smallholder market participation concepts and evidence from eastern and southern africa abstract this paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation with a focus on staple foodgrains i e cereals in eastern and southern africa in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural africa the conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce and perhaps especially at improving poorer households access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi subsistence poverty traps macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region

economywide impacts of climate change on agriculture in sub saharan africa two possible adaptation scenarios to climate change for sub saharan africa are analyzed under the sres b2 scenario the first scenario doubles the irrigated area in sub saharan africa by 2050 compared to the baseline but keeps total crop area constant the second scenario increases both rainfed and irrigated crop yields by 25 for all sub saharan african countries the two adaptation scenarios are analyzed with impact a partial equilibrium agricultural sector model combined with a water simulation module and with gtap w a general equilibrium model including water resources the methodology combines the advantages of a partial equilibrium approach which considers detailed water agriculture linkages with a general equilibrium approach which takes into account linkages between agriculture and nonagricultural sectors and includes a full treatment of factor markets the efficacy of the two scenarios as adaptation measures to cope with climate change is discussed due to the limited initial irrigated area in the region an increase in agricultural productivity achieves better outcomes than an expansion of irrigated area even though sub saharan africa is not a key contributor to global food production rainfed irrigated or total both scenarios help lower world food prices stimulating national and international food markets

meaning and credibility in cheap talk games i define neologism proofness a refinement of perfect bayesian equilibrium in cheap talk games it applies when players have a preexisting common language so that an unexpected message s literal meaning is clear and only credibility restricts communication i show that certain implausible equilibria are not neologism proof in some games no equilibrium is journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 d82 c73

the value of the high aswan dam to the egyptian economy the high aswan dam converted a variable and uncertain flow of nile river water into a predictable and controllable water supply stored in lake nasser we use a computable general equilibrium model of the egyptian economy to estimate the economic impact of the high aswan dam we compare the actual 1997 economy to the 1997 economy as it would have been if historical pre dam nile flows drawn from a 72 year portrait had applied i e the dam had not been built the steady water supply sustained by the high aswan dam increased transport productivity and year round availability of predictable and adequate water sustained a shift towards more valuable summer crops these static effects are worth egp 4 9 billion investments in transport and agriculture increased as a consequence these investments assuming that egypt is a small open economy added another egp 1 1 billion to the value of the dam the risk premium on the reduced variability is estimated to be egp 1 1 billion for a modest risk aversion and perhaps egp 4 4 billion for a high risk aversion the total gain of egp 7 1 billion to 10 3 egp billion equals 2 7 to 4 0 of annual gdp in 1997

a non cooperative bargaining theory with incomplete information verifiable types abstract we consider a non cooperative sequential bargaining game with incomplete information where two players negotiate for mechanisms with ex post verifiable types at the interim stage we prove the existence of a stationary sequential equilibrium of the bargaining game where the ex post nash bargaining solution with no delay is asymptotically implemented with probability one further the ex post nash bargaining solution is a unique outcome of a stationary equilibrium under the property of independence of irrelevant types iit whereby the response of every type of a player is independent of allocations proposed to his other types and under a self selection property of their belief

mechanism design by an informed principal private values with transferable utility we provide a solution to the informed principal problem in the independent private values setting with monetary transfers the principal s private information creates signaling considerations that may distort the implemented allocation we show that there is no distortion all principal types implement an allocation that is optimal for the principal ex ante before he she learns his her type as an application we consider settings with linear utility for bilateral exchange in which the principal is one of the traders the solution is a combination of a participation fee a buy out option for the principal and a resale stage with posted prices

beyond mobile number portability measuring consumer preferences for service portability in japan s mobile phone market japan s mobile phone market has been oligopolized by three incumbents who are seeking vertically integrated business models which may prevent competitors from using platform layers to provide original services we conduct two types of conjoint analysis to measure consumer stated preferences and draw two main conclusions from the analyses first the average consumer is willing to pay more than jpy 2000 us 20 to increase mobile service portability second the average consumer s willingness to pay corresponds to jpy 100 200 us 1 2 per song for securing music download platforms a dilemma exists in consumer preferences for service portability in japan s mobile phone market namely the choice between free mobile service portability and convenient music download platforms

the welfare implications of externalities and price elasticities for telecommunications pricing the efficiency implications of telecommunications service pricing are analogous to a puzzle whose parts are beginning to be assembled recently mitchell 1978 has examined the efficiency implications of alternative local service pricing approaches he contrasts the welfare effects of a flat monthly rate with measured service pricing under an optimal two part tariff with an access line charge and a per call charge daly and mayor 1980 have examined the efficiency implications of free directory assistance contrasting it to marginal cost pricing and found large welfare losses the efficiency implications of long distance telecommunications service which in 1975 accounted for almost one half of the bell system revenues remains to be placed in the puzzle the primary purpose of this paper is to examine the efficiency implications of the pricing of local service vis h vis conventional long distance service referred to as message telecommunications service mts which constitutes the bulk of long distance service excluded from this analysis are wats and private line service as demonstrated by rohlfs 1979 substantial cross subsidization occurs between local service which is priced approximately 50 below marginal cost and long distance which is priced two to three times above marginal cost nevertheless cross subsidization need not imply inefficiency in a second best pricing framework for several reasons baumol and bradford 1970 first subsidization of local service can be justified due to access externalities arising because the value to potential callers is not internalized in the subscriber s price second even in the absence of access externalities if the price elasticities of both services tend to be very inelastic cross subsidization may have negligible efficiency effects the optimal second best pricing approach depends critically on the deviation of price from marginal costs the extent of the access externality and the relative price elasticities for local and long distance service in this exercise the welfare effects are particularly sensitive to the price elasticity of mts service thereby justifying the empirical focus on the price elasticity of mts the mts demand relationship estimated in this paper contains advances in several respects first unlike previous pure time series or cross sectional studies 2 the data set consists of pooled quarterly data 1966 to 1978 for five southwestern states the analysis of intrastate long distance demand3 offers a much more robust data source than national interstate demand owing to the limited price variation in the latter the pooled model features polynomial distributed lags and an error structure which corrects for both autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity also the model includes a unique and superior measure of television advertising effects an index of gross rating points reflecting the actual frequency with which television advertising is viewed by the public the use of gross rating points avoids the distortion implicit in the substantial volume discounts reflected in expenditure data 4 the subsequent section outlines the simple theoretical model which is the basis for econometric estimation and the pooling techniques section iii reports the empirical results in section iv we examine the price elasticity implications for optimal pricing of mts service section v recapitulates the major conclusions and suggests directions for future research received for publication september 29 1980 revision accepted for publication april 20 1981 university of houston the author wishes to acknowledge the collaboration of bruce egan in the econometric modelling section of this paper in addition numerous helpful comments were provided by george daly thomas mayor jeffrey rohlfs william taylor and an anonymous referee i see rohlfs 1978 table iii 1 2 for a review see taylor 1980 and lowry 1976 3 taylor notes that from the view of demand the distinction between interstate and intrastate mts is purely artificial see taylor 1980 p 97 and table 5 1 4 comanor and wilson 1967 note that volume discounts may give rise to increasing marginal returns to advertising expenditures

