expectationally driven market volatility an experimental study abstract we study the existence and robustness of expectationally driven price volatility in experimental overlapping generation economies in the theoretical model under study there exist pure sunspot equilibria which can be learned if agents use some adaptive learning rules our data show the existence of expectationally driven cycles but only after subjects have been exposed to a sequence of real shocks and learned a real cycle in this sense we show evidence of path dependent price volatility journal of economic literature classification numbers c62 c92 f17 e32 e44

power struggle dispute and alliance over local resources analyzing democratic decentralization of natural resources through the lenses of africa inland fisheries summary this paper is based on a global review of fisheries decentralization programs co management in sub saharan africa partly challenging the current narrative but in line with experience in other sectors e g forestry the review shows that the outcomes of these decentralizations have not been systematically positive in most cases fisheries co management failed to improve governance but simply altered the distribution of power and responsibility amongst the different stakeholders in this new political landscape poorly designed reforms have enabled a variety of usual and new local actors to advance their own agendas often at the detriment of the direct end users fisherfolk

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis revisited summary more than two decades ago schlager and ostrom 1992 developed a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights the conceptual framework has profoundly influenced research on natural resource governance common property and community resource management however currently natural resource governance has changed dramatically challenging the applicability of the conceptual schema there are now many more social actors involved in resource management than the local communities at the focus of original analysis additionally resource management increasingly provides access to various kinds of benefits from outside the immediate context including indirect benefits such as payments for environmental services and results based payments for redd these changes demand addition of new property rights to the original framework this paper updates the conceptual schema in reaction to changes in natural resource governance proposing three specific modifications on the focus of use rights control rights and authoritative rights to come up with a framework that distinguishes eight types of property rights we apply the framework to three purposefully selected governance interventions in china and laos that include the provision of indirect benefits in addition to the direct benefits derived by local people from natural resources the empirical application shows how contemporary governance changes may not lead to local people s outright dispossession since they continue to possess direct use rights to natural resources however local people may be excluded from control and authoritative rights which are exercised exclusively by state agencies and international actors the latter make available indirect benefits to local people which may or may not translate into use rights in the sense of policy based entitlements the empirical insights suggest the possibility of a wider trend of compensated exclusions in natural resource governance

the role of markets in reducing expected utility violations market theorists assume that expected utility predicts preferences at the market level even as evidence mounts that it predicts poorly at the individual level the arguments for better performing markets are grounded in the assumption that individuals respond to the competition of the market the objective of this study is to test empirically the validity of those assumptions using the betweenness property of expected utility i conclude that expected utility does indeed predict better in markets but analyses suggest that improved performance may be due to the statistical role played by markets introduced by market price selection rules

conflict management decentralization and agropastoralism in dryland west africa summary this paper reports on a four site study conducted in the sahelian zone of niger the study takes a novel mixed methods approach for understanding conflict management from the perspective of rural peoples by not only describing past highly publicized conflicts but also by analyzing the steps rural peoples follow to management disagreements that arise in their everyday lives this bottom up approach reveals both a capacity and preference among our informants to manage disagreements informally without involving village or extra village authorities decentralization initiatives by reworking the authority and responsibilities of authority based systems affect the role that these informal mechanisms as mediated by social norms and relations play in conflict management

a bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995 2014 abstract natural resource accounting plays a critical role in sustainable utilization and conservation of natural resources this paper aims to review research progress on natural resource accounting for the period of 1995 2014 the main research methods for this study include bibliometric analysis and social network analysis covering publications performances characteristics of related journals countries institutions authors and keywords the results show that the total amount of publications on natural resource accounting has increased rapidly since 2001 the most productive journal country institution and author are journal of environmental management usa university of california and dr chen respectively all of them have higher academic influence meanwhile natural resources that attract most attentions are water and energy the six main research methods in this field include mathematic modeling emergy exergy ecological footprint ef life cycle assessment lca and material flow analysis mfa reasons for the prominent performance of key countries and institutions are then discussed and uncovered as well as for six methods finally suggestions on how to further promote the development of this research field are raised

