regulation by simulation the role of production cost models in electricity planning and pricing this paper is a case study on the role of complex computer simulation models in the regulation of the electricity industry the analysis focuses on electricity production cost simulation models as they are used to set prices for certain nonutility generators in california this represents an early part of the trend toward markets for electric power and away from pure monopoly supply the introduction of even limited competition creates conditions both favoring and hindering the reliability of cost estimates and demonstrates the sensitivity of results to problem specification and model implementation attention is focused on the representation of power system operational constraints particularly the unit commitment problem in the modeling process and their effect on the prices which result examples from the litigation history illustrate the problem of managing the strategic use and abuse of modeling techniques for competitive advantage highly structured procedures for using models in such situations offer some constraints on manipulation by competing parties otherwise experts are apt to overwhelm regulators

an endogenous growth model for the evolution of water rights systems this article presents a model to help explain the transition path from one water management system to another typically a commons framework to one of tradable permit based property rights furthermore drawing from transaction cost literature the model demonstrates how this takes place when externalities the strain on water resources become severe enough to warrant the increased transaction costs inherent with more complex water rights management frameworks

land ownership as insurance and the market for land a study in rural vietnam we propose simple empirical insights to analyze the relationship between the value of the safety net embedded in land and households decision to sell land land sales may differ from other kinds of land transactions such as rental free loans and gifts in terms of future capacities to safeguard livelihood households well insured through nonland riskcoping mechanisms are expected to make use of sales more frequently than others we test this hypothesis with 2006 survey data from vietnam and find that selling households are less vulnerable better educated and richer than those that use other transfer types

monetary policy and transaction costs empirical analysis of consumption function for the united states of america 1988 2014 abstract in macroeconomic theory different approaches discuss the ability of monetary policy to affect real variables in the long run this research proposes the empirical application of a theoretical model that includes nominal rigidities arising from transaction costs and real rigidities arising from the firms competition structure thus based on data from the us economy we propose to test the theoretical results combining the existence of shocks arising from both real factors and factors affecting the money market establishing tests for shocks of supply and aggregate demand the concern is to investigate if the economic policy is capable of affecting the long run average values of the real private consumption time series analysis methodology of structural vector autoregressive svar models was used to test long run relationship for us economy the ability to establish the long run relationships between these aggregates with some degree of confidence allow simulating shocks by impulse response functions and variance decomposition the theoretical results of the model indicate that productivity transaction costs number of transactions with credit debit cards and currency money tend to positively influence consumption whereas delinquency have a negative effect on consumption we tested two empirical specifications and both confirmed the theoretical results for the us economy and therefore the research can help policymakers to measure the long run consequences of their decisions that is the results converge on the non neutrality of money in the long run in the us economy

strategic interdependence in models of property rights the concept of strategic interdependence has opened a wide spectrum of explanation beyond the robinson crusoe economy this essay explores the implications of strategic interdependence for the theory of property rights and the new institutional economics schotter it attempts to clarify some of the linkages from institutional economics to micro and macroeconomic theory by considering how property institutions result from strategic interdependence confer payoffs to individual agents and reflect collective choices based on individual preferences