money talks deterring quality challengers in congressional elections j 4t e examine the role of incumbent fundraising in deterring strong challengers we construct vf v a signaling model in which incumbents can use fundraising strategically to ward off w v quality challengers we show however that only under very limited circumstances will there be an observable relationship between fundraising and challenger quality therefore previous empirical tests for deterrence have systematically underestimated the effects of fundraising in decreasing electoral competition our analysis also suggests that by making fundraising easily observable federal election commission regulations may encourage candidates to overinvest time and resources accumulating large war chests instead of governing

capital accumulation and economic growth the case of the retail food industry in developing countries the share of resources allocated to food marketed through supermarkets and their marketing channels has grown at an unprecedented rate in developing countries during the 1990s this expansion has caused some resources to depart traditional channels differences in the relative capital intensity of the modern marketing channels in contrast to the traditional channels is shown to explain at least part of this evolution as the process of economic growth and capital deepening even when the food share of total expenditures declines in this case incomplete markets and policy distortions can exacerbate the effects of adjustment in traditional agriculture placing a greater need

timing decisions in organizations communication and authority in a dynamic environment this paper develops a theory of how organizations make timing decisions we consider a problem where an uninformed principal decides when to exercise an option and interacts with an informed but biased agent this problem is common examples include headquarters deciding when to close a plant drill an oil well or launch a product because time is irreversible the direction of the agent s bias is crucial for communication and allocation of authority when the agent favors late exercise centralized decision making where the principal retains authority and communicates with the agent often features full information revelation but ine cient delay delegation is never optimal in this case in contrast when the agent favors early exercise communication under centralized decision making is partial while option exercise is unbiased or delayed delegation is optimal if the bias is small or delegation can be timed thus delegating decisions such as plant closures is never optimal while delegating decisions such as product launches may be optimal

experimental evidence on the evolution of the meaning of messages in sender receiver games an experiment this paper experimentally investigates the evolution of message meanings when talk is cheap we consider communication between a privately informed sender and a receiver when the sender s message does not affect payoffs directly sender receiver games introduced by jerry green and nancy stokey 1980 and vincent p crawford and joel sobel 1982 provide the simplest stylized environment in which communication is essential communication is the only way to link the receiver s action to the sender s private information in addition sender receiver games have been widely used to study communication in accounting economics finance and political science intuition strongly suggests that effective communication will evolve when the players interests are closely aligned however there is always a nash equilibrium in which the sender randomizes uniformly across all messages such babbling equilibria are proper roger b myerson 1978 blume 1994 and even strategic stability elon kohlberg and jeanfrancois mertens 1986 does not rule out uninformative equilibria in general in response a literature developed that formulates equilibrium selection criteria by appealing to the existence of a commonly understood language matthew rabin 1990 steven a matthews et al 1991 joseph farrell 1993 that can be used to formulate credible deviations from equilibrium unfortunately the selection criteria from this literature are frequently strong enough to remove all equilibria from consideration in addition these arguments are vulnerable to stiglitz s observation in koo cho and david m kreps 1987 that successful deviations from equilibrium may induce further deviations which in turn may undermine the credibility of the original deviations both problems can be avoided by a dynamic approach as in rabin and sobel 1996 we also adopt a dynamic perspective but do not require messages to have a priori meanings instead distinct meanings may emerge endogenously this is important for communication across cultures and for language change 2 we are guided by recent results of blume department of economics university of iowa iowa city ia 52242 dejong department of accounting university of iowa iowa city ia 52242 kim department of economics sung kyun kwan university seoul 110 745 korea sprinkle department of accounting university of wisconsin madison wi 53706 we thank joyce berg vince crawford robert forsythe joel horowitz deirdre mccloskey forrest nelson larry samuelson gene savin joel sobel and especially two anonymous referees for their advice and suggestions we benefitted from comments and discussions resulting from presentations at the 1994 summer meetings of the econometric society the 1996 social learning workshop at suny stony brook the io me gt workshop at the university of iowa the university of bonn the university of bielefeld the center for economic research at tilburg university ohio state university seoul national university and texas a m university we are grateful for financial support from the college of business administration at the university of iowa the ira b mcgladrey institute and the national science foundation

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

media as watchdogs the role of news media in electoral competition abstract we develop an equilibrium model to analyze the role of the media in electoral competition when policy payoffs are state dependent party policies do not converge to the median voter s ideal policy if the media report only party policies news analysis about the state though possibly biased can discipline off equilibrium deviations and make the parties adopt more centrist policies since voters are rational the party favored by the media need not win with a higher probability instead media bias may reduce the effectiveness of electoral competition and lead to more polarized policies

communication in bargaining over decision rights abstract this paper develops a model of bargaining over decision rights between an uninformed principal and an informed but self interested agent we introduce two different bargaining mechanisms tacit and explicit bargaining in tacit bargaining an uninformed principal makes a take it or leave it price offer to the agent who then decides whether to accept or reject the offer in the equilibrium of the game the principal inefficiently screens out some agent types so that the agent s private information cannot be fully utilized when the decision is made in explicit bargaining in which parties can communicate explicitly via cheap talk before tacit bargaining however an equilibrium with no such inefficient screening exists even when the conflict of interest is arbitrarily large we also follow a mechanism design approach showing that under certain conditions explicit bargaining is an optimal bargaining mechanism that maximizes the joint surplus of the parties

when can a news organization lead public opinion ideology versus market forces in decisions to make news do news organizations purposefullylead the public to support a particularideological agenda when debating thisquestion many analysts draw conclusionsfrom weak empirical evidence we introducea model that clarifies how a newsorganization s internal structure combineswith market forces to affect when it canlead public opinion we identify conditionsunder which liberal reporters orpolitically driven media magnates canachieve ideological goals we alsoilluminate important barriers that preventmany would be public opinion leaders fromever satisfying these conditions we showthat internal structure and market forcesare critical determinants of any newsorganization s power over public opinion

