where there is a will there is a way assessing the impact of obstacles to innovation the aim of this article is to assess the impact of obstacles to innovation on firms propensity to innovate we show that distinguishing between firms that do not innovate because they do not intend to and firms that try but fail or give up because of insurmountable obstacles is key for properly measuring the impact of the barriers to innovation estimating an innovation production function on appropriately defined subsamples allows obtaining consistent results i e a significant and negative impact of the obstacles to innovation on firms propensity to innovate these results are robust to the definition of these subsamples to the way obstacles to innovation are defined as well as to the distinction between financial and nonfinancial obstacles

cost reduction competition and industry performance in many markets firms compete over time by expending resources with the purpose of reducing their costs sometimes the cost reducing investments operate directly on costs in many instances they take the form of developing new products that deliver what customers need more cheaply therefore product development can have the same ultimate effect as direct cost reduction in fact if one thinks of the product as the services it delivers to the customer in the way that lancaster pioneered then product development often is just cost reduction

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

is there a double dividend from anti sprawl policies abstract this paper examines the welfare effects of anti sprawl policies such as development tax in a simple spatial explicit urban model with two market failures urban decline at the city core and underprovision of open space amenities at the urban fringe and pre existing distortionary property tax used to fund public services and improvements to mitigate urban decline consistent with prior double dividend literature there is a tax interaction effect that occurs between the development tax and the pre existing property tax however there are two fundamental differences between the tax interaction effect identified here and that of prior literature ours one has two components first there is a cost side tax interaction effect that is spatially concentrated at the urban fringe as only agents at the urban fringe alter their behavior in response to the development tax second there is also a benefit side tax interaction effect as increases in open space at the urban fringe are capitalized into housing prices throughout the city in contrast to prior literature we find that the empirical importance of the combined tax interaction effect is of substantially less importance and as a consequence the likelihood of a double dividend is higher than in prior studies further we show that the development tax should be part of the local tax system even in the absence of open space benefits

the cost of pollution on longevity welfare and economic stability this paper presents an overlapping generations model where pollution private and public health expenditures are all determinants of longevity public expenditures financed through labour taxation provide both public health and abatement we study the role of these three components of longevity on welfare and economic stability at the steady state we show that an appropriate fiscal policy may enhance welfare however when pollution is heavily harmful for longevity the economy might experience aggregate instability or endogenous cycles nonetheless a fiscal policy which raises the share of public spending devoted to health may display stabilizing virtues and rule out cycles this allows us to recommend the design of the public policy that may comply with the dynamic and welfare objectives

non farm income household welfare and sustainable land management in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model has been calibrated to the socio economic and biophysical characteristics of a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought necessitates development of non farm employment opportunities in the area the model has been used to assess the impact of improved access to non farm income on household welfare agricultural production conservation investments and land degradation in the form of soil erosion the model simulations indicate that access to low wage off farm income is restricted by lack of employment opportunities since households otherwise would have engaged in more off farm wage employment than observed the simulations show that better unconstrained access to low wage non farm income has a substantial positive effect on household income total agricultural production crop and livestock production and farm inputs used are reduced when access to non farm employment is improved and thus increases the need to import food to the area access to non farm income reduces farm households incentives to invest in conservation and this leads to more overall soil erosion and more rapid land degradation even though intensity of production is reduced special policies are therefore needed to ensure land conservation and to sustain local food production

pollution private investment in healthcare and environmental policy in this paper we demonstrate that in a two period overlapping generations model the relationship between environmental taxation and economic activity output level and growth has an inverted u shape when we take into account the detrimental impact of pollution on health and the individual decision of each working age agent to improve her health we also demonstrate that the link between environmental tax and lifetime welfare also has an inverted u shape and that a tighter environmental policy might enhance economic activity while reducing steady state lifetime welfare finally we investigate the social optimum and the determinants of the optimal environmental tax

optimal taxation and cross price effects on labor supply estimates of the optimal gas tax abstract this study estimates parameters necessary to calculate the optimal second best gasoline tax most notably the cross price elasticity between gasoline and leisure prior theoretical work indicates the importance of this elasticity but despite this almost none of the prior studies of commodity taxation and none of the studies on second best environmental regulation actually estimate it using household data we find that gasoline is a relative complement to leisure and thus that the optimal gasoline tax is significantly higher than marginal damages the opposite of the result suggested by the bulk of the prior literature indeed even if there were no externalities at all associated with gasoline the optimal tax rate would still be almost equal to the average gas tax rate in the u s following this approach to estimate cross price elasticities with leisure could strongly influence estimates of optimal rates for other important commodity or pollution taxes