does commercialization undermine the benefits of decentralization for local services provision evidence from mexico s urban water and sanitation sector summary decentralization has been promoted as a means to better reflect citizen preferences and improve local services many developing countries decentralized and promoted neoliberal policies such as commercialization simultaneously leaving mayors with the responsibility of improving public services through self financing reforms this study evaluates experiences in three mexican cities to assess whether decentralization and commercialization practices have resulted in improved water and sanitation services it finds that commercialization has increased social conflict surrounding urban services provision and that local institutional constraints further undermine mayor s ability to adopt politically contentious policies the result has been stalled and uneven service improvements

can geographical indications modernize indonesian and vietnamese agriculture analyzing the role of national and local governments and producers strategies summary this paper investigates the way geographical indications gis are implemented by national and local governments in indonesia and vietnam the two states are active at all stages of gi development from the selection of the products candidates for gi registration to the supervision of the gi implementation thanks to the involvement of national experts from public agencies in the establishment of the codes of practices cop they are able to push for the substitution of traditional local techniques with good practices i e mostly those recommended by research centers worldwide thus they put gis at the service of agricultural modernization when gis apply more conventionally to specific products based on traditional know how however the implementation of the cops and thus the achievement of this objective of modernization depend on the perceived interest of producers in the whole gi dynamic indeed the cases studied in indonesia and vietnam highlight the variable level of participation of local producers in the gi in the four studied cases the cops are mainly based on expert knowledge which differs from the actual practices of farmers and processors moreover gis are implemented in order to create or reinforce reputations rather than legally protecting preexisting ones for these two reasons producers motivation to invest in gi certification is weak which makes difficult the necessary collective involvement in both countries the involvement of local governments in gi construction and management modifies the situation thanks to their knowledge of local situations and stakes they are more likely than national experts to identify the most strategic supply chains at local level enable participatory approaches in gi construction and facilitate the involvement of local producers in the gi managing group but if competences have been given to local governments in the indonesian and vietnamese legal frameworks the distribution of roles between central and provincial governments in gis are not clearly enough specified the nature and the importance of local public intervention differ from one case to another finally this paper recognizes the legitimacy of state intervention in gi development at least as long as producers awareness of gis is still low however this state intervention should not only let enough space for producers in gi governance but also design a frame for arousing their interest and adhesion and for facilitating their collective involvement that may be facilitated by a concrete and clearly established decentralization of competences in national policies

legal pluralism and decentralization natural resource management in mali summary much recent work on decentralized natural resource management has focused on the institutional arrangements that shape the balance of powers between central and local governments it has given comparatively less attention to relationships between local government and community level institutions in mali decentralization has superimposed modern legal institutions on community institutions the ambiguous relationships between them can undermine both the authority of nascent local governments and the performance of customary institutions legal pluralism the coexistence and interaction of multiple normative orders with different sources of legitimacy and authority helps explain the dynamic nature of local institutions under decentralization this article examines the experiences of three malian communities with decentralized natural resource management one maintains autonomy from government another engaged its local government and a third negotiated a multi stakeholder agreement a local convention they demonstrate that crafting workable relationships between communities and local government requires a pragmatic approach to negotiating and institutionalizing political space for innovation in self governance

a strategy experiment in dynamic asset pricing this study presents a strategy experiment in a simple dynamic asset pricing model where the current market equilibrium asset price is determined by aggregated individual expectations of next period s price after participating in an introductory laboratory experiment on expectation formation participants formulate a complete forecasting strategy these strategies are programmed and markets are simulated participants receive feedback from the results of these simulations and can adapt their strategy four rounds are played and the entire experiment lasts eight weeks a final laboratory experiment compares predictions of participants with the predictions of the submitted strategy we find that most of the participants submit complicated strategies and that strategies become more complicated over the rounds most markets converge to a steady state price only after many periods if at all the number of converging price sequences increases over the rounds these results suggest in general slow convergence and learning of the subjects over the rounds even in a stationary environment learning the correct fundamental price level turns out to be difficult an important part of the non convergence seems to be caused not by individual strategies but by the interaction of several strategies from the final experiment we conclude that the strategies are a good representation of what participants do in a laboratory experiment

