on the fixed nature of sharecropping contracts newbery and stiglitz i979 suggest four stylised facts of sharecropping which theories should attempt to explain the first is the persistence of sharecropping and its coexistence with fixed rental and wage markets under a variety of conditions over centuries of time the second is that in modern developed economies there appears to be a decline in share tenancy thirdly share tenancy is often but not alwavs associated with lower productivity than fixed rental land finally in many economies contracts involve shares of around one half for landlord and tenant this does not vary from contract to contract and does not seem to be the object of negotiation smith i776 and many subsequent authors have likened sharecropping to a tax they argue that under this type of contract tenants choose their labour supply to equate their marginal disutility of labour with their proportionate share of the marginal product instead of the full marginal product they therefore regard sharecropping as an inefficient form of land tenure however this view is difficult to reconcile with the first observation given the coexistence of fixed rent and share contracts it is reasonable to expect that if share contracts were relatively inefficient they would quickly die out this does not appear to have happened more recently it has been argued most notably by cheung i969 that if there is certainty and transactions costs are the same for all contracts then provided a share contract specifies the labour supply of the tenant it leads to the same efficient allocation of resources as a fixed rent or wage contract cheung has used this result as the basis of an explanation for coexistence he suggests that the transaction costs for share contracts are higher than for wage and fixed rent contracts however share contracts have the advantage that they allow the risk to be shared between the landlord and tenant whereas with fixed rent contracts the tenant bears all the risk and with wage contracts the landlord does given varying degrees of risk aversion among landlords and tenants it is possible that for some parties the risk sharing advantages outweigh the transaction cost disadvantages so that they will prefer share contracts whereas with others the reverse is true one problem with this argument raised by stiglitz i974 and newbery i977 is that given constant returns to scale the risk sharing properties of share contracts can be attained with mixtures of fixed rent and wage contracts if these do indeed have lower transaction costs share contracts would not then be observed

evaluation of drought management in irrigated areas this paper focuses on the economic consequences of droughts for the irrigation sector we develop a dynamic recursive mathematical programming farm model that assumes imperfect mobility of capital and labour as well as rational expectations about future water availability the model is calibrated to 12 representative farms belonging to three irrigation communities of the guadalquivir basin south spain and used to simulate the 1991 1997 period which included 3 years of intense drought results indicate that the drought imposed significant costs on farmers but show also that water managers partly exacerbated these costs by allocating excessive amounts of water to irrigators in the abundant years the model is also used to evaluate the benefits of a perfect water supply forecast and to simulate the economic gains of a voluntary water banking scheme results show that the benefits resulting from the perfect forecast of water supply 1 year ahead would represent a relative gain of 5 however a voluntary banking system would allow farmers to increase their benefits by 32 82 depending on the supply system

assessing the functioning of land rental markets in ethiopia although a large theoretical literature discusses the possible inefficiency of sharecropping contracts the empirical evidence on this phenomenon has been ambiguous at best household level fixed effect estimates from about 8 500 plots operated by households that own and sharecrop land in the ethiopian highlands provide support for the hypothesis of marshallian inefficiency at the same time a factor adjustment model suggests that the extent to which rental markets allow households to attain their desired operational holding size is extremely limited our analysis points towards factor market imperfections no rental for oxen lack of alternative employment opportunities and tenure insecurity as possible reasons underlying such behavior suggesting that rather than worrying almost exclusively about marshallian inefficiency it is equally warranted to give due attention to the policy framework within which land rental markets operate