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

can peers improve agricultural revenue crop revenues vary greatly among farmers and the source of that variation is not fully understood even after controlling for factors including input use technology adoption and other agro climatic factors one hypothesis that may explain the variation in outcomes among farmers is differential access to information through peers using a household survey from india containing detailed information about personal relationships we estimate peer effects on cash crop revenue using a novel spatial econometric technique to control for reflection our results show that 60 of farmers revenue is explained by peers peer effects are particularly large in pesticide use and in the cultivation of a new crop however peer effects in input expenditures and land allocation cannot fully explain the variation in revenue implying peers may also associate with management negotiation and marketing we find that peer effects are significant among farmers self reported peers especially among those peers who are farmers main advisors for agricultural matters although caste based networks both within the same and in adjacent villages are important their effect is smaller than that of self reported peer networks we empirically rule out that our effects are driven by other factors such as geographically correlated unobservables farmers following a lead farmer or economies of scale our findings speak to both the potential and the limitations of peers as sources of agricultural information and highlight the need for future research about how to best integrate peers into agricultural extension

optimal health and environmental policies in a pollution growth nexus abstract this paper shows how policies aimed at insuring health risks and those intended to improve the environment are and should be deeply intertwined in the model economy inspired by recent chinese experience pollution raises the likelihood of future poor health prompting households to save more so as to self insure against anticipated medical expenses increased household saving generates more capital while capital use by firms generates more pollution along the transition such a pollution growth nexus may be attractive from a capital accumulation perspective however rising pollution via the health channel hurts welfare both insurance and environmental policies affect capital accumulation and can have additional dynamic benefits the availability of private health insurance to top up pay as you go coverage of medical bills along with a pigouvian tax on emissions and a profit tax can replicate the first best

optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency with an externality in an overlapping generations model abstract this paper examines optimal tax rules and public sector efficiency integrating them in a second best world with pollution by using an overlapping generations model the second best world is characterized by the comparative statics of green preferences the main results obtained are as follows first the marginal cost of public funds may be reduced by the externalities regardless of the choice of taxes second optimal environmental and non environmental tax rules are additively and directly affected by the dynamic efficiency of capital accumulation per unit labour decal and indirectly by it through the efficiency of the public sector environmental taxes going beyond pigovian ones may be welfare improving if the decal is improved by the environmental tax even optimal non environmental tax rules should additively and directly counter the dynamics of pollution to consider the income effects of the optimal tax system for the future third the additivity property or the principle of targeting does not hold even in the absence of incentive compatibility constraints the essential reasons for this are clarified as follows distortions that should be countered by taxes that is the income effects of the optimal tax system and the decal in this model break the equality between optimal environmental taxes and the externalities measured by governments finally growing environmental concerns may in fact increase pollution the inverse relationship between environmental and labour income taxes may not hold

children s environmental health education and economic development this article aims at investigating the interplay between environmental quality health and economic development in a unified olg framework human capital accumulation depends on the environment through its impact on children s health and workers productivity in turn environmental quality dynamics rely upon human capital that determines maintenance efforts this two way relationship generates a co evolution of human capital and environmental quality in the long run along the transition path the dynamic interactions between economic and environmental spheres allow for replicating two different trajectories some economies experiment an environmental kuznets curve while some others are caught into the environmental poverty trap

flows of air pollution ill health and welfare we provide a theoretical framework for measuring welfare when pollution influences economic growth by impairing health and driving up defensive medical expenditures we demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in practice by applying it to data from swedish valuation studies designed according to the accounting principles suggested here we estimate that the negative health effects of nitrogen dioxide emissions amount to 0 6 of gdp in sweden we also show that a corrective pigouvian tax should internalize the direct disutility reduced labor productivity and increased healthcare expenditures caused by pollution according to our calculations harmful health impacts alone excluding ecosystem effects justify 65 of the current swedish tax on nitrogen dioxide

emigration to south africa s mines this paper presents a simultaneous econometric model of both the determinants of international migration to the south african mines and of some of the economic consequences for each of the labor supplying countries not only are the short run effects of labor withdrawal on traditional crop cultivation and the domestic wage labor markets considered but also the long term effects of savings from mine earnings invested in crops and cattle in the home countries the experiences of botswana lesotho malawi mozambique and the south african homelands are compared it is shown that emigration to the south african mines has reduced crop production in the subsistence sectors of botswana lesotho malawi and the south african homelands in the short run but the results also suggest that earnings of migrants have enhanced both crop productivity and cattle accumulation in the longer run except in lesotho excerpt