green revolution in sub saharan africa implications of imposed innovation for the wellbeing of rural smallholders green revolution policies are again being pursued to drive agricultural growth and reduce poverty in sub saharan africa however conditions have changed since the well documented successes of the 1960s and 1970s benefitted smallholders in southern asia and beyond we argue that under contemporary constraints the mechanisms for achieving improvements in the lives of smallholder farmers through such policies are unclear and that both policy rationale and means of governing agricultural innovation are crucial for pro poor impacts to critically analyze rwanda s green revolution policies and impacts from a local perspective a mixed methods multidimensional wellbeing approach is applied in rural areas in mountainous western rwanda here malthusian policy framing has been used to justify imposed rather than induced innovation the policies involve a substantial transformation for rural farmers from a traditional polyculture system supporting subsistence and local trade to the adoption of modern seed varieties inputs and credit in order to specialize in marketable crops and achieve increased production and income although policies have been deemed successful in raising yields and conventionally measured poverty rates have fallen over the same period such trends were found to be quite incongruous with local experiences disaggregated results reveal that only a relatively wealthy minority were able to adhere to the enforced modernization and policies appear to be exacerbating landlessness and inequality for poorer rural inhabitants negative impacts were evident for the majority of households as subsistence practices were disrupted poverty exacerbated local systems of knowledge trade and labor were impaired and land tenure security and autonomy were curtailed in order to mitigate the effects we recommend that inventive pro poor forms of tenure and cooperation none of which preclude improvements to input availability market linkages and infrastructure may provide positive outcomes for rural people and importantly in rwanda for those who have become landless in recent years we conclude that policies promoting a green revolution in sub saharan africa should not all be considered to be pro poor or even to be of a similar type but rather should be the subject of rigorous impact assessment such assessment should be based not only on consistent objective indicators but pay attention to localized impacts on land tenure agricultural practices and the wellbeing of socially differentiated people

the fate of easter island the limits of resource management institutions abstract malthus malthus thomas 1798 1970 an essay on the principle of population penguin new york believed that population growth will eventually lead to natural resource depletion economic and social collapse and population decline brander and taylor brander james a taylor m scott 1998 the simple economics of easter island a ricardo malthus model of renewable resource use american economic review 88 119 138 use a predator prey model with an assumption of an open access resource they show that the collapse of easter island could be explained by a malthusian trap combined with technical characteristics of the resources they suggest that institutional change such as assignment of property rights could potentially have averted the collapse of easter island in this paper we show that even if the islanders had complete assignment of property rights and implemented optimal resource management with infinite horizon or equivalently had a social planner that implemented such an optimal plan as in neoclassical welfare economics a similar boom bust cycle would have occurred

dispatch planning using newsvendor dual problems and occupation times application to hydropower abstract we consider price driven dispatch planning under price uncertainty a storable commodity is optimally sold and purchased over time first we consider models where the storage level is constrained in expectation the dual of the corresponding optimization problem is related to the newsvendor problem exact solutions of bang bang type are given the second methodology is for high frequency dispatch decisions in multistage stochastic programming models to overcome the curse of dimensionality prices are modeled by occupation times at price levels in a case study we consider a pumped storage hydropower plant numerical solutions are given which have similar patterns as for the first exactly solvable problems

can political entrepreneurs solve the free rider problem abstract a solution of the problem of voluntary collective action employing an improved concept of political entrepreneurship is proposed this solution is consistent with large numbers of actors and pure public goods joint production of private goods and asymmetry are not assumed the importance of information imperfections in producing suboptimality in the provision of public goods is emphasized political entrepreneurship is made to parallel the knightian concept of the entrepreneur emphasizing the role of risk taking and information collecting

does anticipated aggregate demand policy matter further econometric results a heated debate has arisen over what modigliani has dubbed the macro rational expections mre hypothesis this hypothesis embodies two component hypotheses 1 rational expectations and 2 short run neutrality i e that anticipated changes in aggregate demand will have already been taken into account in economic agents behavior and will thus evoke no output or employment response together these component hypotheses imply that deterministic feedback policy rules will have no effect on business cycle fluctuations the irrelevance of these types of policy rules is inconsistent with much previous macro theorizing as well as with the views of policymakers it is thus an extremely controversial proposition which requires a wide range of empirical research this paper is a sequel to a previous paper by the author that paper developed a methodology for testing the mre hypothesis and found that anticipated money growth does matter to the business cycle this paper extends the analyses to cases where the rate of nominal gnp growth or the inflation rate rather than money growth is the aggregate demand variable the empirical results are also negative on the mre hypothesis and its corresponding policy ineffectiveness proposition this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

optimal price and quantity determination for retail electric power contracts considering the viewpoint of a retailer this paper analyzes the problem of setting up contracts on both the supplier and end user sides to maximize profits while maintaining an acceptable level of settlement risk the proposed stochastic optimization model can assist retailers with these efforts and guide them in their contractual arrangements a realistic example illustrates the capabilities of the methodology proposed

