economic performance and u s senate elections reply major criticisms made by chressanthis and shaffer c s are addressed the authors failure to include noneconomic variables in the regression model the inclusion of open elections in the sample and the use of variables other than the state unemployment rate as economic performance measures errors in c s s interpretations are noted additional regression results are reported using modifications of the authors original model these suggest that the change notrelative change as in c s in state unemployment rate is superior and that the authors model yields a stronger effect of state economic performance on election outcomes than does the c s model

state dependence and heterogeneity in fishing location choice to explore the distinction between state dependence and heterogeneity in repeated decisions this paper combines a mixed logit model with a state dependence parameterization from the marketing literature to study fishing location choices of commercial sea urchin divers in california it examines implications of ignoring either effect and finds in all cases that true state dependence is an important determinant of location choice consequently spatial policies like marine reserves can lead to differences in the short and long run behavioral responses of the fishing fleet under some specifications random preference parameters are statistically significant when state dependence is excluded from the model but when it is included random preference parameters are not significant in other specifications including state dependence only dampens the variability in preference parameters these results highlight the importance of gathering and analyzing diary type data for commercial fisheries as well as for similar choice problems in recreation demand

the role of spatial scale in the timing of uncertain environmental policy the spatial scale of an environmental problem is dictated by boundaries physical boundaries limit the extent of impacts while the scale of decision making creates perceived boundaries beyond which impacts are ignored by decision makers while it is well understood that uncertainty and irreversibility will alter policy decisions aimed at alleviating environmental impacts the effect of spatial scales both physical and perceived is less understood when spatial scale is included in a real options model of environmental policy adoption results indicate that the importance and influence of spatial considerations depends on the level of uncertainty stringency of the proposed policy and flexibility of the policy decision recognizing spatial scale may force policy adoption to take place within a window of current damage when spatial scale is small or uncertainty high this window for policy adoption can close precluding policy adoption entirely this undermines well known results demonstrating that changes in uncertainty will only alter the timing of policy adoption in other instances the policy adoption window remains open but the option value increases faster than the benefits of the policy creating a scenario where it is always preferable to delay here the inclusion of an option value can prevent adoption of policies that would be adopted according to traditional cost benefit analysis in general policy decisions will be most affected by spatial considerations when the spatial scale is small damage is spreading fast and the uncertainty in damage spread is high

econometric estimations of popularity functions a case study for austria in this paper we investigate the effects of changes in economic conditions on the popularity of political parties in austria after a brief description of the austrian political system we estimate single equations and simultaneous systems of popularity functions for different parties based on traditional theoretical foundations results show that some effects of economic variables on popularity exist although they are different between different policy regimes traditional popularity functions nevertheless outperform models based on the assumption of voters rational expectations which claim that only unexpected changes in economic conditions affect political popularity

a politico economic approach to intergovernmental lump sum grants this paper develops a positive approach to grant design when the central government and a lobby of local governments are the main agents it develops the hypothesis that the regressivity or progressivity of per capita grants regarding community size is ceteris paribus related to the structure of the lobbying activities of local governments and is independent of hypothetical economies or diseconomies of scale in the production of local public goods an encompassing lobby organisation using a one mayor one vote system of representation supports the regressivity of per capita grants while under proportional representation the lobby will support a design of per capita grants which is progressive towards community size an empirical analysis of lump sum grants in portugal supports the politico economic hypothesis and rejects the hypothesis that economies of scale is the main explanatory cause for the observed regressivity of per capita grants

the effects of commodity price stabilization programs in this paper the authors analyze the effects of commodity programs in which the government attempts to support and stabilize price through open market purchases and sales specifically they as sess the effects of such programs on the u s soybean market using a rational expectations model that allows for private storage expected price responsive production and arbitrary support and release price s a salient feature of the model is that private storage and product ion behavior adjusts to changes in government policy stochastic simu lations of the market model demonstrate that price stabilization prog rams can reduce long run market price and destabilize producer revenu e copyright 1988 by american economic association

an energy centric theory of agglomeration abstract this paper sets out a simple spatial model of energy exploitation to ask how the location and productivity of energy resources affects the distribution of economic activity across geographic space by combining elements from energy economics and economic geography we link the productivity of energy resources to the incentives for economic activity to agglomerate we find a novel scaling law links the productivity of energy resources to population sizes while rivers and roads effectively magnify productivity we show how our theory s predictions concerning a single core aggregate to predictions over regional landscapes and city size distributions at the country level

fishing down the food chain revisited modeling exploited trophic systems abstract several highly cited papers suggest that commercial fishing is altering marine ecosystems by fishing down the food chain recent evidence calls into question the generality of the original findings but the papers all raise the question what mechanisms lie behind exploitation patterns in a trophic system this paper develops a simple model that shows how economic factors drive patterns of exploitation in a trophic system we show that while fishing down the food chain is possible there is no reason to suppose that the relevant economic factors favor such an outcome as we show other patterns are just as plausible we also discuss and show how an index of trophic level weighted harvest is not necessarily a good indicator of ecosystem health if biomass abundance is important

causes of u s farm commodity programs this paper i s an attempt to explain variations by commodity in producer protection afforded by farm price support programs since the1930s particularly emphasized are theideas that these programs are essentially income redistributional measures and that given political forces the programs are attempts to redistribute efficiently variables associated with the cost to producers of generating political pressure and the social cost deadweight losses of redistribution are both found to be empirically important copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

commodity agreements and commodity markets lessons from tin in what follows we study the history of the tin market over the period i982 5 important questions this exercise will help to answer are was the collapse of the tin market a failure of the buffer stock operation and was it inevitable was the activity of the buffer stock a commodity market manipulation was there a deficiency in the drafting of the tin agreement was there a failure of commodity market regulation more generally while it has long been recognised that stabilisation schemes are vulnerable to speculative attacks the interconection between buffer stock managements and futures markets has not been explored in this sense our historical analysis will

voting and the economic cycle sophisticated voters assess incumbent competence by filtering out economic cycles which they do not like from trend growth which they do naive voters on the other hand respond only to raw economic growth this implies that voting in the aggregate should respond asymmetrically to the economic cycle upswings are rewarded by the naive but punished by the sophisticated downswings are punished by all voters using an established dataset of over 400 general elections we find that the incumbent vote share a responds differently to trend growth than to the cycle b does not respond significantly to positive variation in the economic cycle and c responds significantly and negatively to negative realizations in the economic cycle in contrast to standard formulations of the grievance asymmetry this asymmetric vote response is found to be independent of trend growth

