optimal ngo financing of a resource management certification scheme the development of voluntary certification schemes in areas as diverse as fish coffee and forestry offer the promise of environmental improvements without the requirement of governmental regulation and intervention in many cases however the costs to landholders of making the transition are too large for them to do so at the same time the large intermediaries appear to have little economic incentive to introduce certification because the market does not adequately value the environmental benefits instead ngos and other aid and development agencies who would like to see small producers benefit from the change in production practices have typically stepped in to provide financial support for certification this paper shows how voluntary price discrimination in the form of donations by the consumers that most highly value certification can be used to finance a switch to environmentally sustainable practices and thus address a market failure this analysis shows that an ngo s optimal intervention depends on the size of its budget the elasticity of supply of the product and the elasticity of participation by producers ngos with smaller budgets rely more heavily on lump sum transfers to the intermediary and less heavily on volume and participation dependent subsidies volume and participation dependent subsidies are inversely related to the elasticity of supply and the elasticity of participation in a standard lerner relationship

leveling the playing field or just lowering salaries the effects of redistribution in baseball in an attempt to even the playing field major league baseball has considered a number of different redistribution programs to successfully address the problem of imbalance in the league redistribution must affect teams marginal revenue functions previous theoretical work has shown that efforts to redistribute revenues from rich to poor teams will lower the marginal value of winning of all teams thus reducing the payments to labor but it remains an empirical question as to whether the net effects of such programs have improved balance in this paper we provide an empirical assessment of whether redistributive efforts between 1996 and 2001 succeeded in reallocating talent to less advantaged teams by estimating the effect of redistribution on the marginal revenue functions of small and large market teams our results indicate that redistribution lowered salaries by approximately 22 without affecting league balance

rate of return regulation and two part tariffs in choosing a two part tariff a monopoly subject to rate of return regulation will rely more on demand elasticities and less on marginal costs than would a welfare maximizing firm the rate of return regulated firm also will reduce its access fee or its marginal usage fee more depending on whether adding consumers or increasing output requires marginally the most capital in the typical case these effects will favor declining block rate structures which helps to explain their widespread use by rate of return regulated firms

the impact of the 1981 and 1994 1995 strikes on major league baseball attendance a time series analysis protracted labour disputes in professional team sports have become increasingly common in the past 30 years although each of the four major professional team sports in the usa have experienced episodes of labour strife major league baseball has the longest and most frequent experience with labour management conflict fans and the media claim with each incident permanent harm is done to baseball s standing as the national pastime the purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether such claims can be supported by the empirical evidence utilizing time series analysis aggregate attendance at professional baseball games is examined the evidence presented suggests that although the most protracted periods of labour discord had short term impacts on attendance there is no empirical evidence that these exogenous shocks had any long term effects

the effects of labour strikes on consumer demand in professional sports revisited previous research has concluded that the 1981 and 1994 1995 major league baseball mlb strikes have caused short term losses in attendance but have not resulted in any long term effects on attendance while total attendance at mlb games following the 1994 1995 strike has recovered to its pre strike levels this has been done only through the construction of new stadiums at an unprecedented pace which cannot continue into the future after accounting for stadium effects average mlb baseball attendance has dropped significantly since the 1994 1995 strike

a quality of play model of a professional sports league assuming that consumers value both the absolute and relative quality of play i compare the choice of ticket prices team qualities and number of games played in a noncooperative outcome versus that chosen by a social planner i find that the nature of consumer preferences regarding the quality of play determines whether the demand for talented players are strategic complements or substitutes a strong preference by fans for a superior team makes players strategic substitutes while a concern for a high quality of play and competitive balance make players strategic complements moreover when fans only value the relative quality of play there is an overemployment of talented players in the noncooperative outcome versus the socially optimal outcome when they only value the absolute quality of play then there is an underemployment of talented players in the noncooperative outcome jel l1 l2 l4 l83

