur analyse les effets de l inegalite des ressources et de l heterogeneite dans l evaluation de biens publics dont la production se fait avec des rendements croissants et decroissants a l echelle la litterature specialisee suggere habituellement que les caracteristiques des agents sont donnees et connues du chercheur a contrario ce memoire compare l action collective de groupes d agents dont les ressources et les evaluations du bien public sont tirees de distributions conjointes connues specifiquement le niveau d equilibre anticipe du bien public est fonction de divers moments et proprietes de ces distributions une distribution conjointe ressources evaluations qui en domine une autre au sens stochastique de premier ordre resulte toujours en un niveau de bien public anticipe plus eleve quelle que soit la technologie de production quand les rendements a l echelle sont decroissants une inegalite de ressources plus grande resulte en un niveau de bien public anticipe plus eleve quand les rendements sont croissants le meme resultat s ensuit si le niveau moyen de la ressource est relativement bas mais le niveau de bien public anticipe decroit quand le niveau moyen de la ressource est eleve des resultats paralleles sont notes pour ce qui est des evaluations du bien public par les agents

non point source pollution regulation as a multi task principal agent problem this paper considers a multi task principal agent problem where risk averse farmers possessing private information have two tasks pollution control and corn production but only direct incentive for corn production using a highly tractable reformulation of the standard uncertain production model a general method for solving the associated constrained paretian problem is developed and analyzed the optimal solution is shown to obey a generalized inverse elasticity rule and the optimal solution is characterized under a number of assumptions about the underlying technology and the role that pollution emission plays in reducing farmer risk

the assessment decentralisation and the economics of local government by almost universal agreement local government in the uk and especially its finance is in a mess after the major layfield committee of inquiry in the 1970s into local government finance after numerous other reports green papers and white papers the conservative government embarked on a radical attempt at reform firstly it tightened central control on the level of local authority spending through changes to the block grant and more recently ratecapping secondly it abolished theglc and other upper tier authorities in metropolitan areas thirdly it forced through a much wider use of tendering and subcontracting for local government services and finally it launched into a wholesale reform of local government finance based on the programme outlined in the 1986 green paper this includes centralising control over non domestic rates and replacing domestic rates with a new household tax the community charge to be paid at a flat rate by all adults

income and bargaining effects on education and health in brazil abstract this study examines the impacts of the 1991 reform of brazil s rural pension system on schooling and health indicators we conclude that the reform had significant positive effects on schooling especially on literacy for girls co residing with a male pensioner we were unable to find similar results for children living with a female pensioner we further investigated whether these results were driven by bargaining power differences within households our findings suggest that this explanation is plausible

transfers among divorced couples evidence and interpretation we analyze divorce settlements made by a cohort of whites who graduated from high school in 1972 the effects of spouses incomes on the divorce transfer are estimated and used to simulate the welfare effects of divorce on husbands wives and children under alternative assumptions about marriage contracts and the ability of a couple to continue coordinating resources in the aftermath of divorce we find a positive negative relationship between divorce transfers and the growth of husband s wife s earnings during marriage the estimated expenditure on children in the divorce state is only half the accustomed level during marriage

gorman and musgrave are dual an antipodean theorem on public goods abstract this paper examines the conditions under which the allocation branch of the government can determine the optimum provision of public goods independently of the distribution of private goods we draw attention to the duality with the literature on aggregation over consumers private goods economies

transaction costs communication and spatial coordination in payment for ecosystem services schemes agricultural producer participation and spatial coordination of land use decisions are key components for enhancing the effective delivery of ecosystem services from private land however inducing participation in payment for ecosystem services schemes for coordinating land management choices is challenging from a policy design perspective owing to transaction costs associated with participation this paper employs a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of such costs on participation and land use in the context of an agglomeration bonus ab scheme the ab creates a coordination game with multiple nash equilibria related to alternative spatially coordinated land use patterns the experiment varies transaction costs between two levels high and low which affects the risks and payoffs of coordinating on the different equilibria additionally an option to communicate is implemented between neighbors arranged on a local network to facilitate spatial coordination results indicate a significant difference in participation and performance under high and low transaction costs with lower uptake and performance when transaction costs are high these effects are however impacted by transaction costs faced in the past communication improves both ab participation rates and performance with the effect being greater for participants facing high transaction costs

perceptions of country corruption antecedents and outcomes globalization has increased the need for managers and future managers to predict the potential for country corruption this study examines the relationship between hofstede s cultural dimensions and how country corruption is perceived power distance individualism and masculinity were found to explain a significant portion of the variance in perceived corruption a significant portion of country s risk trade flow with u s a foreign investment and per capita income was explained by perceived corruption

fiscal implications of effluent charges and input taxes abstract taxing inputs that cause pollution is an alternative to effluent fees the literature has identified an economic relationship between these two market approaches that results in equivalent emission reductions however the fiscal implications of each approach may differ considerably this investigation shows total revenues collected from polluters under each instrument are identical only if the production of residuals exhibits constant returns to scale empirical estimates of the difference in revenues collected are presented for the case of deep percolated nitrate losses in irrigated agriculture