evaluation of biodiversity policy instruments what works and what doesn t w e review and confirm the claim that credible evaluations of common conservation instru ments continue to be rare the limited set of rigorous studies suggests that protected areas cause modest reductions in deforestation however the evidence base for payments for ecosystem services decentralization policies and other interventions is much weaker thus we renew our urgent call for more evaluations from many more biodiversity relevant locations specifically we call for a programme of research conservation evaluation 2 0 that seeks to measure how programme impacts vary by socio political and bio physical context to track economic and environmental impacts jointly to iden tify spatial spillover effects to untargeted areas and to use theories of change to characterize causal mechanisms that can guide the collection of data and the interpretation of results only then can we usefully contribute to the debate over how to protect biodiversity in developing countries

who talks with whom the role of repeated interactions in decentralized forest governance summary this article suggests that efforts to study decentralization outcomes would benefit from widening the unit of analysis from the local government administration to the local governance system many individual local governments especially in developing countries lack the human and physical resources to be effective governors by themselves it is thus useful to recognize the linkages between different governance actors the empirical analysis based on observations in bolivia s forestry sector finds that the degree of connectivity between the actors in a municipal governance system helps explain why some systems are more effective than others 2003 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

stepping into formal politics women s engagement in formal political processes in irrigation in rural india summary gender quotas decentralization of irrigation management and reliance on mgnrega for labor provision challenge the traditional patriarchal canal management system by institutionalizing women as formal decision makers and members of the irrigation labor force in northern india based on a survey of 592 women in rural himachal pradesh this paper quantitatively analyses how these policies affect women s engagement in formal political processes results indicate that factors from the private and individual domains influence female participation in formal political processes most importantly india s gender inclusive policies provide women with the opportunity to legitimately engage in formal political processes governing resource management

sectorial wages and the real exchange rate abstract this paper considers a multi sector economy subject to exogenous demand shocks that alter the equilibrium structure of relative prices and relative wages contracts set nominal wages in advance of the realization of stochastic shocks formulae for optimal sectorial wages indexation rules are provided these optimal rules alter the absolute and the relative structure of sectorial nominal wages the rules depend on the heterogeneity of the skill distribution the effects of shocks on the real exchange rate and on real wages are determined and the limited role of second best nominal exchange rate policy is analyzed

price controls and the behavior of auction markets an experimental examination price ceilings and price floors are common in all market systems the ancient greeks and hellenistic era egyptians are known to have utilized price controls see h michele p 272 and j p levy p 41 and numerous public policy questions today involve them apparently for as long as price controls have existed their effects have been debated for example diocletion s favorable view of his price ceilings was disputed by the religious philosopher lactantius who charged that the policy led to scarcity and low grade articles p 145

evolution and market competition abstract profit maximization is the usual prerequisite for achievement of a perfectly competitive equilibrium however for a long time it has been though that this principle of profit maximization can be replaced by natural selection in an evolutionary model of an industry where firms outputs are chosen randomly where entry occurs with no motivation and where exit occurs when a firm s wealth becomes negative this paper shows that the industry converges in probability to a perfectly competitive equilibrium as each firm gets infinitesimally small relative to the market as the entry cost gets sufficiently small and as time gets sufficiently large journal of economic literature classification numbers d21 d41 l10

recentralizing while decentralizing how national governments reappropriate forest resources summary decentralization initiatives have been launched in the majority of developing countries but these rarely lay the foundations necessary to reach decentralization s purported efficiency and equity benefits this paper uses a comparative empirical approach to show how central governments in six countries senegal uganda nepal indonesia bolivia and nicaragua use a variety of strategies to obstruct the democratic decentralization of resource management and hence retain central control effective decentralization requires the construction of accountable institutions at all levels of government and a secure domain of autonomous decision making at the local level