racial integration as an innovation empirical evidence from sports leagues this paper treats racial integration as an innovation in economic process in which economic entities find it advantageous to utilize potentially more productive inputs previously unavailable due to law custom or managerial discretion data on the racial integration of major league baseball and atlantic coast conference basketball are employed to address this issue the central question examined is which type of team integrated first losers or winners the results strongly support the idea that entrepreneurship trumps competitive rivalry that is winning teams led the process of racial integration jel li j7 one of the watershed events in u s history is the struggle to achieve a racially integrated society while the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 195o s 196o s and 197o s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of jim crow rule in the american south other changes in law and custom also motivated the process of racial integration across time and place indeed segregation was not limited to the south but was a prominent feature of many national organizations and markets despite the extensive commentary on these events from various perspectives there has been very little economic analysis of the actual process of racial integration economists have focused their efforts on the economics of discriminatio n while the actual process by which individuals firms and

the impact of labor strikes on consumer demand an application to professional sports the primary bargaining power of organized labor is its ability to withdraw labor from the rm in the form of a strike from the workers perspective a strike is intended to impose substantial costs upon the rm over time as these costs accumulate the rm develops an appreciation of the solidarity of labor and may eventually surrender to the demands of the workers orley c ashenfelter and george e johnson 1969 note that the strike also serves the function of informing the workers to the reality of the rm s position although the union leadership may recognize early in negotiations that the rm cannot or will not meet the workers demands the rank and le of the union often do not understand the impracticality in their position until the workers have struck and the rm fails to surrender whether strikes ultimately serve as a lesson to workers or rms is partially impacted by the extent to which such events impart costs upon both the rm and the industry for example brian e becker and craig a olson 1986 examined the relationship between worker strikes and changes in shareholder equity these authors found that on average a strike of at least 1 000 workers would reduce shareholder equity by 4 1 percent richard a de fusco and scott m fuess jr 1991 examined airline carriers and found that strikes tended to redistribute wealth from shareholders of those airlines which experienced a strike to shareholders of airlines that had management labor peace furthermore richard mchugh 1991 investigated the impact of a labor strike on both the rm and organizations linked as purchasers or suppliers surprisingly the impact of the strike was greater for the linked rm than it was for the rm directly experiencing the worker strike each of the aforementioned studies found that strikes impose costs on the rm these costs generally centered on the loss of output the rm experienced during the duration of the management labor con ict previous studies have largely neglected the possible extended costs associated with the reactions of the remaining party impacted by the worker strike the consumer although in many industries rms can increase inventories prior to a worker strike this is not true in all industries within the airline industry for example labor strikes temporarily force consumers to either consume the production of other suppliers or live without the particular good or service this outcome leads to the question we investigate do work stoppages permanently impact consumer demand when the struck rm is unable to meet demand during the labor strike a natural setting to explore this issue is the professional sports industry in such an industry worker strikes can completely remove the output from the consumer s consumption basket unlike strikes in other industries though consumers of the output from the professional team sports industry frequently threaten to withdraw all future demand if worker strikes are not avoided or ended quickly this threat has led industry insiders to claim that labor strikes might destroy the professional sports league experiencing management labor dif culty

market size and the demand for talent in major league baseball in this article we look at how revenues affect the personnel decisions of major league baseball mlb teams it is well established that teams with the strongest demands end up with the top stars and deepest benches thus the best chance of winning since a team s demand for talent is its marginal revenue product the critical test is whether large market teams have a greater marginal revenue mr controlling for the impact of re distributional efforts by mlb we find that the mr of a large market team is about 50 larger than that of a small market team furthermore we find that re distributive efforts have a more severe effect on small market teams are the new york yankees a dynasty because they outsmarted everyone no they just outspent everyone sam smith chicago tribune