rent seeking and tax competition abstract regional or local governments often appear to favour the interests of those who own land in the region here the implications of this sort of policy making are modelled formally people are assumed perfectly mobile between regions but are assumed to own land only in the region of their birth the nash equilibrium is shown to be efficient if and only if no migration of capital or labour is needed to achieve efficiency otherwise tax competition leads to too little migration voluntary inter regional transfers will never arise in equilibrium despite the inefficiency of the nash equilibrium when there is migration a higher level of government cannot alter the equilibrium if regional governments choose policies simultaneously after the federal government has committed to its policies

partner choice investment in children and the marital college premium abstract we construct a model of household decision making in which agents consume a private and a public good interpreted as children s welfare children s utility depends on their human capital

host market government corruption and the equity based foreign entry strategies of multinational enterprises while extant theory suggests that the pervasiveness of host market government corruption should influence the equity ownership decisions of foreign investing multinational enterprises mnes empirical research has produced inconclusive results we leverage insights from transaction cost economics to advance an uncertainty oriented framework which can be used to explain the impact of host market government corruption on the equity based entry strategies of mnes we disaggregate government corruption into two distinct components grand corruption and petty corruption we propose that grand and petty corruption precipitate different types of uncertainty environmental and behavioral which motivate mnes to vary their equity based foreign entry strategies entry mode and partnering hypotheses pertaining to the entry strategies of mnes under conditions of more pervasive grand and petty corruption are developed and tested with a sample of 643 japanese investments in 30 countries between 2004 and 2007 we find that the main effect of grand corruption and the interaction between grand and petty corruption significantly impact a mne s entry mode further while more pervasive grand corruption increases the likelihood that a mne will engage in a joint venture investment with a host country partner we find that an increase in petty corruption heightens a mne s preference to invest with a home country partner

effects of an environmental tax on meat and dairy consumption in sweden this study evaluated the environmental impacts of introducing an environmental tax on meat and dairy consumption in sweden three meat products beef pork and chicken four dairy products milk fermented products cream and cheese and four pollutants generating environmental damage greenhouse gases ghg nitrogen ammonia and phosphorus were included in the analysis the unit tax applied corresponded to between 8 9 and 33 3 of the respective price per kg product in 2009 consumer response to the tax was calculated by econometric estimates of the almost ideal demand system aids for meat and dairy products using per capita consumption data and prices the results indicated relatively inelastic own price elasticities and high income elasticities for all meat products and slightly lower for dairy products simultaneous introduction of a tax on all seven products decreased emissions of ghg nitrogen ammonia and phosphorus from the livestock sector by up to 12

sustainable competitive advantage combining institutional and resource based views this article suggests that the context and process of resource selection have an important influence on firm heterogeneity and sustainable competitive advantage it is argued that a firm s sustainable advantage depends on its ability to manage the institutional context of its resource decisions a firm s institutional context includes its internal culture as well as broader influences from the state society and interfirm relations that define socially acceptable economic behavior a process model of firm heterogeneity is proposed that combines the insights of a resource based view with the institutional perspective from organization theory normative rationality institutional isolating mechanisms and institutional sources of firm homogeneity are proposed as determinants of rent potential that complement and extend resource based explanations of firm variation and sustainable competitive advantage the article suggests that both resource capital and institutional capital are indispensable to sustainable competitive advantage 1997 john wiley sons ltd

altruism and charitable giving in a fully replicated economy abstract in this paper an economy is analyzed where one group of agents the altruists cares about the well being of another group of agents the recipients it is asked how changes in the size of these groups affect the altruists charitable giving in the nash equilibrium i show that a pure group size effect i e a proportional expansion of both subgroups can lead to less free riding and to a lower degree of underprovision relative to the efficient level of charitable giving

administrative costs and instrument choice for stochastic non point source pollutants this paper extends the empiricalanalysis of non point source pollution to thecase where the pollutant is stochastic andalternative regulatory instruments havedifferent administrative costs it also appliesa method of stochastic programming whereemissions are log normally distributed forthe kennet catchment in south west england werank a range of policies in terms of abatementcosts alone and total costs abatement andadministrative costs on the basis ofabatement costs alone a uniform emission taxis the cost minimising policy but on the basisof total cost a nitrogen input tax is theleast cost policy furthermore the policyranking based on total costs changes as thereliability standard increases

choosing tax rates and public expenditure levels using majority rule abstract a sufficient condition is presented for a policy to be a condorcet winner when voters differ only in a single characteristic the condition is that all voters utility gradients with respect to the n different policy dimensions lie in the same plane in r n if the policy is a set of commodity tax rates then the condition is implied by the linearity of voters common engel curves if the policy includes levels of public good provision then the vectors of marginal willingness to pay for the various public goods of the different voters must all lie on the same line