health effects and optimal environmental taxes abstract the literature on environmental taxation in the presence of pre existing distortionary taxes has shown that interactions with these distortions tend to raise the cost of an environmental tax and thus that the optimal environmental tax is less than marginal environmental damages a recent paper by schwartz and repetto 2000 challenges this finding arguing that the health benefits from reduced pollution will also interact with pre existing taxes and may cause the optimal environmental tax to exceed marginal damages schwartz and repetto s analysis represented health effects implicitly in the utility function in contrast the present paper explicitly represents health effects in an analytically tractable general equilibrium model this model shows that interactions with health effects from pollution actually will tend to reduce the optimal environmental tax contradicting schwartz and repetto s conclusion this demonstrates the usefulness of explicitly modeling health effects and it reinforces the general notion that tax interactions tend to raise the costs of an environmental tax

risk sharing and public transfers we use public transfers in the form of food aid to test for the presence of risk sharing arrangements at the village level in rural ethiopia we reject perfect risk sharing but find evidence of partial risk sharing via transfers there is also evidence consistent with crowding out of informal insurance linked to food aid programmes

strategic r d with spillovers collusion and welfare the author considers a two stage r d then output or price duopoly game in which r d spills over so reducing the marginal cost of both the investing firm and its rival the author compares the noncooperative regime to three collusive regimes joint venture collusion on r d price fixing collusion at the price or output stage and merger collusion at both stages and evaluates under what circumstances a collusive regime improves welfare if spillovers are sufficiently large all three regimes are beneficial although mergers are more likely and price fixing less likely to produce specific benefits than are joint ventures copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

on the marginal welfare cost of taxation this paper develops a rigorous partial equilibrium analysis of the determinants of margin al welfare cost mwc of taxes on labor earnings it shows that four key parameters interact to determine the magnitude of mwc using aggregate data and plausible ranges of values for the parameters mwc can vary from under 10 percent to more than 300 percent of marginal tax revenue intermediate parameter values sugge st mwc is in the 25 50 percent range however the more extreme estimates cannot be ruled out on the basis of available evidence suggesting that mwc cannot yet be copyright 1987 by american economic association

is off farm income reforming the farm evidence from mexico does access to off farm income complement or compete with agricultural production this article explores the effect of off farm income on agricultural production activities using data from the 2003 mexico national rural household survey we first discuss the theoretical conditions under which access to off farm income may influence production in an agricultural household model instrumental variable iv estimation methods are then used to test whether agricultural production activities technologies and input use differ between households with and without access to off farm income we find that off farm income has a negative effect on agricultural output and the use of family labor on the farm but a positive impact on the demand for purchased inputs there is also a slight efficiency gain in households with access to off farm income findings offer insights into how household production evolves as rural households increasingly engage in off farm income activities

modelling imperfectly appropriable r d via spillovers abstract we provide an extensive comparison of the well known r d models of d aspremont jacquemin and kamien muller zang exposing full or partial conflict in key conclusions and policy prescriptions using a mix of formal and or intuitive criteria we argue that the first model is of questionable validity for large spillover values the latter being characterized by jointly increasing returns to scale in the r d process an argument leading to equivalence between the two r d processes but not to agreement on some key conclusions is exposited in conclusion the models emerge as fundamentally different although a unilateral shift in the cost function of the first leads to agreement in all equilibrium outcomes

