how do payments for environmental services affect land tenure theory and evidence from china we gratefully acknowledge the financial support from renmin university for the research on land market development in the forest tenure reform project no 11xnc002 the british academy reference sg121920 the cambridge humanities research grants scheme and the economy and environment program for southeast asia reference pco13 0308 009

firm growth size age and behavior in japanese manufacturing this paper investigates the relationship between firm growth and firm size firm age and firm behavior such as r d activity and subcontracting based on the data of nearly 14 000 japanese manufacturing firms the stylized facts that firm size and age have a negative effect on firm growth are confirmed in the case of japanese manufacturing firms also a firm s survivability rises with its size and age r d expenditure per employee has a significant positive effect on firm growth which justifies the argument made by hall 1987 although subcontracting to only one company has no significant effect on firm growth it has a significant positive effect on a firm s survivability in addition subcon tracting firms depending on only one company as a customer are subject to no significant age effects this possibly suggests that the age effect itself has some relation to the extent of the trade network

the ambiguous impact of inequality on local resource management abstract the impact of inequality on the ability of human groups to undertake successful collective action is investigated with special reference to overexploitation of common property resources in voluntary provision problems on the one hand inequality has an ambiguous impact on the feasibility of the efficient outcome even though better endowed agents contribute more to collective action in regulated settings on the other hand inequality tends to reduce the acceptability of available regulatory schemes and therefore to make collective action more difficult

conceptualising environmental collective action why gender matters this paper demonstrates how institutions for natural resource management such as community forestry groups which appear to be participative equitable and efficient can be found lacking on all three counts from a gender perspective it also examines possible gender differences in social networks values and motivations although there is little to suggest that women are inherently more conservationist than men the distinctness of women s social networks embodying prior experience of successful cooperation their higher dependence on these networks as also on the commons in general and their potentially greater group homogeneity relative to men could provide an important and largely ignored basis for organising sustainable environmental collective action the paper also outlines the factors that can constrain or facilitate women s participation in formal environmental management groups illustrative examples are drawn from rural south asia

institutional determinants of success among forestry based carbon sequestration projects in sub saharan africa summary this paper contributes to the debate on the economic and social implications of carbon forestry through the study of 42 programs in africa using carbon offset payments to fund tree planting activities such projects may be understood as multi layered collective action problems growing trees for carbon offsets requires not only international financial incentives to plant trees but also local institutions to monitor impose sanctions and distribute benefits consistent with economic theories large projects appear to realize economies of scale contrary to expectations community based projects on lower quality sites often successfully generate and sell offsets while private for profit initiatives appear susceptible to collapse

hospital ownership and performance this study compares the performance of three ownership forms of hospitals for profit private nonprofit and public further classified according to whether or not the hospital is run by a hospital chain data come from a 1979 national survey of u s hospitals the authors find that hospital cost is quite similar among alternative ownership forms as is profitability the results do not provide much empirical support for standard property rights theory several reasons are suggested why this may be so

playing games in the forest state local conflicts of land appropriation this paper explores possible strategic interactions between the state and local community in games of tropical forestland appropriation three typical cases are discussed corresponding to a development over time of increased resource competition and market integration the local response to more state deforestation depends on the costs market and behavioral assumptions and less on the structure of the game cournot or stackelberg the state fuels local deforestation by providing infrastructure roads which reduces the net costs of agricultural expansion or when markets are imperfect and local behavior determined by survival needs the game structure is however important for total deforestation this paper explores possible strategic interactions between the state and local community in games of tropical forestland appropriation three typical cases are discussed corresponding to a development over time of increased resource competition and market integration the local response to more state deforestation depends on the costs market and behavioral assumptions and less on the structure of the game cournot or stackelberg the state fuels local deforestation by providing infrastructure roads which reduces the net costs of agricultural expansion or when markets are imperfect and local behavior determined by survival needs the game structure is however important for total deforestation

transaction costs collective action and survival of heterogeneous co management institutions case study of forest management organisations in west bengal india abstract cost effective natural resource management is important for equity and efficiency yet transaction costs of cooperation may pose a challenge to heterogeneous co management institutions we conducted a survey in seven forest protection committees of west bengal india to examine this hypothesis empirically we find that 1 among several factors caste heterogeneity distance to forest political heterogeneity land inequality and trust systematically influence transaction costs and collective action and 2 robust institutions bear less costs of cooperation the implication is that transaction costs related to heterogeneity may exert significant influence on successes or failures of co management

agricultural household models extensions applications and policy this book presents the basic model of an agricultural household that underlies most of the case studies undertaken so far the model assumes that households are price takers and is therefore recursive the decisions modeled include those affecting production and the demand for inputs and those affecting consumption and the supply of labor comparative results on selected elasticities are presented for a number of economies the empirical significance of the approach is demonstrated in a comparison of models that treat production and consumption decisions separately and those in which the decisionmaking process is recursive the book summarizes the implications of agricultural pricing policy for the welfare of farm households marketed surplus the demand for nonagricultural goods and services the rural labor market budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings in addition it is shown that the basic model can be extended in order to explore the effects of government policy on crop composition nutritional status health saving and investment and to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the effects on budget revenues and foreign exchange earnings methodological topics primarily the data requirements of the basic model and its extensions along with aggregation market interaction uncertainty and market imperfections are discussed the most important methodological issues the question of the recursive property of these models is also discussed