the impact of corruption on entry strategy evidence from telecommunication projects in emerging economies with globalization and the growth in emerging economies multinational enterprises mnes now frequently confront challenges associated with corrupt governments already a growing body of research has demonstrated that corruption significantly reduces a countrys aggregate inflows of foreign direct investment through its effects on firm performance we move the analysis of corruption from aggregate financial flows toward managerial theory and practice by examining how firms adjust their strategy for entering foreign markets in corrupt environments and how different types of corruption affect firms choices building on institutional theory we predict that mnes will respond to pervasive and arbitrary corruption in a host country by selecting particular types of equity and nonequity modes of entry using data on 220 telecommunications development projects in 64 emerging economies we find that firms adapt to the pressures of corruption via short term contracting and entry into joint ventures we also find that the arbitrariness surrounding corrupt transactions has a significant impact on firms decisions in addition to the overall level of corruption in contrast to extant research we show that mnes use nonequity entry modes or partnering as an adaptive strategy to participate in markets despite the presence of corruption

agricultural runoff as a nonpoint externality a theoretical development the purpose of this paper is to develop and explore a theory dealing with an important facet of agricultural runoff problems agricultural runoff is a nonpoint externality with notable implications for both research and policy a nonpoint externality exists whenever the externality contributions of individual economic agents cannot be practically measured by direct monitoring without monitoring regulations on emissions cannot be enforced and charges or subsidies cannot be assessed thus policies which are usually suggested for pollution abatement are not available there is great need for a theoretical base that can adequately capture these facts such a theory yields some important implications even before specific empirical applications the economic problem of agricultural runoff can be separated into three distinct categories first the sediment nutrients and chemicals removed by runoff represent a loss of resources to the individual farmer these costs are borne privately by farmers second if the discount rate of the individual farmer is greater than the social discount rate or if the farmer has a planning horizon which is shorter than society s the farmer will mine the soil resource at a rate which is more depletive than is socially optimal this is a temporal externality a third category involves the conservation of mass physical resources lost by the individual farm must appear elsewhere in the environment in sufficient quantities these resources are pollutants since water is the primary transport media for these resources it is water that is polluted by soil nutrients and agricultural chemicals this spatial externality has been the focus of much research here we intend to develop a theory for these issues to employ it to suggest a revised research methodology and to provide some important conclusions about alternative runoff policies only two of the three categories of agricultural runoff problems involve externalities and only the spatial externality is considered here

the producer welfare effects of trade liberalization when goods are perishable and habit forming the case of asparagus asparagus is a perishable highly seasonal crop we find that out of season imports of asparagus caused habit formation that increased demand in the u s growing seasons we find that habit effects offset about 64 of the welfare losses to u s asparagus producers from increased mexican imports under nafta and all of the u s producer welfare losses from increased peruvian imports under the andean trade preference act we estimate that the u s producer welfare losses from nafta are less than the annualized value of market loss assistance provided them in the 2008 farm bill jel classifications d12 f130 q17 q18

wealth culture and corruption this paper examines the impact of national wealth income distribution government size and four cultural variables on the perceived level of corruption in a country the study finds that corruption is significantly correlated to gnp per capita power distance masculinity and uncertainty avoidance significant interaction effects occur in collectivistic and high power distance countries suggestions for future research are developed

testable implications of transferable utility although the transferable utility tu assumption is widely used in micro theory little is known about its testable consequences and in particular how one can from the observation of a group s demand test whether the tu assumption is satisfied within this group we derive a set of necessary and sufficient conditions on demand that characterize the tu context the conditions are of two types first tu requires the group to behave as a single decision maker secondly within the unitary setting the representative utility generated by a tu framework must be of the generalized quasi linear gql form we derive testable properties of the demand function that fully characterize gql utilities these additional restrictions only involve specifi cp rices namely those of the goods that are publicly consumed within the household

an effective allocation criterion for co2 emissions abstract the kyoto protocol has set relatively easy targets for emission limitations for annex i parties these are not sufficient to save the earth from climate change or to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference of the climate it is the contention of the authors that eventually all parties to the protocol will have to undertake commitments equal per capita emissions with simple and transparent adjustments for the short and medium term could be the most equitable basis for allocating emissions rights it is reasonable to accept an individual as the unit of account since we are discussing anthropogenic emissions i e those which are generated by humans besides being equitable for any criterion to be successful it should be effective and implementable in order to be effective global emissions have to be restricted to a pre determined level this is possible with the widest participation which would include both annex i and non annex i countries the approach should be practical flexible and one which is easy to implement this paper proposes a very simple exposition of the common but differentiated responsibility concept article 4 1 of the fccc it aims to strike a balance between the concerns relating to the choice of the numeraire viz population and gdp in determining emission targets in other words both equity and efficiency considerations are addressed in the approach suggested herein the authors would like to acknowledge dr leo schrattenholzer for providing invaluable comments and dr tom wigley for providing critical information