distributive politics and regional development assessing the territorial distribution of turkey s public investment turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and pork barrel this article tests whether this is the case by analysing the extent to which politics rather than equity and efficiency criteria have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of turkey between 2005 and 2012 the results show that although the turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment moreover in contrast to official regional development policy principles we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development we interpret this as the state bureaucracy s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on the better off among the most in need

the theory of rational bubbles in stock prices free disposal of equity which directly rules out the existence of negative rational bubbles in stock pric es also imposes theoretical restrictions on the possible existence o f positive rational bubbles the analysis in this paper shows that a positive rational bubble can start only on the first date of trading of a stock thus the existence of a rational bubble at any date woul d imply that the stock has been overvalued relative to market fundame ntals since the first date of trading and that prior to the first da te of trading the issuer of the stock and potential stockholders who anticipated the initial pricing of the stock expected that the stock would be overvalued copyright 1988 by royal economic society

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

bioeconomics of spatial exploitation in a patchy environment abstract this paper presents a model of renewable resource exploitation that incorporates both intertemporal dynamics and spatial movement the model combines the h s gordon vernon smith hypothesis of a rent dissipation process with ricardian notions that resources are exploited across space in a pattern dependent upon relative profitabilities the population structure is characterized in a manner consistent with modern biological ideas that stress patchiness heterogeneity and interconnections among and between patches generally we find the equilibrium patterns of biomass and effort across the system to be dependent upon bioeconomic conditions within each patch and the nature of the biological dispersal mechanism between patches we use simple examples to illustrate how the distribution of effort throughout the system reflects the heterogeneity and the spatial biological linkages

diversity productivity and temporal stability in the economies of humans and nature abstract recent advances in ecology are of great potential relevance to economists here we present two ecological models of mechanisms of competition and coexistence and use these to derive how the primary productivity of ecosystems the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and stored by plants the efficiency of resource use and the spatial and temporal variability of productivity and resource use should depend on diversity we then discuss the relevance of these results to 1 ecosystem services and the economic value of diversity and 2 the functioning of any competitive system including the economy

international commodity agreements design and performance abstract this article traces the design and performance of the five currently or recently active international commodity agreements icas in cocoa coffee natural rubber sugar and tin following detailed discussion of each of these the author makes three observations that icas can only be successful provided that they command a consensus in their industries that existing agreements are not robust enough with regard to exchange rates and that existing agreements are poorly drafted the author argues that the collapse of the tin agreement in october 1985 may have marked the end of the postwar chapter in the commodity intervention story he finds it improbable that new icas will emerge and suggests instead that more of the existing agreements will lapse

causality testing of the popularity function an empirical investigation for the federal republic of germany 1971 1982 relying on allensbach and infratest data it is asked if there is a relation between the perception of the general economic situation and the voting intention modern time series techniques are employed box jenkins analysis and granger causality tests the test results as well as ex post predictions show that voting intentions are strongly influenced by the perceived economic situation thus the null hypothesis of no relationship between the variables can not only be rejected by using classical econometric methods as is done in previous studies but also by employing modern time series procedures

reinterpreting the role of inflation in politico economic models the author attempting to analyze the interplay between politics and economics is faced with a large number of problems ranging from an always too small and idiosyncratic data set to the lack of any generally accepted theory of the process which has testable implications my aims have been 1 to show that past studies have typically treated inflation in an extremely naive way disregarding the fact that it may have political pluses if unanticipated and 2 to test the sensitivity of established formulations to what i believe is the more useful view of voter behavior given in model ii since model i and model ii represent polar extremes of amnesiac and eidetic behavior tests of intermediate lag structures are clearly in order because of administration peculiarities however lost data points will pose a serious problem

general economic conditions and national elections the fact that economic conditions influence voters is a leading commonplace of conversation in election years the question is is this fact in fact a fact despite the overwhelming popularity of the fact it has received neither an explicit theoretical analysis presumably because it is so obvious that economic adversity should create political adversaries nor until recently a satisfactory statistical analysis gerald h kramer has presented a multivariate analysis of congressional elections which would strongly suggest that fluctuations in the rate of unemployment have no appreciable effect upon elections but that fluctuations in per capita real income are influential in the following pages i propose to 1 reaffirm his finding on the electoral unimportance of ordinary fluctuations in unemployment 2 argue that contrary to kramer fluctuations in real income also do not have important electoral effects and 3 present an argument based upon rational voter behavior for the unimportance of general economic conditions in national elections

transboundary pollution in the black sea comparison of institutional arrangements this paper analyses the transboundary pollution between romania and ukraine coastal states along the black sea and studies the welfare consequences of institutional arrangements for controlling this problem to achieve this goal we use a dynamic and strategic framework we compare in terms of total welfare for two countries a first best case with three different institutional arrangements the non cooperative game of countries the uniform emission policy and the constant emission policy as proposed by the black sea commission our findings indicate that the non cooperative game provides a better level of total welfare than the other rules

