market frictions a unified model of search costs and switching costs it is well known that search costs and switching costs can create market power by constraining the ability of consumers to change suppliers while previous research has examined each cost in isolation this paper demonstrates the benefits of examining the two types of friction in unison the paper shows how subtle distinctions between the two costs can provide important differences in their effects upon consumer behaviour competition and welfare in addition the paper also illustrates a simple empirical methodology for estimating separate measures of both costs while demonstrating a potential bias that can arise if only one cost is considered

payment card rewards programs and consumer payment choice abstract by using a unique data set that contains detailed information about consumer payment choice and consumers attitudes toward each payment method we estimate the effects of payment card rewards on consumer choice of payment methods our approach allows us to control for consumer heterogeneity we find the effects of rewards to be statistically significant across five retail types our policy experiments suggest that for the sub population who hold both credit and debit cards removing rewards would increase their share of paper based payment methods i e cash and checks measured in terms of in store transactions by no more than 4 percentage points

what to preserve an application of diversity theory to crane conservation this paper attempts to demonstrate how diversity theory can be applied to the analysis of real world conservation policies the specific example chosen to serve as a paradigm concerns preservation priorities among the fifteen species of cranes living wild throughout the world the example is sufficiently actual to show how diversity theory can be used operationally to frame certain critical conservation questions and to guide us toward answers by providing informative quantitative indicators of what to protect at the same time the cranes example is rich enough that it illustrates nicely some broad general principles about the economics of diversity preservation

value function approximation in the presence of uncertainty and inequality constraints an application to the demand for credit cards abstract we present an algorithm for approximating the solution to discrete time stochastic dynamic programs with inequality constraints the algorithm exploits the state preference approach to choice under uncertainty to reduce the dimensionality of the state space and polynomial approximation to improve computational efficiency it is particularly useful in financial applications involving liquidity and credit constraints and more than one asset the algorithm provides information about the derivatives of the value function and therefore risk aversion along with asset demands

costs and benefits of preserving farm animal genetic resources from extinction cvm and bio economic model for valuing a conservation program for the italian pentro horse abstract this paper presents the results of a cost benefit analysis of a conservation program for the pentro horse this horse breed has been reared for millennia in a southern italian wetland where it is now strongly tied to the traditions of the region but presently faces extinction as only 150 horses have survived horse herds live in a wild state characterising in a remarkable manner the landscape of the wetland this results in a flow of social benefits that the market value of this breed fails to capture the benefits from a conservation program for this currently unprotected local breed is estimated in a contingent valuation study while a bio economic model is used to estimate the costs associated with its in situ conservation the results show that the benefit cost ratio is in the worst scenario equal to 1 67 thus justifying a conservation policy this combined approach could be useful to support policy making for conservation in regions with a long history of breeding domestic animals

borrowing high versus borrowing higher price dispersion and shopping behavior in the u s credit card market we document substantial cross individual dispersion in u s credit card borrowing costs even after controlling for borrower risk and card characteristics that remaining dispersion arises because cross lender pricing heterogeneity generates dispersion in annual percentage rate apr offers to borrowers and borrowers vary in shopping intensity our empirics match administrative data to self reported card shopping intensity and use instruments suggested by fair lending law to account for the endogeneity between aprs and search the results show that shoppers versus nonshoppers pay aprs as different as those paid by borrowers in the best versus worst credit score deciles we discuss implications for policy and practice

risk based pricing of interest rates for consumer loans abstract by focusing on observable default risk s role in loan terms and the subsequent consequences for household behavior this paper shows that lenders increasingly used risk based pricing of interest rates in consumer loan markets during the mid 1990s it tests three resulting predictions first the premium paid per unit of risk should have increased over this period second debt levels should have reacted accordingly third fewer high risk households should have been denied credit further contributing to the interest rate spread between the highest and lowest risk borrowers for people obtaining loans the premium paid per unit of risk did indeed become significantly larger after the mid 1990s for example for a 0 01 increase in the probability of bankruptcy the corresponding interest rate increase tripled for first mortgages doubled for automobile loans and rose nearly six fold for second mortgages additionally changes in borrowing levels and debt access reflected these new pricing practices particularly for secured debt borrowing increased most for the low risk households who saw their relative borrowing costs fall furthermore while very high risk households gained expanded access to credit the increases in their risk premiums implied that their borrowing as a whole either rose less or sometimes fell