when is efficiency separable from distribution in the provision of club goods abstract using the homogeneous of degree zero inverse congestion quality function employed most frequently in the literature we characterise completely the families of utility functions which are then necessary and sufficient for break even utilitarian welfare maximising provision of club goods with self selection to be separable from distribution two types of separation involving alternatively a the price and quality b the price quality facility size and total utilisation are considered when separation is possible utility functions and optimal decisions take simple intuitive forms our results extend the scope of separation results previously obtained only for pure public goods journal of economic literature classification numbers d62 h23 h40

a new approach to business fluctuations heterogeneous interacting agents scaling laws and financial fragility abstract in this paper we discuss a scaling approach to business fluctuations our starting point consists in recognizing that concepts and methods derived from physics have allowed economists to re discover a set of stylized facts which have to be satisfactorily accounted for in their models standard macroeconomics based on a reductionist approach centered on the representative agent is definitely badly equipped for this task on the contrary we show that a simple financial fragility agent based model based on complex interactions of heterogeneous agents is able to replicate a large number of scaling type stylized facts with a remarkable high degree of statistical precision

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

corruption and development a review of issues in this paper we start with a discussion of some of the different denotations of the problem of corruption we then consider the ways in which the damaging consequences of corruption operate in a developing economy while not ignoring its possible redeeming features in some cases we pursue the question of why corruption is perceptibly so different in different societies and also persistent finally we examine the feasible policy issues that arise in this context

necessary and sufficient conditions for single peakedness in public economic models abstract median voter results have played a central role in public economic analyses where there is a linearly ordered set of policy alternatives that is to be voted on in these analyses the median voter results themselves have been based on voters preferences being single peaked with respect to the ordering for this set in this paper we derive conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for such single peakedness to occur whenever we have economic decision makers this leads to certain new median voter results in addition it also reveals some important limitations on median voter analyses

optimal climate policies in a dynamic multi country equilibrium model abstract this paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with an arbitrary number of different regions to study the economic consequences of climate change under alternative climate policies regions differ with respect to their state of economic development factor endowments and climate damages and trade on global markets for capital output and exhaustible resources our main result derives an optimal climate policy consisting of an emissions tax and a transfer policy the optimal tax can be determined explicitly in our framework and is independent of any weights attached to the interests of different countries such weights only determine optimal transfers which distribute tax revenues across countries we infer that the real political issue is not the tax policy required to reduce global warming but rather how the burden of climate change should be shared via transfer payments between different countries we propose a simple transfer policy which induces a pareto improvement relative to the laissez faire solution a calibrated example quantifies pareto improving transfers between rich and poor countries

both sides of the coin motives for corruption among public officials and business employees the aim of this study is to better understand why public officials and business employees engage in corruption insight into individual level explanations for corruption was obtained with the aid of a self report survey the results suggest that the most indicative factors of whether or not individuals are corruption prone are as follows the moral conviction they have to refrain from corruption perceptions of whether their colleagues approve of and engage in corruption and difficulties experienced in complying with the rules on corruption this result pattern was identical for public officials and business employees alike and as a consequence for both sides of corrupt acts the latter indicates that the same motives may not only underlie corruption in both private and public sectors but also the act of corruption in its active and passive forms the results of the current study do not provide strong support for the assumption that economic considerations expected costs and benefits are crucial in predicting corruption based on the findings that norms and the perceived opportunity to comply are dominant factors in explaining corruption this article focuses on the practical implications for the development of anti corruption strategies within both public and private sectors

boundary optima and the theory of public goods supply abstract this paper derives a generalized optimality condition that is valid for all boundary optima in an economy with many public goods and one private good this condition is then used to show that there is an open subset of pareto optima where samuelson s condition does not hold finally it is shown that allocation and distribution are inextricable at these optima even under conditions that guarantee independence of allocation and distribution at interior optima

collective decision making and heterogeneity in tastes this article begins by proposing a random taste parameterization of a quadratic extension of the piglog demand system at the household level which is consistent with exact aggregation this variation in tastes is a random function of household characteristics the econometric implication is that a well defined heteroscedastic error enters the demand system this heteroscedasticity can be handled by a gmm technique using a large canadian cross sectional household data set and the quadratic almost ideal demand system homoscedasticity is rejected however when heteroscedasticity is allowed for there are no longer inconsistencies between the theoretical and empirical evidence particularly with respect to the collective decision making properties of homogeneity sr1 symmetry and distribution factor proportionality and linearity

government markets and the theory of the nth best abstract there is increasing interest in having the us government create markets in property rights to allocate various resources such as landing rights and environmental quality the purpose of this paper is to provide some general guidelines for the more efficient organization of such markets the analysis examines the problem of devising efficient government markets when there are multiple inputs to the production process subject to different taxes and regulations it develops some simple rules of thumb for the design of markets and examines how they can be applied to problems involving regulated utilities