the political economy of u s wheat legislation bruce a babcock colin a carter and andrew schmitz both taxpayer subsidies to u s wheat producers and domestic deadweight losses increased as a result of the u s wheat program adopted in 1985 a calculation of the costs and benefits of alternative wheat policies shows that mandatory production controls with no taxpayer expense could have made wheat producers as well off as the adopted policy becker s theory of competition among interest groups and peltzman s theory of the equilibrium amount of regulation are shown to be consistent with the observed policy choice if the list of affected interest groups includes agricultural input suppliers and grain marketing firms i introduction every five years congress drafts new farm legislation dictating the provisions of commodity programs for cotton and the major food and feed grains for the subsequent five years from 1973 through 1985 the primary features of the commodity programs were guaranteed farm prices and government stockholding activities deadweight losses from the programs during this time were minimal market prices were generally higher than the government defended price floors because of a booming export market legislated increases in commodity support prices combined with a severe drop off in the demand for agricultural exports beginning in 1982 increased the economic costs of the commodity programs the u s price floor became the world price for wheat cotton and corn grain stocks accumulated while government payments to u s farmers grew to unprecedented levels most agricultural interest groups in 1984 agreed that an overhaul of agricultural policy was necessary supporters of large levels of production and exports wanted to stimulate the demand for exports by eliminating price floors others felt that the united states should reduce budgetary costs by using direct supply controls to raise farm prices the clear winners in the new 1985 farm bill were the proponents of maintained production levels and expanded exports the new policy froze the relatively high supply prices received by farmers while simultaneously lowering price floors becker 1983 argues that two forces mainly determine the outcome of policy debates the first following stigler 1971 and peltzman 1976 is the relative efficiency with which interest groups exert political pressure interest groups that are efficient in exerting political pressure can increase the subsidization or decrease the tax burden of their constituents the second force is the extent of deadweight losses associated with proposed policies those policies with lower deadweight losses are ceteris paribus more likely to be adopted for the simple reason that less tax needs to be collected from losing interest groups for given transfers to winning groups gardner 1987 finds empirical evidence that both the ability to redistribute efficiently and the effectiveness of political organizations help explain which farm commodities have received the most government support since 1930 his study provides little insight however into which force is more important in determining the type of redistribution policies that are ultimately adopted for a given commodity an examination of the wheat program adopted in the 1985 farm bill and alternative policies that were rejected provides an opportunity to determine whether the efficiency of programs or the political prowess of interest groups is more important in determining policy outcomes this task requires a calculation of the magnitudes and the distribution of costs and benefits of the chosen policy and alternative policies costs and benefits are calculated for 1 a continuation of the 1981 farm bill policies through 1986 1990 2 the adopted 1985 farm bill policies and 3 mandatory production controls all three alternatives are examined relative to a laissez faire policy whereby the u s government has no direct involvement in agriculture

economic conditions and national elections post sample forecasts of the kramer equations there has long been a division of opinion among economists concerning the effects of economic developments on voting behavior in his well known study kramer 1971a concluded that the fluctuations in economic activity have a systematic influence on u s congressional elections his findings were challenged by various economists including stigler 1973 the purpose of this paper is to extend the analysis of kramer s results by examining the post sample forecast performance of his models as noted by christ 1966 pp 546 49 the acid test of a time series model is its ability to perform well outside the sample period the results discussed below demonstrate that kramer s equations have relatively good post sample predictive ability the findings thus support the view that short term economic fluctuations have important effects on national elections however the results also suggest that economic factors alone are not sufficient to account for all variations of voter behavior

limited entry licensing insights from a duration model limited entry is used to manage many fisheries effectiveness depends on a program s ability to control aggregate fishing power which fleet size and composition both affect this article analyzes fleet composition and attrition in a limited entry fishery the california red sea urchin fishery it explores the dynamics of heterogeneity in catch and revenue and applies duration analysis to study individual fisherman attrition using both individual level and time varying covariates the results show that the fleet is becoming more homogenous but also more potent and spatially mobile regulations such as size limits and season restrictions tend to increase attrition

a note on the ecological economic modelling of marine reserves in fisheries abstract this paper gives an overview of the bioeconomic modelling of marine reserves and illustrates how economists have responded to the modelling results found in the ecological literature the economic analysis is shown to be far more pessimistic with regards to the potential of marine reserves as a fisheries management tool than what one finds in the purely ecological analysis the reason being the latter s neglect of issues such as discounting and economic incentive behaviour however economic analysis despite some of it being relatively advanced with regards to spatiality is still simplistic with regards to for instance ecosystem and habitat content a simple expansion of the existing bioeconomic models with regards to positive habitat effects of area closures is presented and analysed showing room for improved results from marine reserve implementation as compared to the existing analysis

decision making in patchy resource environments spatial misperception of bioeconomic models abstract we investigate the performance of subjects in a patchy resource environment in the experimental laboratory to expand the concept of stock misperception into spatial and non spatial components results indicate that substantial heterogeneity exists in the decision heuristics employed that can be used to identify subject types steady state and pulse fishing strategists while steady state strategists are only subject to spatial misperceptions pulse strategists are subject to both forms of misperception both subject groups overallocate effort to regions within the fishery that possess the highest rates of emigration inducing a spatial externality these spatial misperceptions are exacerbated by the spatial structure present

policy effectiveness in spatial resource wars a two region model abstract we develop a spatial resource model in continuous time in which two agents strategically exploit a mobile resource in a two region setup to counteract the overexploitation of the resource the tragedy of commons that occurs when players are free to choose where to harvest the regulator can establish a series of spatially structured policies we compare the equilibria in the case of a common resource with those that emerge when the regulator either creates a natural reserve or assigns territorial user rights to the players we show that when technological and preference parameters dictate a low harvesting effort the policies are ineffective in promoting the conservation of the resource and in addition they lead to a lower payoff for at least one of the players conversely in a context of higher harvesting effort the intervention can help to safeguard the resource preventing extinction while also improving the welfare of both players

private eradication of mobile public bads we consider analytically the non cooperative behavior of many private property owners who each controls the stock of a public bad such as an invasive weed species infectious disease fire or agricultural pest the stock of the public bad can grow and disperse across a spatial domain of arbitrary size in this setting we characterize the conditions under which private property owners will control or eradicate and determine how this decision depends on property specific environmental features and on the behavior of other landowners we show that high mobility or lower control by others result in lower private control but when the marginal dynamic cost of the bad is sufficiently large we find that complete eradication may be privately optimal despite the lack of consideration of others welfare in these cases eradication arises in the non cooperative game and is also socially optimal so there is in effect no externality finally when property harboring the bad is not owned or is owned in common we derive the side payments required to efficiently control the mobile public bad

fixed effect estimation of highly mobile production technologies we consider fixed effect estimation of a production function where inputs and outputs vary over time space and cross sectional unit we exploit variability in the spatial dimension to identify time varying individual effects without parametric assumptions on the effects while estimation is unbiased asymptotics along the spatial dimension allow estimation of robust standard errors and asymptotic normality of the marginal products also if inference on the estimates of the individual effects is warranted then spatial asymptotics provide asymptotic normality while precluding an incidental parameters problem caused by asymptotics along the time or crosssectional dimensions we apply our results to a production function of bottom trawler fishing vessels in the flatfish fisheries of the bering sea we find significant spatial variability of output catch which we exploit in estimation of a harvesting function we conclude that vessel individual effects did not change across the period 2002 to 2004 we apply the theory of ranking and selection to determine that individual effects are not statistically significant across vessels

