developing effective policies for the sustainable development of ecological agriculture in china the case study of jinshan county with a systems dynamics model abstract this paper focuses on a search for concrete policy measures to facilitate the overall sustainability of ecological agricultural development at a county level for this purpose a system dynamics model aiseem has been developed to explore the potential long term ecological economic institutional and social interactions of ecological agricultural development through a case study of jinshan county in china the model provides an experimental platform for the simulation and analysis of alternative policy scenarios the results indicate that the diversification of land use patterns government low interest loans and government support for training are important policy measures for promoting the sustainable development of ecological agriculture at least in the case study context in addition the study reveals that environmentally sound technology e g biogas project alone cannot sufficiently induce farmers to adopt ecological agricultural practices limited availability of information risk aversion and high transaction costs are major barriers to the adoption of alternative agricultural practices in this regard the importance of capacity building and institutional arrangements are emphasised through the development of an improved policy making process on agricultural sustainability this case study highlights the importance of combining the ecological economics analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach as a feasible integrated tool to provide insight into the policy analysis of ecological agriculture and thus set a solid basis for effective policy making to facilitate its sustainable development on a regional scale

filtering city change and the supply of low priced housing in canada this paper examines the filtering process and shows the extent of the forces that are gentrifying canadian cities the 1996 census micro data are used to develop rent and price age profiles of dwe

cyclical delay in bargaining with externalities externalities between buyers are shown to induce delays in negotiations between a seller and several buyers delays arise in a perfect and complete information setting with random matching even when there is no deadline while with a deadline we identify delays both for positive and negative externalities without a deadline we find that 1 when externalities are positive there exists no spne in pure strategies with bounded recall that exhibits delay 2 when externalities are negative it may happen that all spne with bounded recall have the property that long periods of waiting alternate with short periods of activity this is the cyclical delay phenomenon

stationary equilibria in bargaining with externalities this paper studies infinite horizon bargaining between a seller and multiple buyers when externalities are present we extend the analysis in jehiel and moldovanu by allowing for both pure and mixed equilibria jehiel p moldovanu b 1995a cyclical delay in bargaining with externalities rev econ stud 62 619 637 a characterization of the stationary subgame perfect equilibria in generic games is presented equilibria with delay exist only for strong positive externalities since each buyer receives a positive payoff when the seller makes an agreement with some other buyer positive externalities induce a war of attrition between buyers

bargaining without a common prior an immediate agreement theorem in sequential bargaining models without outside options each player s bargaining power is ultimately determined by which player will make an offer and when this paper analyzes a sequential bargaining model in which players may hold different beliefs about which player will make an offer and when excessive optimism about making offers in the future can cause delays in agreement the main result states that despite this if players will remain sufficiently optimistic for a sufficiently long future then in equilibrium they will agree immediately this result is also extended to other canonical models of optimism

over confidence may reduce negotiation delay abstract when a seller negotiates with multiple buyers how does over confidence affect the timing of trade in this paper we distinguish between over confidence about trade opportunities and over confidence about the terms of trade in bargaining environments without externalities both types of over confidence can cause delays in agreement if externalities are present the two forms of subjective bias have very different impacts on delay in particular over confidence about trade opportunities may reduce bargaining delay

contracts and externalities how things fall apart a single principal interacts with several agents offering them contracts the crucial assumption of this paper is that the outside option payoffs of the agents depend positively on how many uncontracted or free agents there are we study how such a principal unwelcome though he may be approaches the problem of contract provision to agents when coordination failure among the latter group is explicitly ruled out two variants are considered when the principal cannot re approach agents there is a unique equilibrium in which contract provision is split up into two phases in phase 1 simultaneousoffers at good though varying terms are made to a number of agents in phase 2 offers must be made sequentially and their values are discontinuously lower they are close to the very lowest of all the outside options when the principal can repeatedly approach the same agent there is a multiplicity of equilibria in some of these the agents have the power to force delay they can hold off the principal s overtures temporarily but they must succumb in finite time in both models despite beingable to coordinate their actions agents cannot resist an invasion by the principal and hold to their best payoff it is in this sense that things eventually fall apart

economics for sustainable rural systems abstract critics often reproach the discipline of economics for supporting developments that result in environmental and social degradation this article identifies where such censure is valid but proceeds to argue that the rationale underlying economic techniques is at fault rather than the techniques themselves within the rural context we suggest that economics can make a valuable contribution to the design and achievement of sustainable ways of living valid criticism of economics focuses on its assumptions about value since this has led to emphasis of favourable effects of markets and laissez faire policies exposing rural areas to more rigorously competitive market conditions encourage their transformation by increasing mechanisation industrialisation and a less sustainable use of resources new approaches and policies are required if different outcomes are to be achieved an initial step is to identify desirable outcomes a matter of social choice however society makes multiple demands on rural resources and such issues cannot be adequately captured within a neo classical welfare model an alternative hierarchical framework in the tradition of systems thinking capable of analysing the complex relations associated with rural resource use provides appropriate emphasis to the economic links between goals at different levels within the system and appears to have some heuristic value an empirical counterpart of the hierarchical framework input output analysis generates information to support social choices and can also contribute to the understanding of economic systems and their interaction with the wider social cultural ethical and environmental universe the article concludes with some revised economic policy prescriptions to promote rural sustainability