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

pigouvian taxation with administrative costs abstract this paper examines how the optimal pigouvian tax should be adjusted to reflect adminisrative costs several cases are examined depending on whether the administrative costs are fixed per firm taxed or are a function of the amount of tax collected and on whether such costs are borne by the government or by the taxed firm in some cases the presence of administrative costs leads to an optimal tax greater than the external cost while in other cases it leads to a tax less than the external cost

optimal government finance policy and exchange rate management in a stochastically growing open economy abstract optimal monetary policy is analyzed in a stochastic small open economy consisting of risk averse representative agents the analysis shows how optimal monetary policy should be directed toward an optimal interest rate target this target which maximizes the intertemporal utility of the representative agent is determined by balancing off the marginal gains of a higher interest rate on increased growth and the future consumption it generates against the marginal losses stemming from a reduction in the holdings of real money balances the paper shows how an appropriately set monetary growth rate eliminates the need for continuous intervention in the exchange market

sorting by foot travel for local public goods and equilibrium stratification we re examine tiebout s hypothesis of endogenous sorting in a competitive spatial equilibrium framework by considering both income and preference heterogeneity and by allowing agents to decide endogenously the number of visits to a travel for local public good the equilibrium configuration may be completely segregated incompletely segregated or completely integrated depending on relative market rents and income preference local tax parameters a segregated equilibrium may feature endogenous sorting purely by income or by both income and preferences while the rich need not be closer to the local public facility site multiple equilibria may arise when the equilibrium configuration is incompletely segregated jel classification d50 h41 classification par deplacement biens publics locaux accessibles par deplacement et stratification d equilibre les auteurs reexaminent l hypothese de tiebout de classification endogene dans un cadre d equilibre spatial concurrentiel en tenant compte a la fois de l heterogeneite des revenus et des preferences ainsi qu en permettant aux agents de decider de maniere endogene du nombre de visites pour se procurer un bien public local par deplacement il peut s ensuivre des equilibres de segregation complete de segregation incomplete ou d integration complete selon les rentes relatives et les parametres de revenus de preferences ou de fiscalite locale un equilibre de segregation peut entrainer une classification endogene sur la base seulement des revenus ou sur la base des revenus et des preferences alors que les riches n ont pas besoin d etre plus proches du site du bien public local des equilibres multiples peuvent surgir quand la configuration d equilibre en est une de segregation incomplete

the two index pigl demand system abstract the extended pigl demand system is shown to be the only solution to a two index income aggregation problem where at least one index is the sample mean of income and aggregate quantities are aggregate demands

spatial heterogeneity and the choice of instruments to control nonpoint pollution because it is difficult to monitor emissions and to implement differentialtaxes and standards uniform taxes and standards on agricultural chemicaluse are often proposed and used to control nonpoint source pollution thisarticle analyzes the relative efficiency of these uniform instruments in thepresence of spatial heterogeneity we show that the relative slopes of themarginal pollution cost and marginal profit of chemical use are only one ofthe factors that affect the relative efficiency other factors includecorrelation between marginal pollution costs and marginal profits and theslope and variability of marginal profits in addition a uniform tax mayresult in some farmers not using the chemical and a uniform standard mayhave no effect on low input land we show empirically that the presence ofcorner solutions can reverse a conventional finding of tax or standardsuperiority based on the relative slop rule

distributive justice corruption and entrepreneurial behavior this article introduces equity theory to the economic growth literature to examine whether a relationship exists between perceptions of distributive justice and the productivity of entrepreneurial behavior using survey responses from 317 entrepreneurs in india we find that productive entrepreneurship is positively related to distributive justice perceptions but negatively related to perceptions that corruption is pervasive in contrast nonproductive forms of entrepreneurship are negatively related to distributive justice but positively related to corruption unexpectedly the findings also show that corruption mediates the relationship between distributive justice and legal entrepreneurial behavior while distributive justice mediates the relationship between corruption and illegal entrepreneurial behavior we conclude with a discussion of the study s findings and their implications for entrepreneurship and economic growth

the microfoundations project in general equilibrium theory the author 1 argues that the long lived microfoundations project based on general equilibrium models has come to an end and 2 shows that non walrasian models intended to provide microfoundations for macroeconomics are inadequate the arguments are derived from the sonnenschein mantel debreu smd demonstration of the arbitrariness of aggregate excess demands in general equilibrium models of the walrasian arrow debreu mckenzie type the issues raised have significance for the proper method of modeling macroeconomic phenomena for instance the smd results have led a growing number of general equilibrium theorists to make assumptions concerning macroeconomic structure in order to analyze other regularities at the macro level these points validate the position that systematic macroeconomic phenomena are intrinsically macroeconomic copyright 1994 by oxford university press