collective action for market chain innovation in the andes the papa andina network employs collective action in two novel approaches for fostering market chain innovation the participatory market chain approach pmca and stakeholder platforms engage small potato producers together with market agents and agricultural service providers in group activities to identify common interests share market knowledge and develop new business opportunities these forms of collective action have generated commercial technological and institutional innovations and created new market niches for andean native potatoes grown by poor farmers in remote highland areas these innovations have benefited small farmers as well as other market chain actors this paper describes papa andina s experiences with collective action for market chain innovation it then discusses the implications of these experiences for the understanding of collective action and the policy implications for research and development organizations

coordination problems in local level resource management starting from the observation of important returns to scale effects in conservation of common property resources we identify some of the factors that impinge upon the chances of success of a decentralized group based management of local natural resources particular attention is paid to the influence of asset inequality among resource users in particular it is shown that by redistributing incentives among landowners land reform has an ambiguous impact on the latter s willingness to undertake conservation investments

household contributions to community development in indonesia summary critical to the success of community development is the degree to which citizens contribute their resources the paper develops regression models to examine the effects of household and community characteristics on household contributions of time and money to three types of participatory community development efforts governance social welfare and environmental infrastructure households with indicators of lower socio economic status generally contributed less time and money to community development integration into social networks was also a strong predictor of the amount of time a household contributed because most of the community development efforts analyzed rely on reciprocity where participants contribute resources in order to receive benefits the findings raise doubts about the extent to which these efforts help the poor and socially excluded

local enforcement and better forests summary current studies of local resource management examine many factors thought to be associated with good resource conditions despite the number of studies and the importance of such resources to millions of people worldwide a lack of theory and hypothesis testing beyond the case level limits the lessons empirical studies offer we argue that regular monitoring and sanctioning of rules rule enforcement is a necessary condition for successful resource management we test our theory using data regarding 178 user groups and by pairing rule enforcement with other important factors social capital formal organization and dependence on forest products

exogenous degradation in the commons field experimental evidence abstract this article presents the results from framed field economic experiments in rural colombia that aim to explore the behavioral responses of resource users to exogenous changes in the availability of a common pool resource in the first 10 rounds of the experiment all subjects played at a baseline with the same initial resource availability in the subsequent rounds the experimenters exogenously changed the resource size including mild and strong reductions in the resource size and rebounds to original size results show that subjects react to strong reductions in resource availability by increasing appropriation from the resource this behavior holds for intense and persistent as well as for progressive reductions in resource availability in addition subjects that experience a reduction in the resource availability followed by a rebound to the initial resource size appropriate more than those subjects who did not experience any change in the resource availability

the impacts of collective action and property rights on plant genetic resources summary the loss of agricultural biodiversity can reduce food security increase economic uncertainty and threaten the viability and sustainability of agricultural systems often overlooked in the discussion about genetic erosion is the role that collective action and property rights play in controlling the propagation and use of landrace varieties this paper presents examples from around the world of collective management practices over plant genetic resources and discusses some of the impacts that private property rights legislation could have on the conservation of plant genetic resources reflecting upon recent advances in related research areas the paper concludes with suggestions of directions for future research in this emergent topic

collective action initiatives to improve marketing performance lessons from farmer groups in tanzania this study aims to examine the extent to which certain characteristics and asset endowments of smallholder farmer groups facilitate collective action initiatives to improve group marketing performance this is approached through an evaluation of a government led programme in tanzania which is attempting to increase smallholder farmers incomes and food security through a market oriented intervention findings suggest that more mature groups with strong internal institutions functioning group activities and a good asset base of natural capital are more likely to improve their market situation gender composition of groups also affects group marketing performance as an enabling factor for male dominated groups structural social capital in the form of membership in other groups and ties to external service providers and cognitive social capital in the form of intra group trust and altruistic behaviour are not significant factors in a group s ability to improve its market situation

a tale of two communities explaining deforestation in mexico summary deforestation policies in mexico need to recognize heterogeneity in community s management schemes in communities that extract wood from the forest for profit forestry projects generate funds whose investment in public goods increases the value of standing forest to those not receiving direct dividends from the projects increases in such investment help decrease deforestation in communities with other livelihoods deforestation decreases with the community s ability to form a coalition that cooperates in reducing forest clearing this is easier in smaller communities with more experienced leaders analysis using data collected in 2002 combined with satellite imagery verifies the models predictions

the impact of changes in common property resource management on intrahousehold allocation abstract in developing countries common property resources cprs can be an important source of income for certain individuals within households this paper demonstrates that if changes in the management of cprs impose fixed costs on them or cause a decline in the prices of goods produced from it the intrahousehold allocation of resources may alter in a manner detrimental to those individuals the paper also shows that the assumption of a unitary household model causes the detrimental effects of certain cpr policy interventions to be overlooked although the model is narrowly conceived the results can be generalised to examples where households have members who specialise in different economic activities outside the home