incorporating fuel constraints and electricity spot prices into the stochastic unit commitment problem the electric power industry is going through deregulation as a result the load on the generating units of a utility is becoming increasingly unpredictable furthermore electric utilities may need to buy power or sell their production to a power pool that serves as a spot market for electricity these trading activities expose utilities to volatile electricity prices in this paper we present a stochastic model for the unit commitment that incorporates power trading into the picture our model also accounts for fuel constraints and prices that may vary with electricity prices and demand the resulting model is a mixed integer program that is solved using lagrangian relaxation and bender s decomposition using this solution approach we solve problems with 729 demand scenarios on a single processor to within 0 1 of the optimal solution in less than 10 minutes our numerical results indicate that significant savings can be achieved when the spot market is entered into the problem and when stochastic policy is adopted instead of a deterministic one

dimensions and diversity of property rights in rural china dilemmas on the road to further reform abstract this paper contributes to the debate over land tenure in rural china by conceptualizing and measuring multiple dimensions of property rights in a way that elucidates the competing interests that are affected by the property rights regime utilizing a unique village level data set this paper argues that the regional and temporal variation in rural property rights signals a pattern in which decentralized institutional innovation occurs in response to the competing interests of the national state of local authorities and of present and possible future individual land users unlike the earlier debate concerning the household responsibility system the current property rights dilemma is intrinsically more complex because the potential conflicts of interest between individuals local collectives and the state are greater resolution of that debate will ultimately require careful exploration of the reality and substance of the tradeoffs and competing interests that make further reform of rural property rights so difficult

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed

the dynamic effects of aggregate demand and supply disturbances we interpret fluctuations in gnp and unemployment as due to two types of disturbances disturbances that have a permanent effect on output and disturbances that do not we interpret the first as supply disturbances the second as demand disturbances demand disturbances have a hump shaped mirror image effect on output and unemployment the effect of supply disturbances on output increases steadily over time peaking after two years and reaching a plateau after five years

the development of an infrastructure for entrepreneurship abstract this paper takes a macroperspective of entrepreneurship and focuses on the issues and events involved in constructing an industrial infrastructure that facilitates and constrains entrepreneurship this infrastructure includes 1 institutional arrangements to legitimate regulate and standardize a new technology 2 public resource endowments of basic scientific knowledge financing mechanisms and a pool of competent labor as well as 3 proprietary rd numerous entrepreneurial actors in the public and not for profit sectors play crucial roles it motivates one to examine the different roles played by these actors and how their joint contributions interact to develop and commercialize a new technology this in turn makes it possible to understand how the risk time and cost to an individual entrepreneur are significantly influenced by developments in the overall infrastructure for entrepreneurship it also explains why the entrepreneurs who run in packs will be more successful than those that go it alone to develop their innovations

land tenure choice in chinese villages the rational versus the political model the rational and political decision models are developed and tested for the land tenure choice in rural china a novelty of the test is to link the collective decision with general relative factor scarcities competing hypotheses are developed for the two models and tested with panel data collected on 83 chinese villages the results show that neither model is strongly rejected although the political model fares slightly better in more sophisticated econometric testing this suggests that popular political participation is emerging in chinese villages implications of this finding to chinese land policy are discussed

stochastic programming based bounding of expected production costs for multiarea electric power system a bounding based method is developed for estimating the expected operation cost of a multiarea electric power system in which transmission capacity limits interarea flows costs include the expense of power generation and losses suffered by consumers because of supply shortfalls averaged over random generator outage states and varying demand levels the calculation of this expectation termed the distribution problem is a large scale stochastic programming problem rather than solving this problem directly lower and upper bounds to the expected cost are created using two more easily solved models the lower bound is from a deterministic model based on the expected value of the uncertain inputs the upper bound results from a linear program with recourse whose structure permits relatively quick solution by benders decomposition the benders subproblems use probabilistic production costing which can be viewed as a stochastic greedy algorithm to consider random outages and demands these bounds are iteratively tightened by partitioning realizations of the random variables into subsets based on the status of larger generators and a cluster analysis of demands computational examples are described and application issues addressed