eliciting information from a large population abstract this paper studies information transmission in social surveys where a welfare maximizing decision maker communicates with a random sample of individuals from a large population who have heterogeneous preferences the population distribution of preferences is unknown and has to be estimated based on answers from the respondents the decision maker cannot identify the true distribution of preferences even if the sample size becomes arbitrarily large since the respondents have incentive to exaggerate their preferences especially as the sample size becomes larger and each respondent has weaker influence on the decision the quality of communication with each respondent may improve as the sample size becomes smaller and thus we identify the trade off between the quality and quantity of communication we show that the decision maker may prefer to sample a smaller number of individuals when the prior is weaker

water scarcity and the impact of improved irrigation management a computable general equilibrium analysis increasing water scarcity combined with an increasing demand for food and water for irrigation call for a careful revision of water use in agriculture currently less than 60 of all the water used for irrigation is effectively used by crops based on the new version of the gtap w model we analyze the effect of potential water savings and the welfare implications of improvements in irrigation efficiency worldwide the results show that a water policy directed to improve irrigation efficiency led to global and regional water savings but it is not beneficial for all regions the final effect on regional welfare will depend on the interaction of several different causes for instance higher irrigation efficiency changes opportunity costs and reverses comparative advantages modifying regional trade patterns and welfare for water stressed regions the effects on welfare are mostly positive for nonwater scarce regions the results are more mixed and mostly negative the results show that exports of virtual water are not exclusive of water abundant regions

the economics of water scarcity and variability does the availability or variability of water matter for the economy does it meaningfully impact the growth and development trajectory of a country it may seem surprising that answers to these most basic of questions remain elusive the aim of this paper is to summarize recent work on the economic impacts of water scarcity and variability the paper finds that there is strong evidence that variations in rainfall and water availability have significant impacts on particular sectors such as agriculture human capital and even conflict but paradoxically evidence of impacts on economic growth and other measures of aggregate economic activity remains ambiguous the paper explains reasons for this anomaly and explores the pathways through which water impacts the economy the paper provides a synthesis of key developments in the literature identifies methodological gaps and suggests policy solutions

antidumping signaling and cheap talk abstract in the united states there is evidence that domestic non filing firms do not always support dumping countervailing duty investigations absent other factors domestic firms have an unambiguous incentive to support petitions filed by other domestic producers we argue that in cases where the non complainant firm is not a significant importer or exporter the most plausible explanation is that non support acts as a costly signal of private information extending the model to allow firms to engage in cheap talk such signaling can take place even in the absence of an investigation this result provides an explanation for the puzzling observation that fewer antidumping investigations are filed than one would expect

external shocks adjustment policies and investment in a developing economy illustrations from a forward looking cge model of the philippines abstract the rapid increase in investment and external debt of middle income countries like the philippines during the 1970s was perfectly rational given existing policies however these countries could have done better with an appropriate mix of adjustment policies using a dynamic general equilibrium framework the paper examines the sensitivity of investment and growth to external shocks and adjustment policies it highlights the intertemporal trade offs of tariff reform a policy often recommended in the 1980s emphasizing the need for complementary measures to ease macro imbalances and short term dislocations of the protected sector

the hidden middle the quiet revolution in the midstream of agrifood value chains in developing countries the food security debate has focused largely on the farm sector and on trade relatively neglected or hidden from mainstream debate are the middle segments processing logistics wholesale of agrifood value chains in developing countries and yet this midstream forms 30 40 per cent of the value added and costs in food value chains the productivity of the midstream is as important as farm yields for food security in poor countries the article shows that over the past several decades the middle segments have transformed quickly and surprisingly with a huge volume expansion a proliferation of small and medium enterprises smes but also concentrating and multinationalizing in some places and products with technology change characterized by capital led intensification and with the incipient emergence of branding and labelling and packaging of new organizational arrangements in procurement and marketing interfaces with farmers and retailers and of private standards and contracts economic policies of market and foreign direct investment fdi liberalization commercial and business climate regulations hard and soft infrastructure investment and food safety laws have paved the path to the expansion and shaped the transformation of the important midstream segment of food value chains

the informativeness of on line advertising abstract sending general advertisements with inflationary claims may attract additional visitors with whom an advertiser is poorly matched this is costly when ads are priced per click because many visitors clickers will not purchase this renders per click advertising particularly conducive to the transmission of information via ads the admissibility of information transmission depends not only on advertiser behaviour but also upon consumers interpretation of and trust in ads in less conducive environments consumers quickly learn to place little stock in the claims they see advertised this mechanism undermines the ability of advertisers and consumers to communicate under per impression or per sale fee structures consumers benefit from increased informativeness but distortions introduced by the market power given to advertisers imply that society may be better off with no information transmission taking place

water markets and third party effects we examine potential third party effects arising from trading water from one region rural to another urban using labor water and heterogeneous land rural agents produce a traded agricultural good and nontraded service good absent job market frictions increased water trading improves per capita regional welfare but aggregate service income can increase decrease while individual land rents decrease increase if labor experiences job market frictions water trading can trigger socially inefficient land fallowing and a decrease in per capita regional welfare simulation results confirm the no job market friction model predictions

small farmers and big retail trade offs of supplying supermarkets in nicaragua summary in nicaragua and elsewhere in central america small scale farmers are weighing the risks of entering into contracts with supermarket chains we use unique data from cooperatives supplying supermarkets to study the effect of supply agreements on producers mean output prices and price stability we find that prices paid by the domestic retail chain approximate the traditional market in mean and variance while mean prices paid by walmart are significantly lower than the traditional market however the walmart contract is found to systematically reduce price volatility we find some evidence however that farmers may be paying too much for this contractual insurance against price variation

spillovers from modern supply chains to traditional markets product innovation and adoption by smallholders there is an emerging body of literature analyzing how smallholder farmers in developing countries can benefit from modern supply chains however most of the available studies concentrate on export markets and fail to capture spillover effects that modern supply chains may have on local markets here we analyze the case of sweet pepper in thailand which was initially introduced as a product innovation in modern supply chains but which is now widely traded also in more traditional markets using survey data from smallholder farmers and econometric techniques we show that sweet pepper cultivation contributes significantly to higher household incomes strikingly at this stage participation in modern supply chains does not lead to higher incomes than supplying sweet pepper to traditional markets however the results also indicate that missing land titles weak infrastructure conditions and limited access to information constituted serious constraints during the early phases of sweet pepper adoption such constraints need to be overcome so that smallholder farmers are better prepared for the prompt reactions needed under rapidly changing market conditions