viewpoint induced innovation in fisheries and aquaculture abstract some classical economists most notably malthus predicted that scarcity would undermine long term human well being john stuart mill in contrast predicted that the threat of scarcity creates incentives for innovation that help to avoid some of the worst outcomes popular claims of marine ecologists often apply the malthusian narrative to supplies of seafood yet global supplies have continued to grow we examine the modern seafood industry and evaluate mill s claims about innovation we argue that the mechanisms that mill discusses innovation in response to and in anticipation of scarcity account for much of what we see scarcities induce technological policy and market innovations that enable seafood supplies to grow and these innovations can build on each other the challenge for policy makers is to avoid knee jerk responses to malthusian narratives and craft policy responses that encourage innovation while recognizing physical limits of ocean resources

beneficiaries from federal transfers to municipalities the case of israel in this paper we have shown which variables affect the size of grants given by the government to cities in israel we have also shown that aside from demographic variables which alone account for a very large portion of the variance there is also a political residual effect where cities with mayors who are members of the in political party fared better than other cities this effect is felt mainly through the general and not the earmarked portion of the grant and was more prevalent when the likud was in power than when labor ruled

general equilibrium tragedy of the commons many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods households in resource based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities as a result factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change this has two important implications first it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non resource sectors second it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors we construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons this model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock we use the model to illustrate medium run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in honduras simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy wide impacts on prices and wages managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks

money and votes a simultaneous equation model this paper has specified and estimated a model of the interaction between money and voting in american politics convincingly establishing the identification of a system of equations can be difficult even when theory provides a guide in the study of money in politics however no theoretical perspective has been established in the literature to make the case for identification as unambiguous as possible this paper has done two things first the specification was based in part on theory which has formally been developed elsewhere and which satisfactorily describes data at the economic interest group level welch 1980 second part of the question of identification revolves around the relationship between party strength and socioeconomic variables because there are questions as to the best measurement of party strength results based on two measures were presented for a number of reasons the presidential vote was the preferred measure this study draws four conclusions first money influenced voting in u s house elections in 1972 although its effect was small second patterns of total contributions to a u s house candidate are consistent with the hypothesis that a majority of dollars come from contributors who prefer to support likely winners third the total contributions made to a candidate are a positive function of the district s median years of schooling completed and the gini coefficient total contributions made to a democratic candidate are also a positive function of the median income finally had house campaigns been financed in the early 1970s even to the point of giving each major party candidate 150 000 in 1978 dollars few elections would have been changed it is also worth mentioning some of the things about the financing of political campaigns that we still do not know the above conclusions involve only elections to the u s house there are good reasons for suspecting that money is more influential in u s senate elections ols statistics support this belief and the greater visibility of those races help justify it although money has little effect on house elections we do not know whether contributions affect legislative voting in the house representatives apparently believe that expenditure influences their reelection chances given the complexity of the process it should be no surprise that this belief conflicts with our findings acting on this belief a representative s vote may very well be influenced by the sources of his contributions either directly or indirectly through the giving of access to contributors finally we should be reminded that the above model is static while the electoral process is dynamic the amount contributed to a candidate is affected by his probability of winning in the previous time period e g week month and in turn affects that probability in the following time period as usual what we know is overshadowed by what we do not know the above questions are both interesting in their own right and of interest to policy making

dynamic random utility modeling a monte carlo analysis applied studies of commercial fishing have largely ignored the intertemporal aspects of repeated site choices for many fisheries fishermen might choose a dynamically optimal cruise trajectory rather than myopic day to day strategies and a model that ignores these considerations will likely lead to biased parameter estimates and poor policy guidance a dynamic random utility model is developed that utilizes the same information as static site choice models but is entrenched in the principles of dynamic optimization using monte carlo analysis we evaluate the performance of this estimator as compared to the static model for a variety of simulated fishery types

conservation in the optimal use of rangelands abstract in previous papers we have considered the optimal mix of biodiversity in semi arid rangelands focusing on the steady state this paper addresses the question of conservation in the optimal use of rangelands where conservation is understood to mean maintenance of the system in a natural state we consider a rangeland that may exist in one of two states in the natural state its dynamics are regulated by fire in the managed state its dynamics are regulated by grazing pressure by livestock we show that the optimal use of rangelands may include its maintenance in both states at different points in time depending on initial conditions and the set of relative prices

marine reserves a bio economic model with asymmetric density dependent migration abstract a static bioeconomic model of a marine reserve allowing asymmetric density dependent migration between the reserve and the fishable area is introduced this opens for habitat or ecosystem differences allowing different fish densities within and outside a reserve not described in earlier studies four management scenarios are studied a maximum harvest b maximum current profit c open access and d maximum sustainable yield msy in the reserve these are all analysed within the induced sustainable yield function isyf giving the relationship between the fish abundance inside the reserve and the harvesting taking place outside a numerical analysis shows that management focused on ensuring msy within the reserve under the assumption of symmetric migration may be negative from an economic point of view when the area outside the reserve is detrimental compared to the reserve furthermore choice of management option may also have negative consequences for long run resource use if it is incorrectly assumed that density dependent migration is symmetric the analysis also shows that the optimal area to close either a more or a less attractive ecosystem for the resource in question may differ depending on the management goal

joint production of food and wildlife uniform measures or nature oases intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity we argue that such an approach may not be optimal since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non convex due to fixed costs associated with such provision this implies that even when farms are identical it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers we test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern sweden where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground nesting birds and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first mowing we show that the optimal solution is likely to involve some farmers maintaining profit maximizing practices while other identical farmers delay their first mowing significantly the superiority of such split solutions may have major implications for agricultural policy

anti hoarding laws a stock condemnation reconsidered economists have regarded anti hoarding laws as irrational reactions to nonexistent monopoly in the storage of grain this paper shows that anti hoarding laws cannot be rationally directed against a monopolistic storer for he will always store less not more than would be stored under competition but seemingly perverse competitive storage in the form of excessive stockholding can arise when a price ceiling distorts the market additional public storage exacerbates this perverse private behavior and may even induce behavior that appears to be active market manipulation under such circumstances anti hoarding laws can be desirable second best measures