from exclusion to participation turning senegal s forestry policy around abstract a century of centralized forestry policies has excluded senegal s forest villagers from charcoal production and marketing policies have given access to marketing and labor opportunities to urbanbased merchants who hire guinean migrant laborers while forest villagers neither produce nor consume charcoal commercial production is cutting forests on which villagers rely in 1993 progressive forestry agents ushered in a new participatory forestry code but this new policy may not be equitable nor beneficial and it risks adding control over village labor for forest management to the long list of forest service controls locally accountable representation local decision making powers and simple local management enabling policies could diminish these risks

the viability of local payments for watershed services empirical evidence from matiguas nicaragua abstract using both qualitative and quantitative approaches this article investigates the under researched demand side of locally financed payments for environmental services pes it assesses downstream users willingness to pay wtp for improved tap water quality in a setting where upstream landowners are clearing watersheds the research findings are indicative of a considerable wtp for improved drinking water services and a definite local awareness of upstream downstream interdependencies suggesting potential for successful pes contingent valuation cv however found a substantially lower wtp under a pes scenario than under an alternative scenario involving infrastructure investments the qualitative research angle indicates that the feasibility of a locally financed pes system may have been negatively affected by the prevailing discursive framing of agricultural externalities and entitlements raising issues about the fairness of such payments moreover low levels of mutual trust were found to undermine the credibility of the pes framework these results confirm that institutional failures contribute to environmental degradation and that pes should not be viewed as a market panacea transcending the local institutional context but rather as a potentially complementary instrument within a broader rearrangement of environmental governance

natural resources and decentralization in nicaragua are local governments up to the job abstract both decentralization and natural resource management literature suggest that natural resources could benefit from the redistribution of centralized management authority yet neither has sufficiently examined the processes already underway in numerous developing countries to decentralize resource management from central to municipal government authorities this study reviews the role of 21 local governments in forest management in nicaragua it finds that most interventions are economically motivated and that three key factors are needed for local governments to be good resource managers capacity incentive and long term commitment these three factors are part of a process in which civil society can play a critical role

fiscal decentralization in indonesia a new approach to an old idea abstract the system for financing and delivering local public services in indonesia as in many developing countries is highly centralized growing awareness of the weaknesses of the present system has recently generated much interest in decentralization and numerous government policies and programs toward that end in spite of these efforts the role and capacity of local governments remain weak in this paper we outline the most critical obstacles to decentralization and examine a strategy to reduce their significance instead of centering our analysis on the definition of a normatively desirable decentralization outcome we focus on the development of a process through which genuinely feasible outcomes could be defined and implemented in this case an interministerial and intergovernmental process for evaluating local governments

price formation in single call markets this paper reports a laboratory experiment designed to examine the price formation process in a simple market institution the single call market the experiment features random values and costs each period so each period generates a new price formation observation other design features are intended to enhance the predictive power of the bayesian nash equilibrium bne theory developed recently for this trading institution we find that the data support several qualitative implications of the bne but that subjects bid and ask behavior is not as responsive to changes in the pricing rule as the bne predictions bids and asks tend to reveal more of the underlying values and costs than predicted particularly when subjects are experienced nevertheless observed trading efficiency falls below the bne prediction the results offer more support for the bne when subjects compete against nash robot opponents a simple learning model accounts for several of the deviations from bne

decentralization institutional ambiguity and mineral resource conflict in mindanao philippines based on an analytical framework that builds on theories of incremental institutional change this article interrogates the relationship between decentralization and mineral resource conflict in the philippines here efforts to decentralize control over mineral resource wealth have resulted in a highly ambiguous institutional arena wherein heterogeneous actor coalitions are attempting to influence trajectories of institutional change and the associated distribution of mineral wealth on the ground this institutional renegotiation produces a diverse range of conflicts emerging on top of these institutional struggles are local elected politicians which raises important concerns over elite capture of the decentralization process

price formation in double auction markets abstract this paper reports 14 laboratory experiments that examine existing theories of the price formation process in the continuous double auction the experiments feature random values and costs and therefore a new price formation observation each period we find that efficiency is high and rises with experience in this environment we also find that trades with greater exchange surplus tend to occur earlier in the period that increased trader experience reduces an anomalous intertemporal arbitrage opportunity observed previously and that only when traders are very experienced does exchange surplus accrue disproportionately to the side of the market with a smaller number of traders

