bribes lobbying and development paign contributions or influence buying through other means as an activity that is aimed at changing existing rules or policies we view bribery in contrast as an attempt to bend or get around existing rules or policies the analysis contrasts these two means of influencing politics we use the labels lobbying and bribery for convenience and not because they are perfect defini tions for the two rent seeking activities we study in reality bribery and lobbying differ in several di mensions first lobbying is a legal and regulated activ ity in many countries whereas bribery is not second a change in the rules as a result of lobbying often af fects an entire industry whereas the return to bribery is more firm specific third a government that ponders a change in the rules might have quite different concerns than a bureaucrat considering a bribe our model cap tures all these differences possibly the most important difference however and the driving assumption in the model is that bending the rules is only temporary bu reaucrats can seldom commit to not asking for bribes in the future because corrupt deals are not enforceable in courts and because firms deal with different officials over time a legislative change on the other hand al ters the status quo and is therefore likely to last longer although policies and politicians also change over time our key assumption is that changing the rules is long lasting relative to bending them 2

political donations and the allocation of public procurement contracts abstract we study whether and when firms donations to political parties induce favouritism in public procurement allocations our analysis builds on a unique comprehensive dataset covering all public procurement contracts and all corporate donations to major political parties in the czech republic over the period from 2007 to 2014 and exploits changes in political control over regional governments within this period for identification purposes we find that firms donating 10 more to a political party gaining losing power witness an increase decrease in the value of their public procurement contracts by 0 5 0 6 importantly and in line with theoretical expectations these effects only arise for contracts allocated under less restrictive procurement allocation processes assessing the underlying mechanisms we show that donating firms receive more small contracts allocated under less regulated procurement procedures face less competition in more regulated and open procurement procedures and tend to win with bids further above the estimated cost of the procurement contract

why get technical corruption and the politics of public service reform in the indian states the emergence of new information and communication technologies in the 1990s offered governments opportunities to deliver public services more effectively to their citizens yet national and subnational authorities have employed such technologies in highly uneven ways drawing on a new data set of technology policy adoption by indian states the author argues that political calculations drive variation in the timing and scope of technology policies politicians weigh the expected electoral benefits from providing new goods to citizens against the expected electoral costs of reduced access to corrupt funds because of increased transparency the author shows that the level of bureaucratic corruption in a state is the best predictor of both when states implement policies promoting computer enabled services and the number of services made available this finding contrasts with arguments that posit economic or developmental conditions or alternative electoral and institutional characteristics as the major dri

urban bias revisited in his book why poor people stay poor the author has argued that urban bias is the moving force behind needlessly slow and inequitable growth in contemporary developing countries this claim is defended against three main criticisms that the methods chosen to test it are not appropriate that the evidence tendered is not relevant or sufficient and that the rural urban polarity is not clear cut or does not represent the prime conflict within contemporary developing countries

a dynamic econometric model of thailand manufacturing energy demand the purpose of this article is to employ the dynamic translog framework to model inter factor and inter fuel energy demand for the thai manufacturing sector the denny et al 1981 and lynk 1989 framework which proposes a dynamic adjustment for capital stock is employed to motivate the estimated of factor demand and fuel share equations three factors energy labour and capital and five fuel types fuel oil diesel oil liquified petroleum gas lpg electricity and coal and lignite are examined regression diagnostics support the empirical specification numerous factor and fuel substitution possibilities are identified with some policy implications described

economic growth and interfactor interfuel substitution in korea this paper investigates the impact of increases in oil consumption and changes in wage rates on the interfactor interfuel substitution in korea a two stage translog cost function is estimated to incorporate the feedback effect between the interfactor and interfuel substitution empirical results show that the substitutability complementarity relationships among factors and fuels exhibit substantially different patterns before and after 1989

legal standards enforcement and corruption stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials corruption in contrast to the tollbooth view of regulation the standard chosen by a self interested government is a non monotonic function of officials corruption and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator international evidence on environmental regulation shows that standards correlate positively with per capita income and negatively with corruption consistent with the model s predictions for benevolent governments jel d73 k42 l51