the economics of choice in the allocation of federal grants an empirical test in this paper we have provided strong evidence in favor of the niskanen model of bureaucratic behavior and against the public interest hypothesis by considering the selection process used by hud in awarding urban development action grants specifically we did not find that any distress measures specified in regulations dealing with the program were statistically significant in explaining the awarding of grants the only consistently significant factors of those considered were the level of private commitment to the project and the ratio of private funds committed to total amount requested we argue that use of these variables especially the latter as primary selection criteria by hud bureaucrats reflects their desire to enhance their budgetary environment by making what the market perceives to be the best investments available to them avoiding risk and spreading available udag funds as widely as possible

sharing clams tragedy of an incomplete commons abstract a dispersive phase is part of the reproductive cycle of most living organisms when economic agents are limited to harvesting a renewable resource from a fixed geographical area dispersion of the resource creates a tragedy of the commons a dynamic optimization problem is constructed where economic agents control fixed areas the growth of the resource occurring in each area disperses it is shown that the desired stock size for maximizing agents in their own area decreases inversely with the amount of leakage the degree to which the resource is common the socially optimal stock in each region is a function of the marginal profit for all areas that receive dispersing organisms and may be greater than the privately optimal stock for an area if that area captured all of its own resource growth this effect is enhanced if the dispersal rate is stock dependent possibly creating a double tragedy in a source and sink situation the socially optimal solution may involve eliminating all harvesting in the source region

spatial externalities and the common pool resource mechanism abstract this paper expands the common pool resource cpr game of walker et al 1990 to incorporate spatial structure with two spatially linked common pool resources subjects participated in a five player common pool resource game under three alternative spatial structures non spatial bi directional and uni directional linkages within the experiment results indicate that behavior in the uni directional cpr game yielded the highest average yields whereas those in the bi directional game were lower than in the non spatial game furthermore investment patterns in the uni directional game were proportionally lower in the sink cpr than those in the source cpr this behavior is consistent with the individual incentives of the game and highlights the importance of understanding the spatial structure present within our natural resources

renewable natural resource management and use without markets natural resources by their nature are not readily bent to the status of private property efficient resource use is complicated by jurisdictional externalities public goods non use values and beneficiaries spatially separated from the location of resources the task is made more challenging by ecological complexity that obscures cause benefits and effects costs and dramatic time lags between individual actions and subsequent social consequences that together with substantial uncertainty introduce the chance of irreversibilities resource economists have played a major role in the literature on externalities the development of individual transferable quotas non market valuation techniques and common property management

renewable resource economists and policy what differences have we made abstract this paper surveys developments in fisheries economics and fisheries policy over the past half century early work clarified the nature of the economic issues associated with open access laying the groundwork for changes in policies after coastal nations expanded their jurisdictions in 1976 perhaps the most important point made by economists is that property rights matter and that open access conditions create economic as well as biological problems the policy process has begun to create property rights systems although many of the world s fisheries still operate under mixed systems of regulations and open access incentives

human ecosystem interactions a dynamic integrated model abstract we develop an interactive simulation model that links ecological and economic systems and explore the dynamics of harvest patterns as they simultaneously affect natural and human capital our models represent both single and multiple systems the level of natural capital is influenced by interactions of 1 natural capital growth and non human influenced depletion 2 ecological fluctuations 3 harvest rules and 4 biological transfers from one ecological system to another we focus first on isolated systems in which there are no biological transfers between units and humans rely for subsistence on the resource thus both the economic and ecological portions of the system are relatively independent of other systems in this case the maximum sustainable harvest rate depends on the local carrying capacity the stock growth rate and fluctuations in such ecological variables as rainfall and temperature which are extrinsic to the stock human harvest but nonetheless affect stock levels next we address spatially complex situations in which biological resources move from one spatial unit to others in these models the greater the potential movement of stocks across ecosystems the more any particular human sub system can increase its harvesting rate without danger of its own collapse although at a cost to neighboring subsystems

business cycle and political election outcomes evidence from the chilean democracy this paper explores the influence of economic variables in chilean presidential elections we use a panel where the dependent variable corresponds to the share of the vote obtained by the incumbent at a municipal level in the presidential elections of 1989 1993 and 1999 we focus on the unemployment rate and the output gap and find that both have a significant influence on the vote we also find that if the mayor is from the same coalition as the incumbent people will further punish the incumbent when regional unemployment is above national unemployment

pattern formation spatial externalities and regulation in coupled economic ecological systems abstract we study the management of ecosystems in which interacting state variables that are affected by management decisions diffuse in space we study pattern formation first in a setting where economic agents maximize myopic profits and ignore spillovers onto agents at other sites and second in the context of a social planner who internalizes these spillovers we compare patterns under these two institutions and study how the differences in the patterns generated by these two institutions impact the design of regulatory schemes to internalize the externalities at the same time we introduce new methods based on fourier series type decompositions that enable us to turn an intractable infinite dimensional optimal control problem into a countable number of finite dimensional optimal control problems as far as we know these methods are new to the economics literature our theory is applied to the management and regulation of a semi arid system

natural resource economics and conservation contributions of agricultural economics and agricultural economists research by agricultural economists on natural resources has been distinguished by an interdisciplinary emphasis and a dynamic perspective it has recognized technological and institutional constraints has been oriented toward solving concrete resource management and policy problems and has emphasized empirical and quantitative analysis agricultural economists have introduced methods for evaluating natural resource conservation efforts for predicting adoption of resource conservation technologies and for designing efficient and sustainable resource management policies they have identified ways of improving land management and preventing land degradation proposed reforms of institutions governing water allocation and water quality and introduced policies for balancing environmental and efficiency considerations in the management of pests biodiversity and livestock diseases their research has had substantial impacts on the formulation of resource conservation policies

consequences of discretion in the formation of commodities policy abstract in a simple model of endogenous primary commodity price support policy i policy is affected by private inventories and ii private inventories are affected by speculative attempts to forecast policy the interaction between these two forces is rich yielding bubbles and extrinsic volatility thus helping to explain some odd episodes observed in commodity markets in addition under some conditions a government that wishes to support the price but is unable to commit to future action may be impotent and a government that does not want to support the price may be trapped into doing so by speculative activity