equity as a prerequisite for stability of cooperation on global public good provision analysing cooperative provision of a global public good such as climate protection we explore the relationship between equitable burden sharing on the one hand and core stability on the other to assess the size of the burden which a public good contribution entails for a country we make use of a specific measure based on moulin econometrica 55 963 977 1987 in particular we show that a pareto optimal allocation which is not in the core can always be blocked by a group of countries with the highest moulin sacrifices in this sense it is the overburdening and thus unfair treatment of some countries that provides the reason for core instability by contrast a pareto optimal allocation is in the core if the public good contributions are fairly equally distributed according to their moulin sacrifices the potential implications of our theoretical analysis for global climate policy are also discussed

integration oriented strategies host market corruption and the likelihood of foreign subsidiary exit from emerging markets extant research has found that more pronounced levels of corruption in foreign host emerging markets increase the likelihood that subsidiaries established by multinational enterprises mnes from developed countries will exit we synthesize insights from the organizational perspective of corruption and the integration responsiveness paradigm to propose that integration oriented strategies will weaken the positive relationship between corruption and the likelihood of exit at high levels of host market corruption we develop and test hypotheses pertaining to the main effect of corruption on the likelihood of subsidiary exit as well as the moderating impacts of a firm s equity ownership strategy and its expatriate staffing strategy upon this relationship we theorize that uncertainty operates as the mechanism that underpins the corruption market exit relationship and that an mne s strategic choices with respect to its subsidiary investments contribute to reducing this uncertainty we find that an increase in the foreign investing mne s equity ownership share negatively moderates the positive relationship between corruption and the likelihood that foreign subsidiaries established by developed market mnes will exit host emerging markets when corruption is high however the marginal effects results do not support the expatriate staffing strategy hypothesis our work provides guidance to developed country mnes that seek insights with respect to the utility of strategies that might be implemented in host emerging markets characterized by more pronounced levels of corruption

coexistence of gm and non gm crops with endogenously determined separation the possibility that genetically modified gm crops may contaminate non gm crops through pollen mediated gene flow presents a challenge to coexistence of gm agriculture with conventional and organic farming systems in this paper an analytical model of coexistence is developed that allows for endogenous derivation of efficient widths and allocation of pollen barriers to limit contamination of non gm crops to reflect the uncertainty that surrounds pollen dispersal mechanisms the model contains a stochastic contamination function and safety rule decision mechanism constraining the level of contamination to remain below a tolerated adventitious presence with a given probability two policies are considered and their performance is tested the tolerance level of adventitious presence and the allocation of responsibility for implementing coexistence measures to either gm or non gm farmers the relative size of gm rents the value of productivity gains and the non pecuniary benefits from gm crops rents for identity preserved non gm crops price premiums realised over the gm crop price characteristics of farms and possible variation in agricultural landscapes are also taken into account the findings indicate that conventional adventitious presence tolerances can be met without ex ante mandating large widths of pollen barriers at the policy level the findings of this paper are relevant for setting region specific pollen barriers widths and or for establishing institutions that facilitate cooperative coexistence

the impact of corruption on firm tax compliance in transition economies whom do you trust tax compliance is an important issue for gov ernments and the public alike to meet public needs and fund public mandates firms around the world are expected to comply with tax laws factors that are related to orga nizational firm tax compliance have not been sufficiently examined in the literature owing to the increasing global influence of transition economies factors associated with firm tax compliance in transition economies are particu larly of interest based on a sample of over 5 000 firms from 22 former soviet bloc transition economies we find that higher levels of corruption and higher levels of par ticularized trust reliance on friends and family are asso ciated with lower levels of tax compliance interestingly we also find that the negative relationship between cor ruption and tax compliance is weakened in situations of higher generalized trust trust in strangers overall our study s results suggest that institutional factors play an important role and are related to firm tax compliance behavior in transition economies

a fresh look at the rotten kid theorem and other household mysteries gary becker s rotten kid theorem asserts that if all family members receive gifts of money income from a benevolent household member then even if the household head does not precommit to an incentive plan for family members it will be in the interest of selfish family members to maximize total family income i show by examples that the rotten kid theorem is not true without assuming transferable utility i find a simple condition on utility functions that is necessary and sufficient for there to be the kind of transferable utility needed for a rotten kid theorem while restrictive these conditions still allow one to apply the strong conclusions of the rotten kid theorem in an interesting class of examples

household bargaining over fertility theory and evidence from malaysia we develop and test a model of household bargaining over fertility when transfers between spouses are possible the model makes precise how the fertility preferences of each spouse translate into fertility outcomes we show this depends on whether or not spouses can commit to their future actions within marriage if couples bargain with commitment fertility outcomes take account of both spouses fertility preferences and do not depend on the threat point in marital bargaining if couples bargain without commitment the influence of each spouse s fertility preference on fertility outcomes depends on the relevant threat point in marital bargaining and the distribution of bargaining power we test the models using household data from the malaysia family life survey this data set contains information on each spouse s desired fertility level as well as fertility outcomes we exploit differences in threat points in marital bargaining across ethnic groups to help identify the underlying bargaining model the evidence suggests couples bargain without commitment