bad loans to good friends money politics and the developmental state in south korea why has the literature on asian development not addressed the issue of money politics in south korea how can we reconcile the view of an efficient developmental state in south korea before 1997 with reports of massive corruption and inefficiency in that same country in 1998 and 1999 politics is central to the answer in this study i make two arguments first money politics was extensive in south korea both during and after the high growth era second political not economic considerations dominated policymaking this study explains both past and present and compares the patterns of money politics in the early post independence era with those that arose after the democratic transition in 1987 while during the park era a balance of power between businessmen and politicians kept corruption from spinning out of control the transition to democracy altered the basic business state relationship allowing business to exert greater influence over policy decisions the political hypothesis advanced in this study suggests a new direction for our research about the developmental state

a structural time series approach to modelling multiple and resurgent meat scares in italy this paper exploits a structural time series approach to model the time pattern of multiple and resurgent food scares and their direct and cross product impacts on consumer response a structural time series almost ideal demand system sts aids is embedded in a vector error correction framework to allow for dynamic effects vec sts aids italian aggregate household data on meat demand is used to assess the time varying impact of a resurgent bse crisis 1996 and 2000 and the 1999 dioxin crisis the vec sts aids model monitors the short run impacts and performs satisfactorily in terms of residuals diagnostics overcoming the major problems encountered by the customary vector error correction approach

enforcement for sale lobbying for water in pakistan s indus basin abstract surface irrigation is a common pool resource subject to over exploitation by upstream users we ask to what extent state enforcement of de jure water allocations designed to ensure adequate irrigation to downstream users is up for sale unique data on the land ownership of nearly a quarter million irrigators in pakistan s vast indus basin watershed provide a measure of political influence consistent with an influence driven model the decline in water availability and land values from head to tail is accentuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the head and attenuated along channels having greater lobbying power at the tail our paper shows how power disparities can be leveraged through the administrative state to capture valuable common resources

competition among officials and the abuse of power traditional economic theory suggests that competition among officials providing government goods tends to reduce corruption however empirical evidence does not yet support this view in this paper i show that a corrupt and powerful central authority can use competition among officials to amass resources for itself while competition reduces corruption at the lower level of government corruption at the higher level of government is increased to avoid widespread theft from the central authority competing officials are monitored more intensively than a monopolist hence even though competition among officials generates more consumer surplus it may reduce welfare

demand estimation in the presence of stochastic trend and seasonality the case of meat demand in the united kingdom if budget shares have stochastic trend or seasonality or both then demand equations based on the assumption of deterministic trend and deterministic seasonality will be mis specified we test this proposition by estimating a linearized almost ideal lai demand system for meat demand in the united kingdom using harvey s structural time series methodology we demonstrate that the model specification allowing for stochastic trend and deterministic seasonality performs best in terms of diagnostic tests and goodness of fit measures it is also shown that the model with stochastic trend is better at out of sample forecasting

bureaucracy intermediaries corruption and red tape abstract intermediaries that assist individuals and firms with the government bureaucracy are common in developing countries although such bureaucracy intermediaries are anecdotally linked with corruption and welfare losses few formal analyses exist we introduce a model in which a government license can benefit individuals we study the net license gain when individuals get the license through the regular licensing procedure through bribing or through intermediaries for a given procedure individuals using intermediaries are better off than if intermediaries and corruption had not existed then we study the incentives of corrupt bureaucrats to create red tape bureaucrats implement more red tape and individuals are unambiguously worse off in a setting with intermediaries than with direct corruption only intermediaries can thus improve access to the bureaucracy but also strengthen the incentives to create red tape a potential explanation why licensing procedures tend to be long in developing countries

institutional development the world bank and india s new agricultural extension programme the new world bank sponsored and funded training and visit system of agricultural extension represents a major attempt by the bank to promote institutional development the very considerable investment has in fact resulted in little change or improvement in the quality of extension the reasons lie in failure to analyse the cause of the weakness of the previous extension systems inherent defects of the training and visit system and the way in which it has been introduced into india these failures in turn can be explained by the interests and the politics underlying the programme