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

persuasive communication when the sender s incentives are uncertain abstract we study persuasion in a modified crawford sobel sender receiver game in which the receiver makes a binary decision to accept or reject a good recommended by the sender the good s quality and the sender s type neutral or biased are not observable to the receiver these alterations yield a simple model and a unique truth telling equilibrium in which neutral senders who observe different qualities fully separate but can only communicate low quality levels accurately biased senders adopt a mixed strategy that can successfully persuade the receiver to accept the good most of the time when the sender s degree of bias is continuously distributed a truth telling equilibrium does not exist nonetheless a partition equilibrium exists for any given number of partitions on the message space

on turkey s trade policy is a customs union with europe enough abstract turkey has decided to harmonize its tarification structure with that of the european union for the country s authorities this move to a customs union is only meant to be the first step toward integration in the european union there are signs however that political opposition to the government s procompetitive stance may be strong enough to block any further move toward fuller trade liberalization we show using applied intertemporal ge analysis that to be welfare improving the trade reform would have to be pursued further and nontariff barriers on european trade removed failure to do so could be more detrimental to domestic welfare than no reform at all

a model of expertise we study a model in which perfectly informed experts offer advice to a decision maker whose actions affect the welfare of all experts are biased and thus may wish to pull the decision maker in different directions and to different degrees when the decision maker consults only a single expert the expert withholds substantial information from the decision maker we ask whether this situation is improved by having the decision maker sequentially consult two experts we first show that there is no perfect bayesian equilibrium in which full revelation occurs when both experts are biased in the same direction it is never beneficial to consult both in contrast when experts are biased in opposite directions it is always beneficial to consult both indeed in this case full revelation may be induced in an extended debate by introducing the possibility of rebuttal

why do sellers usually prefer auctions we compare the most common methods for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly a simple simultaneous auction and a sequential process in which potential buyers decide in turn whether to enter the bidding the sequential process is always more efficient but preemptive bids transfer surplus from the seller to buyers because the auction is more conducive to entry precisely because of its inefficiency it usually generates higher expected revenue we also discuss the effects of lock ups matching rights break up fees as in takeover battles entry subsidies etc

competition and allocative efficiency the case of the u s telephone industry this study investigates the effect of competition on the productive efficiency of the u s telephone industry taking into account the fact that the industry was subject to rate of return regulation it is shown that competition induces the incumbents to use capital inputs closer to the unconstrained optima thereby reducing the allocative inefficiency caused by the averch johnson effect this effect is in addition to the usual technical efficiency improvement induced by competition empirical results based on annual data for the u s telephone industry for the 1951 90 period suggested that competition improved the allocative efficiency of the incumbent firms which had been under a rate of return regulation until 1989 copyright 1995 by mit press

the theory of implementation when the planner is a player abstract in this paper we study a situation where the planner cannot commit to a mechanism and the outcome function is substituted by the planner herself we assume i agents have complete information and play simultaneously and ii given the messages announced by the agents the planner reacts in an optimal way given her beliefs this transforms the implementation problem into a signaling game we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for interactive implementation under different restrictions on the planner s out of equilibrium beliefs we compare our results to standard results on nash implementation journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 d71 d82

impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition in kenya summary many developing countries experience a food system transformation with a rapid growth of supermarkets we analyze impacts of supermarkets on farm household nutrition with survey data from kenya participation in supermarket channels is associated with significantly higher calorie vitamin a iron and zinc consumption we use simultaneous equation models to analyze impact pathways supermarket supplying households have higher incomes a higher share of land under vegetables and a higher likelihood of male control of revenues furthermore income and the share of land under vegetables have positive impacts while male control of revenues has negative impacts on dietary quality policy and further research implications are discussed

coffee value chains on the move evidence in ethiopia abstract important changes have happened to the upstream segment of the coffee sector in ethiopia africa s biggest in the last decade as illustrated by the increasing adoption of improved production harvest and post harvest practices upstream marketing has also improved and there have been large investments in processing capacity shown by the extended coverage of wet mills these improved practices are shown to be associated with positive impacts on coffee productivity and prices changes appear to be linked with multiple factors including local market reform greater presence of public extension agents high international prices and a push for certification by international buyers on the other hand a combination of production lack of improved seedlings weather and disease shocks as well as institutional issues saving constraints and lack of vertical integration and traceability have seemingly impeded more widespread uptake of improved practices and therefore better farm performance the study illustrates the significant complexity in obtaining transformation at the farm level in these settings

deviations dynamics and equilibrium refinements existing equilibrium refinements rule out nash equilibria susceptible to deviations we propose a framework for considering not only equilibria impervious to deviations but also equilibria likely to recur in the long run because they are repeatedly deviated to we explore which equilibria are recurrent with respect to the deviations underlying some existing signaling refinements we show that the set of recurrent equilibria based on cho and kreps s 1987 intuitive criterion is equivalent to their solution concept but that applying our framework to existing cheap talk refinements make those solution concepts more realistic and guarantee existence where their current formulations do not journal of economic literatureclassification numbers b49 c72 c73

learning and communication in sender receiver games an econometric investigation this paper compares the performance of stimulus response sr and belief based learning bbl using data from game theory experiments the environment extensive form games played in a population setting is novel in the empirical literature on learning in games both the sr and bbl models fit the data reasonably well in common interest games with history while the test results accept sr and reject bbl in games with no history and in all but one of the divergent interest games estimation is challenging since the likelihood function is not globally concave and the results may be subject to convergence bias

the welfare impact of self supplied water pricing in canada a computable general equilibrium assessment this paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to assess the welfare cost of changing the method of water allocation in canada towards one that uses prices to ration demand we model the introduction of a price on both water that is abstracted as well as water that is consumed that is abstracted and not returned to the source we estimate that reducing water consumption by 25 would require imposition of a price on water consumption of around 0 21 text m 3 similarly introduction of a water abstraction charge of about 0 013 text m 3 would be sufficient to reduce water abstraction by 25 we find that if revenues from water pricing are returned in lump sum to households the introduction of water pricing would result in a modest welfare loss when revenues from water pricing are used to offset existing taxes we find a gain in welfare corresponding to a strong double dividend