permanent income hypothesis in emerging markets some brazilian evidence abstract this paper uses a dataset from one of the largest credit card issuers in brazil to investigate the extent of credit constraints for one of the world s largest emerging market economies in order to deal with the endogeneity problem from an observational dataset an identification strategy based on the issuer actual policies was used to better identify the long run effects of a credit card limit increase on debt the results point to a long run effect of credit limit on credit card debts of 0 1144 a similar size to the ones found in gross and souleles 2001 this value indicates the permanent income hypothesis is rejected for this sample and some evidence supporting a variation of buffer stock behavior is found furthermore results indicate the degree of heterogeneity in effects is much higher than similar results for developed countries lending credence to the conclusion credit constraints are much stronger for lower income groups this conclusion is in line to previous studies in brazil such as de lucinda and vieira 2014

race ethnicity and credit card marketing there is a vast literature on discrepancies in consumer credit related to race and ethnicity i explore a pattern that was first identified in aggregate data by han keys and li 2011 in their study of credit access blacks were approximately 27 less likely to receive offers from credit card lenders during the sample period even after controlling for variables such as credit history household income and local economic conditions hispanics were 17 less likely to receive an offer after including controls the discrepancy is robust to lender specific regressions and the inclusion of a large number of explanatory variables my findings imply that marketing is an important area for analysis of discrimination in consumer credit due to the likely need for confidential information in further analysis investigation by an appropriate regulatory agency such as the consumer financial protection bureau would be useful

the real costs of credit access evidence from the payday lending market using geographic differences in the availability of payday loans i estimate the real effects of credit access among low income households payday loans are small high interest rate loans that constitute the marginal source of credit for many high risk borrowers i find no evidence that payday loans alleviate economic hardship to the contrary loan access leads to increased difficulty paying mortgage rent and utilities bills the empirical design isolates variation in loan access that is uninfluenced by lenders location decisions and state regulatory decisions two factors that might otherwise correlate with economic hardship measures further analysis of differences in loan availability over time and across income groups rules out a number of alternative explanations for the estimated effects counter to the view that improving credit access facilitates important expenditures the results suggest that for some low income households the debt service burden imposed by borrowing inhibits their ability to pay important bills copyright 2011 oxford university press

price dispersion in the small and in the large evidence from an internet price comparison site this paper examines four million daily price observations for more than 1 000 consumer electronics products on the price comparison site http shopper com we find little support for the notion that prices on the internet are converging to the law of one price in addition observed levels of price dispersion vary systematically with the number of firms listing prices the difference between the two lowest prices the gap averages 23 per cent when two firms list prices and falls to 3 5 per cent in markets where 17 firms list prices these empirical results are an implication of a general clearinghouse model of equilibrium price dispersion

how effective are rewards programs in promoting payment card usage empirical evidence card issuers have mainly relied on rewards programs as their main strategy to increase usage however there is scarce evidence on the effectiveness of these programs this paper is addressing two topics which could have important managerial and public policy implications i it estimates the impact of rewards on the use of cards and ii it quantifies their economic effects in terms of the cash substitution we find that rewards may significantly modify choice for card payments their economic impact also varies significantly across types of rewards and merchant activities additionally rewards seem to be more effective for debit cards

the importance of lender heterogeneity in mortgage lending abstract previous studies of the mortgage lending process which fail to adequately account for inter lender differences suffer from a potentially serious omitted variables bias using a sample of 23 094 home purchase mortgage applications from pinellas county st petersburg florida over the 1993 1995 interval i demonstrate that the inclusion of lender characteristics enhances the predictive power of accept reject decision models of mortgage origination in addition the inclusion of lender attributes is shown to substantially influence the coefficient estimates of additional model parameters of interest such as the applicant race and neighborhood racial composition variables finally this study provides unique and supportive evidence regarding the existence and persistence of information externalities in home purchase mortgage markets

regulate one service tame the entire market credit cards in turkey abstract in credit card markets banks provide both payment and credit services two regulations were recently enacted in the turkish credit card market one on payment services in 2005 and the other on credit services in 2006 by employing the well known panzar and rosse 1982 panzar and rosse 1987 method and a unique quarterly data set for 21 turkish banks between 2002 and 2008 we investigate the extent of banks market power in the turkish credit card market before and after the regulations unlike most of the existing literature which considers competition and regulation for either credit or payment services and ignores the externalities between them we consider the entire market by taking both services into account fixed effects estimations reveal that banks enjoyed collusive oligopoly power before the regulations although the first regulation did not have much impact the second led to rises in both banks total revenues and competition in the entire market