the management of irrigation systems how to evoke trust and avoid prisoner s dilemma abstract the performance of canal irrigation systems depends partly on trust by farmers in the good faith and abilities of irrigation officials in india this trust is typically lacking there is instead a prisoners dilemma type syndrome of anarchy under the canals in which farmers lack the confidence that if they refrain from taking water out of turn they will get water on time and officials lack the confidence that if they work conscientiously to deliver the water on time farmers will refrain from rule breaking in east asia this syndrome of irrigation anarchy scarcely exists the reasons for the difference are partly to do with agro climatic conditions but they are also related to policy relevant variables of physical design and organizational arrangements within the constraints of agro climatic conditions features of east asian design and organization might usefully be transferred to indian conditions including break point reservoirs irrigation scheduling and monitoring separation of construction organization from operations and maintenance organization and catchment based operating agencies with their own revenue base

the incidence and persistence of corruption in economic development abstract economic development and bureaucratic corruption are determined jointly in a dynamic general equilibrium model of growth bribery and tax evasion corruption arises from the incentives of public and private agents to conspire in the concealment of information from the government these incentives depend on aggregate economic activity which in turn depends on the incidence of corruption the model produces multiple development regimes transition between which may or may not occur in accordance with recent empirical evidence the relationship between corruption and development is predicted to be negative

the impact of corruption on investment predictability matters abstract this paper argues that it is not only level of corruption that affects investment but also the nature of corruption corruption regimes that are more predictable in the sense that those seeking favors from government do obtain those favors have less negative impact on investment than those that are less predictable using the data collected by world bank in preparing the world development report of 1997 we provide empirical support for the conjecture

appraising alternatives for allocating and cost recovery for irrigation water in egypt abstract alternative approaches to allocating and recovering costs for water on egyptian farms are proposed and evaluated in accordance with the societal objectives of allocative efficiency equity of income distribution and cost recovery a linear programming model of a study area in egypt s northern delta predicts farmers response to the proposed cost sharing instruments over a range of water supply conditions transactions costs for each charging instrument are estimated and incorporated into the allocative efficiency analysis flat land charges supplemented by water quotas in the event of increasing water scarcity best achieve societal objectives in the current and prospective egyptian situation volumetric charging instruments were judged to be somewhat less desirable due to higher tangible and intangible costs of implementation the results highlight the importance of transactions costs the degree of water scarcity and other governmental revenue raising policies in determining an appropriate charging mechanism

decentralizing antipoverty program delivery in developing countries we study the effects on accountability in government service delivery of decentralizing administration of an antipoverty program while governments at both central and local levels are vulnerable to antipoor policy biases owing to political capture centralized delivery systems are additionally prone to bureaucratic corruption owing to problems in monitoring bureaucratic performance decentralizing the delivery system promotes cost effectiveness and improves intraregional targeting at low program scales but interregional targeting may deteriorate as central grants to high poverty regions shrink owing to high capture of local governments by local elites in such regions

do special economic zones induce developmental spillovers evidence from india s states abstract do special economic zones induce local development research drawing on the case of china s special economic zones suggests that subnational polities can target the location of export zones in order to catalyze local and regional socioeconomic development since 2006 a number of indian states have pushed forward similar zones in the face of accusations of land grabbing arguing that the zones will be engines for improvement in exports employment and infrastructure i argue that local development spillovers are an important albeit previously understudied dimension by which to evaluate the effects of special economic zones i then present the first systematic analysis of the developmental effects of india s sezs leveraging an original dataset on their locations together with 2001 and 2011 census data containing a host of social and economic developmental variables the findings show these sezs have failed to bring about local socioeconomic development to explain this absence of developmental spillovers i provide a theoretical framework based on the crucial role of political economy incentive structures facing local politicians i outline the mechanism through which indian state politicians use state owned development corporations for rent capture undermining the potential effectiveness of sezs and leading to their developmental failures the combination of available means for extracting rents and the limited political constraints on such rent extraction leads to a lack of developmental spillovers this framework can also help to explain the difference in the effects of sezs in india and in china these findings have theoretical importance for understanding the conditions under which subnational polities can use export zones and other export policies to catalyze development and practical implications for understanding the mixed pattern of sez success across the world