optimal two part pricing in a carbon offset market a comparison of organizational types author affiliation murray fulton johnson shoyama graduate school of public policy diefenbaker building university of saskatchewan saskatoon sk s7n 5b8 canada e mail murray fulton usask ca corresponding author james vercammen food and resource economics and sauder school of business 2053 main mall university of british columbia vancouver bc v6t 1z2 canada e mail james vercammen ubc ca acknowledgment the authors would like to thank tom ross and ralph winter for valuable comments on an early version of this article as well as the southern economic journal editor and two anonymous reviewers the usual caveats apply 1 introductionone of the consequences of the kyoto protocol kp and the increased focus on the role of greenhouse gases ghgs in climate change is that market based approaches to reducing ghg emissions are being actively developed in europe the european union eu operates an emissions trading scheme ets 1 while in the united states the chicago climate exchange ccx trades carbon offsets among exchange members 2 in canada a number of provinces have announced plans for carbon trading schemes four of them have joined the western climate initiative wci a consortium of canadian provinces and states developing a regional cap and trade system wci 2008 the wci and the regional greenhouse gas initiative rggi a consortium of northeastern and mid atlantic states see rggi 2008 are part of the international carbon action partnership a group of countries and regions from around the world that has formed to actively pursue the development of mandatory cap and trade systems in carbon 3the agriculture and forestry sectors are likely to be important suppliers of carbon offsets to the carbon market both through carbon sequestration activities for example the storing of carbon in the soil or in trees and through activities that reduce ghg emissions for instance estimates made by the united states at the time the kp was being negotiated projected that forest cropland and grazing land management sinks could have accounted for about half of u s reduction commitments u s department of state 2002 in canada the federal government estimated that agricultural and forestry sinks could provide in the order of 15 20 million metric tons of carbon offsets relative to a total of 270 300 million metric tons of reductions required under the kp government of canada 2005 food and agricultural organization fao estimates indicate that dryland soils in the world could sequester somewhere in the range of 12 000 16 000 million metric tons of carbon fao 2004 in the case of agriculture since carbon offsets are sold in units that are much larger than most individual farmers can supply carbon sequestration from a number of producers must be aggregated to fulfill contracts 4 as a consequence market intermediaries or aggregators as they are known are emerging to perform this economic function some of these aggregators are organized as for profit firms while others are organized by farmers associations examples of for profit firms are as follows c green aggregators ltd a privately owned company that contracts with farmers in manitoba saskatchewan and alberta for carbon sequestration the carbon they acquire is sold on the ccx c green aggregators 2008 and agcert international an irish company founded to generate emission reductions from livestock farms agcert international 2008 much of agcert s sales of carbon credits has been direct to individual emitters on the producer association side the iowa farm bureau has created agragate climate credits corporation to aggregate carbon credits for sale on the ccx agragate climate credits corporation 2008 agragate administers the project transacts trades on the exchange and distributes earnings to project participants

human capital investments and relative earnings mobility the role of education training migration and job search a major question in economic development is how a country can increase its rate of output growth although the quantity of capital and labor are central in many theoretical models of output determination the empirical evidence from growth accounting models indicates that the amount of capital and the hours of labor employed account for only a small proportion of the growth in per capita product on the basis of these findings theorists have extended growth accounting models to identify other factors that stimulate growth according to the findings of these models quality and deployment of inputs organizational modes and technology are all keys to growth 2 by making changes and investments that affect these factors countries can move toward greater growth and development of the resources available to low income countries labor remains the most abundant these countries can thus achieve major gains in output through labor investments whenever a country reallocates labor from lowto high productivity activities and sectors whenever it improves labor quality through education and training it fuels economic growth an extensive empirical literature documents the direct productivity enhancing effects of human capital in the agricultural as well as the industrial sectors 3 most institutions and researchers concerned with development acknowledge human capital development and deployment as a central source of growth and especially per capita growth 4 representative of this perspective are g psacharopoulos and a arriagada who view limited human capital development as the

modeling farmers decisions on child labor and schooling in the cocoa sector a multinomial logit analysis in cote d ivoire since 2000 children working in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire have found themselves in the media spotlight this situation has assumed particular importance because approximately 40 of the world s cocoa production occurs in c ote d ivoire concerned parties have since taken great interest in this thorny issue there is a need to better understand the reality of child labor utilization in this sector this article investigates child labor issues in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire in conjunction with schooling status of children the study is based on a survey done in 2002 over a representative sample of more than 11 000 members of cocoa households the multinomial logit model is used to capture choice probabilities across work and or school options the results reveal that child labor in cocoa farms and nonenrollment in schools are significant moreover many children are involved in potentially dangerous and or harmful tasks data also highlight gender and age dimensions in the participation of children in tasks and the way labor is allocated econometric results generally indicate that the gender and age of children whether or not the child is the biological child of the household head parents education the origin of the farmer household welfare household size the household dependency ratio the size of other perennial crop farms the number of sharecroppers working with the household head and communities characteristics are all pertinent in explaining the child work schooling outcome in the cocoa sector of c ote d ivoire