carbon taxation in russia prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency russia is not only one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy coal oil and gas but is also one the most intensive users of energy furthermore russia accounts for a disproportionately large share of global carbon dioxide emissions some 5 to 6 of global carbon dioxide emissions eia 2011a it has been estimated world bank 2008 that russia could reduce its use of primary energy use by 45 with consequent economic and environmental benefits high energy and carbon intensity of the russia economy is inter alia explained by low energy prices due to high export taxes as well as administrative regulation of domestic prices of gas and electricity and low environmental taxes carbon taxes are one such pigouvian tax and they would address concerns on several fronts simultaneously in the short to medium term they would inter alia lead to lower ghg emissions and encourage the diffusion of more energy efficient technologies in the longer term the increased cost of energy inputs is expected to induce technological progress in this analysis the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of carbon taxes on the russia economy are examined this analysis addresses the following objectives i to test the double dividend hypothesis under perfect and imperfect competition in output markets to analyse ii the incidence of carbon taxes iii impacts on sectoral competitiveness iv effects on income equity and v interactions of carbon taxes with other taxes a computable single country multi sector comparative static cge model is employed russland verfugt nicht nur uber einen der grosten vorrate an kohlenstoffbasierter energie wie kohle rohol und gas sondern ist auch einer der grosten energieverbraucher daruber hinaus ist russland fur einen uberproportional grosen anteil von kohlendioxid emission etwa 5 bis 6 der weltweiten kohlendioxidemission verantwortlich mit der einfuhrung einer kohlendioxidsteuer konnten gleichzeitig unterschiedliche wirkungen erzielt werden kurz und mittelfristig wurden kohlenstoffsteuern sowohl zu einer reduzierung von treibhausgasemissionen als auch zur einfuhrung von energieeffizienteren technologien fuhren langfristig wird erwartet dass hohe energiekosten den anreiz zur entwicklung und zur investition in energiesparenden technischen fortschritt erhohen die vorliegende arbeit analysiert und bewertet die makrookonomischen und sektoralen auswirkungen einer einfuhrung von kohlenstoffsteuern auf die russische wirtschaft die ziele der arbeit bestehen darin die hypothese der doppelten dividende fur den fall des vollkommenen und des unvollkommenen wettbewerbs auf gutermarkten zu uberprufen und die inzidenz einer kohlenstoffsteuer ihre auswirkungen auf die sektorale wettbewerbsfahigkeit ihre auswirkungen auf die einkommensverteilung und die interaktion von kohlenstoffsteuern mit anderen steuern zu analysieren und zu bewerten als methodischer ansatz wurde ein single country und multi sektor model gewahlt

pollution taxes and revenue recycling abstract discussions of environmental policy and the tax system have emphasized the value of pollution tax revenues which can be used to reduce other tax distortions in the economy however by raising private marginal production costs environmental taxes also tend to reduce gdp and exacerbate the welfare costs of conventional taxes for environmental taxes in consumption goods industries the net welfare change from these two effects is negative unless this good is a relatively weak substitute for leisure an estimate for the optimal pollution tax with full revenue recycling is 63 to 78 of marginal environmental damages

the degree of spillovers and the number of rivals for maximum effective r d abstract the amount of cost reduction or effective r d that results in a symmetric sequential nash equilibrium with quadratic payoffs and differentiated goods is shown to increase with spillovers in oligopolies with a few rivals and to achieve a maximum for spillovers that are not perfect in industries with many firms similar tendencies apply for consumer surplus profits and static welfare more rivals typically lead to reduced investments output and profitability while consumer surplus and welfare increase or at least do not decrease limited entry in markets with a few rivals may enhance innovative investments profitability and consumer surplus if only product differentiation and spillovers are sufficiently high and r d costs sufficiently low too many rivals will then again lead to reductions and a decrease in static welfare

firm heterogeneity imitation and the incentives for cost reducing r d effort i develop and test a model of strategic r d investments where innovating and non innovating firms compete on the basis of their ability to reduce costs and imitate rivals i find that a larger proportion of non innovating rivals stimulates cost reducing investments and attenuates the disincentive effect of imitation by innovators on firm level r d key model properties are verified by estimating the first order condition for the optimal choice of r d using the 1994 carnegie mellon survey of u s industrial r d results also suggest that r d and size are simultaneously determined with r d being proportional to size as predicted by the theoretical model

nonseparable utility and the double dividend debate reconsidering the tax interaction effect the literature on the use of environmental taxes inthe presence of distortionary labor taxes warns thata partial equilibrium pigouvian tax analysis is notappropriate because increasing the price of dirtygoods can futher aggravate the prexisting distortions this argument is most frequently made assuming thatlabor is taxed to meet a fixed revenue requirement when a dirty good is also taxed others argue thatthis lowers workers real wages causing people toreduce their labor supply below its already suboptimallevel aggravating labor market distortions however most papers ignore the effect that a cleanerenvironment can have on labor supply that is mostpast work has assumed that the quality of theenvironment is weakly separable in the utilityfunction we argue that a cleaner environment canincrease labor supply at least partially offsettingany incentive for workers to decrease their laborsupply further we show explicitly how relaxing theseparability assumption affects the standardresults