modelling the trend and seasonals within an aids model of the demand for alcoholic beverages in the united kingdom the argument that is put forward in this paper is that failure to represent stochastic trend and stochastic seasonality in an aids model leads to a misspecified and possibly structurally unstable model this proposition is verified by estimating an aids model of the demand for alcoholic beverages in the united kingdom three versions of the model are estimated and it is demonstrated that the version allowing for stochastic trend and stochastic seasonality performs better than the other two versions of the model in terms of the diagnostics tests and goodness of fit measures the best estimated model turns out to possess the properties of having common components and being homogenous further empirical testing reveals the presence of stochastic trends and cointegration between the budget shares of beer and wine the results clearly indicate that there has been a shift away from the consumption of beer towards wine copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

interfuel substitution a meta analysis interfuel substitutability has been of longstanding interest to the energy economics and policy community however no quantitative meta analysis has yet been carried out of this literature this paper fills this gap by analyzing a broad sample of studies of interfuel substitution in the industrial sector manufacturing industry or subindustries or macro economy of a variety of developed and developing economies publication bias is controlled for by including the primary study sample size in the meta regression results for the shadow elasticities of substitution between coal oil gas and electricity for forty six primary studies show that at the level of the industrial sector there are easy substitution possibilities between all the fuel pairs with the exception of gas electricity and coal electricity substitution possibilities seem more constrained at the macro level and less constrained in sub industries estimates also vary across countries publication bias does not seem to be present but model and data specification issues very significantly affect the estimates derived by each individual study estimates from cross section regressions are generally largest fixed effects panel estimates intermediate in magnitude and time series estimates are mostly much smaller econometric research suggests that the fixed effects estimates are likely the best among the existing studies though biased downwards

the political economy of public goods some evidence from india we are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state we use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural india to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s national policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure we find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities reflecting perhaps the importance of these commitments among the historically disadvantaged social groups those that mobilized themselves politically gained relative to the others measures of social heterogeneity that have been emphasized in the recent empirical literature on public goods are relevant but not overwhelming in their importance

welfare effects of criminal politicians a discontinuity based approach abstract this paper uses unique data on the criminal records of indian bureaucrats to examine the relationship between politicians criminality and consumption crime and corruption the identification relies on a regression discontinuity design by which individuals living in districts where a criminal politician was barely elected are compared with individuals living in districts where a criminal politician barely lost the results show that criminal politicians decrease consumption by vulnerable sections of society the monthly per capita expenditure of scheduled castes scheduled tribes or other backward classes decreases by 19 percent this paper suggests that the effect of criminal politicians on criminality and corruption may explain this result

modules for modernisation colonial irrigation in india and the technological dimension of agrarian change water control is central to the political economy of water distribution in large scale irrigation in india the changes in water distribution irrigation technology and agrarian development through the introduction of the block system technical devices called modules and volumetric water pricing in the nira left bank canal bombay presidency in the period 1900 40 are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control technical managerial and socio political this analysis points to the crucial but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management the debate on the success of the block system continues to the present day but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution the article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations and agricultural price regimes relevant to wa

seeking rents by setting rents the political economy of rent seeking in recent years there has been a large number of papers on the subject of rent seeking most such works on rent seeking have taken the rent as exogenously determined by regulators regulators howeve r may also be expected and indeed have been shown to be rent seeke rs and hence the determination of the rent itself should be endogeniz ed to reflect the fact that the rent setters are themselves rent se ekers in this paper the authors do this by presenting an analysis o f the interaction of regulators firms and consumers within a rent s eeking framework where all three groups are assumed to be self motiva ted the analysis is carried out under alternative assumptions regard ing the nature of the market and the reaction functions of the partic ipants policy implications are drawn where appropriate copyright 1987 by royal economic society