open access harvesting of wildlife the poaching pit and conservation of endangered species abstract we extend the traditional g s model of open access by defining a non concave harvesting function we demonstrate the possible existence of multiple equilibria and perverse comparative statics and show that small changes in the underlying economic parameters may trigger large jumps in species abundance finally we briefly discuss implications for management

differences and similarities between ecological and economic models for biodiversity conservation abstract in this paper we investigate an important obstacle which substantially complicates co operation between ecologists and economists but which has received little attention so far differences between the modelling approaches in economics and ecology to understand these differences 60 models addressing issues relevant to biodiversity conservation have been selected randomly from eight international economic and ecological journals the models have been compared according to a number of criteria including the models level of generality the mathematical techniques employed for formulation and solution of the models the level of complexity and the way time space and uncertainty are taken into account the economic models sampled are formulated and analysed analytically tend to be relatively simple and are mostly used to investigate general questions furthermore they often ignore space dynamics and uncertainty although some ecological models have similar properties there is also a substantial number of another type of ecological models that are relatively complex and analysed by simulation these models tend to be rather specific and often explicitly consider dynamics space and uncertainty the integrated ecological economic models are observed to lie in the middle between ecological and economic models an unexpected result is that they are not more complex than ecological and economic models as one could have expected from a simple merger of models from both disciplines but have an intermediate complexity

the local effects of an innovation evidence from the french fish market in this paper we investigate the effect on quality quantity and prices of an innovative fishing gear introduced for a subsample of vessels on a single wholesale fish market in france estimations are conducted using transaction data over the 2009 2011 period during which the innovation was introduced using a difference in differences approach around the discontinuity we find that for the treated the innovation has a large effect on quality 29 2 percentage points and prices 23 2 percentage points a shift in caught fish species is observed and new targeted species are fished very intensively we also quantify the treatment effect on the treated market from aggregate market data using factor models and a synthetic control approach we find a sizable effect of the innovation on market quality which is consistent with non treated vessels adapting their fishing practices to remain competitive the innovation has no effect on market quantities and prices

dynamic use of closures and imperfectly enforced quotas in a metapopulation the dynamic efficiency of closures in bioeconomic systems depends upon stock levels and in situ values that evolve over time and on relative costs of implementation a model of a harvested metapopulation is presented in which second best reduction of harvest from open access levels using input quotas balances monitoring costs against dynamic benefits of mitigating overharvesting temporary or permanent closures though generally still second best are preferable to quotas under certain conditions as demonstrated for a representative patch and time period interactions between patches are discussed numerical solutions illustrate comparative dynamics of closure use and show their potential benefits in a dynamic regulatory path

an open access fishery with rational expectations explain the evolution of the fish stock and the boat fleet as well as determine their equilibrium levels 2 while the changes in the fish stock are described by a biological rule entry and exit from the fishing industry are determined by how expectations are formed we examine a general model in which entry and exit are proportional to the present value of expected profits and compare two special cases of adaptive myopic expectations and rational expectations although both expectations mechanisms lead to the same equilibrium values they lead to different adjustment paths where expectations solely depend on current values myopic expectations it is well known that boats enter the fishery only when the fish stock is greater than its steady state stock 3 with rational expectations however boats may enter when the fish stock is much lower than its steady state value provided the boat fleet is sufficiently small this difference in adjustment is observable and in principle leads to an obvious test on how agents form expectations section 2 develops a general dynamic model for studying fisheries in section 3 we show that the model standardly used in the literature is equivalent to a myopic adaptive expectations model a rational expectations model is analyzed in section 4 the standard and rational expectations models are compared in section 5 section 6 illustrates this comparison using a simulation based on a schaefer model of the pacific halibut fishery section 7 presents the conclusions

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

distributive politics in china regional favouritism and expansion of construction land land conversion control in china remains in the shadow of the planned economy highly hierarchical governments fully control both land quotas and land approval which are indispensable for each add

rational and self fulfilling balance of payments crises speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes occur ifasset price paths are to be free of abnormal profit opportunities suchattacks are fully rational as they reflect the market s response to aregime breakdown that is inevitable the authors shows that under someexpectations about policy balance of payments crises can also be purely self fulfilling events in such cases even a permanently viableregime may collapse and the economy will possess multiple equilibriacorresponding to different subjective assessments of the probability ofa crisis the behavior of the domestic interest rate will naturally reflect the possibility of a speculative attack copyright 1986 by american economic association

an ecological economic modelling procedure to design compensation payments for the efficient spatio temporal allocation of species protection measures abstract using an interdisciplinary approach we present an ecological economic modelling procedure to design compensation payments for species protection we develop our procedure on the example of white stork protection in a spatio temporally structured landscape generated by human land use the proposed procedure is able to solve complex allocation problems such as the spatio temporal allocation of a budget among more than two areas with spatially differing species specific cost and benefit functions of any shapes furthermore the procedure delivers the efficient compensation payments not only qualitatively but quantitatively and is hence relevant to the implementation of species protection policies

it s the economy and then some modeling the presidential vote with state panel data using data for the 50 us states for presidential elections from 1972 to 2004 two theories for determining state voting outcomes are considered jointly the economy matters and home grown ness theories fixed effects regressions show that measures of the economy matters real income unemployment and a proxy for inflation have the predicted effects on state voting patterns for presidential elections the home grown theory receives mixed support there is weak evidence that incumbent party candidates garner greater support in their home states there is strong support however for the proposition that incumbent party candidates fare worse in the home state of rival party candidates

a metapopulation model with private property and a common pool abstract a metapopulation illustrated by barnacles has a spatial distribution and a two stage life cycle in the model developed here space limits expansion introducing a profitable harvest activity of adults leads to harvest at only one site a solution driven by biological increasing returns the model is of interdisciplinary interest because the natural resource has common property characteristics in its larval stage but a private property character in its adult stage the model permits economic valuation of lost habitat