biocomplexity conceptual challenges for institutional analysis in biodiversity governance abstract institutions for biodiversity governance are located at the interface of human and ecological systems the analysis of such institutions is challenged due to addressing a multitude of complex interactions between these two systems occurring at different natural scales and levels of human organization due to this complexity empirical analysis of biodiversity management often leads to context specific explanations providing little scope for comparative work or the development of more generalised theory based accounts we aim at reducing complexity in understanding human biodiversity relations making cases comparable across sites and propose that in order to address complexity we need a method of abstraction that leads to the development of a more structured analysis based on selection of explanatory factors according to cconceptual models as well as empirical significance we suggest that the stylisation of typical resource use perspectives the combination of typical transactions that are inextricably linked by the interest of the actor can be a useful method for realizing appropriate model selection in this paper we provide an account of how use perspectives can be developed and to what kind of analysis they can contribute using the example of agrobiodiversity in grain as seed food or genetic material

common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources abstract the literature on common property based resource management comprises many important studies that seek to specify the conditions under which groups of users will self organize and sustainably govern resources upon which they depend using three of the more comprehensive such studies and with an extensive review of writings on the commons this paper demonstrates that the enterprise of generating lists of conditions under which commons are governed sustainably is a flawed and impossibly costly research task for a way out the paper examines the relative merits of statistical comparative and case study approaches to studying the commons it ends with a plea for careful research design and sample selection construction of causal mechanisms and a shift toward comparative and statistical rather than single case analyses such steps are necessary for a coherent empirically relevant theory of the commons

land markets property rights and deforestation insights from indonesia summary we examine the emergence of land markets and their effects on forest land appropriation by farm households in jambi province sumatra using micro level data covering land use and land transactions for a period of more than 20 years 1992 2015 based on a theoretical model of land acquisition by a heterogeneous farming population different hypotheses are developed and empirically tested farm households involved in forest land appropriation differ from those involved in land market purchases in terms of migration status and other socioeconomic characteristics in principle these differences provide opportunities for market induced deforestation however the appropriated forest land is not extensively traded which we attribute to the lack of de jure property right protection and the resulting undervaluation in the market while the de facto property right protection under customary law provides sufficient security within the village community the sense of external tenure security is low when the land cannot be formally titled clearing forests for trading in the land market is therefore financially less lucrative for farm households than engaging in own cultivation of plantation crops such as oil palm and rubber we conclude that land markets did not have significant effects on deforestation on the other hand the emergence of land markets alone has also not been able to deter forest appropriation by local farm households

biological and economic foundations of renewable resource exploitation abstract a physiologically based population dynamics model of a renewable resource is used as the basis to develop a model of human harvesting the model incorporates developing technology and the effects of market forces on the sustainability of common property resources the bases of the model are analogies between the economics of resource harvesting and allocation by firms and adapted organisms in nature specifically the paper makes the following points 1 it shows how economic and ecological theories may be unified 2 it punctuates the importance of time frame in the two systems evolutionary versus market 3 it shows contrary to prevailing economic wisdom how technological progress may be detrimental to resource preservation 4 it shows how the anticipated effects of high discount rates on resource use can be catastrophic when synergized by progress in harvesting technology 5 it suggests that increases in efficiency of utilization of the harvest encourages higher levels of resource exploitation and 6 it shows the effects of environmental degradation on consumer and resource dynamics the model leads to global implications on the relationship between economic growth and the ability of modern societies to maintain the environment at a sustainable level

payments for environmental services as an alternative to logging under weak property rights the case of indonesia decentralization reforms in indonesia have led to local communities negotiating logging agreements with timber companies for relatively low financial payoffs and at high environmental cost this paper analyzes the potential of payments for environmental services pes to provide an alternative to logging for these communities and to induce forest conservation we apply a game theoretical model of community firm interactions that explicitly considers two stylized conditions present in the indonesian context i community rights to the forest remain weak even after decentralization and ii the presence of logging companies interested in the commercial exploitation of the forest intuition may suggest that pes design should focus on those communities with the lowest expected payments from logging deals however we show that these communities may not be able to enforce a pes agreement i e they may not be able to prevent logging activities by timber companies moreover some communities would conserve the forest anyway in these cases pes would not lead to additional environmental gains most important the introduction of pes may increase a community s expected payoff from a logging agreement a failure to consider this endogeneity in expected payoffs could lead to communities opting for logging agreements despite pes simply allowing communities to negotiate better logging deals our results indicate that pes design is a complex task and that the costs of an effective pes system could potentially be much higher than expected from observing current logging fees using data collected in indonesia on actual logging fees received by communities we illustrate how the theoretical results could be used in empirical analysis to guide pes design our results are likely to be useful in other cases where local people make resource use decisions but have weak property rights over these resources and where external commercial forces are present the results highlight the importance of understanding the details of the local context in order to design pes programs appropriately

linking smallholders to markets determinants and impacts of farmer collective action in kenya summary this article investigates determinants and impacts of cooperative organization using the example of smallholder banana farmers in kenya farmer groups are inclusive of the poor although wealthier households are more likely to join employing propensity score matching we find positive income effects for active group members yet price advantages of collective marketing are small and high value market potentials have not yet been tapped beyond prices farmer groups function as important catalysts for innovation adoption through promoting efficient information flows we discuss the conditions under which collective action is useful and through what mechanisms the potential benefits emerge

municipal government approaches to service delivery an analysis from a transactions cost perspective municipal governments are less likely to contract out for service delivery if citizen preferences for the service are heterogeneous this conclusion is based on an analysis that extends to the public sector the empirical industrial organization literature on transaction costs and the make or buy decision faced by private firms service delivery practices for sixty three municipal services are examined the findings are consistent with the proposition that the cost for writing and monitoring contracts may be an important consideration in municipal service delivery approach and that bureaucratic supply may not be as inefficient as some previous studies indicate