commitment of electric power generators under stochastic market prices a formulation for the commitment of electric power generators under a deregulated electricity market is proposed the problem is expressed as a stochastic optimization problem in which expected profits are maximized while meeting demand and standard operating constraints under an assumption of perfect competition when an electric power producer has the option of trading electricity at market prices a unit commitment schedule can be obtained by optimizing the self commitment of each unit separately subject to stochastic prices three certainty equivalent formulations of the stochastic self commitment problem are provided the procedures involve application of dynamic programming statistical analysis and asymptotic probability computations the price of electricity is represented by a stochastic model depending on demand generating unit reliabilities and temperature fluctuations we use several approximation methods normal edgeworth series expansion and monte carlo simulation for computing the required probability distributions numerical examples are provided for a market consisting of 150 generating units

seigniorage and political instability the importance of seigniorage relative to other sources of government revenue differs markedly across countries this paper tries to explain this regularity by studying a political model of tax reform the model implies that countries with a more unstable and polarized political system will have more inefficient tax structures and thus will rely more heavily on seigniorage this prediction of the model is tested on cross sectional data for seventy countries the authors find that after controlling for other variables political instability is positively associated with seigniorage copyright 1992 by american economic association

agricultural labour productivity food prices and sustainable development impacts and indicators in the last few years high and unstable food and agricultural commodity prices and concerns about population growth increasing per capita food demands and environmental constraints have pushed agriculture and food production up national and international political policy and research agendas drawing on both theory and empirical evidence this paper argues that fundamental impacts of links between agricultural productivity sustainability and real food price changes are often overlooked in current policy analysis this is exacerbated by a lack of relevant and accessible indicators for monitoring agricultural productivity sustainability and real food prices two relatively simple and widely applicable sets of indicators are proposed for use in policy development and monitoring historical series of these indices are estimated for selected countries regions and the world their strengths weaknesses and potential value are then discussed in the context of the need for better sustainable agricultural development and food security indicators in any post 2015 successors to the current mdgs

institutions and the r d of gm crops abstract this paper analyzes how different institutional structures shape the research and development r d of genetically modified crops gm crops whether this r d is conducted within companies cooperatives or public research organizations both publicly and privately funded r d is expected to influence the type of crops and traits that are developed and therefore the effects on society and ecosystems that potentially could follow from the use of gm crops this issue is analyzed empirically by statistical analysis of 1323 notifications for field trials with gm crops that have been submitted under two eu directives in seven european countries the results show that the type of r d organization influences the traits and crops that are developed companies are more likely to submit notifications that concern gm crops that secure the potential for profit than are other types of r d organizations while r d organizations that are purely publicly funded are more likely to submit notifications that only concern biosafety research than are cooperatives and companies consideration of the environment food safety and food security might justify institutional reforms of r d of gm crops this might include increased public funding combined with changes in intellectual property rights

adaptation to land constraints is africa different since the seminal works of malthus and boserup scientists have long debated the impact of population growth and land constraints on the wellbeing of rural people today these concerns are particularly relevant to africa with its rapid population growth very small farms and chronic food insecurity in this paper we examine adaptation to falling land labor ratios using a comprehensive theoretical framework in which households faced with binding land constraints can respond in three ways intensifying agricultural production diversifying out of agriculture and reducing fertility rates using cross country data and drawing upon the existing literature we reach three conclusions first population density is associated with reduced fallows and more intensive use of land but not fertilizer use or irrigation indicating major challenges in achieving sustainable intensification or agricultural productivity growth second there is little evidence of successful non farm diversification in response to land pressures in africa from domestic or international income sources third rural africans in land constrained countries desire smaller families but have thus far benefited little from family planning policies these findings underscore the need for a coordinated multi sectoral approach to sustainably reduce poverty in the region