adjustment cost and supply response in a fishery a dynamic revenue function in industries where firms can adjust product mix in response to price changes the process can be delayed by adjustment costs an example is fishermen who change fishing grounds to target different species if adjustment costs are sufficiently large this may hamper the fishermen s response so that regulatory tools that are not efficient in the long run are useful in the short run moreover adjustment costs can influence the choice of species targeted in this paper dynamic supply equations are specified using a revenue function approach different hypotheses about the dynamics of the supply equations are tested for norwegian trawlers

tariffs as insurance optimal commercial policy when domestic markets are incomplete free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile ex post and markets for contingent claims are incomplete the government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets using a combination of analytical and simulation techniques we demonstrate that optimal policy for this purpose will often have an anti trade bias we also show that the usual preference by economists for factor or product taxes and subsidies over tariffs and export subsidies may not be justified in this context this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

money politics and the post war business cycle abstract the political economy literature has enshrined as stylized fact the view that lower inflation and temporarily lower growth follow the election of republican presidents and has emphasized political manipulation of monetary policy as an explanation support for the monetary explanation comes in econometric work that largely ignores identification issues that dominate the literature on measuring the effects of monetary policy we generalize a standard vector autoregression framework to accommodate discrete political party variables we find almost no support for the view that political effects on the macroeconomy operate through monetary policy and only weak evidence that political effects are significant at all

the control of invasive species on private property with neighbor to neighbor spillovers invasive pests cross property boundaries property managers may have private incentives to control invasive species despite not having sufficient incentive to fully internalize the external costs of their role in spreading the invasion each property manager has a right to future use of his own property but his property may abut others properties enabling spread of an invasive species the incentives for a foresighted property manager to control invasive species have received little attention we consider the efforts of a foresighted property manager who has rights to future use of a property and has the ability to engage in repeated discrete control activities we find that higher rates of dispersal associated with proximity to neighboring properties reduce the private incentives for control controlling species at one location provides incentives to control at a neighboring location control at neighboring locations are strategic complements and coupled with spatial heterogeneity lead to a weaker link public good problem in which each property owner is unable to fully appropriate the benefits of his own control activity future use rights and private costs suggest that there is scope for a series of coase like exchanges to internalize much of the costs associated with species invasion pigouvian taxes on invasive species potentially have qualitatively perverse behavioral effects a tax with a strong income effect e g failure of effective revenue recycling can reduce the value of property assets and diminish the incentive to manage insects on one s own property

presidential and congressional vote share equations three vote share equations are estimated and analyzed in this paper one for presidential elections one for on term house elections and one for mid term house elections the sample period is 1916 2006 considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic variables affect each and to examine various serial correlation and coattail possibilities the resulting three equation model can then be analyzed dynamically which is done in section 4 the main conclusions are briefly 1 there is strong evidence that the economy affects all three vote shares and in remarkably similar ways 2 there is no evidence of any presidential coattail effects on the on term house elections the presidential vote share and the on term house vote share are highly positively correlated but this is because they are affected by some of the same variables 3 there is positive serial correlation in the house vote in that the previous mid term house vote share positively affects the on term house vote share and the previous on term house vote share positively affects the mid term house vote share 4 the presidential vote share has a negative effect on the next mid term house vote share the most likely explanation for this is a balance argument where voters are reluctant to let one party become too dominant ruled out as possible explanations for this fourth result is any reversal of a coattail effect since there is no evidence of an effect in the first place and a regression to the mean since the positive serial correlation in the house vote implies no such regression also it is not simply voting against the party in the white house because the presidential variable is a vote share variable not a 0 1 incumbency variable

specification of spatial dynamic externalities and implications for strategic behavior in disease control we propose a novel distance and density dependent specification of externalities that captures spatial dynamics within and between neighboring land parcels we use this specification to model the short and long distance diffusion and control of an infectious disease in two privately owned and ecologically connected vineyards using computational experiments to generate individual and aggregate payoffs our results suggest that ignoring the within parcel spatial dynamics in the model may overestimate the social cost of an externality we find that increased resource value heterogeneity defined as the difference in grape prices received by the two vineyards has a detrimental impact on aggregate payoffs

optimal harvesting of stochastic spatial resources abstract we characterize the optimal harvest of a renewable resource in a generalized stochastic spatially explicit model despite the complexity of the model we are able to obtain sharp analytical results we find that the optimal harvest rule in general depends upon dispersal patterns of the resource across space and only in special circumstances do we find a modified golden rule of growth that is independent of dispersal patterns we also find that the optimal harvest rule may include closure of some areas to harvest either on a temporary or permanent basis biological reserves reserves alone cannot correct open access but may under sufficient spatial heterogeneity and connectivity increase profits if appropriate harvest controls are in place outside of reserves

economic impacts of marine reserves the importance of spatial behavior abstract marine biologists have shown virtually unqualified support for managing fisheries with marine reserves signifying a new resource management paradigm that recognizes the importance of spatial processes in exploited systems most modeling of reserves employs simplifying assumptions about the behavior of fishermen in response to spatial closures we show that a realistic depiction of fishermen behavior dramatically alters the conclusions about reserves we develop estimate and calibrate an integrated bioeconomic model of the sea urchin fishery in northern california and use it to simulate reserve policies our behavioral model shows how economic incentives determine both participation and location choices of fishermen we compare simulations with behavioral response to biological modeling that presumes that effort is spatially uniform and unresponsive to economic incentives we demonstrate that optimistic conclusions about reserves may be an artifact of simplifying assumptions that ignore economic behavior

presidential politics budget deficits and monetary policy in the united states 1960 1976 this paper has focused on the extent to which the traditional tools of macroeconomic management in the united states monetary and fiscal policy have contributed to a political business cycle regardless of whether politicians can successfully influence real economic variables to their own ends the evidence presented here suggests that they tried and that they enjoyed some at least indirect aid from their independent monetary authorities in doing so several major conclusions emerge