the impact of hospital market structure on patient volume average length of stay and the cost of care a variety of recent proposals rely heavily on market forces as a means of controlling hospital cost inflation sceptics argue however that increased competition might lead to cost increasing acquisitions of specialized clinical services and other forms of non price competition as means of attracting physicians and patients using data from hospitals in 1972 we analyzed the impact of market structure on average hospital costs measured in terms of both cost per patient and cost per patient day under the retrospective reimbursement system in place at the time hospitals in more competitive environments exhibited significantly higher costs of production than did those in less competitive environments

common property equality and development the appeal of common property ideas may be traced in large measure to the fact that they seem to embody widely held values of equality on the other hand empirical examination of common property institutions reveals that they can coexist with significant inequality in this paper the relationship between common property and equality is examined it is argued that the role of common property can only be understood in the context of the associated private property institutions common property in agriculture is interpreted as part of a system based on small scale peasant proprietorship of arable land common property institutions provide a method of capturing scale economies and thereby increasing the efficiency of small scale proprietorship in competition with large scale production based on wage labor

hugging trees claiming de facto property rights by blockading resource use this paper explores conflicts between two groups the industry and theenvironmentalists over whether an indivisible resource e g an ancient tree should be harvested or preserved in a complete information war ofattrition the environmentalists willingness to blockade harvest attemptsmay control resource use as effectively as if they held property rights optimal government intervention will override this ability for somebenefit cost combinations but may augment it for other combinations introducing uncertainty about the environmentalists benefits results inextended disputes and consequent lack of efficiency governmentintervention for welfare reasons generally reduces these efficiencylosses

common pool resources and contextual factors evolution of a fishermen s cooperative in calcutta abstract the cpr school has successfully rebutted hardin s pessimistic tragedy of the commons model however in recent years critics have focussed on the inward orientation and lack of contextual analysis characterising the writings of the cpr school oakerson a model for the analysis of common property problems working paper r86 13 workshop in political theory and policy analysis indiana university 1986 and ostrom governing the commons cambridge cambridge university press 1990 have detailed the list of variables that have to be studied to understand the mechanics of collective action however these factors are internal to the community recent critics point out that the actions of individual agents are also influenced by the alternatives embedded outside the system these variables are collectively labelled contextual factors in our paper we have analysed the case of a fishermen s cooperative in the calcutta metropolitan district to show how the historic and economic context shapes targets of resource users and affects the feasibility of alternative courses to achieve the target by determining opportunity and transaction costs of actions this indicates the importance of contextual factors in explaining the formation and evolution of the resource regime

on the endogeneity of resource comanagement theory and evidence from indonesia we examine theoretically the emergence of participatory comanagement agreements that share between state and user the management of resources and the benefits from use going beyond user user interactions our state user model addresses a critical question when will comanagement arise in order to consider the right baseline for evaluating comanagement s forest and welfare impacts we then compare our model s hypotheses concerning de facto rights negotiated agreements and transfers all endogenous with community level data including observed agreements in a protected indonesian forest these unique data could refute the model despite being limited but instead offer support

constraints on collective action in a transitional economy the case of bulgaria s irrigation sector abstract irrigation until recently a major water user in bulgaria has been drastically affected by the political and economic changes that came about after the collapse of the socialist system collective action might be a way for societies to overcome the well known common pool resource dilemma thereby securing sustainable water management this article questions whether measures to facilitate local self governance could be successful in bulgaria empirical results suggest that local actors use power asymmetries to maintain their opportunistic strategies and the governance of information plays an especially important role moreover distrust between community members plays a crucial role in constraining the evolution of social capital which is a prerequisite for collective action

agricultural expansion and deforestation modelling the impact of population market forces and property rights abstract this paper compares four different modelling approaches to agricultural expansion and deforestation and explores the implications of assumptions about the household objectives the labour market and the property rights regime a major distinction is made between population and market based explanations many of the popular policy prescriptions are based on the population approach assuming subsistence behaviour and limited market integration within a more realistic particularly for the long term effects market approach well intentioned policies such as agricultural intensification programmes may boost deforestation many forest frontier contexts are also characterized by forest clearing giving farmers land rights deforestation becomes an investment to the farmer and a title establishment strategy land titling and credit programmes may therefore increase deforestation

property rights and deforestation in the brazilian amazon this paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the brazilian legal amazon deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands moreover deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk squatters invade land plots clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles a particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the brazilian context it is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures principal component analysis allows synthesising such information an econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988 2000 period and the nine states of the brazilian legal amazon the hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed this result questions the modality of the brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures

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

complexities of decentralization in a globalizing world in many developing countries decentralization programmes for natural resource management aim to induce incentives for sustainable resource management at the local level the effectiveness of such programmes has however suffered from weak property rights to the resource and by the presence of externalities growing economic integration among countries has exacerbated these problems by increasing the exposure of local user groups to commercial actors interested in resource extraction in this paper the interplay of decentralization and globalization in affecting environmental outcomes and community welfare is analysed through a game theoretic model of community firm interactions the results highlight the complexities of policy design first by raising the extractive value of the resource globalization may lead to communities negotiating resource extraction agreements with firms second with a lack of effective state enforcement of community resource rights communities may be unable to assume de facto ownership over the resource while commercial actors succeed in exploiting resources without community consent no single policy option provides a panacea to counteracting these negative effects instead a mix of policies combining incentive payments along with the provision of more secure property rights and poverty alleviation is shown to have the potential to improve both environmental outcomes and community welfare

property rights and liability for deforestation under redd implications for permanence in policy design reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd is critical in efforts to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change despite uncertainty about the exact form of a future international redd system redd carbon property rights would need to be created and allocated with liability assigned for the potential loss of climate benefits in the event of carbon reversal from deforestation this commentary explores the links between forest property rights and liability to different redd policy options and their implications for permanence should national governments retain liability for permanence then project level activities that have individually assigned redd carbon rights may have a higher risk of carbon reversal than policies where rights are assigned to the state knowledge of pre existing forest rights is necessary for some policies implemented with government assigned redd rights in order to compensate for potential income losses from policy implementation

context dependent biodiversity conservation management regimes theory and simulations ecosystem degradation hasmotivated a search for successful conservation approaches the perceived failure of state directed protected areas in the tropics has prompted experimentation with community management and co management strategies numerous case studies suggest that none of these are effective universally there exists however little analytical or empirical work to identify under what conditions one arrangement will be more effective than another this paper develops a model of statedependent equilibrium conservation management design that identifies the comparative advantage of different managers in the interest of appropriately locating authority for conservation tasks as a function of prevailing biophysical economic and sociopolitical conditions

for better or for worse local impacts of the decentralization of indonesia s forest sector this paper quantifies the local impacts of mechanized logging on forest dependent communities in indonesia before and after decentralization a conceptual framework incorporates financial social enforcement rent seeking and environmental impacts using data from 60 communities in east kalimantan the empirical results suggest that significantly more households received financial and in kind benefits after decentralization compared to before many communities engaged in self enforcement activities against firms both before and after decentralization post decentralization a significantly higher proportion of households perceived community forest ownership there were few significant differences in perceived environmental impacts little evidence exists of a post decentralization trade off between environmental and financial contractual provisions

land tenure and property rights theory and implications for development policy this article explores the nature of property rights systems their evolution and their effect on resource allocation it is argued that certain institutional arrangements for land rights have evolved in order to reduce uncertainty and increase efficiency in credit as well as in land markets of particular relevance to developing countries the article emphasizes the contribution of public sector infrastructure to effective land rights systems an appendix to the article presents a formal model analyzing the effects of security of land rights on land prices the intensity of cultivation and the use of credit empirical evidence from thailand supports several of the propositions derived from the model

governance institutions resource rights regimes and the informal mining sector regulatory complexities in indonesia summary this study examines how shifting resource governance regimes affect labor inequities in the small scale mining sector in indonesia it focuses on the implications of governance decentralization processes and mining regulation reforms for indigenous and migrant populations who rely on informal unlicensed mining for income in central kalimantan while the findings illustrate the territorially uneven impacts of recent reforms they highlight how dominant paradigms that prioritize the enforcement of property rights schemes have contributed to problems of livelihood insecurity and poor environmental governance the article urges for more nuanced attention to contested articulations of power as well as local resource rights and institutional arrangements to assist rural communities in reversing marginalization

empirical research on the different innovation engine between china and us manufacturing using an improved method abstractmost studies arrive at controversial conclusions about the relationship between firm size and technological innovation industrial differences and subjective model design are generally considered the primary cause in static comparisons across industries dynamic industrial changes are ignored but this might lead to differing results when attempting to identify the driving forces of evolutionary change in an industrial environment this study applies nonparametric regression methods with an expansive industry grouping to overcome the industry difference interference and empirical model error typifying traditional studies first a comparative analysis of the forces driving us and chinese manufacturing is performed results indicate that us and chinese manufacturing are in different industrial growth stages chinese manufacturing takes the traditional elements and r d input as its main driving factors which require objectively expansive scale of enterprise therefore showing characteristic schu

symposium on management of local commons in the public image of industrially advanced countries the commons problem relates to global warming acid rain depletion of the ozone layer and the like in the developing countries the daily livelihood of the poor depends more substantially and directly on the local commons irrigation forestry grazing in shore fisheries and so on these restricted access common property resources usually involve small local communities which opens the possibility for local level community organizations to manage resources and resolve conflicts as an alternative to the polar opposites of private and state control which usually hog the limelight in public policy discussion in fact many developing countries have a long history of balanced resource management under highly informal local community institutions in these countries the erosion of the local commons set in only with major demographic and institutional changes in recent years often accelerated by private commercialization or bureaucratic appropriation of the traditional historical rights of local communities over these resources

dry promotions and community participation evidence from a natural field experiment in brazilian fishing villages abstract this paper investigates the role of dry promotions for community participation in eight brazilian fishing villages we randomly promoted some fishermen to assistants before the start of an environmental program increasing their responsibilities but not providing any monetary compensation thereafter we study whether they engage more in conservation behavior during this program the data shows that promoted fishermen provide substantially more effort which suggests that such promotions may be a cost effective tool to stimulate cooperation and community participation