a dynamic option value for institutional change marketable property rights in the sahel in this article we use dynamic programming methods to create an option value measure of the value of the institutional innovation of marketable property rights this measure has two properties that are important to understanding institutional change it is truly dynamic and it allows for agent heterogeneity in the case of west africa we find that the collapse of customary risk management institutions is a vital part of the demand for marketability rights as agents struggle to smooth income and consumption in its wake we find that the social efficiency implications of this demand for institutional innovation are ambiguous

monopolistic competition and the effects of aggregate demand how important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output we ask the question at three levels can monopolistic competition by itself explain why aggregate demand movements affect output can it together with other imperfections generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot if so can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements the answers are no yes and yes

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

making sense of institutions as a factor shaping economic performance abstract there has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance a review of this literature reveals that the concept of an institution means different things to different scholars both within economics and across the social sciences we discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions and develop a concept of institutions useful for the analysis of economic performance and economic growth in particular specifically we develop the notion of institutions as standard social technologies economic growth results from the co evolution of physical and social technologies

toward a theory of induced institutional innovation in this paper we elaborate a theory of institutional innovation in which changes in the demand for institutional innovation are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change we illustrate from agricultural history how changes in resource endowments and technical change have induced changes in private property rights and in the development of non market institutions we also consider the impact of advances in social science knowledge and of cultural endowments on the supply of institutional change in a final section we present the elements of a model of institutional innovation that maps the relationships among resource endowments cultural endowments technology and institutions

what has luck got to do with it a regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural india this article explores the role of agro ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in india using a new operationalisation of agro ecological factors and incorporating within state variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural development which in turn in associated with poverty reduction promotion of agriculture in less favoured areas in unlikely to have similar effects on agriculture in less favoured areas is unlikely to have similar effects on agricultural growth even if the effects of agricultural growth on poverty remain similar unless conditions for irrigation are favourable or rainfall is sufficiently abundant and reliable this suggests that considerable caution may be needed in drawing policy conclusions from empirical analysis by state alone and without regard to their underlying f

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

opportunism and ngos entrepreneurship and green north south transfers abstract through the lens of entrepreneurship this paper applies the new institutional economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations ngos in latin america to clarify their political economic roles southern ngos that rely on northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods these nonprofit ngos take their place alongside for profit firms as contributors to economic production employment institutional innovation and technology transfer the theoretical framework proposed assumes that self interested behavior coexists with loyalty commitment and altruism as well as opportunism

institutional innovation and agricultural development abstract this paper elaborates a theory of institutional innovation in which shifts in the demand for institutional change are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and by technical change the supply of institutional innovations responds to advances in social science knowledge and changes in cultural endowments case studies drawing on 1 innovations in land tenure and labor relations in the philippines 2 export promotion and import substitution of agricultural commodities in east asia and 3 farm commodity policy in the united states are presented elements of a general institutional innovation model are outlined

a probability model for the electricity price duration curve under an oligopoly market in this paper we propose a new formulation for the price duration curve pdc using probability considerations and provide a procedure for constructing it this curve is expected to be useful in the long term prediction of market prices and is similar in spirit to the load duration curve it shows the proportion of time over a given time horizon during which the real time market price of electricity is expected to exceed specified dollar amounts the price over a long term is a stochastic quantity that depends on physical factors such as production cost load generation availability unit commitment and transmission constraints it also depends on economic factors such as strategic bidding and load elasticity we illustrate a procedure for constructing a stochastic system based model for the pdc taking into account the randomness associated with load and generator outages the effects of unit commitment transmission congestion and transmission outages are not considered we use two economic models one is due to bertrand and represents perfect competition the other model is due to rudkevich et al who have given a closed form expression for the market clearing price in an oligopoly consisting of several identical firms