economic impact of direct marketing and contracts the case of safe vegetable chains in northern vietnam abstract the paper investigates the respective impacts on incomes of contractual arrangements direct sales and spot marketing for safe vegetable farmers in northern vietnam it is based on a survey of 137 peri urban vegetable farmers that was analyzed using different econometric methods to correct selection biases direct sales and contractual arrangements have a significant positive impact on income compared to spot marketing contracts have less impact on income compared to direct sales it is recommended that policies be formulated to stimulate direct dealings between farmers and consumers which enhance consumer confidence in terms of quality and translate into higher farmer income than anonymous exchanges or contracts

persuasion with communication costs this paper studies strategic transmission of verifiable information with reporting costs that continuously increase in the precision of the report contrary to previous literature it is shown that the unraveling result first derived by milgrom 1981 is relatively robust to costly reporting a separating equilibrium exists even with arbitrarily high reporting costs intuitively the costs work as a signaling device and a combination of disclosure of information and costly signaling accomplishes full separation with reporting costs there are typically multiple equilibria for example a pooling equilibrium exists if and only if the reporting costs are high finally a separating equilibrium exists when the receiver has to make a costly effort in order to access the information in a report as long as this cost is not too high

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

secessions and political extremism why regional referenda do not solve the problem this paper shows that an uninformed player can increase his bargaining power by committing to receive information from an expert more skeptical to cooperation this general idea is applied to a model in which a regional political leader the expert influences voting in a referendum on independence by strategically disseminating information about the consequences of separation i show that this motivates a moderate electorate to appoint a more extreme leader to receive biased information that increases their bargaining power over the gains of staying unified however a trade off between bargaining power and precision of information causes inefficient outcomes in equilibrium jel c73 d72 d82 h77

the demand for commodity packages the case of telephone custom calling features the demand for two custom calling services is investigated the services may be bought individually or in a discounted package a micro theory based on discrete choice model is formulated that explicitly accounts for these purchase options the model is estimated assuming both dependence and independence of the unobservable choice influencing variables the estimated parameters are used to simulate the revenue impact of price and discount changes copyright 1993 by mit press

multinational supermarket chains in developing countries does local agriculture benefit there is no consensus in the empirical literature on how entry of multinational supermarket chains affects farmers in developing countries econometric analyses struggle with causality issues and are unclear about the channel of effects we quantify the dynamic effects of supermarket expansion on agriculture within a structural framework that clarifies the adjustment mechanisms involved the model specification allows for endogenous interaction between agricultural productivity and supermarkets choice of suppliers based on numerical simulations two results emerge first we offer a possible interpretation of the conflicting evidence in the empirical literature whether farmers benefit from supermarkets or get stuck in a low productivity trap depends on the extent of local constraints related to production capacity and market access second supply chain development initiated by supermarkets can help farmers escape the low productivity trap while supermarkets face a short run cost to supplier upgrading they gradually gain from more productive local suppliers

labour chains analysing the role of labour contractors in global production networks abstract third party labour contractors are increasingly prevalent in global production networks gpns and can provide a channel for new forms of unfree labour review of case study evidence from south african and uk horticulture suggests this often emerges off site through labour intermediaries analytical approaches to labour in gpns and value chains are examined the article argues that labour contracting is driven by the commercial dynamics of global outsourcing a cascade system allows unscrupulous intermediaries to coerce vulnerable workers we examine strategies of civil society alliances and regulatory reform and argue for extending liability of all commercial actors across global boundaries

cellular telephones in the israeli market the demand the choice of provider and potential revenues this study presents the methodology the estimates and a scenario for forecasting the demand for cellular telephones and their use in israel the analysis was based on the integration of three sub models the estimate of the consumer s decision on whether to purchase a cellular telephone and what type was obtained by using a discrete choice model of the multinomial logit type the total number of cellular telephone purchases to be made in israel during the years 1998 2008 was estimated using a logistic growth model employing aggregate data over time the anticipated demand for airtime was based on findings of a survey carried out on a national sample and on actual usage data on the various consumers during the years prior to the survey the research shows the substantial economic potential of israel s cellular telephone market

changing one s mind when the facts change incentives of experts and the design of reporting protocols experts often collect and report information over time what reporting protocol elicits the most information here a principal receives reports sequentially from an agent with privately known ability who observes two signals about the state of the world the signals differ in initial quality and unlike previous work differ in quality improvement the paper finds that mind changes inconsistent reports can signal talent if a smart agent improves faster also sequential reports dominate when the principal s decision is very sensitive to information a single report dominates if the mediocre agent s signals improve faster or the agent is likely mediocre

using water allocation in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities this paper uses the water allocation economy in israel as a proxy for imputing the value of agricultural amenities a general equilibrium model is developed and incorporates agricultural amenities as byproducts of agricultural production water trade channels and multiple water types the premise is that until a decade ago water policy in israel was interlinked with agricultural land use policy integrating a monte carlo analysis the model searches for a baseline minimum value of agricultural amenity that makes household in the counterfactual scenario indifferent between the administrative and market mechanisms the minimum imputed value is around 109 agricultural output the intuition is that the gains in economic welfare from improved water use efficiency are offset by the losses in social welfare due to a reduction in available agricultural amenities

viewpoint decision making in committees this article reviews recent developments in the theory of committee decision making a committee consists of self interested members who make a public decision by aggregating imperfect information dispersed among them according to a pre specified decision rule we focus on costly information acquisition strategic information aggregation and rules and processes that enhance the quality of the committee decision seeming inefficiencies of the committee decision making process such as over cautiousness voting and delay emerge as partial remedies to these incentive problems cet article passe en revue certains developpements recents dans la theorie de la prise de decision en comite un comite est defini comme un groupe de membres qui ont des interets particuliers et qui prennent une decision publique en agregeant une information imparfaite et dispersee a travers le groupe selon une regle de decision pre etablie les auteurs portent leur attention sur l acquisition couteuse d information l agregation de l information strategique et les regles et procedures qui accroissent la qualite de la decision en comite ce qui apparait comme des inefficacites du processus de prise de decision en comite sur precaution votes delais s avere etre des remedes partiels aux problemes d incitation