water markets design and evidence from experimental economics market mechanisms are gaining increasing acceptance all over the world as a way of making more efficient use of scarce water resources designing regulatory frameworks that ensure both inter and intra temporal efficient allocations is a daunting task especially if supply is stochastic and there is ample storage capacity in addition to defining tradable rights specific provisions must regulate the use of reservoirs commonly water statutes include provisions that establish asymmetries regarding the allocation of water and market restrictions that ban water trading across different users in this article we use data collected in a laboratory to test two specific market regulations included in the 1999 water reform in spain first junior right holders are not allowed to buy water from senior users second the law does not explicitly define water rights over units left in reservoirs for the following season results suggest that trading restrictions among water right holders lead to welfare losses for senior users it is shown that removing this restriction would increase senior right holders benefits without reducing those of junior users results show that defining water rights over saved units across periods would increase the average stock levels of reservoirs and reduce market price instability the lessons learned from the spanish experience are applicable to settings characterized by unstable natural water supply and the availability of large storage facilities

tenure insecurity gender low cost land certification and land rental market participation in ethiopia abstract there is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in africa this paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in ethiopia in the late 1990s four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern ethiopia are analysed showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of potential tenant and landlord households especially those that are headed by females

valuing options in water markets a laboratory investigation risk and reliability dominate water supply discussions in the arid western united states due to increasing demand and finite weather dependent supply water markets have evolved in this region so agencies could meet this growing demand in a few instances water agencies turned to contractual mechanisms such as options to manage supply as demand continues to grow option markets and other novel approaches to allocating water may become increasingly popular we utilize experimental economics to analyze the effect of annual options on water markets in the absence of sufficient real world data for conventional econometric analysis we find gains from trade are higher when options can be traded additionally gains are more evenly distributed particularly with a dominant buyer and many sellers findings suggest option markets may be a viable choice as policymakers prepare for future droughts

rationing and adjustment in the market for tenancies the behavior of landowning households in thanjavur district a large proportion of peasants cultivate only their own land even when there are active markets for tenancies as well as labor however rationing of tenancies can occur under moral hazard or adverse selection a model that includes as possible outcomes both rationing and full adjustment through trading is analyzed and estimated using data from south india on this basis households can be characterized as rationed or adjusted and confidence intervals for these assignments can be calculated while some households achieved full adjustment a majority were rationed in the tenancy market many of them completely

the distributive impact of land markets in uganda abstract this article presents first hand evidence about land distribution and the impact of land markets in central uganda this area is characterized by unequal distribution of land inheritance rural rural migration and active land markets we show that land markets and particularly land purchases tend to reduce the initial inequality in the initial inherited distribution of land land purchases by landless farmers in their native village represent an important part of this adjustment

the advantage of resource queues over spot resource markets decision coordination in experiments under resource uncertainty farmers have to make key decisions such as which crops to plant or whether to prepare the soil before knowing how much water they will get they face losses if they make costly decisions but do not receive water and they may forego profits if they receive water without being prepared we consider the coordination of farmers decisions such as which crops to plant or whether to prepare the soil when farmers must divide an uncertain water supply we compare ex ante queues pre decision to an ex post spot market post decision post rain in experiments in rural brazil and a university in england queues have greater coordination success than does the spot market

cooperation in common property regimes under extreme drought conditions empirical evidence from the use of pooled transferable quotas in spanish irrigation systems the success of a common property regime can be partially judged on the basis of its ability to handle extreme events that stress its capacity for cooperation this paper compares the performance of 38 irrigation associations in a large irrigation area in spain during a severe drought as a test of hypotheses derived from property right theories the case is particularly interesting because it contains a transferable quota institution that can potentially strengthen the effectiveness of common property regimes in scarcity conditions according to the results the use of transferable quotas across associations can contribute to cooperation and drought performance in this context performance is higher when the associations enjoy 1 effective monitoring systems 2 experience and legitimate leaders and 3 facilitative biophysical conditions like soil water holding capacity the analysis also suggests that biophysical properties like soil water holding capacity may compensate for weaker monitoring or leadership and vice versa