seeing is believing evidence from an extension network experiment extension is designed to enable lab to farm technology diffusion decentralized models assume that information flows from researchers to extension workers and from extension agents to contact farmers cfs cfs should then train other farmers in their communities such a modality may fail to address informational inefficiencies and accountability issues the authors run a field experiment to measure the impact of augmenting the cf model with a direct cf training on the diffusion of a new technology all villages have cfs and access the same extension network in treatment villages cfs additionally receive a three day central training on the new technology they track information transmission through two nodes of the extension network from extension agents to cfs and from cfs to other farmers directly training cfs leads to a large statistically significant increase in adoption among cfs however higher levels of cf adoption have limited impact on the behavior of other farmers

economists views about parameters values and policies survey results in labor and public economics specialists in labor economics and public economics at 40 leading research universities provided opinions of policy proposals quantitative best estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals for economic parameters and answers to values questions regarding income redistribution efficiency versus equity and individual versus social responsibility their positions on policy are more closely related to their values than to their estimates of relevant economic parameters average best estimates of the economic parameters agree well with the relevant literature but individual best estimates are usually widely dispersed the individual 95 percent confidence intervals are much narrower than the substantial cross respondent variation in estimates would warrant

measuring and decomposing productivity change measuring productivity change with malmquist indices has become common practice because they are easily computed using nonparametric programming techniques and can be readily decomposed into technical and efficiency change however this approach is nonstochastic and requires a constant returns to scale assumption to construct the reference technology we propose estimating productivity change using a stochastic input distance frontier imposing no restrictions on returns to scale we derive the analogous decomposition of productivity change and develop a generalized method of moments strategy in which outputs or inputs may be endogenous we compare two methods in an application to electric utilities

when can carbon abatement policies increase welfare the fundamental role of distorted factor markets abstract this paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue neutral carbon tax and nonauctioned carbon emissions permits taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets the presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies this cost increase is much greater under emissions permits since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about 18 per ton of carbon in contrast an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare improving so long as environmental damages are positive

income strategies among rural households in mexico the role of off farm activities abstract off farm activities generate on average more than half of farm households incomes in the mexican ejido sector participation in these activities helps reduce poverty and contributes to greater equality in the distribution of income this paper analyzes the determinants of access to off farm sources of income across households we find that education plays a major role in accessing better remunerated nonagricultural employment adults of indigenous ethnic origin suffer from an educational lag and have less access to off farm nonagricultural employment than non indigenous adults at identical educational levels the regional availability of off farm employment strongly affects participation in addition women are differentially limited by distance to urban centers in their ability to gain off farm employment

evaluating policy interventions with general equilibrium externalities abstract we report on the results of analytical and numerical models that describe the effects of non separable externalities or public goods on public policies with important general equilibrium consequences in the numerical exercise we calibrate a general equilibrium model with non separable air quality benefits in order to measure the excess burden and total net benefits of transportation and energy taxes in the 1995 u s economy the change in the physical level and the economic value in air quality associated with a given policy is a function of the substitution patterns between air quality and market goods that we assume the size of the deadweight loss due to pre existing distortions such as a tax on labor income is substantially affected by these substitution patterns

the efficiency value of effluent tax revenues the concept of the efficiency value of effluent tax revenues is developed it is defined as the reduction in excess burden resulting from the substitution of these revenues for current or future resource distorting tax revenues such as those raised from federal corporate and personal income taxes the annual efficiency value of revenues raised by national effluent taxes on two major air pollutants is estimated to range from 0 63 to 3 05 billion if substituted for federal personal income tax revenue and from 1 to 4 87 billion if substituted for corporate income tax revenue expressed in 1982 dollars thus previous estimates of the efficiency gain from substitution of an effluent tax scheme for current pollution regulation policy have been too low because the efficiency value of the tax revenues has been excluded