attendance and promotions in minor league baseball the carolina league this empirical study investigates determinants of attendance at minor league baseball games in the carolina league in 2006 the focus of the analysis is on the effect of a wide variety of game day promotions on attendance on a game by game basis rather than aggregate attendance during the season the ordinary least square ols results imply that attendance is positively a function of per capita income in the city or county hosting the team runs scored by the home team friday and saturday games and promotions that provide cost reduced food or beverages low and high value merchandise and post game fireworks attendance is negatively a function of home team errors monday games and possibly rainy conditions during the game an unusual finding with respect to minor league baseball is that team performance variables affect attendance however home team runs scored and home team errors contribute to the overall entertainment experience for the home team fans and thus yield plausible effects on attendance

league level attendance and outcome uncertainty in u s pro sports leagues we extend the breakpoint literature regarding annual league level attendance and the impact of outcome uncertainty to the national basketball association national football league and national hockey league as our measures are different than past work on baseball we also apply our model to the american and national leagues attendance series for each league under consideration are not stationary overall but are stationary with break points no form of outcome uncertainty game play off or across seasons matters for attendance in hockey or baseball regardless of which game uncertainty variable is used under the measure of game uncertainty that recommends itself for football only play off uncertainty matters for attendance whether outcome uncertainty matters for basketball depends on the measure of game uncertainty situational similarities in the break points across leagues suggest general areas for future research jel l83 c22

an economic analysis of delayed primary school enrollment in a low income country the role of early childhood nutrition this paper investigates why children in low income countries often delay primary school enrollment despite the prediction of human capital theory that schooling will begin at the earliest possible age we explore several explanations for delayed enrollment but focus on the hypothesis that delays are rational responses to early childhood malnutrition we test these alternative hypotheses using recent data from ghana our estimates which address a number of previously ignored econometric issues firmly support the hypothesis that early childhood malnutrition causes delayed enrollment we find little or no support for alternative explanations based on borrowing constraints and the rationing of places in school copyright 1995 by mit press

the invariance principle in baseball new evidence this article considers the change in revenue sharing in major league baseball that occurred prior to the 2007 season and its effects on parity via its effects on marginal revenues based on the results from an empirical specification for team revenue we find evidence that the reduction in revenue sharing increased marginal revenue by more for large market clubs than for small market clubs despite holding constant other differences in how small and large market club revenues are determined the upshot of this result is that the modest reduction in revenue sharing could have worsened league parity by 11 to 17 points in winning percentage between small and large market clubs although other factors affect parity as well the well known invariance principle in the economics of sport literature does not appear to hold however the current consensus of theoretical models is not confirmed

opportunism and ngos entrepreneurship and green north south transfers abstract through the lens of entrepreneurship this paper applies the new institutional economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations ngos in latin america to clarify their political economic roles southern ngos that rely on northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods these nonprofit ngos take their place alongside for profit firms as contributors to economic production employment institutional innovation and technology transfer the theoretical framework proposed assumes that self interested behavior coexists with loyalty commitment and altruism as well as opportunism

pre and within season attendance forecasting in major league baseball a random forest approach this study explores the forecasting of major league baseball game ticket sales and identifies important attendance predictors by means of random forests that are grown from classification and regre

determinants of revenue in sports leagues an empirical assessment this study investigates determinants of revenue in north america s four major professional sports leagues revenue is positively associated with on field success in baseball mlb basketball nba and hockey nhl but not in football nfl the returns to success are not diminishing as commonly assumed which casts doubt on the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis and differences across leagues are consistent with revenue sharing arrangements estimates indicate a strong negative but diminishing relationship between stadium age and revenue teams in larger markets generate more revenue than smaller markets but the returns to success do not differ according to market size jel z21