using a system model to decompose the effects of influential factors on locational marginal prices locational marginal prices lmps are influenced by various factors such as load uncertainty thermal limit capacity reserve and market power we build a system model to quantitatively analyze the effects of these individual factors and their interactions on the mean and standard deviation of the lmps assuming that the factors are either active or inactive according to the sensitivity analysis results from convex quadratic programming lmps are piecewise linear functions of demand variation which is a key property used in the computation this paper attempts to answer the following types of questions 1 to what extent does market power raise the lmps above the marginal cost 2 what effects will generation or transmission capacity expansion have on relieving high lmps under high demand scenarios an ieee 30 bus test system is used as an example to demonstrate our approach

business groups and the natural state abstract recent revisionist accounts of corporate governance in both business history and finance are challenging the tradition narrative associated with berle and means 1932 and chandler 1977 in which the american model of diffuse ownership and coherent diversification is both an inevitable outcome of economic development and perhaps a normative standard for the world to follow this essay is an attempt to rethink that narrative in light of the continued significance of the pyramidal business group as a governance structure around the world i argue that business groups arise in response both to inadequacies in arm s length markets and to the needs of what north et al 2009 call the natural state in this view the quality of markets and the demands of the state are tightly interconnected phenomena such a perspective explains the emergence of business groups in developing countries as well as their persistence even in wealthy and sophisticated polities apart from the u s and the u k in the end moreover i endorse the view that the much discussed and oft misunderstood exceptionalism of the u s in corporate governance arises not only from the sophistication of american markets but also importantly from government policies toward corporate taxation and securities regulation policies that arose from the unique public choice problem posed by the differential effect on the u s of the collapse of globalization during the middle years of the twentieth century

network models of spatial oligopoly with an application to deregulation of electricity generation because of the existence of transmission costs and significant scale economies in power production deregulation of electricity generation would lead to spatial oligopolistic markets this paper uses linear programs to obtain short run spatial price equilibria for a deregulated bulk power market in upstate new york these models unlike most previous models of imperfect competition capture spatial variations in production costs and demand functions we present two models one calculates a nash bertrand equilibrium in which each firm believes that rivals will not react to price changes this equilibrium represents the most intense level of competition to be expected the other model yields limit prices that are designed to discourage new firms from entering the market

the political economy of productivity thai agricultural development 1880 1975 the economic history of thailand between 1880 and 1975 contrasts sharply with the development experiences of other third world countries between the opening of trade in 1850 and 1941 when war halted economic activity thailand became a major exporter of rice in the world market although conditions for further growth seemed highly favourable thailand s rapid integration into the world economy failed to improve living standards and rice yields actually declined in examining the causes of the underdevelopment of thai agriculture over the last 100 years feeny introduces supply and demand models of technical and institutional change to analyse why the rice export boom did not result in more development this book much of which is based on primary research in the thai national archives is one of the few quantitative economic histories of a less developed country

the development of a land market insights from cote d ivoire this paper contributes to the debate on rural land sales in africa first it shows that the emergence of sales in the forested area of cote d ivoire corresponds to an imperfect land commoditization due to the social embedding of land transfers in the autochthon migrant relationship then it analyzes land sales in a former no man s land outside this relationship where the transactions correspond to complete sales however a diachronic analysis reveals an involution in the market related to the transformation of the pioneer s individual private right into a family right once the land is inherited highlighting therefore another social dimension of land markets 2006 by the board of regents of the university of wisconsin system

electricity spot price dynamics beyond financial models we reveal properties of electricity spot prices that cannot be captured by the statistical models commonly used to model financial asset prices that are increasingly used to model electricity prices using more than eight years of half hourly spot price data from the new zealand electricity market we find that the half hourly trading periods fall naturally into five groups corresponding to the overnight off peak the morning peak daytime off peak evening peak and evening off peak the prices in different trading periods within each group are highly correlated with each other yet the correlations between prices in different groups are lower models adopted from the modeling of security prices that are currently applied to electricity spot prices are incapable of capturing this behavior we use a periodic autoregression to model prices instead showing that shocks in the peak periods are larger and less persistent than those in off peak periods and that they often reappear in the following peak period in contrast shocks in the off peak periods are smaller more persistent and die out perhaps temporarily during the peak periods current approaches to modeling spot prices cannot capture this behavior either