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

environmental quality medical care demand and environmental tax interactions assuming that improvements in environmental quality lead to lower demand for medical care it has been shown that general equilibrium interactions with the tax distorted labor market reduce the benefits from such improvements and thus lower the second best optimal environmental tax this paper provides some insights on how the link between environmental quality individual s health capital and the demand for medical care affects the analysis of pollution taxes the paper develops structural conditions under which improvements in environmental quality decrease increase the demand for medical care and discusses their implications for environmental tax interactions

dynamics in research joint ventures and r d collaborations abstract we investigate the short and long term effects of different types of r d collaborations on firms consumers and the industry to that end we consider a differentiated product market in which firms compete a la bertrand and invest in process innovation in order to lower the production cost over time investments are stochastic and there can be cartelization or competition strategies among firms at the moment of making the decision on the amount to invest in r d our results show that in equilibrium the long run welfare is larger under a research joint venture than under other environments discounted present value profits increase with the level of the spillover but there are asymmetries that depend on the firms asymmetry on marginal costs

tax evasion and optimal environmental taxes abstract this paper introduces a new argument to the debate about the role of environmental taxes in modern tax systems some environmental taxes particularly taxes on gasoline or electricity are more difficult to evade than taxes on labor or income when the tax base is shifted in a revenue neutral manner toward these environmental taxes the result is a net reduction in the amount of tax evasion using a carbon tax as a motivating example the tax evasion effect is shown to sharply reduce the welfare cost of controlling emissions a simple computable general equilibrium model suggests that the impact of considering tax evasion can be large costs are lowered by 28 in the united states by 89 in china and by 97 in india in countries with high levels of pre existing tax evasion a carbon tax will pay for itself through improvements in the efficiency of the tax system

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china in our paper we have used the new economics of labor migration framework to trace the complex linkages that exist among migration remittances and agricultural productivity in china constraints in the operation of on farm labor and capital or insurance markets or institutions provide households with a motivation to migrate and distort on farm operations when labor leaves in our household sample the net impact of migration and remittances on maize production is negative excerpt

public policy towards r d in oligopolistic industries the importance of determining optimal policy towards r d cannot be exaggerated given the worldwide interest in fostering r d and given the significant differences between european and u s policies towards interfirm cooperation on r d moreover the problem is an inherently difficult one because of the complex nature of the r d process since r d is a component of fixed costs industries where it is important tend to be concentrated hence r d policy must go hand in hand with competition policy at the same time r d is like any form of investment in that it precedes the production stage hence issues of time consistency and strategic commitment inevitably arise in considering the choice of r d policy finally r d by one firm typically leads to spillovers wbich benefit other firms so that r d exhibits many of the character department of economics university college dublin belfield dublin 4 ireiatid for helpful discussions and comments we are grateful to two anonymous referees to pedro bartos steve martin massimo motta and damien neven and to participants at seminars in birmingham st andrew s and warwick at a cepr workshop on r d spillovers in lausanne at erwit 94 in caslel gandolfo eea 95 in prague the 1996 conference on industrial economics at universidad carlos iii de madrid and a meeting of the dublin economics workshop this paper was produced as part of the international economic performance programme of the centre for economic performance london school of economics supported by the u k esrc an earlier version was circulated as cepr discussion paper no 1243 see alexis jacquemin 1988 and stephen martin 1996 istics of a public good albeit one that is mostly privately produced tbe degree to which such spillovers occur and can be internalized is another crucial influence on the desirable pattem of intervention

synergy and learning effects of informal labor sharing arrangements summary we study the effects of informal labor sharing arrangements and other social interactions on farmers productivity in a developing country context testing whether these types of social and work interactions lead to productivity gains through learning synergy or both using a rich panel data set of ethiopian subsistence farmers we estimate a distance function of grains production and find large productivity gains approximately 33 and 29 in 1999 and 2004 from labor sharing due to synergy effects that boost labor productivity however labor sharing does not lead to learning as the productivity gains observed in years with labor sharing disappear in following years if the farmers do not continue to engage in labor sharing labor sharing partners are either neighbors relatives members of the same funeral and religious associations or have plots next to each other which together reduce labor sharing as a single venue for learning however the synergy effect is strong enough to warrant the design of extension and outreach policies that recognize and utilize farmers informal social networks such as labor sharing arrangements

substituting pollution taxation for general taxation some implications for efficiency in pollutions taxation abstract earlier papers have recognized that nonenvironmental benefits will be realized if pollution taxes are substituted for other taxes which impose efficiency losses on society the purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of these nonenvironmental benefits for the design of an efficient pollution tax it is found that the efficient tax may be higher or lower than that conventionally defined as optimal and that the net benefit from unrestrained pollution can have important implications for the size of the tax

technical efficiency of european railways a distance function approach this study has two principal objectives the first objective is to measure and compare the performance of european railways the second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization are unlikely to be applicable using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988 1993 multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares cols the resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0 980 for the netherlands to 0 784 for italy with a mean of 0 863 the distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single output production functions where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a tornqvist index the results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings casting significant doubt upon the reliability of