the determinants of early age human capital formation evidence from brazil it is now widely acknowledged that the low human capital base is the most serious developmental constraint in developing countries 1 investments in child schooling add to the stock of human capital and therefore to future income and living standards for society as a whole and among subgroups of the population families invest in children s education for many reasons among them the expectation that education will increase the child s future earnings governments also invest in education in order to raise the skill level of the labor force and hence to increase worker productivity and income in society at large thus the analysis of the determinants of investment in schooling among different subgroups in the population and levels of education attained are of major concern for policymakers this study explores the effects of several economic demographic social and regional factors on the educational attainment of brazilian children between the ages of 7 and 14 years in particular it examines the determinants of school participation grade attainment and dropping out of school the data came from the 3 public use national sample of the 1980 brazilian population census containing 3 526 000 individuals in 808 000 households 2 out of this large data base a random subsample was drawn of 200 000 individuals in 40 000 households selected so as to represent all brazilian states and urban and rural areas from this latter subsample we obtained a subset of 23 700 children aged 7 to 14 to whom we matched their parental and household data the following section gives some background information on brazil section iii describes in more detail the sample used in this analysis section iv focuses on the determinants of school participation section v examines the impact of household and regional charac

in the market but not of it fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification as market based social change summary this paper discusses two well known market based social change initiatives fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives a serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives a global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives governance structures both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories but face similar pressures from conventional market logics practices and dominant actors a preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment focusing on distribution of benefits how conventional market institutions may be questioned and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence

the impact of strikes on shareholder equity from an analysis of data for 1962 82 the authors find that strikes substantially affect shareholder equity as measured by the change in stock prices associated with strikes over that period the a

pass or run an empirical test of the matching pennies game using data from the national football league this article examines play calling in the national football league nfl it finds that a mixed strategy equilibrium game explains nfl play calling better than standard optimization techniques when a quarterback is injured and replaced with a less capable backup standard optimization theory suggests that the offense will run more often passing less our game theoretic model predicts that the offense will not change its play calling because the defense will play against the run more often using every first half play from the 11 teams that had a starting quarterback miss action because of injury in the 2006 season we find that the injury did not alter the likelihood that the offense would pass we also find that coaches randomly mix passing and running plays as the mixed strategy games predict

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

do new major league ballparks pay for themselves in recent decades local governments have allocated billions of dollars to subsidizing construction of facilities for major league baseball we use panel data that cover all major league baseball teams from 1989 2001 to estimate the impact of ballpark construction on team revenue our estimates imply that a typical new ballpark generates additional revenue sufficient to cover most or all of its capital cost it follows that any external benefits of ballpark construction are likely to be inframarginal and that continuance of large public subsidies cannot be justified on economic grounds

the existence and persistence of a winner s curse new evidence from the baseball field this study takes advantage of recent developments in the measurement and valuation of individual output in the baseball labor market to i reassess prior evidence that this market is afflicted by the winner s curse phenomenon and ii test whether bidders learn to avoid this curse over time though we find no evidence of negative average returns on player contracts for the earliest cohort of baseball free agents we conclude that teams in that era failed to efficiently discount their bids in accord with available information especially about risk what is more evidence from a larger sample of players signed in the late 1990s shows that teams have continued to overvalue inconsistent free agents and failed to limit their bids to conform to players lower values in small markets this is consistent with experimental evidence that finds bounded rational behavior when bidders are faced with complex valuation problems involving multiple elements

the economics of sports facilities and their communities since the 1950s taxpayers have been the primary investors in stadia built for the use of privately owned professional sports teams team owners have argued that sports facilities boost local economic activity however economic reasoning and empirical evidence suggest the opposite public support for stadia is also driven by demand for community image and owners of sports teams supply a scarce input into image enhancement participation in the major league for which they have been able to extract monopoly rents from dispersed taxpayers we suggest reforms to dissipate the monopoly sports leagues exercise when negotiating with host communities for their teams