double auction dynamics structural effects of non binding price controls in competitive equilibrium non binding price controls that is price floors below and ceilings above the equilibrium should not affect market outcomes but in laboratory experiments they do we build a simple dynamic model of double auction markets with zero intelligence zi computer traders that accounts for many though not all of the discrepancies between the data and the walrasian tatonnement predictions the success of the model in organizing the data and in isolating various consequences of price controls shows that the simple zi model is a powerful tool to gain insights into the dynamics of market institutions

re election incentives and deforestation cycles in the brazilian amazon abstract despite expansive research on amazonian deforestation and its drivers the role of local politics is not well understood using a panel data set that combines municipal level deforestation and election data from 2002 to 2012 i estimate the effect of an incumbent mayor running for re election on deforestation rates in election periods i find that deforestation rates increase 8 10 in election years when an incumbent mayor runs for re election an amount equivalent to four percent of the total forest lost since the 2004 elections electoral deforestation cycles do not appear to be driven by changes in agricultural policy implementation and activity but are linked to corruption and campaign finance suggesting that weak institutional constraints facilitate electoral manipulation of forest resources this phenomenon is not likely limited to amazonian forests re election incentives could very well lead to misallocation of other natural resources in alternate geographies

the legal environment and incentives for change in property rights institutions summary land conflicts in many parts of the world indicate pressures for change in the property rights institutions governing land acquisition and land use whether or not institutional change occurs depends on the incentives and capacities of political actors this article argues that the legal environment is one factor influencing incentives for institutional change three case studies of land governance in southeast asia s palm oil industry illustrate three types of legal environment rule by law legalism legal pluralism and lawlessness or routinized illegality the cases show that the legal environment shapes modes of resistance to property reallocations in the palm oil industry rule by law legalism supports legalized modes of resistance through the court system in contrast legal pluralism and lawlessness favor the use of political strategies to contest property reallocations the mode of resistance in turn determines whether actors acquiring property have incentives to gain legal cover or whether investing in political resources is more rewarding although the effectiveness of resistance is largely determined by the distribution of political resources the mode of resistance helps explain whether there is demand for property rights institutions that offer generalized legal certainty in property protection path dependence arising from the legal environment therefore influences the direction of institutional change

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

beyond microfoundations towards a not too rational macroeconomics at ucla we are establishing a center for computable economics i have been very much involved in this effort this may surprise you that a non mathematical macro monetary economist should become an enthusiast for this project is one of those things that do not compute but then as i will explain we take a special interest in things that do not compute one may come to computable economics by many intellectual routes i will trace my own not because it makes a particularly edifying story but because it will tell you what kind of problems i hope we can make progress on by developing the field of computable economics but before we get to that i had better explain what i mean by computable economics

the forbidden fuel charcoal urban woodfuel demand and supply dynamics community forest management and woodfuel policy in malawi abstract this article examines woodfuel policy challenges and opportunities in malawi two decades after woodfuel crisis narratives and counter narratives a nuanced examination of woodfuel supply demand use and markets illuminated options to turn stagnant policies based on charcoal bans and fuel substitution into proactive realistic ones acknowledging woodfuel dominance and its socio economic importance findings revealed growing spatially differentiated woodfuel deficits in southern and central malawi and around blantyre zomba and lilongwe cities poverty limited electricity access reliability and generation exacerbated by tariff subsidies and complex fuel allocation decisions restricted energy ladder transitions from woodfuels to electricity producing an enduring urban energy mix dominated by charcoal thereby increasing wood consumption diverse socio political interests prevented lifting of the charcoal ban despite progressive forest laws despite implementation challenges lessons already learnt efficiency and poverty reduction arguments limited government capacity growing illegal production of charcoal in forest reserves and its staying power make targeted community based forest management cbfm approaches more practical for regulated commercial production of woodfuels than the status quo new differentiated policies should include commercial woodfuel production and licensing for revenue and ecological sustainability under cbfm or concessions within and outside selected reserves an enterprise based approaches for poverty reduction smallholder private tree growing woodfuel energy conserving technologies improved electricity supply and agricultural productivity