information transmission in irrigation technology adoption and diffusion social learning extension services and spatial effects in this article we investigate the role of information transmission in promoting agricultural technology adoption and diffusion through extension services and social learning we develop a theoretical model of technology adoption and diffusion which we then empirically apply using duration analysis on a micro dataset consisting of recall data covering the period 1994 2004 for olive producing farms from crete greece our findings suggest that both extension services and social learning are strong determinants of technology adoption and diffusion while the effectiveness of each of the two informational channels is enhanced by the presence of the other

from regressive pollution taxes to progressive environmental tax reforms european countries have increased their use of environmental tax instruments by designing new tax bases but many countries face opposition from public opinion for fear of the distributive consequences of these environmental tax reforms this paper sheds light on the distributive consequences of environmental tax policies when households are heterogeneous the objective is to assess whether an environmental tax reform could be pareto improving when the revenue of the pollution tax is recycled by a change in labor tax properties we show that whatever the degree of regressivity of the environmental tax alone it is possible to design a recycling mechanism that renders the tax reform more pareto efficient by simultaneously decreasing the wage tax and increasing its progressivity

the impact of kinship networks on the adoption of risk mitigating strategies in ethiopia the adoption of certain farm management practices such as tree planting and soil and water conservation can reduce exposure to weather shocks however in many countries the adoption of such risk mitigating measures is far from complete we explore how risk sharing networks in the form of kinship characterized by the moral imperative of within group sharing affects the adoption of risk mitigating activities in rural ethiopia we find suggestive evidence that compulsory sharing invites free riding and attenuates incentives for self protection against weather shocks we also find evidence of the existence of a possible substitution effect between credit and social networks

measuring welfare loss caused by air pollution in europe a cge analysis abstract to evaluate the socio economic impacts of air pollution we develop an integrated approach based on computable general equilibrium cge applying our approach to 18 western european countries shows that even there where air quality is relatively high compared with other parts of the world health related damages caused by air pollution may be substantial we estimate that as of 2005 europe experienced an annual loss in consumption of about 220 billion euro in year 2000 prices about 3 of total consumption with a range based on 95 high and low epidemiological response functions of 107 335 billion euro and a total welfare loss of about 370 billion euro range of 209 550 including both consumption and broader welfare losses around 2 of welfare level due to the accumulated effects of three decades of air pollution in europe in addition we estimate that a set of air quality improvement policy scenarios as proposed in the 2005 cafe program would bring 18 european countries as a whole a welfare gain of 37 49 billion euro year 2000 prices in year 2020 alone

income diversification poverty traps and policy shocks in cote d ivoire and kenya abstract this paper presents evidence on the effects of two different sorts of policy shocks on observed income diversification patterns in rural africa in cote d ivoire households with poor endowments were less able to respond to attractive emerging on farm and non farm opportunities due to entry barriers to superior livelihood strategies the benefits of exchange rate reform accrued disproportionately to households that were richer prior to devaluation by contrast food for work transfers to households in kenya significantly reduced liquidity constraints enabling project participants to pursue more lucrative livelihood strategies in non farm activities and higher return agricultural production patterns jointly these two shocks underscore the importance of liquidity market access and skill constraints to skilled non farm income sources to dynamic poverty traps in rural africa

cost reducing and demand creating r d with spillovers this article analyzes r d policies when the returns to cost reducing and demand creating r d are imperfectly appropriable and market structure is endogenous we generalize previous characterizations of appropriability to permit the possibility that own and rival r d are imperfect substitutes we also describe how equilibrium expenditures on process and product r d as well as equilibrium market structure depend on technological opportunities and spillovers in contrast to previous work diminished appropriability does not necessarily reduce r d expenditures for example under some conditions an increase in the extent of process product spillovers will lead to an increase in product process r d we estimate several variants of the model by using manufacturing line of business data and data from a survey of r d executives

the anatomy of industry r d intensity distributions using firm data disaggregated by industry we establish a set of regularities in the distribution of firm r d intensities within manufacturing industries we show how a simple probabilistic process in which chance influences a key unobserved determinant of r d and firm size conditions the returns to r d can account for these regularities and other features of the distributions the model provides a unified noncausal explanation of a series of long observed relationships across mean r d intensity market concentration and the coefficient of variation it also offers a novel explanation for the inverse relationship between r d productivity and firm size jel 031