discrimination in the small business credit market we use data from the 1993 and 1998 national surveys of small business finances to examine the existence of racial discrimination in the small business credit market we conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by race and find that black owned small businesses are about twice as likely to be denied credit even after controlling for differences in creditworthiness and other factors a series of specification checks indicates that this gap is unlikely to be explained by omitted variable bias these results indicate that the racial disparity in credit availability is likely caused by discrimination

the role of soft information in a dynamic contract setting evidence from the home equity credit market credit underwriting is a dynamic process involving multiple interactions between borrower and lender during this process lenders have the opportunity to obtain hard and soft information from the borrower we analyze more than 108 000 home equity loans and lines of credit applications to study the role of soft and hard information during underwriting our data set allows us to distinguish lender actions that are based strictly on hard information from decisions that involve the collection of soft information our analysis confirms the importance of soft information and suggests that its use can be effective in reducing overall portfolio credit losses ex post

valuing indigenous cattle breeds in kenya an empirical comparison of stated and revealed preference value estimates abstract in this study we compare revealed and stated preference approaches to value traits of cattle in kenya the premise is that much can be learnt about non market values of indigenous animal genetic resources angr from the use of multi attribute stated preference methods if these compare well with revealed preference results the objective is to investigate the performance of choice experiments ces in maasai cattle trading by conducting an external test of preference consistency we compare value estimates for cattle attributes from ces data with those from hedonic analysis of actual transactions by the same population of traders in the same markets and over the same period if ces perform well they can be used to investigate values of those genetically determined livestock traits currently not prominent in pastoralists populations but desirable candidates for breeding or conservation programmes e g disease resistance the results indicate that ce estimates pass the external test and appear to be adequately precise in estimating values for cattle traits that are relevant in market transactions for maasai traders accounting for taste and variance heterogeneity does not change this conclusion ces may therefore be a promising tool for valuing phenotypic traits expressed by indigenous angr

the gatekeeper s optimal fee structure when sellers can price discriminate abstract this article investigates a monopoly gatekeeper s optimal fee structure under the premise that sellers can charge two prices one price is for subscribers and the other is for non subscribers the gatekeeper s optimal fee structure attains the social optimal allocation

rates for vehicle loans race and loan source a household s vehicle purchases are among its largest expenditure outlays moreover unlike housing purchases which a typical household may make once or twice over a lifetime a house hold may well buy several cars over the same interval the magnitude and relative frequency of vehicle purchases suggest that differential treatment by race in the vehicle market may have important implications for differences in wealth and financial well being by race yet whereas a robust literature in economics has studied virtu

license to cheat voluntary regulation and ethical behavior although monitoring and regulation can be used to combat socially costly unethical conduct their intended targets can often avoid regulation or hide their behavior this surrenders at least part of the effectiveness of regulatory policies to firms and individuals decisions to voluntarily submit to regulation we study individuals decisions to avoid monitoring or regulation and thus enhance their ability to engage in unethical conduct we conduct a laboratory experiment in which participants engage in a competitive task and can decide between having the opportunity to misreport their performance or having their performance verified by an external monitor to study the effect of social factors on the willingness to be subject to monitoring we vary whether participants make this decision simultaneously with others or sequentially as well as whether the decision is private or public our results show that the opportunity to avoid being submitted to regulation produces more unethical conduct than situati

household borrowing after personal bankruptcy a large body of literature has examined factors leading to filing for personal bankruptcy but little is known about household borrowing after bankruptcy this paper augments the existing literature with a comprehensive analysis of postbankruptcy borrowing using data from the survey of consumer finances we find that filers generally have more limited access to unsecured credit but borrow more secured debt after bankruptcy than comparable households that have never filed for bankruptcy filers also pay higher interest rates on all types of debt in addition as more time passes after filing credit access and borrowing costs improve however filers remain more prone than comparable nonfilers to experience financial distress accumulate less wealth and use expensive credit sources like payday loans even more than 10 years after filing