price formation in double auctions abstract we develop a model of information processing and strategy choice for participants in a double auction sellers in this model form beliefs that an offer will be accepted by some buyer similarly buyers form beliefs that a bid will be accepted these beliefs are formed on the basis of observed market data including frequencies of asks bids accepted asks and accepted bids then traders choose an action that maximizes their own expected surplus the trading activity resulting from these beliefs and strategies is sufficient to achieve transaction prices at competitive equilibrium and complete market efficiency after several periods of trading journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d41 d44 d8

participatory processes in the soy conflicts in paraguay and argentina abstract within emerging environmental conflicts different participatory processes have developed as alternatives to the top down models that have dominated policy making in this paper we focus on conflicts over the expansion of soy production we analyze three issues related to top down vs bottom up participatory processes and how they affect the proposals coming out of these processes who counts as stakeholder the role of social movements what counts as participation the role of mobilization and who has power to select stakeholders and issues make decisions and influence preferences to explore these issues we present a case study of two parallel participatory processes in rural areas of paraguay and argentina one of these the roundtable on responsible soy is top down created by large agri business multinationals and international conservation ngos with the support of the governments in the region and has focused on establishing criteria for responsible soy the other is bottom up self organized by peasant and civil society organizations and focused on stopping soy expansion and promoting food sovereignty the findings highlight the potential of bottom up processes to promote true agricultural sustainability while at the same time emphasizing the need for more research on grassroots participatory processes and their potential and limitations in different contexts

paradoxes of decentralization water reform and social implications in mexico summary decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of mexico s neoliberal reform strategy we analyze decentralization based on urban rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources and to examine its development implications we assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient sustainable and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas we find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains for agricultural water management irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under mexico s transference strategy but did not result in greater equity efficiency or sustainability of water use we argue that decentralization in the mexican water sector is context specific and marked by limited benefits privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non state institutions the creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability transparency equity and sustainability

imperfect factor mobility and the distribution of income abstract when labor is imperfectly mobile between industries workers may have a special interest in commercial policies that increase the price of the output of the industry in which they are employed this proposition is investigated in a two good model in which the degree of labor mobility is measured by the elasticity of a convex input transformation curve the existence of such a transformation curve is justified by a model in which individual workers have differing relative and absolute efficiencies in different industries the results are extended to the case of many industries

dynamics of trade liberalization policy abstract this paper analyzes the dynamics of trade liberalization policies in the presence of adjustment costs the discussion focuses on modeling the nature of those costs and the interaction between wages and resource reallocation during the adjustment also it highlights the role that human capital plays in the adjustment process

allocative efficiency of markets with zero intelligence traders market as a partial substitute for individual rationality we report market experiments in which human traders are replaced by zero intelligence programs that submit random bids and offers imposing a budget constraint i e not permitting traders to sell below their costs or buy above their values is sufficient to raise the allocative efficiency of these auctions close to 100 percent allocative efficiency of a double auction derives largely from its structure independent of traders motivation intelligence or learning adam smith s invisible hand may be more powerful than some may have thought it can generate aggregate rationality not only from individual rationality but also from individual irrationality

bayesian equilibrium in double auctions populated by biased heuristic traders abstract we use computer simulation to examine three asset markets with imperfect information in processing imperfect information traders in the three markets are bayesian empirical bayesian and heuristic representativeness and anchor and adjust respectively all three converge to the same bayesian equilibrium although the latter two converge more slowly without profit maximization natural selection arbitrage or mutual cancellation of random actions the results support becker 1962 and simon 1973 in that the rationality of the market emerges as a consequence of the market structure and not from the rationality of individuals

local government fiscal reform in developing countries lessons from kenya abstract local government fiscal reform is emerging clearly as a major development issue of the 1990s as central governments of developing countries cut back their budget growth in response to economic reality and donor pressure many are attempting to tap the underutilized potential of local authorities to help meet rising service demands drawing on a case study of the local finance system in kenya and that country s attempts at reform the challenging economic institutional and political issues that must often be confronted in such reform efforts are highlighted