an efficiency and welfare classification of rationing by waiting in the presence of bribery abstract governments often allocate commodities at low prices and on a first come first served basis rationing by waiting while bureaucrats who distribute the commodities usually take bribes a model is developed to classify the efficiency implications of bribery and socially optimal pricing schemes in rationing by waiting if the rationed good and individual income spent on other goods other income are complements then bribery may enhance allocative efficiency and a dual pricing scheme can augment social welfare however if the rationed commodity and other income are substitutes then bribery may not improve allocative efficiency and distributing the rationed commodity free is socially optimal

wealth culture and corruption this paper examines the impact of national wealth income distribution government size and four cultural variables on the perceived level of corruption in a country the study finds that corruption is significantly correlated to gnp per capita power distance masculinity and uncertainty avoidance significant interaction effects occur in collectivistic and high power distance countries suggestions for future research are developed

is there an alternative for irrigation reform summary poor performance of government managed irrigation systems persists in developing countries despite numerous policy interventions over the last four decades we argue that many of these interventions have failed because they did not recognize irrigation bureaucracies as prime actors in policy change this paper examines the varied actors and agendas within irrigation bureaucracies highlighting the dichotomy between hydraulic missions on the one hand and direct service provision to farmers on the other to increase the significance of future reform bureaucracies must be considered as explicit actors and reform efforts should derive from better understanding of the farmer agency interface

obtaining a driver s license in india an experimental approach to studying corruption we conduct two experiments to understand the process of obtaining a driver s license in india in the first experiment we randomly assign license candidates to one of three groups bonus offered a financial reward if they could obtain their license fast lesson offered free driving lessons upfront and control the control group alone illustrates bureaucratic failures 71 of the license getters in that group avoided the mandated driving test and 62 failed a surprise driving test the system responds to private needs there are more license getters in the bonus group but at a social cost there are more license getters who cannot drive in the bonus group the system however also appears to respond to social considerations as there are more license getters in the lesson group large extra legal payments are made by license getters those in the control group pay 2 5 times the official fee more of these extra legal payments take place in the bonus group surprisingly these extra legal payments are not direct bribes to bureaucrats but instead payments to agents in the second experiment we perform an audit study to better understand the role of agents the audit shows that agents can provide licenses to individuals even if they cannot drive but the audit also shows that agents cannot as easily circumvent all other rules we argue that our findings are most consistent with agents being the channel for corruption in this system we also report some suggestive evidence that bureaucrats create red tape possibly to induce more license candidates to use agents

corruption and development a review of issues in this paper we start with a discussion of some of the different denotations of the problem of corruption we then consider the ways in which the damaging consequences of corruption operate in a developing economy while not ignoring its possible redeeming features in some cases we pursue the question of why corruption is perceptibly so different in different societies and also persistent finally we examine the feasible policy issues that arise in this context

do rights work law activism and the employment guarantee scheme summary recent rights based approaches offer a promising route for bringing about social change however we have little experience with state provided legally enforceable socio economic rights this paper examines one of the few examples of a legally granted socio economic right a limited right to work that has existed in one state of india for over 25 years in the form of the employment guarantee scheme the paper argues that legal underpinnings do not automatically enable the poor to obtain rights however legal rights have important indirect effects for pro poor activist organizations including mobilizing membership protecting activists from arbitrary action and shifting public discourse

locational asymmetry and the potential for cooperation on a canal abstract illegal water diversions and lax rule enforcement are common on irrigation canals we present a mathematical programming model of a watercourse calibrated to a canal in maharashtra on which farmers voted to cooperate to control water theft the model solution computes the crop choices and profits of individually optimizing farmers who differ in their location it reveals the spatial distribution of gains and losses from cooperation it illuminates why voluntary bargaining will rarely achieve an efficient water allocation it also shows that landless laborers might well be against local cooperation if the expropriated water nurtures labor intensive crops

the economics of real superstars the market for rock concerts in the material world beginning in 1997 the price of concert tickets took off and ticket sales declined from 1996 to 2003 for example the average concert price increased by 82 while the cpi increased by 17 explanations for price growth include 1 the possible crowding out of the secondary ticket market 2 rising superstar effects 3 baumols and bowen s disease 4 increased concentraion of promoters and 5 the erosion of complementarities between concerts and album sales because of file sharing and cd copying the article tentatively concludes that the decline in complementarities is the main cause of the recent surge in concert prices