is australia s home ownership rate really stable an examination of change between 1975 and 1994 australia has exhibited a remarkably stable home ownership rate of 70 per cent for over thee decades however this paper questions whether this rate is sustainable decomposition techniques based on tenure choice models are used to provide evidence of changing homeownership patterns in australia between 1975 and 1994 the results indicate a distinct change in home ownership propensities which is neither uniform across age groups nor uniform for different household types with both the same and with different levels of income a number of tentative explanations are proposed each of which provides the basis for further research on the factors affecting household tenure decisions this is essential if the potential for a significant decline in home ownership is to be seen as a matter of concern

recasting alternative agriculture as a management model the value of adept scaling abstract this paper identifies the significance of scale considerations as applied to agricultural resource management scaling is the act of defining the spatiotemporal level or levels of interest when attempting problem solving a goal commonly proposed by the diverse interests working toward an alternative agriculture is sustainability to date advocates of sustainability have failed to scale meaningfully both their critique of conventional agriculture and the alternatives they represent because sustainability is inherently sensitive to changes in analytic context i e is scale relative in the absence of explicit scaling sustainability is unworkable as a measure of system performance the importance of scale as applied to the concept of sustainability in hierarchical systems has been noted lowrance et al 1986 am j altern agric 1 169 173 however the implications of this finding have not been confronted in the subsequent literature going beyond lowrance et al 1986 this paper describes the error that accompanies improperly scaled assessment of agricultural sustainability and identifies two important considerations that emerge through explicit scaling 1 the necessity of consistent and timely integration of local information into upper level decision making and 2 the necessity of recognizing the scalar level of the downside of resource allocation trade offs and addressing them accordingly the first of these considerations suggests the need for agricultural systems that are resilient to collapse from unpredictable and potentially fundamental disturbance through incorporation of local information it is possible to maintain coherent strategies aimed at upper level objectives e g biodiversity conservation while supporting the integrity of lower level sub systems e g community economic vitality the second consideration that arises from explicit scaling indicates the value of developing systems which are buffered against political paralysis caused by negative impacts of resource allocation decisions victims or losers result from allocation and reallocation functions these individuals and or institutions must be addressed recent enthusiasm regarding win win scenarios in many cases is buoyed by scaling error explicit recognition of the implications of necessary trade offs both positive and negative promotes the development of mechanisms to support losers failure to confront the fact that losers are consistently produced exaggerates the negative impact they have on system performance we define holistic management as identifying assimilating and acting on information in a manner consonant with the contextual spatiotemporal scale of the problem at hand the fundamental challenge facing agriculture is integration of multiple considerations across levels in the system explicitly scaled analysis and action in a holistic setting is proposed as a means by which alternative agriculture can respond to this challenge

contracting with externalities the paper studies inefficiencies arising in contracting between one principal and n agents when the utility of each agent depends on all agents trades with the principal when the principal commits to a set of publicly observable bilateral contract offers the arising inefficiency is due entirely to the externalities imposed on non signers in contrast when the principal s offers are privately observed the distortion is due to the externalities given agents equilibrium trades comparison of the two externalities determines the relative efficiency of the two contracting regimes in both cases we show that when n is large each agent can be treated as non pivotal provided that appropriate continuity assumptions are satisfied we also study the case in which the principal can condition each agent s trade on other agents messages we characterize the set of such mechanisms in which each agent s participation is voluntary when the principal can commit to any such mechanism she implements the first best outcome while threatening each deviator with the harshest possible punishment however in the presence of noise that goes to zero slower than n goes to infinity in the limit we obtain a generally inefficient outcome in which each agent feels non pivotal

technology adoption in the presence of network externalities we analyze technology adoption in industries where network externalities are significant the pattern of adoption depends on whether technologies are sponsored a sponsor is an entity that has property rights to the technology and hence is willing to make investments to promote it key findings include the following 1 compatibility tends to be undersupplied by the market but excessive standardization can occur 2 in the absence of sponsors the technology superior today has a strategic advantage and is likely to dominate the market 3 when one of two rival technologies is sponsored that technology has a strategic advantage and may be adopted even if it is inferior 4 when two competing technologies both are sponsored the technology that will be superior tomorrow has a strategic advantage

waiting to persuade i analyze a sequential bargaining model in which players are optimistic about their bargaining power measured as the probability of making offers but learn as they play the game i show that there exists a uniquely predetermined settlement date such that in equilibrium the players always reach an agreement at that date but never reach one before it given any discount rate if the learning is sufficiently slow the players agree immediately i show that for any speed of learning the agreement is delayed arbitrarily long provided that the players are sufficiently patient therefore although excessive optimism alone cannot cause delay it can cause long delays if the players are expected to learn