commons regulation and rent seeking behavior the dilemma of pakistan s guzara forests curred over the past 120 years these forests known locally as guzara forests can be characterized as regulated commons the regulation by placing quantitative restrictions on felling aimed at an orderly exploitation of these forests on the surface the failure of regulation seems to be a simple case of enforcement failure however a closer look reveals a fairly complex picture in which factors such as the delineation of property rights and the rent seeking behavior of those subject to regulation as well as of the regulators themselves have contributed to the problems of these forests the evidence presented in this article shows that the way the regulation was devised gave rise to a discordant structure of property rights involving the government and the local inhabitants despite early signals that it could not be effectively enforced no rectifying change was introduced in the structure of rights which has persisted into the postcolonial era indeed there was a reversal of some potentially beneficial institutional changes that had been introduced toward the end of the colonial period while the process of degradation was set in motion by discordances that arose in the process of delineating property rights it is the theory of rentseeking behavior that provides an adequate explanation of its persistence as well as of the subsequent reversals an effective response to the problem of the guzara forests must take account of two additional features in the regulation of these forests first in addition to the common property externality that leads to the tragedy of the commons these forests also display interjurisdictional externality by virtue of their location second a common

trading off environmental sustainability for empowerment and income woodlot devolution in northern ethiopia summary this paper explores local empowerment income generation opportunities and environmental sustainability under varying scales of woodlot management in ethiopia we find that more devolved woodlot management empowers resource users providing greater decision making autonomy regarding harvesting and management our economic analysis indicates that there has been limited harvesting of high value products such as poles and fuelwood labor inputs declined tree survival rates increased and average annual net benefits improved as woodlot management was devolved indicating improved efficiency with more localized management environmental sustainability was associated with less devolved woodlot management this study highlights the trade offs inherent in devolution reforms

high value forests hidden economies and elite capture evidence from forest user groups in nepal s terai abstract this paper argues that the policy on decentralised forest management in nepal informed by experiences from the middle hills overlooks the complexity and conflictual potential of establishing effective and equitable user groups in the terai our case study evidence from west central terai suggests that the combination of high forest value and weak institutional control mechanisms create opportunities for local elites to siphon off substantial shares of the benefits generated by valuable local forests the rents created by autonomous fug policies give rise to stark distributional biases a scramble for control and institutional instability we estimate the extent of elite capture and argue that institutional reform needs are intimately linked to controlling what we call the hidden economy of forest user groups

power relations and institutional outcomes a case of pastureland development in semi arid rajasthan abstract the paper critically examines institutional outcomes in conservation of village commons against the backdrop of rural power relations in two villages of rajasthan india while one of the villages could achieve highest institutional outcome in terms of equity the other one failed to do so it failed because renovated institution reproduced same relations of unequal power and authority as a pervasive feature of social relations the paper shows how the locally renovated institution in the other village sustains while managing its village common pastureland despite perpetrating discrimination against the subordinates it however does not suggest institutional practices under the authoritarian leadership that might collapse in the context of changing power equations in rural areas the paper argues that primary condition for equitable entitlement to the improved resource base to emerge as an institutional outcome is the removal of dependency syndrome of the subordinates on the powerful it capacitates them to make claims

the structure of a contract and the theory of a non exclusive resource the process of arriving at a useful concept of analysis is not only slow and painful but also may go astray and attain nothing useful someone begins with one example or observation followed by a theory which is intuitively plausible a theoretical term associated with a vague concept is coined examples of a seemingly different type emerge which call for another theory the process goes on as examples and theories continue to accumulate the different categories under the same heading of analysis serve only to confuse and each associated theory becomes ad hoc such has been the fate of the concept of externality a more useful approach i think is via contractual conditions the example chosen for illustration is marine fisheries where the fishing right is taken

collective action for local commons management in rural yunnan china empirical evidence and hypotheses using evolutionary game theory this paper presents hypotheses regarding collective actions for irrigation management with the help of evolutionary game theory data for the analysis were collected by the author from the irrigation system of rural yunnan china an econometric analysis reveals that collective action will be forthcoming in rural communities where few nonfarm job opportunities are provided the degree of income disparity is quite small and resource restrictions are moderately problematic the finding that communities without local government intervention outperform those with intervention supports the proverbial view that external agencies should delegate significant parts of the control rights of common pool resources to immediate stakeholders

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

economic incentives under contract supply of local government services it has been argued that organizations which are unable to directly appropriate any of the firm s residual earnings tend to experience various forms of wealth taking by managers alchian and kessel 1962 this wealth taking has been observed in privately owned regulated firms nelson 1980 as well as in government operated bureaus the results in this paper suggest that the x inefficiency associated with various forms of wealth taking may be constrained when external competitive pressures exist niskanen argued that one strategy for reducing the inefficiency associated with monopoly bureaus would be to set up two bureaus to compete for the sponsor s budget in order to generate better information on cost and production functions at the local level the lakewood plan by generating information on actual production cost to purchasing cities and to unincorporated area residents appears to create the desired effect by generating this flow of information on cost the lakewood plan eases the task of monitoring the performance of county departments second the threat of entry posed by the city bureau which can always produce services in house appears to effectively constrain the x inefficiency of the county supplier bureaus