do liquidity constraints and interest rates matter for consumer behavior evidence from credit card data this paper utilizes a unique new dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how people respond to changes in credit supply the data consist of a panel of thousands of individual credit card accounts from several different card issuers with associated credit bureau data we estimate both marginal propensities to consume mpcs out of liquidity and interest rate elasticities we also evaluate the ability of different models of consumption to rationalize our results distinguishing the permanent income hypothesis pih liquidity constraints precautionary saving and behavioral models we find that increases in credit limits generate an immediate and significant rise in debt counter to the pih the average mpc out of liquidity ddebt dlimit ranges between 10 14 the mpc is much larger for people starting near their limits consistent with binding liquidity constraints however the mpc is significant even for people starting well below their limit we show this response is consistent with buffer stock models of precautionary saving nonetheless there are other results that conventional models cannot easily explain e g why so many people are borrowing on their credit cards and simultaneously holding low yielding assets unlike most other studies we also find strong effects from changes in account specific interest rates the long run elasticity of debt to the interest rate is approximately 1 3 less than half of this elasticity represents balance shifting across cards with most reflecting net changes in total borrowing the elasticity is larger for decreases in interest rates than for increases which can explain the widespread use of temporary promotional rates the elasticity is smaller for people starting near their credit limits again consistent with liquidity constraints

futile attempts at self control we investigate costly yet futile attempts at self control when consumption of a harmful product has a binary breakdown no breakdown nature and individuals tend to underestimate their need for self control considering time inconsistent preferences as well as temptation disutility we show that becoming more sophisticated can decrease welfare and investigate what kind of mistaken beliefs lead to low welfare with time inconsistent preferences being close to perfectly understanding one s preferences but assigning zero probability to true preferences induces the worst outcome jel d03 d11 d91

risk management of non maturing liabilities abstract risk management of non maturing liabilities is a relatively unstudied issue of significant practical importance non maturing liabilities include most of the traditional deposit accounts like demand deposits savings accounts and short time deposits and form the basis of the funding of depository institutions therefore the asset and liability management of depository institutions depends crucially on an accurate understanding of the liquidity risk and interest rate risk profile of these deposits in this paper we propose a stochastic three factor model as general quantitative framework for liquidity risk and interest rate risk management for non maturing liabilities it consists of three building blocks market rates deposit rates and deposit volumes we give a detailed model specification and present algorithms for simulation and calibration our approach to liquidity risk management is based on the term structure of liquidity a concept which forecasts for a specified period and probability what amount of cash is available for investment for interest rate risk management we compute the value the risk profile and the replicating bond portfolio of non maturing liabilities using arbitrage free pricing under a variance minimizing measure the proposed methodology is demonstrated by means of a case study the risk management of savings accounts

decision making in livestock conservation in this article theory and practical implementations of decision making in livestock conservation are reviewed it is argued that the objective of livestock conservation is a composite of maintaining between and within breed diversity and single breeds of recognised value assuming that this goal can be reflected in an objective function decision making requires maximisation of this objective function with or without restrictions different strategies have been proposed in the literature to achieve this goal while the diversity measure suggested by weitzman 1992 weitzman m l 1992 on diversity quart j economics cvii 363 405 is not fully appropriate to be applied to breed conservation within livestock species the approach of maximising expected diversity weitzman 1993 weitzman m l 1993 what to preserve an application of diversity theory to crane conservation quart j economics cvii 157 183 is seen as a fundamental concept in this area although highly elaborate methods of decision making are discussed in the scientific literature the concepts presently used by national or international authorities or non government organisations are rather simplistic mainly risk related and based on simple functions of population size it is argued that decision making has to account for the global diversity of a species and therefore decisions and conservation activities should be coordinated on an international level the use of more appropriate decision rules will strongly increase the cost efficiency of conservation investments livestock conservation should be based on an extended objective function reflecting the expected future value of the conserved set of breeds which encompasses within and between breed diversity as well as specific traits and cultural or scientific value of the main breeds a critical issue is the derivation of the required parameters like the breed value or the risk status of a breed since it will generally be difficult to obtain exact values decision making under uncertainty will be the usual challenge and bayesian decision theory might be an option the optimum allocation pattern and implementation of conservation activities can be derived based on weitzman s expected diversity concept approximate decision rules for breed prioritisation based on the extinction probability of a breed and its marginal objective function are given even if the respective parameters are not perfectly known the use of the suggested approaches has the potential to double the cost efficiency in terms of maintained diversity per conservation dollar spent compared to the simplistic approaches that are used today d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