basic analytics of multilateral lending and surveillance abstract i analyse the role of multilateral financial institutions in a world of global capital markets assuming that they have an informational advantage over private lenders in the market for sovereign debt i show that the adverse selection problem in this market may be solved through certification if the multilateral agency does not care too much about borrower country welfare however with lending the private information of the agency will be revealed whatever its weighting of borrower welfare vs private lenders profits multilateral lending on concessional terms also alleviates the moral hazard problem that investment in creditworthy borrowers is reduced as private lenders seek to avoid ex post default by constraining credit

integrated water and economic modelling of the impacts of water market instruments on the south african economy a static computable general equilibrium model of south africa is adapted to compare new taxes on water demand by two industries namely forestry and irrigated field crops comparisons are made with respect to both the short and the long run in terms of three target variables namely i the environment ii the economy and iii equity since the taxes on the two industries do not raise the same amount of revenue the target variables are calculated per unit of real government revenue raised by the new taxes also referred to as the marginal excess burdens of the taxes the model results are robust for moderate values of the water elasticity of demand in the two industries in both the long and the short run the tax on irrigated field crops performs better in terms of all three the target variables in the short run in the long run the tax on irrigated filed crops is better in terms of water saving but reduces real gdp and the consumption by poor households

signaling strategies in competitive interaction building reputations and hiding the truth abstract the authors develop a conceptual framework of how managers interpret competitors signals over time in various market contexts from the framework the authors generate hypotheses about the relative effectiveness of signaling strategies used by firms in different market contexts the authors conducted two empirical studies involving a repeated entry pricing game to test the hypotheses the results of study 1 show that the entrant s perceptions of the aggressiveness of the incumbent depend on the focus and strength of the incumbent s signals the results of study 2 show that the strength of the entrant s responses to the incumbent s signals depends on the incumbent s use of bluffs and the cost of information about the factors driving the incumbent s signals the implications of these findings for how firms should signal to achieve such strategic objectives as revealing or concealing information developing a desired reputation and influencing competitors responses over time are discussed the au

some dynamic aspects of food standards food standards have existed since the beginning of trade and exchange but have increased and expanded in recent years affecting global and local value chains this has triggered vigorous debates on the impacts on trade and development standards may simultaneously enhance economic efficiency and redistribute rents complicating policy analysis and implying that the economics and the politics of standards are often hard to separate while substantial research has contributed important insights dynamic aspects of standards have not received much attention i present a framework to illustrate some dynamic economic and political aspects of standards in closed and open economies this framework integrates changes over time in preferences implementation costs and protectionist pressures as determinants of standards and suggests explanations for persistent differences in food standards across countries hysteresis in standards can persist due to protectionist motives even if the initial standards were not introduced for protectionist reasons i use some historical cases to document both the persistence and adjustment of standards over time and with international integration

demand and pricing of telecommunications services evidence and welfare implications although telephone pricing has received increasing attention in recent years the geographic patterns of telephone pricing and the corresponding economic consequences of those patterns have remained perplexing to consumers and policymakers and largely unaddressed by economists in this article we first specify a model of the demand for short intralata long distance calling we then draw upon data made available by the recent adoption of extended area service eas in four metropolitan areas to empirically measure the structure of inter exchange telephone demand given these estimates and a conceptual framework for analyzing the economic welfare effects we were able to quantify the consumer surplus effects of alternative pricing policies the empirical results indicate that consumer surplus is noticeably enhanced by adopting eas but the net economic welfare effects are shown to be sensitive to among other things the level of price cost margins prevailing prior to the implementation of eas

food safety and urban food markets in vietnam the need for flexible and customized retail modernization policies access to safe and healthy food is a crucial element of food security in vietnam the safety of daily vegetables is of great concern to both consumers and policymakers to mitigate food safety risks the vietnamese government enforces rules and regulations and relies strongly on a single approach for organizing food provision being modernizing retail by replacing wet markets with supermarkets in general reorganizing food provision in this way is increasingly considered to be a guarantee for food safety especially in urban settings with growing populations to assess the effectiveness of this induced retail modernization of the fresh vegetables market in vietnam s capital hanoi this paper examines for whom and under which conditions does this approach deliver the desired outcomes the survey data and interviews show that ongoing retail modernization in hanoi reaches only a minor segment of the population and drives a large group of shoppers into informal vending structures on the basis of five case studies this paper demonstrates how similar supermarket interventions can yield contrasting outcomes when they do not accommodate for differences in shopper population and do not adapt to variations in the urban conditions to reduce exposure to unsafe food particularly for poorer segments of the population we conclude that developing a flexible portfolio of retail modernization pathways and adopting a reflexive policy approach provide better impact and leverage as opposed to the current trend of promoting supermarkets as a single ideal type form of food shopping

fixed equilibrium rationalizability in signaling games abstract this paper studies equilibrium refinements in signaling games through an examination of rationalizability in derived games obtained by replacing the equilibrium path with a sure outcome that yields the equilibrium payoff to all players the informed player chooses between the sure payoff and sending an out of equilibrium signal from the original game whether or not the strategy of choosing the sure payoff is rationalizable is related to the iterated intuitive condition divinity when the original game is viewed as having imperfect incomplete information our results also demonstrate the significance of testing out of equilibrium signals as a set rather than individually

market distortions and government transparency in this paper we investigate how government transparency depends on economic distortions we first consider an abstract class of economies in which a benevolent policy maker is privately informed about the exogenous state of the economy and contemplates whether to release this information our key result is that distortions limit communication even if transparency is ex ante pareto superior to opaqueness it cannot constitute an equilibrium when distortions are sufficiently high we next confirm this broad insight in two applied contexts in which monopoly power and income taxes are the specific sources of distortions jel d82 e61

language meaning and games a model of communication coordination and evolution language is a powerful coordination device we generalize the cheap talk approach to pre play communication by way of introducing a meaning cor respondence between messages and actions and by postulating two axioms met by natural languages players have a lexicographic preference second to material payoffs against deviating from the meaning correspondence under two sided communication in generic and symmetric n 3 n coordination games a nash equilibrium component in such a lexicographic communication game is evolutionarily stable if and only if it results in the unique pareto efficient out come of the underlying game we extend the analysis to one sided communica tion in arbitrary finite two player games jel c72 c73 z 3

who benefits from a sender s credibility concern the sender or a receiver abstract in an information transmission situation a sender s concern for its credibility could endow itself with an invisible power to control a receiver s decision so that the sender can manipulate information without being detected the current paper models this paradoxical role of the sender s credibility concern