nuclear learning and u s soviet security regimes the concepts of regimes and learning have been developed in the liberal theory of international relations but their application has been mostly in the area of international political economy u s soviet relations are generally explained solely in terms of realist theory the dichotomy is unfortunate because both strands of theory have something to contribute although the injunctions of an overall regime do not govern the u s soviet security relationship it is possible to identify the injunctions and constraining effects of regimes in subissues of the security relationship in five areas of the nuclear relationship destructive power control problems proliferation arms race stability and deterrent force structure it is possible to identify different degrees of learning and to see how such learning affects and is affected by the development of regimes looking at the u s soviet security relationship in terms of learning and regimes raises new questions and opens a research agenda which helps us to think more broadly about the processes of political change in this area

information and the operation of markets tests based on a general equilibrium model of land leasing in india abstract this paper develops an estimable general equilibrium model of land leasing to test the extent to which information is commonly held in a village and whether village markets are efficient information regarding the relative farming skill of households is found to be widespread but the assumption of perfectly efficient markets within the village is rejected these results have ramifications for the estimation of agricultural household models and for our understanding of rural institutions the model is derived from the primitives of the production technology the extent of information and the distributions of assets and several household unobservables simultaneity and selection issues are dealt with explicitly in a two stage maximum likelihood estimation procedure using panel data from india

anarchy hierarchy and the variety of international relations security relations between states vary along a continuum from anarchic alliances to hierarchic empires this continuum in turn is defined by the parties rights of residual control the state s choice between alternatives is explained in a theory of relational contracting as a function of the expected costs of opportunism which decline with relational hierarchy and governance costs which rise with relational hierarchy a comparison of early postwar relations between the united states and western europe and the soviet union and eastern europe illustrates the theory

how do markets manage water resources an experiment we experimentally test how a private monopoly a duopoly and a public utility allocate water of differing qualities to households and farmers most of our results are in line with the theoretical predictions overexploitation of the resources is observed independently of the market structure stock depletion for the public utility is the fastest followed by the private duopoly and private monopoly on the positive aspects of centralized public management we find that the average quality to price ratio offered by the public monopoly is substantially higher than that offered by the private monopoly or duopoly

spot water markets and risk in water supply water availability patterns in semiarid regions are typically extremely variable even in basins with a highly developed infrastructure users are subject to unreliable water supplies incurring substantial economic losses during periods of scarcity more flexible instruments such as voluntary exchanges of water among users can help users to reduce risk exposure this article looks at the effects of spot water markets on the economic risk caused by water availability variations our theoretical and empirical risk analyses are based on the random profits of water users profit probability density functions are formally and graphically characterized for both water sellers and buyers under several possible market outcomes we conclude from this analysis that where water supply is stochastic water markets unambiguously reduce both parties risk exposure the empirical study is conducted on an irrigation district in the guadalquivir valley southern spain where there is a high probability of periods of extreme water scarcity water demand functions for the district representative irrigators and a spatial equilibrium model are used to simulate market exchanges and equilibrium this programming model is combined with statistical simulation techniques we show that the profit probability distribution of a representative irrigator is modified if water exchanges are authorized leading to risk reductions results also indicate that if the market were extended to several districts and users that are subject to varying hydrological risk exposure extremely low profit events would be less likely to occur in sum we show that exchanging water in annual spot markets can reduce farmers economic vulnerability caused by water supply variability across irrigation seasons these results support the water policy reform carried out in spain in 1999 to allow for voluntary water exchanges among right holders

can a water market avert the double whammy of trade reform and lead to a win win outcome abstract this paper focuses on the linkages between water and trade policies using morocco as a case this country is typical of many in that policy protects its import competing agricultural and industrial sectors while water in irrigated agriculture is priced below its marginal value product changing water policy without correcting for these other distortions leads to a more inefficient allocation of water on the other hand reforming trade policy alone can make farmers growing crops protected pre reform worse off using an intertemporal applied general equilibrium model we find that trade reform actually creates an opportunity to pursue water policy reform creating a water user rights market post trade reform not only compensates for the decline in farmers profits caused by the trade reform but also raises the efficiency of water allocation and hence benefits the economy as a whole