learning self control this article examines how a decision maker who is only partially aware of his temptations learns about them over time in facing temptations individuals use their experience to forecast future self control problems and choose the appropriate level of commitment i demonstrate that rational learning can be perpetually partial and need not result in full sophistication the main result of this article characterizes necessary and sufficient conditions for learning to converge to full sophistication i apply this result to a consumption savings environment in which a decision maker is tempted by present bias and establish a learning theoretic justification for assuming sophistication in this setting an individual who finds himself continuously repudiating his past plans may learn to distrust his future behavior and may do something about it strotz 1955

the return to independent invention evidence of unrealistic optimism risk seeking or skewness loving examining a sample of 1 091 inventions i investigate the magnitude and distribution of the pre tax internal rate of return irr to inventive activity the average irr on a portfolio investment in these inventions is 11 4 this is higher than the risk free rate but lower than the long run return on high risk securities and the long run return on early stage venture capital funds the portfolio irr is significantly higher for some ex ante identifiable classes of inventions the distribution of return is skew only between 7 9 reach the market of the 75 inventions that did six realised returns above 1400 60 obtained negative returns and the median was negative

housing policy retrenchment australia and canada compared housing policy has declined in importance relative to other areas of state policy making in many western countries this paper seeks to understand why this has happened at a time when there has been a decline in the level of housing affordability and supply of affordable rental housing it presents an argument that a way of understanding this policy retrenchment through a comparative analysis of australian and canadian housing systems is to consider the way in which housing policy problems are defined how policy making capacity is institutionalised in state agencies and the form and extent of civil society mobilisation on housing issues it is not sufficient to ascribe the declining salience of housing policy to the ascendancy of neo liberal ideas in policy making

negative externalities may cause delay in negotiation we study the strategic equilibria of a negotiation game where potential buyers are affected by identity dependent negative externalities the unique equilibrium of long finitely repeated generic games can either display delay where a transaction can take place only in several stages before the deadline or in spite of the random element in the game a well defined buyer exists that obtains the object with probability close to one

decomposing canada s growing housing affordability problem do city differences matter this article examines the role of eight factors that affect the prevalence and incidence of housing affordability problems geography demography migration immigration ethnicity income recipients income source employment and education it develops bivariate probit models that use the 1991 and 1996 canadian census public use microdata to predict the joint probability that a household spends more than half of its income on housing and that its income is below the poverty line the conclusions show that city and regional differences are negligible after the effects of the factors common to all the cities have been accounted for changing employment levels and sources of household income are the most important factors explaining the prevalence and growth of housing poverty while single parents have the highest incidence the growth of the problem is mostly in the young non family households migration immigration and ethnicity play a role that is independent of the other factors education has almost n

equilibrium incentives for exclusive dealing in a differentiated products oligopoly we consider the incentives for oligopolistic manufacturers to adopt exclusive dealing manufacturers producing differentiated brands can choose to distribute through exclusive retail dealerships or nonexclusive dealerships with nonexclusive dealing manufacturers face an interbrand externality because brand enhancing investments made by one manufacturer may benefit the brands of other manufacturers although exclusive dealing eliminates this externality oligopolistic manufacturers may not choose exclusive dealing exclusive dealing enhances the incentive to invest but the promotional investments are a form of competition between manufacturers thus manufacturers might earn higher profits with nonexclusive dealing making lower promotional investments we find cases in which nonexclusive dealing is a dominant strategy we also find cases in which some but not all manufacturers adopt exclusive dealing moreover even if adoption of exclusive dealing by all manufacturers is the equilibrium it can arise from a prisoner s dilemma in that each manufacturer would prefer nonexclusive dealing

patent thickets courts and the market for innovation we study how fragmentation of patent rights and the formation of the court of appeals for the federal circuit cafc affected the duration of patent disputes and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing we develop a model of patent litigation which predicts faster settlement when patent rights are fragmented and when there is less uncertainty about court outcomes as was associated with the pro patent shift of the cafc we confirm these predictions empirically using a data set that covers patent suits in u s district courts during the period 1975 2000 finally we analyze how fragmentation affects total settlement delay considering both the reduction in dispute duration and the increase in the number of patent negotiations

waiting to settle multilateral bargaining with subjective biases abstract we study multilateral bargaining games where agents disagree over their bargaining power we show that if agents are extremely optimistic there may be costly delays in an arbitrarily long finite game but if optimism is moderate all sufficiently long games end in immediate agreement we show that the game with extreme optimism is highly unstable in the finite horizon and we examine the ramifications of this instability on the infinite horizon problem finally we consider other voting rules and show that the majority rule may be more efficient than the unanimity rule when agents are optimistic