incentive auctions and information revelation we study an incentive auction in which multiple principals bid for the exclusive services or effort of a single agent each principal has private information about her valuation for these services and the agent has private information about his disutility of providing them we characterize the equilibrium of this auction and examine the agent s incentives to reveal information about his type we show that the effort level taken by the agent is smaller than in the standard auction for a known agent type and greater than in the single principal single agent model additionally inexperienced analysts are less likely to issue timely forecasts and they revise their forecasts more frequently these findings are broadly consistent with existing career concern motivated herding theories

interim bayesian persuasion first steps some recent information transmission models kamenica and gentzkow 2011 rayo and segal 2010 view the sender as an information structure designer this view emphasizes a connection between design and information transmission it departs from traditional models of information transmission crawford and sobel 1982 grossman 1981 milgrom 1981 spence 1973 since it assumes that the sender commits to an information system before learning her type so that her choice is by itself uninformative by contrast there is a small but active tradition in mechanism design following myerson 1983 that considers the possibility that a choice of mechanism by an informed principal may be used as a signal by the participants in the mechanism through the study of an example this short paper proposes a modest first step toward building a theory of information structure design by an informed principal i work in a simple framework where a sender whose type is either high or low seeks validation from a receiver who wants to validate high types exclusively the sender chooses an infor mation system i e a conditional distribution of signals for each of her types from a feasible set i allow for potential restrictions on the set of feasible information systems which is important to make bayesian persuasion models more flexible i consider perfect bayesian equilibria of the game in which the sender chooses an information system after learning her type and the receiver chooses whether to validate after observing the signal generated by the information system

counterparty risk in financial contracts should the insured worry about the insurer we analyze the efiect of counterparty risk on insurance contracts using the case of credit risk transfer in banking in addition to the familiar moral hazard problem caused by the insured s ability to in uence the probability of a claim this paper uncovers a new moral hazard problem on the other side of the market we show that the insurer s investment strategy may not be in the best interests of the insured the reason for this is that if the insurer believes it is unlikely that a claim will be made it is advantageous for them to invest in assets which earn higher returns but may not be readily available if needed this paper models both of these moral hazard problems in a unifled framework we flnd that instability in the insurer can create an incentive for the insured to reveal superior information about the risk of their investment in particular a unique separating equilibrium may exist even in the absence of any signalling device this provides one of the main contributions of the paper an example in which cheap talk can achieve separation in an insurance market

co ordination spillovers and cheap talk abstract we analyze the role of cheap talk in two player games with one sided incomplete information we identify conditions under which 1 players can fully communicate and coordinate on efficient nash equilibria of the underlying complete information game and 2 players cannot communicate so cheap talk does not alter the equilibrium set of the bayesian game we present examples that illustrate several issues that arise when there is two sided incomplete information journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d82

can the government talk cheap communication announcements and cheap talk a great deal of attention has recently been focused on communication in economic contexts while some models of credible announcements have been based on reputational forces or penalties imposed by third parties as in sobel 21 and cothren 4 several recent papers have addressed the possibility of communication through cheap talk that is talk in situations with no explicit penalties for deception perhaps the most prominent application of cheap talk in the literature is the recent model of federal reserve announcements by stein 22 this paper will show that cheap talk equilibria of the sort modeled by stein and others often depend in a fundamental way on implausible discontinuities in public responses to government announcements that is cheap talk equilibria are frequently only possible if certain infinitesimally small changes in government announcements are capable of causing large discontinuous changes in public expectations and behavior intuitively if public expectations are a continuous function of government announcements then the government can fine tune these expectations the government will therefore often be tempted to deviate from the cheap talk equilibrium announcements in order to manipulate expectations this causes the equilibrium to unravel discontinuous public reactions sometimes prevent these equilibria from unraveling because they convert continuous choice problems which allow manipulative fine tuning into discrete choice problems where such fine tuning is impossible these discontinuities are implausible however and this may often rule out cheap talk as a realistic model of governmental policy announcements 2

lying for strategic advantage rational and boundedly rational misrepresentation of intentions starting from hendricks and mcafee s 2000 example of the allies decision to feint at calais and attack at normandy on d day this paper models misrepresentation of intentions to competitors or enemies allowing for the possibility of bounded strategic rationality and rational players responses to it yields a sensible account of lying via costless noiseless messages in many cases the model has generically unique pure strategy sequential equilibria in which rational players exploit boundedly rational players but are not themselves fooled in others the model has generically essentially unique mixed strategy sequential equilibria in which rational players strategies protect all players from exploitation

message contingent delegation abstract the paper studies the role of delegation and authority in a principal agent relation in which a non contractible action has to be taken the agent has private information relevant for the principal but has policy preferences different from the principal consequently an information revelation problem arises i consider a partially incomplete contracting environment with contractibility of messages and decision rights and with transferable utility i contribute to the literature by allowing for message contingent delegation and by deriving the optimal partially incomplete contract it is shown that message contingent delegation creates incentives for information revelation and may outperform unconditional authority and unconditional delegation

nutrition agriculture and the global food system in low and middle income countries the entire food value chain and diet of low and middle income countries lmics are rapidly shifting many of the issues addressed by the nutrition community ignore some of the major underlying shifts in purchases of consumer packaged foods and beverages at the same time the drivers of the food system at the farm level might be changing there is a need for the agriculture and nutrition communities to understand these changes and focus on some of their implications for health this rapid growth of the retail sector will change the diets of the food insecure as much as that of the food secure across rural and urban lmic s this short commentary contents that current research programs and policies are ignoring these rapid dynamic shifts

the political economy of regulations and trade wine trade 1860 1970 dramatic changes in the 1860 1970 wine trade provide insights on the political economy of regulations and policy instrument choice and trade an invasion of phylloxera in the 1870s turned france from the world s leading exporter to a massive importer of wine and grapes when french production recovered a combination of tariffs safety regulations and quality standards were introduced to protect its french producers causing dramatic changes in global wine and grape production and trade including in spain italy turkey greece algeria tunisia and morocco changes in wine regulations were caused by relative income and loss aversion factors in political economy tariffs were the preferred policy instruments as they directly restrict imports bring in revenues have low transaction costs and are preferred political instruments when there are information imperfections safety regulations and quality standards including labelling and input prohibitions reduce asymmetric information for consumers or undesirable externalities and simultaneously protected domestic producers regulations were often targeted at imported products wine and raisins when tariffs were ineffective or constrained by institutions such as on colonial wine hence tariffs and quality regulations were jointly used in wine policy both as complements and as substitutes in policy design