reflections on the double dividend debate we survey the history of carbon taxation the range of market based instruments mbis of environmental control and the state of the double dividend debate in order to suggest directions for future research into mbis returning mbi revenues as lower distortionary taxes rather than as lump sums raises aggregate welfare but we favour mbis which raise little or no revenue for reasons of political acceptability to interest groups at the same time the overall case for any environmental improvement is weaker because of general equilibrium interactions with prior distortionary taxes research seems most necessary on quantifying the efficiency benefits of market control of heterogeneous polluters the benefits of environmental improvement the tax interaction effect and the various information costs of an mbi all on a case by case basis for different pollutants and places

gender and corruption in business abstractare firms with female owners or managers less corrupt than other firms we test this question using firm level data on corruption ownership and management we find that women in positions of influence are associated with less corruption female owners are associated with a lower incidence of bribery and report smaller levels of bribery moreover corruption is seen as less of an obstacle in companies where women are represented in top management by providing evidence that women are associated with lower levels of corruption in business our research contributes to the literature on development gender equality and corruption

emission taxes versus other environmental policies in the environmental policy of most countries various forms of quotas and direct regulation are more important than environmental taxes this paper addresses four arguments which are often given against the use of emission taxes the three arguments related to information asymmetries and non convexities are valid in the sense that they point to complications in the use of environmental taxes the fourth argument is related to the employment effects of different types of environmental policies in economies with unemployment although this argument is frequently used by politicians the analysis provides no justification for it on the contrary in the model used employment is higher with environmental taxes than with nonrevenue raising environmental policies

why firms engage in corruption a top management perspective this study builds upon the top management literature to predict and test antecedents to firms engagement in corruption building on a survey of 341 executives in india we find that if executives have social ties with government officials their firms are more likely to engage in corruption further these executives are likely to rationalize engaging in corruption as a necessity for being competitive the results collectively illustrate the role that executives social ties and perceptions have in shaping illegal actions of their respective firms

the social organization of conspiracy illegal networks in the heavy electrical equipment industry we analyze the social organization of three well known price fixing conspiracies in the heavy electrical equipment industry although aspects of collusion have been studied by industrial organization economists and organizational criminologists the organization of conspiracies has remained virtually unexplored using archival data we reconstruct the actual communication networks involved in conspiracies in switchgear transformers and turbines we find that the structure of illegal networks is driven primarily by the need to maximize concealment rather than the need to maximize efficiency however network structure is also contingent on information processing requirements imposed by product and market characteristics our individual level model predicts verdict guilt or innocence sentence and fine as functions of personal centrality in the illegal network network structure management level and company size people of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some diversion to raise prices

the mnc as an agent of change for host country institutions fdi and corruption most empirical research examines how the institutional environment of corruption shapes the behavior of multinational corporations mncs in this study we would like to highlight the other side of the picture how the presence of mncs may shape the institutional environment of corruption over time we propose three avenues through which the mncs may have an impact on its host institutions regulatory pressure effect demonstration effect and professionalization effect based on extensive data on foreign direct investment and corruption for a large sample of countries over the last 30 years the empirical results are generally consistent with our hypothesis such findings provide a glimmer of hope for the future of the host country where corruption is prevalent

collectivism and corruption in commercial loan production how to break the curse recent research suggests that collectivism breeds corruption in bank lending this finding together with the stickiness of culture poses a direct challenge to economic growth in collectivist societies in this paper we address this grim outlook by examining the types of firms that are susceptible to the detrimental effect of collectivism on lending integrity and the formal institutions that can help alleviate such effect we find that the adverse effect of collectivism on bank corruption is more severe in small and medium sized firms privately owned firms and non exporting firms while it is considerably weaker in countries with more effective private monitoring a higher lower fraction of foreign owned government owned banks a more competitive banking sector better information sharing and stronger legal and political institutions our findings are robust to using alternative measures of collectivism and alternative dependent variables these results highlight how firm level characteristics and formal institutions interact with collectivism in affecting firms access to bank credit

marriage markets and assortative mating with household public goods theoretical results and empirical implications this paper analyzes marriage market equilibria when the gains from marriage result from joint consumption of household public goods assuming transferable utility within marriage the paper proves that marriage markets will be characterized by positive assortative mating on wealth when spouses differ only in endowments and the gains to marriage result only from public goods when spouses differ in wages and household public goods are produced at home the results imply offsetting effects with public good economies creating an incentive for positive assortative mating on wages and gains from specialization creating an incentive for negative assortative mating on wages the results help explain the persistent lack of empirical support for becker s prediction of negative assortative mating on wages and have implications for empirical analysis of all joint living arrangement decisions