the elements of the structures of international systems structural international theory has become largely a matter of elaborating the effects of anarchy simple hunter gatherer band societies however perfectly fit the waltzian model of anarchic orders but do not experience security dilemmas or warfare pursue relative gains or practice self help balancing they thus demonstrate that the effects of anarchy where they exist are not effects of anarchy undermining mainstream structural international theory as it has been practiced for the past three decades starting over i ask what one needs to differentiate how actors are arranged in three simple anarchic orders forager band societies hobbesian states of nature and great power states systems the answer turns out to look nothing like the dominant tripartite ordering principle functional differentiation distribution of capabilities conception based on these cases i present a multidimensional framework of the elements of social and political structures that dispenses with anarchy is truly structural in contrast to the independent variable agent centric models of waltz and wendt and highlights complexity diversity and regular change in the structures of international systems

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

the design of smart water market institutions using laboratory experiments one of the problems with proposals for substantialinstitutional change in water systems is thatmodification and irreversibility make the processslow cautious and costly to society in this paper we discuss the role that experimental economics canplay in evaluating proposed institutional changes tohelp facilitate a more rapid and smooth adoption ofchanges in the water system experimental economicsyields a formal and replicable system for analyzingalternative market structures before they are actuallyimplemented for example a water market can bedeveloped and tested in the laboratory under supplyand demand constraints that reflect drought conditionsthat might occur in california or other arid regionsin the world we present a prototype of a californiawater transfer model and the results from a series ofwater market experiments results include realizedmarket efficiency and surplus distribution as well asan analysis of market price volatility theimplications of this research extend well beyondcalifornia water markets not only to water markets inother arid regions but also to the design of marketsfor other environmental goods including tradablepollution permits and fishery itqs

livestock and land share contracts in a hindu society this article examines factors related to a livestock rental market in western nepal and assesses whether this market is associated with caste differentiation and land rental market participation theoretical models for asset rich i e high caste households rich in land and livestock and asset poor i e low caste families households are presented to provide logical explanations for the existence of a livestock rental market and the synergy between livestock and land rental markets participation a combination of double hurdle models and bivariate ordered probit models were used to test the implications of the models consistent with the theoretical models land and livestock rich high caste households were more likely to rent out land and or livestock whereas land and livestock poor and credit constrained low caste households were more likely to rent livestock and land from others participation in the two markets was positively correlated indicating a synergistic relationship that may be due to production and transaction costs reducing benefits policies that can enhance the allocative efficiency of livestock and land rental markets can improve equity as well as efficiency of land use in nepal provision of livestock credit to land poor low caste households is also crucially dependent on their access to more long term contracts for land jel classifications q12 q15 q18

power and interdependence revisited ten years ago we published power and interdependence 1 the passage of a decade makes this an appropriate time to reread and reevaluate that book and to take stock of the research program to which it contributed in doing this we hope to deepen and enrich scholarly understanding of the politics of interdependence and to stimulate reflection on directions for the field of international relations over the next decade 2 such a reappraisal seems particularly opportune given the changes in world politics and especially in american policy that have marked the intervening years stanley j michalak commented in 1979 that the authors may cringe from the analogy but power and interdependence may well become the politics among nations of the 1970s 3 but from the perspective of the late 1980s the world may look different while the 1970s were seen as the decade of interdependence many observers regard the use of force and concern for security as characteristic of the 1980s indeed the view is widespread in some circles that the 1980s resemble the 1950s more than the 1970s and that hans j morgenthau s work is more relevant to contemporary issues of world politics than power and interdependence

a selectivity model of household food marketing behavior in sub saharan africa the agricultural household s discrete decision of whether to participate in coarse grain markets is separated here from the continuous decision of how much to sell or buy conditional on participation failure to participate in markets results from high fixed transactions costs a selectivity model endogenously switches households into alternative market participation states correcting for bias caused by the exclusion of unobservable variables affecting both discrete and continuous decisions improved market information increases the probability of participation by sellers while access to cereals processing technology increases quantities transacted by both sellers and buyers conditional on participation