efficient competition through cheap talk the case of competing auctions we consider a large market where auctioneers with private reservation values compete for bidders by announcing cheap talk messages if auctioneers run efficient first price auctions then there always exists an equilibrium in which each auctioneer truthfully reveals her type the equilibrium is constrained efficient assigning more bidders to auctioneers with larger gains from trade the choice of the trading mechanism is crucial for the result most notably the use of second price auctions equivalently ex post bidding leads to the nonexistence of any informative equilibrium we examine the robustness of our finding in various dimensions including finite markets and equilibrium selection

the hidden cost of raising voters expectations reference dependence and politicians credibility abstract two politicians compete to get elected each politician is characterized by a valence which is unobservable to the electorate and can take one of two values high or low the representative voter prefers politicians with high valence but random shocks may lead him to appoint a low valence politician politicians make statements concerning their valence if the voter is a standard expected utility maximizer politicians statements lack any credibility and no information transmission takes place by introducing reference dependence and loss aversion we show that truthful communication is possible in equilibrium and we characterize the conditions under which it can arise intuitively these behavioral biases introduce a cost of overstating one s valence as overstatements may shift the electorate s preferences toward better skilled opponents

price elasticities for local telephone calls price elasticities are estimated for local telephone calls and minutes of conversation using data from a pricing experiment in central illinois conducted by general telephone and electronics the experiment charges separately for calls and for minutes using a model that is consistent with the theory of telephone demand the authors estimate the effects of both prices the nonlinear generalized least squares estimates of the elasticities are fairly small about 0 1 or less in absolute value at experimental price levels but they are estimated with high precision the report briefly considers the application of these results to predict the effects of introducing measured service telephone rates in other cities residential telephone subscribers in the united states typically pay a flat monthly rate for local service with no extra charge for calls within the local area the alternative of explicitly charging for local calls commonly referred to as usage sensitive pricing or local measured service is of increasing interest to u s telephone companies and regulatory commissions cosgrove and linhart 5 garfinkel and linhart 8 baude ed 2 3 charging for calls that are now free clearly holds promise of increasing economic efficiency alleman 1 mitch

are agricultural markets more developed around cities testing for urban heterogeneity in separability in tanzania abstract a key question for policymakers concerned about feeding sub saharan africa s ssa rapidly growing cities is whether or not nearby farms benefit from improved agricultural markets evidence from case studies and agricultural location theory suggest so but urban heterogeneity has not yet been found in a common economic test of functioning agricultural markets the separability result the test is based on a key insight of the agricultural household model which finds that a farm s profit should be maximized independently from household utility given perfect factor markets i e separability but not so if the household faces at least two market failures i e non separability in this paper i test for geographic heterogeneity in separability between rural peri urban and urban districts using 2014 15 data from the world bank s living standards measurement study and integrated surveys on agriculture lsms isa from tanzania i find strong evidence that the correlation between pre harvest labor demand and household size implying non separability in rural areas is significantly weaker in three of tanzania s five largest cities dar es salaam arusha and mbeya given certain assumptions this can be interpreted as evidence of increased agricultural market functionality around these cities relative to rural areas overall these results contribute to the debate on how to achieve urban food security in ssa and give some validity to agricultural location theory and the separability test as tools to help policymakers characterize the nature of agricultural factor markets

an empirical investigation of the dynamic mcfadden model of purchase timing and brand choice implications for market structure purchase timing and brand choice decisions of households are jointly investigated using the dynamic mcfadden model of heckman and singer the hazard of brand purchase is decomposed into the category purchase hazard and the probability of brand choice conditional on category purchase the former is modeled using the hazard function approach and the latter using a logit model unobserved heterogeneity in brand preferences marketing effects and baseline hazard parameters is accounted for in the empirical analysis the distribution of preference heterogeneity identifies the locations of brands in multiattribute perceptual space and the distribution of attribute importance weights across households

post green revolution food systems and the triple burden of malnutrition developing country food systems have changed dramatically since the green revolution period at the same time malnutrition still represents a challenge and is now understood to encompass the three simultaneous dimensions of undernourishment micronutrient deficiencies and over nutrition manifest in overweight and obesity these changes in food systems and in the understanding of the global malnutrition challenge necessitate fresh thinking about food systems based strategies to reduce malnutrition this paper introduces a special section that offers such new perspectives we discuss trends with respect to indicators of the triple burden of malnutrition to understand the extent of global malnutrition challenges and then relate those to food systems transformation in developing countries

equilibrium selection in experimental cheap talk games in the past many refinements have been proposed to select equilibria in cheap talk games usually these refinements were motivated by a discussion of how rational agents would reason in some particular cheap talk games in this paper we propose a new refinement and stability measure that is intended to predict actual behavior in a wide range of cheap talk games according to our average credible deviation criterion acdc the stability of an equilibrium is determined by the frequency and size of credible deviations acdc organizes the results from several cheap talk experiments in which behavior converges to equilibrium even in cases where other criteria do not make a prediction

a century long perspective on agricultural development this article strategically surveys the past century s literature on agricultural development we organize the discussion around three grand themes that reveal the richness of agricultural development as an intellectual endeavor first we explore the role of agriculture in the broader development process from a macroeconomic and political economy perspective we then examine the role of technological and institutional change in successful agricultural development finally the focus turns to a microeconomic perspective on agricultural household decision making and the problems of imperfect and missing markets asymmetric information and transactions costs that lead to widespread apparent inefficiency and disequilibrium

pandering to persuade a principal chooses one of multiple projects or an outside option an agent is privately informed about the projects benets and shares the principal s preferences except for not internalizing her value from the outside option we show that for moderate outside option values strategic communication is characterized by pandering the agent biases his recommendation toward conditionally better looking projects even when both parties would be better o with some other project a project that has lower expected value can be conditionally better looking we develop some comparative statics of pandering pandering is also induced by an optimal mechanism without transfers

evolving dairy markets in asia recent findings and implications abstract this paper is an overview of important findings regarding the ongoing evolution of asian dairy markets based on a series of new economic investigations these investigations provide systematic empirical foundations to assess asian dairy markets with their new consumption patterns changing industries and trade prospects under different domestic and trade policy regimes with four case studies china india japan and korea a prospective analysis of future regional patterns of consumption and a policy analysis of trade liberalization of asian dairy markets the overview distills the findings of these new investigations and integrates them in the earlier economic literature it draws policy implications and identifies lessons for countries outside of asia especially for emerging exporters in latin america