independence of allocative efficiency from distribution in the theory of public goods when is the pareto optimal amount of public goods independent of income distribution subject to some regularity conditions the answer is when preferences of every individual i can be represented by a utility function of the form u x i y a y x i b i y where x i is i s consumption of private goods and y is the amount of public goods

random wastes imperfect monitoring and environmental quality standards abstract this paper considers a firm s choice of optimal pollution abatement strategy in an environment where pollution licences are purchased through a market and a fine is levied for pollution in excess of the licences held the pollution associated with any level of abatement is stochastic and the authority monitors pollution via a random sample of observations firms choose cost minimising values for the mean and variance of emissions and the authority selects its sample size and the number of licences issued to achieve an exogenous level of environmental quality with abatement costs and monitoring costs at a minimum level

bribe or die gender differences in entrepreneurship in emerging markets this paper examines the relation between gender differences in entrepreneurship and firm level bribery one of the most impactful business obstacles to private sector growth using data from a comp

an incentive approach to land set aside programs abstract this paper is devoted to a theoretical analysis of policies aiming at reducing the supply of agricultural produce through contractual or mandatory land set aside the model relies on contract theory under adverse selection it allows us to evaluate the impact of asymmetric information about yields on the optimal price support policy and on land set aside specifically we analyze an optimal contractual policy consisting of a subsidy system which makes transfers dependent on the set aside area and a policy of mandatory land set aside applying uniformly to all farms and ignoring incentive constraints numerical simulations allow us to assess and compare the respective effects of these policies

research issues in nonpoint pollution control research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution or to ambient pollution concentrations both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution however input based incentives will generally have to be second best to make implementation practical design issues include which inputs to monitor and the rates to apply to them the limited research indicates that second best input based incentives can be effective in adjusting input use in environmentally desirable ways alternatively ambient based incentives have theoretical appeal because efficient policy design appears to be less complex than for input based incentives these incentives have no track record nor close analogues that demonstrate potential effectiveness however research on how households and firms might react in response to ambient based incentives is needed before these instruments can be seriously considered

the samuelson condition and the lindahl scheme in networks abstract we study optimal provision of public goods in the network showing that the samuelson condition and the lindahl scheme can both be substantially extended to characterize the expenditure on such public goods couched in terms of the structure of the network the extended samuelson condition and lindahl scheme formulate precisely how the local publicness of a local public good fundamentally determines its optimal provision and the personalized price that the lindahl tax payer faces independence of the optimal allocation from the distribution of resources at interior samuelsonian solutions in the network generally fails to hold even for the bergstrom cornes preferences

heterogeneity biases distributional effects and aggregate consumption an empirical analysis using stratified microdata using stratified microdata from the canadian famex 78 86 surveys this paper investigates whether observed heterogeneity in marginal propensities to consume across strata actually hinders the aggregation process despite significant heterogeneity in marginal responses the divergences between aggregate predicted consumption and the predictions from a model that uses average strata responses are found to be small whenever the strata demands are approximatively linear at the mean and the commodity group considered is not a luxury good on the other hand some cross sectional estimates obtained by pooling the strata are shown to be contaminated by unwanted cross moments further the analysis reconciles the fact that while there exists significant heterogeneity in consumer demands the related distributional effects in the aggregate equation have not been found to be important

optimal production of transplant care services most organ transplants are from dead donors national transplant organizations exhibit considerable differences in terms of their donor population rates spain s organization is by far the most efficient in this respect we argue that much of the productivity advantage of spain s transplant organization proceeds from an efficient organization of the production chain from organ procurement to transplantation transplants from dead donors are analogous to a common resource for the transplant community their circulation through the national transplant organization creates public good externalities between the care units in charge of organ retrieval and those in charge of transplantation a socially efficient production of transplant care services obtains through an optimal control by the national transplant agency of both the circulation and the production of transplants in particular transplant shortage makes the rotten kid theorem fail in this context the analysis also produces a natural measure of public good externalities evaluated from the standpoint of care units

uniformity versus differentiation in regulating externalities abstract in the regulation of pollutant emissions a regulator may treat different sources with different costs and environmental damage as though they were the same for institutional informational or transaction cost reasons this may occur despite the efficiency gains from regulatory differentiation of sources this issue has been a source of much controversy in the environmental economics literature and is examined here from a theoretical perspective using a two pollutant economy emissions and net social benefits are compared for the case of efficient differentiated regulation and the case of uniform undifferentiated regulation of the aggregate of the two pollutants we show when aggregate emissions will be greater than equal to or less than efficient emissions and we derive conditions for each of these three possibilities further we show that when marginal costs and benefits become more steeply sloped the inefficiency associated with undifferentiated regulation increases

matching as a cure for underprovision of voluntary public good supply abstract matching mechanisms are widely regarded as providing a promising way to cure the public good underprovision problem but the pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium emerges only under very special conditions however we show that public good underprovision is normally avoided