business cycles and the political process the interrelationship between the political sector and the macroeconomy in democratic societies has been examined extensively in recent years research in this area has generally been concerned with two issues first following the lead of kramer 16 various authors have examined the impact of economic conditions on congressional 1 13 21 24 and presidential elections 4 5 the results at the congressional level have been mixed but it is reasonably safe to conclude that economic conditions do affect presidential elections the second issue and the one of primary concern in this study has dealt with the development of models of politico economic interaction the basic concept in these models is that an administration s popularity and therefore the probability of staying in power depends critically on economic conditions knowing this the administration seeks to manipulate the economy in order to maintain power the use of economic tools for political goals by governments is well established in the literature theoretical contributions by nordhaus 20 and macrae 18 have demonstrated the potential for a politically motivated business cycle in a world of politico economic interaction empirical support for the existence of such a cycle is provided by the work of frey and schneider 7 8 9 the main purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model of the political business cycle that generates empirically testable proposition the goal is to integrate the theoretical conclusions of a formal model similar to the nordhaus 20 and macrae 18 framework with the empirical support provided by frey and schneider 7 8 9 the possibility of a political business cycle is important for several reasons in macroeconometric models government policy that is endogenous to the system is usually treated as if it were exogenous this may cause serious misspecification errors further forecasts of the future course of economic events which depend heavily on government action will be inaccurate unless the political motivations of governments are considered

presidential popularity and the economy abstract this study tests the hypothesis that the sensitivity of the president s popularity to economic events differs across distinct demographic groups assuming that presidental popularity is negatively related to both the unemployment rate and the inflation rate the electorate is disaggregated according to sex age race education income and political affiliation and separate regressions are estimated for the individual subgroups using quarterly data covering 1976 through 1988 statistically significant differences in the marginal effects of unemployment and inflation on presidential approval are discovered for the various subgroupings

the political economy of intergovernmental grants evidence from a maturing democracy we evaluate the impact of political forces in the allocation of intergovernmental grants in portugal as it matured from a young to an established democracy using a large and unexplored dataset we show that political variables condition the granting system and that their importance changed over time while tactical manipulation in the distribution of grants among municipalities seems to exist only in the early years of democracy opportunistic effects are stronger in the latter years we argue that the latter effect is due to a change in the political environment and to the electorate s lack of information on intergovernmental grants

policy oriented voting in response to economic issues this study explores the hypothesis that voting in response to economic problems is policy oriented voters concerned about unemployment ore predicted to give greater support to democratic candidates while those concerned about inflation are predicted to vote more republican in light of evidence from previous research this study investigates the electoral effects of inflation and unemployment as 1 problems directly experienced by the individual and 2 problems deemed serious for the nation as a whole support is strongest for the unemployment side of the hypothesis voters personally affected by unemployment gave a modest boost to democratic candidates in virtually every election and in years of high unemployment the large percentage of voters who fell it was a serious national problem voted heavily democratic as well this study concludes by discussing the important implications these findings have for our understanding of how economic conditions influence voting behavior in american national elections

a model of regulated open access resource use abstract this paper develops a model of regulated open access resource exploitation the regulatory model assumes that regulators are goal oriented choosing target harvest levels according to a safe stock concept these harvest quotas are implemented by setting season lengths conditioned on the industry fishing capacity the industry enters until rents are dissipated conditioned on season length regulations harvest levels fishing capacity season length and biomass are determined jointly using parameter estimates from the long regulated north pacific halibut fishery predictions of these variables from the regulated open access model are compared to predictions that arise from the gordon model

rules and discretion in trade policy abstract we argue that the second best nature of trade policy suggests that the issue of time consistency will be an important consideration in determining the extent and efficacy of such intervention if production decisions are made prior to consumption decisions governments with sufficient policy discretion will be tempted to surprise producers with policies other than those announced in an effort to separate the consumption tax aspect from the production subsidy dimension of a tariff this leads optimal trade policy to be time inconsistent in a wide range of environments we explore this idea and illustrate the results with specific examples

disadvantageous oil tariffs and dynamic consistency a large importer who places relatively greater weight on future than current oil consumption will import less oil in the future than if it were able to commit itself in advance to future tariffs and may find itself worse off than if it were unable to impose tariffs at all futures markets and storage modify these adverse effects and may avoid the problem of dynamic inconsistency copyright 1990 by american economic association

the economics of choice in the allocation of intergovernmental grants to local authories the empirical study and modelling of processes and motivations behind government behavior has been relatively meager this paper has formulated and estimated a model designed to explain the allocation of intergovernmental grants to local authorities the model takes into consideration the fact that this process is governed by mixed motivations associated with both the desire to adopt policies and actions based on the concept of public interest and with the desire for re election the model was applied to data pertaining to 52 local authorities in israel under two governments the principal findings of the foregoing analysis can be summarized as follows first the behavioral mechanism operating beyond intergovernmental grants allocation is inherent in the political system and equally applies to the two governments second this mechanism is governed both by factors representing objective criteria describing the needs of the populations and by political factors representing the desire for re election differences in the behavior of the two governments seem to be significant as far as some objective variables are concerned but are almost insignificant as far as the political variable is concerned third as in other studies conducted in the u s our findings support the hypothesis that in their attempt to maximize the prospects for re election governments find it preferable to pursue policies which reward their supporters rather than buy off their opponents lastly by allowing per capita grants to be a non monotonous function of the political variable it was found that indeed both governments have increased per capita grants as a function of pol up to a certain level and decreased it thereafter

unobserved diversity depletion and irreversibility the importance of subpopulations for management of cod stocks abstract diversity is often associated with resilience but in this model unobserved genetic or behavioral diversity can explain the collapse of supposedly regulated fish stocks such as cod recent studies have shown the existence of separate sub stocks of cod even at a very fine geographical scale we show that modeling a group of distinct stocks as if it were one large stock will tend to over estimate the growth and harvest potential if quotas are based on such over estimates the unobserved stock diversity can explain sudden stock collapses and unexpectedly slow recovery as observed for canadian cod it is a lack of information concerning diversity that leads to irreversibility the differences between the various stocks may be behavioral or genetic but cannot be observed by the fishermen or regulators who believe that there is a gradual decline in one big stock while in fact they are witnessing the successive disappearance of a series of sub stocks

government subsidies and presidential election outcomes evidence for a developing country summary we explore the effects of government subsidies on presidential elections in chile in 1989 99 we use a panel with three periods the elections of 1989 1993 and 1999 and 229 counties we correct for the potential simultaneity problem deriving from the fact that an incumbent facing a difficult political scenario might react by increasing subsidies to improve his her electoral performance our results indicate that the greater the coverage of these types of programs i e the percentage of people receiving subsidies the higher the votes for the incumbent