interest rates and informational issues in the credit market experimental evidence from brazil summary this paper utilizes brazilian data to investigate interest rate sensitivity and informational issues associated with the credit demand of the middle income class in a large emerging economy this study s data were collected from an experiment in which credit offers with randomized interest rates were sent to recipients the results indicate that credit constraints and informational issues are important for both the lower middle class and higher middle class income groups interest rate reductions may be more effective for higher income groups

credit card redlining abstract this paper evaluates the presence of racial disparities in the issuance of consumer credit using a database of credit histories i link location based information on race with individual credit files after controlling for place specific factors such as housing vacancy rates and general population demographics i find qualitatively large differences in the amount of credit offered to similarly qualified applicants living in black versus white areas high data quality allows distinguishing between issuer provision supply and utilization of credit demand additional estimates using information on payday lending provide support for idea that issuers condition lending on location

a simple model of advertising and subscription fees abstract traditional and modern mass media such as television newspapers magazines and internet sites typically derive the bulk of their revenues from advertisements rather than subscriptions we present a simple model that explains this phenomenon

information sharing in credit markets we present a model with adverse selection where information sharing between lenders arises endogenously lenders incentives to share information about borrowers are positively related to the mobility and heterogeneity of borrowers to the size of the credit market and to advances in information technology such incentives are instead reduced by the fear of competition from potential entrants in addition information sharing increases the volume of lending when adverse selection is so severe that safe borrowers drop out of the market these predictions are supported by international and historical evidence in the context of the consumer credit market a large body of literature on credit markets has shown that asymmetric information may prevent the efficient allocation of lending leading to credit rationing e g jaffee and russell 1976 stiglitz and weiss 1981 or to a wedge between lending and borrowing rates e g king 1986 in this literature informational asymmetries are taken to be exogenous lenders fail to observe some relevant characteristic or action of potential borrowers and have no way of learning about it in some countries however lenders can improve their knowledge about new customers by exchanging information with other lenders through information brokers generally known as credit bureaus the latter collect file and distribute the information voluntarily supplied by their members and operate on the principle of reciprocity lenders who do not provide data are denied access to the bureau s files in other countries instead these institutions do not exist the literature offers no guide to identify the factors that lead to endogenous communication between lenders this paper is an attempt to fill the gap information sharing is important for a number of reasons it may increase the degree of competitiveness within credit markets vives 1990 improve

the intertemporal dynamics of consumer lock in this article examines how dynamic changes in information cost structure and time preferences affect consumers search and switching behavior over time and lead to lock in the information cost structure is conceptualized as a trade off of initial setup costs and ongoing usage costs lock in is defined as consumers decreased propensity to search and switch after an initial investment which is determined both by a preference to minimize immediate costs and by an inability to anticipate the impact of future switching costs the results of three experiments support the proposed mechanism experiment 1 shows that a small initial investment is sufficient to produce lock in experiment 2 shows that the results of a prior investment on lock in are not due to psychological commitment but to a shift in relative costs of incumbent and new options experiment 3 shows that respondents fail to anticipate how their prior investment will lock them in

competition and pricing in the credit card market many credit card issuers charge fixed rates that remain the same for three to five years while the rest charge variable rates that are indexed to market rates the presence of these two distinct rate types forces prices at firms selling an otherwise identical product to move asynchronously variable rates move one for one with the index while fixed rates stay constant empirical and theoretical analysis shows that this pricing structure provides an explanation for the simultaneous yet seemingly contradictory existence of high rate cost margins and aggressive non price competition for new customers a phenomenon that existed in the credit card market in the early 1990s

the failure of competition in the credit card market the bank credit card market containing 4 000 firms and lacking regulatory barriers casually appears to be a hospitable environment for the model of perfect competition nevertheless this article reports that credit card interest rates have been exceptionally sticky relative to the cost of funds moreover major credit card issuers have persistently earned from three to five times the ordinary rate of return in banking during the periods 1983 88 the failure of the competitive model appears to be partly attributable to consumers making credit card choices without taking account of the very high probability that they will pay interest on their outstanding balances copyright 1991 by american economic association