in search of alternatives pro poor entrepreneurship in community forestry abstract community forestry is quite likely the most prominent form of development intervention in the present era it has gained momentum since the 1970s and now covers more than 25 per cent of the total forestlands globally however the introduction of commercialisation into community forestry controlled by private capital has not only undermined the livelihood requirements of poor people but also swiftly deteriorated forest conditions by unfolding the nature of commercialisation in community forestry in nepal this article argues that pro poor entrepreneurship models of producing forest resources through a partnership between poor people and community groups could be an appropriate alternative to develop economic opportunities and forest conservation

papers in experimental economics on nonbinding price controls in a competitive market interest in the effect of nonbinding price controls on double auction markets stems from two primary considerations the double auction institution converges to a competitive allocation more rapidly and with fewer participating agents than any other institution with which it has been compared see smith et al one way to improve our understanding of this important property is to determine what conditions if any can interfere with or retard this convergence process nonbinding price controls represent a condition that may affect this convergence process hence if such effects can be documented they will provide a body of data that any future proposed model of the double auction process should be able to explain a second reason for studying the effect of nonbinding controls on the double auction is practical the organized commodity exchanges often set limits on price fluctuations during any single day when prices at any point during a day rise above qr fall below the closing prices of the preceding day by more than the amount of the limit no further trading for that day is permitted walter labys p 162 consequently commodity trading frequently occurs at prices near the level of nonbinding price floors or ceilings mark issac and charles plott report the results of twelve exploratory experiments in which various price control constraints are imposed on double auction markets their two principal conclusions can be summarized as follows 1 the hypothesis is rejected that nonbinding price controls that is price ceilings above or price floors below the competitive equilibrium ce will serve as a focal point or signalling price on which sellers and buyers will key their contracts 2 inconclusive evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that nonbinding controls near the ce will bias prices below ce when there is a price ceiling and above ce when there is a price floor support for this second hypothesis is not conclusive because some experimental markets show a tendency to converge from below and others from above depending upon the relative bargaining strength of buyers as against sellers thus sampling variation among subjects can yield a group in which buyers sellers are able to make contracts at an average price below above ce for several periods of trading consequently in an experiment in which there is a price ceiling floor five cents above below ce and in which contract prices are observed to occur below above ce one cannot determine conclusively whether the observed effect was due to the nonbinding price control or to the bargaining characteristics of the market participants we report below an experimental design developed for the purpose of separating these confounding factors and allowing the effect of nonbinding controls to be isolated the results of sixteen experiments strongly support the hypothesis that markets with a nonbinding price ceiling floor near ce will converge from below above relative to any otherwise identifiable tendency to converge from below above an analysis of the effect of a nonbinding price ceiling floor on the distributions of bids and offers reveals the cause of this bias ceilings limit the bargaining strategies of sellers especially but also that of buyers while floors have the opposite effect thus in the absence of price controls double auction trading is characterized by a process in which sellers typically make concessions from offer prices well above ce while buyers most often concede from bid prices well below ce a price ceiling truncates seller offer prices at the ceiling requir university of arizona and indiana university respectively research support by the national science foundation is gratefully acknowledged

trade liberalization in oligopolistic industries the quota case abstract this paper analyzes the short and long run effects on domestic price and output of partially liberalizing quota restrictions in a general model of oligopolistic interactions it is shown that perverse outcomes are possible in a number of cases including that of rational conjectures a larger quota may result in an increase in domestic output in the short run and a higher price in the long run the relationship between oligopolistic conjectures and the number of firms in the industry is critical in determining the long run outcome

voter response to conservation policies in madagascar summary international conservation groups pour millions of dollars into developing countries to help preserve resources and set conservation priorities but critics argue that affected populations are often excluded from the decision making process in 2003 many in the international community praised the president of madagascar for his pledge to more than triple the area under protection this paper examines how voting patterns in the president s re election bid differed in communities affected by these policies the results suggest less support for the president in regions with new protected areas but that these policies would be unlikely to change the outcome of an election