eight questions about corruption this paper will discuss eight frequently asked questions about public corruption 1 what is corruption 2 which countries are the most corrupt 3 what are the common characteristics of countries with high corruption 4 what is the magnitude of corruption 5 do higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption 6 can competition reduce corruption 7 why have there been so few recent successful attempts to fight corruption 8 does corruption adversely affect growth

electricity demand of manufacturing sector in turkey a translog cost approach abstract this paper models factor demand for manufacturing sector in turkey we estimated a translog cost function with four factor consist of capital labor intermediate input and electricity over the 1980 2001 our objective taking in the consideration electricity as production input was twofold on the one hand to estimate the price elasticity of electricity demand in manufacturing sector and on the other hand to use cross price and morishima elasticities of substitution results for structural analysis regarding effects of electricity liberalization which initiated in 2001 empirical result shows that electricity demand is relatively price sensitive 0 85 our result in terms of electricity price is consistent with the previous studies while electricity labor and electricity capital inputs are complementary results indicate the existence of substitution possibilities between electricity and intermediate input this means that changes in electricity prices have impact on labor demand and investment demand these results have important implications for public policy

the system of administrative and political corruption canal irrigation in south india the paper describes how some irrigation engineers raise vast amounts of illicit revenue from the distribution of water and contracts and redistribute part to superior officers and politicians it argues that the corruption system which is centred on control of personnel transfers is an important supply side reason for poor performance of canal irrigated agriculture insofar as the same system operates in other government departments it may be more important for understanding indian politics and the political influences on economic development than has previously been realised

substitution and superstars the existing superstar model rosen 1981 does not require imperfect substitutes and the convexity of total earnings with respect to talent is due to greater output for those with more talent our model explains why wages would increase at an increasing rate in talent imperfect substitutability between non superstars and superstars with probabilistic production results in convexity in wage rates

inter fuel substitution technical change and the demand for energy in the uk economy a model for energy demand based on a translog cost function is formulated unlike previous studies technical progress is modelled by means of stochastic as opposed to deterministic trend components the model is estimated using quarterly uk data for four economic sectors and forecasts of the future level of demand are made

talent and or popularity what does it take to be a superstar the phenomenon of superstars wherein small numbers of people earn enormous amounts of money and dominate the activities in which they engage seems to be increasingly important in the modern world rosen 1981 845 i introduction this the opening sentence of sherwin rosen s seminal paper the economics of superstars applies today more than ever technological change has increased the scope and the intensity of the so called winner takes all markets in the last decades the central question addressed in this article is what does it take to be a superstar why do some artists media stars professional athletes or executives earn disproportionately high salaries while others receive comparatively low remuneration in the literature there are basically two competing but not mutually exclusive theories of superstar formation proposed by rosen 1981 and adler 1985 1 although sherwin rosen explains how small differences in talent translate into large differences in earnings moshe adler argues that superstars might even emerge among equally talented performers due to the positive network externalities of popularity empirical tests of the different driving forces of superstar salaries have proved to be very difficult because an objective measure of a star s talent is often hard to find and even harder to quantify krueger 2005 for example what characterizes the talent of a pop music star the literature offers different approaches hamlen 1991 1994 uses the physical concept of voice quality which measures the frequency of harmonic content that singers use when they sing the word love in one of their songs but is such a high quality voice really a deciding factor for success in pop music krueger 2005 measures star quality by the number of millimeters of print columns devoted to each artist in the rolling stone encyclopedia of rock roll nevertheless as he admits this measure reflects the subjective importance the editors of the encyclopedia implicitly devote to each artist which may correlate both with the artist s talent and with his her popularity in team settings the difficulty of accurately measuring star talent is even greater as individual contributions to team output are mostly unclear however the empirical relevance of stars within teams is undoubted star ceos in top management teams lead singers of rock bands and star athletes on sports teams are just a few examples of superstars embedded in teams this article argues that rank order tournaments in professional sports allow a more accurate determination of talent than in the arts even though each athlete s performance is also affected by random events luck or other factors like weak fitness in individual sports it can typically be assumed that the most talented athlete enjoys the highest probability of winning as we examine superstars in a team setting namely in professional soccer we first estimate a team production function to identify the playing characteristics that significantly influence the probability of a team winning to do so we use the detailed statistics of the opta sports data company which counts and classifies every touch of the ball during the game by each player in a second step we use the individual performance statistics of all variables that have proved to be critical for winning as indicators of the player s talent we estimate the impact of talent popularity and various controls on the player s market value employing individual panel data from the highest german soccer league a player s popularity is measured by the annual press publicity he receives in over 20 different newspapers and magazines purged of the positive influences of on field performance so that our popularity indicator captures the nonperformance related celebrity status of a player we find empirical evidence that both talent and nonperformance related popularity increase the market values of soccer stars