the importance of adverse selection in the credit card market evidence from randomized trials of credit card solicitations analyzing unique data from multiple large scale randomized marketing trials of preapproved credit card solicitations by a large financial institution we find that consumers responding to the lender s inferior solicitation offers have poorer credit quality attributes this finding supports the argument that riskier type borrowers are liquidity or credit constrained and thus have higher reservation loan interest rates we also find a more severe deterioration ex post in the credit quality of the booked accounts of inferior offer types relative to superior offers after controlling for a cardholder s observable risk attributes demographic characteristics and adverse economic shocks we find that cardholders who responded to the inferior credit card offers are significantly more likely to default ex post our results provide evidence on the importance of adverse selection effects in the credit card market

why do retired workers claim their social security benefits so early a potential explanation based on the cumulative prospect theory abstractsocial security provides longevity insurance for older americans according to expected utility theory models rational households who are not liquidity constrained should delay claiming th

the arbitrage free valuation and hedging of demand deposits and credit card loans abstract using a market segmentation argument this paper uses the interest rate derivative s arbitrage free methodology to value both demand deposit liabilities and credit card loan balances in markets where deposits loan rates may be determined under imperfect competition in this context these financial instruments are shown to be equivalent to a particular interest rate swap where the principal depends on the past history of market rates solutions are obtained which are independent of any particular model for the evolution of the term structure of interest rates

exploiting naivete about self control in the credit market we develop a model of the credit market where competitive lenders oer long term contracts specifying a non linear schedule of possible repayment schedules to borrowers who may dier both in their taste for immediate gratication and their prior beliefs about that taste the equilibrium contract to a borrower with given beliefs is discontinuous it features an advantageous option involving fast repayment and a penalty for deviating and repaying later these predictions seem to resemble some salient features of many credit card and mortgage contracts for fully sophisticated borrowers the discontinuity acts as a commitment device and yields fast repayment but all other borrowers even those with an arbitrarily small amount of naivete end up delaying repayment despite the penalty and receive little benet from commitment furthermore because they believe they will repay early they underestimate the cost of credit and hence borrow too much non sophisticated borrowers cross subsidize sophisticated borrowers while sophisticated borrowers discipline rms by preventing very exploitative contracts we identify natural conditions under which the above results obtain even if

information gatekeepers on the internet and the competitiveness of homogeneous product markets we examine the equilibrium interaction between a market for price information controlled by a gatekeeper and the homogenous product market it serves the gatekeeper charges fees to firms that advertise prices on its internet site and to consumers who access the list of advertised prices gatekeeper profits are maximized in an equilibrium where a the product market exhibits price dispersion b access fees are sufficiently low that all consumers subscribe c advertising fees exceed socially optimal levels thus inducing partial firm participation and d advertised prices are below unadvertised prices introducing the market for information has ambiguous social welfare effects

cross selling switching costs and imperfect competition in british banks this paper attempts to evaluate the competitiveness of british banking in the presence of cross selling and switching costs during 1993 2008 it presents estimates of a model of banking behaviour that encompasses switching costs as well as cross selling of loans and off balance sheet transactions the evidence from panel estimation of the model indicates that the consumer faced high switching costs in the loan market in the latter part of the sample period as a result of weaker competitiveness in the loan market additionally the weaker competitiveness in the loan market appears to facilitate the cross selling behaviour of british banks which helps explain the rapid growth of non interest income during the last two decades

the need to conserve farm animal genetic resources in africa should policy makers be concerned abstract this paper outlines key factors contributing to the erosion of animal genetic resources and discusses strategic options for policy makers the ratification of the convention on biological diversity cbd in 1993 represents an international consensus to conserve biodiversity including that of farm animal genetic resources fangr in africa conservation of agricultural biodiversity is inbuilt into the low input low output production strategies of smallholder farming systems these systems are often associated with poverty in rural areas and numerous development projects have thus sought to alleviate such poverty by promoting crossbreeding or modern reproductive technologies however uncontrolled crossbreeding has been and remains a threat to the conservation of local farm animal populations objectives for the conservation of a local farm animal population and opportunities to utilise its diversity to meet present and future market demands to serve as an insurance against environmental changes such as changes in production socio economic and cultural conditions can be identified for research and development to improve food security and to alleviate poverty through the conservation of fangr in africa utilisation of local farm animal populations depends on the ability of communities to decide on and implement appropriate breeding strategies it is for this reason that enabling policies are required