community industry contracting over natural resource use in a context of weak property rights the case of indonesia decentralization in indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies the outcomes of such community company negotiations vary significantly across communities what are the conditions that cause this variation and how can the outcomes be more effectively and efficiently influenced by third party actors such as the local government or ngos this paper addresses these questions by developing a game theoretic model to illustrate the strategic interactions between communities and companies the model allows for endogeneity of de facto property rights and bargaining positions we show that third party actions to improve the community s bargaining position by raising its reservation utility may result in an increase in the area logged and thereby harm the environment our results indicate that the strategy of intervention matters in particular strategies that raise the sensitivity of interventions to local logging threats are likely to be more cost effective in supporting communities and reducing forest degradation than more indiscriminatory strategies the model will be relevant to other situations where communities negotiate contracts over natural resource use with outside actors in a context of weak property rights a situation increasingly observed in other developing countries

common property and collective action in economic development abstract a fundamental issue in many ldcs is the degree to which natural resource mismanagement is caused by common property arrangements this view has led to widespread attempts to privatize forests rangelands and water resources many of these efforts have failed to stop overuse and have contributed to inequality in resource distribution this paper seriously questions this approach and describes a number of reasons why common property may continue to be both efficient and equitable complementing and combining with private rights in a way consistent with the resource endowments of village economies a theoretical approach is outlined showing that the tragedy of the commons is an unsatisfactory model of common property an alternative model is presented together with a call for research into institutional alternatives in resource management

the environmental consequences of decentralizing the decision to decentralize abstract environmental statutes that initiate devolution frequently contain provisions that allow tiers of government to control the final assignment of policymaking authority these provisions may allow one tier of government to propose a re assignment of authority and may give other tiers of government the power to veto the proposed transfer of authority using data from the devolution of the resource conservation and recovery act in california we empirically model a dual selection process in which a lower tier government i e a city may assume policymaking authority from an upper tier government i e a county but only if the upper tier entity chooses not to veto the petition using simulation methods we compare the consequences of this policy with those of two alternative devolution policies each devolution policy results in the setting of different levels of public goods across tiers of government each policy also produces markedly different levels of compliance with state environmental standards

formal informal sector interaction in rural credit markets abstract the majority of small cultivators in the less developed countries are not regarded as credit worthy by the formal sector financial institutions and are forced to borrow from the moneylenders in the informal credit market this paper shows that when such borrowers differ in their likelihood of default and the moneylenders are asymmetrically informed about the client specific degree of risk the policy of providing cheap credit through the formal sector can generate adverse composition effects which worsen the terms of credit and the availability of loans in the informal sector

innovation and size at the firm level empirical studies examining the relationship between firm size and innovative activity have produced what superficially might appear to be contradictory results while some studies have found a positive relationship between firm size and technological change still others have identified no relationship or even a negative one there are two main reasons for these seemingly inconsistent findings the first is that different measures have been used to quantify technical change these measures have typically involved either some measure of inputs into the innovative process such as r d expenditures or else the number of patented inventions while neither of these are direct measures of innovative output they clearly represent different aspects of the innovative process thus it is perhaps not too surprising that different results have tended to emerge when the r d input measures are used than for the patent measures the second reason is that virtually every study examining the relationship between firm size and technical change has had to use a truncated distribution of firm sizes where either no or only a few small firms were included for example scherer s 14 234 35 conclusion that the empirical results tilt on the side of supporting the schumpeterian hypothesis that size is conducive to vigorous conduct of r d was based on the responses of 443 large corporations participating in the federal trade commission s line of business survey similarly scherer 15 used the fortune annual survey of the 500 largest u s industrial corporations and found that the number of patented inventions increases less than proportionately along with firm size soete 16 found that r d expenditures tend to increase more than proportionately along with firm size using a sample from business week consisting of the most r d intensive firms bound et al 6 were able to include a considerably wider spectrum of firm sizes in their sample of 1 492 firms from the 1976 compustat data they found that r d increases more than proportionately along with firm size for the smaller firms in their sample but that a fairly linear relationship exists for the largest firms inferences about the relationship between firm size and technical change based on a severely we thank f m scherer and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions as well as sigrid raasch and jianping

collective action within the household insights from natural resource management summary households face many collective action situations with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods but neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so drawing on the institutional analysis and development framework based in the natural resource management literature this paper explores the factors that encourage and inhibit collective action and provides insights into how to understand collective action problems within the household as dynamic multi actor situations with outcomes that can be evaluated by multiple criteria not just efficiency

a framework for evaluating collective action and informal institutional dynamics under a resource management policy of decentralization the decentralization of resource property rights has become an increasingly popular policy in many natural resource dependent communities of the developing world however the success of this policy approach depends on both collective action and institutionalization it is therefore important to evaluate collective action and institutionalization where the process of property rights decentralization is in progress this paper presents a modified version of the institutional analysis and development iad framework designed to analyze the decentralization of property rights and the collective action of community members to obtain these rights it describes a three phased framework for analyzing i the government property right decentralization policy ii the stock of capital assets in the community required to achieve property rights by initiating collective action and iii the development of an informal institution for effective property right distribution in the community finally to demonstrate its utility to collective action research we present a case study application of our modified framework to the fisheries property right decentralization policy of the bangladesh government and the subsequent collective action of a wetland dependent community

sustaining linkages to high value markets through collective action in uganda abstract uganda s rapid urbanization offers new market opportunities for smallholder farmers to supply higher value markets such as supermarket chains and fast food restaurants supplying these formal outlets offers higher incomes but accessing and maintaining links to these markets requires significant upgrading in terms of product quality and business management to meet these conditions farmers need to become more organized which requires increased levels of social capital to strengthen internal and external relations with group members service providers and market chain actors one farmers group in south western uganda has successfully sustained sales of potatoes to a fast food outlet in kampala farmers had to learn a series of new skills and integrate multiple technical organizational financial and marketing innovations this paper outlines how collective action combined with strong leadership and an iterative market led learning process enabled a smallholder farmers association to meet the considerable challenges of achieving the stringent quality parameters of a modern food outlet

tenure issues in higher education the system of tenure that dominates american higher education has long been a source of controversy the institution of tenure has been attacked for entrenching a lazy professoriate more interested in attending faraway conferences and producing unreadable research than in teaching or developing practical insights while on the other hand it has long been defended as an absolute necessity for the defense of open intellectual inquiry the tenure controversy has been sharpened in recent years by several events the end of mandatory retirement which was abolished by federal law effective january 1 1994 has heightened concerns about the productivity and commitment of professors who received tenure long ago and who no longer have the same incentives to invest in long term reputation there is also ongoing concern over the steadily rising cost of higher education which raises the question of what students as well as the taxpayers who support public institutions of higher education are getting for their money 1 the idea that tenure is a wasteful institution for universities runs up against the puzzling fact that the commitment to tenure is one that academic institutions impose on themselves although the american association of university professors aaup provides a powerful lobby in favor of tenure generally colleges and universities most notably private ones are under no legal requirement to observe tenure constraints although as administrators we certainly feel the weight of those constraints our view is that a tenure system in fact provides important benefits to society and to colleges and universities we argue here that the role of tenure is

production costs transaction costs and local government contractor choice i introduction declining fiscal conditions increasing service obligations and public clamor for more effective government have led local governments to examine alternatives to the bureaucratic supply of publicly provided services the alternative which has received the most attention is contracting under this arrangement services are financed by the local government but production of the service is contracted to external suppliers a growing body of work has explored the contracting decision 1 focusing on the production choice does a local government providing i e financing a service produce it internally or externally the contracting decision however has a second part the contractor choice given the decision to externally produce a service does the local government contract with other governments with nonprofit organizations or with for profit firms 2 contracting is expected to yield production cost savings by exploiting scale economies overcoming input rigidities and capitalizing on managerial and competition induced efficiency incentives the extent to which these production cost savings are achieved depends on the sector of the external producer at the same time public accountability requires contracting governments to be concerned with the proper execution of the contracting process to ensure that shirking is minimized the transaction costs generated by this oversight also vary by the sector of the contractor thus the cost of service delivery depends on the sector of the external producer understanding the contractor choice from among the three sectors would add insight into the motivations for contracting and ultimately enable us to more correctly predict the cost and service quality effects of different external supply alternatives this paper explores the determinants of local government contractor choice in the next section we examine the production and transaction costs associated with organizations from the public nonprofit and for profit sectors we then develop a general model of the contractor choice and empirically test it using data on local government contract arrangements for three health services hospital drug and alcohol prevention and treatment and mental health ii service delivery costs and contractor options we posit that a local government in selecting the sector with which to contract seeks to maximize its utility by choosing the alternative that minimizes the costs of service delivery there are two components of service delivery costs production costs and transaction costs 3 production costs contracting is viewed as a means to overcome scale diseconomies perverse managerial incentives and input rigidities which generate a production cost premium for internal production external production separates the production scale decision from jurisdictional size thus allowing scale economies to be realized this benefit is provided by external production with any contractor of the appropriate size and thus scale economies should not in theory affect the sector choice however the extent to which the contractor exhibits managerial incentives and input flexibility which contribute to production cost savings depends on its organizational form managerial incentives the efficiency incentives of managers vary by the form of their organization in public bureaus principal agent problems arise from the informational advantages of the agents bureaucrats over their principals mayor council which are perceived to increase public production costs for example niskanen s 1971 notion of public bureaucrats as budget maximizers is predicated on the bureau s knowledge of the actual cost of delivering services and the use of this knowledge to increase their budgets in addition the lack of property rights to residuals the difference between budgets and actual production costs reduces incentives for bureaucrats to minimize costs

ejido reforms in mexico conceptual issues and potential outcomes the evolving privatization of the ejido system in mexico represents a challenge to standard economic models of common property regimes these models tend to emphasize human interrelations while discounting the ecological conditions which form the environment for human interactions a risk spreading safety first model capturing interrelationships between nature and humans is developed to analyze the potential implications of mexico s privatization efforts recognizing that the majority of ejido lands are communal not parcelized located primarily in arid areas the model supports the prediction that privatization will occur and be most successful on irrigated ejido lands with modern social and economic infrastructure

adding environment to the collective action problem individuals civil society and the mangrove fishery commons in ecuador summary research on the commons suggests a more robust understanding of human resource interactions is needed to strengthen theories about collective action and sustainable governance i combine ethnographic and fishery data to explore how resource characteristics and institutions influence people s behavior toward common pool resources in coastal ecuador this comparative study of the commons at two levels mangroves and the cockle fishery highlights how trust communication and social obligation depend on social histories of resource systems and types of collective action problems largely explaining why local institutions encourage individuals to uphold mangrove forest conservation but have little effect on cooperation in fisheries