efficient spatial allocation of irrigation water in the presence of conveyance losses the efficient quantity of water applied falls with distance from the water source but the amount of water sent including conveyance losses actually increases with distance from the source except toward the tail end of the inigation system this implies that if marginal cost pricing were implemented farmers at the middle and lower reaches of the system would have to pay more money for less water received the model is illustrated and alternative financing schemes compared for an empirically derived demand function for imgation water despite massive public investments in irrigation infrastructure ex post evaluations of irrigation projects in developed and developing countries indicate that actual benefits are substantially below projected levels considerable evidence suggests that these low benefits are largely the result of poor on farm water use efficiencies and rent seeking activities that result from water charges that are low and often unrelated to water use chaudhry repetto bowen and young for example farmers near the system headworks are said to consume a disproportionate share of irrigation water while tail farmers are left with scanty and unreliable residual supplies reidinger wade many governments faced with increasing political pressure to conserve water and reduce fiscal deficits are considering higher water charges to decrease waste and increase cost recovery from project beneficiaries there is also increased awareness that low water charges and loosely enforced water rationing guidelines lead to environmental damages and excessive mining of groundwater resources in general the problems of water allocation and low user charges contribute to derivative problems in achieving efficiency equity fiscal stability and environmental sustainability

what drives infrastructure spending in cities of developing countries there exists a dearth of empirical studies on what determines infrastructure spending in cities of developing countries this in part can be attributed to the absence of quality data and the tendency for researchers to gloss over variations in infrastructure expenditure in or across developing world cities in the general belief that investment in infrastructure is generally low using the united nations human settlements programme s global urban indicators database this paper examines variations in infrastructure spending across cities in developing countries with a view to identifying the factors that explain these differences the empirical analysis identifies substantial intercity variations in infrastructure spending both across and within the regions of africa asia the middle east latin america and the caribbean and the economies in transition further analysis suggests that intercity variations in infrastructure spending are accounted for by differences in the macroeconomic environment urban g

on some aspects of irrigation drainage in india in recognition of the critical role irrigation plays in agricultural production and in alleviating poverty and reducing inequality in income distribution in rural areas equity in irrigation distribution is now commonly adopted by almost all of the developing countries and is recognized by irrigation professionals across different disciplines as one of the most important objectives reidinger 1974 bromley taylor and parker 1980 bromley 1982 coward 1980 sampath 1984 dhawan 1986 in spite of the wide acceptance of this objective there is a dearth of both conceptual and empirical work done in developing countries to understand the problem of inequity in irrigation distribution in fact this author is not aware of a single macro inequity analysis of irrigation development in any of the asian countries though there are a number of empirical studies that have looked at inequity in distribution in terms of farm location on the water course and farm size in particular project contexts bromley et al 1980 and references therein

underlying trends and seasonality in uk energy demand a sectoral analysis this paper demonstrates the importance for energy demand modelling of allowing for trends and seasonal effects that are stochastic in form inherent underlying trends may be non linear and reflect not only technical progress which usually produces greater energy efficiency but also other factors such as changes in consumer tastes and the economic structure that may be working in the opposite direction using quarterly unadjusted data for various sectors in the uk it is shown that unless energy demand models are formulated so as to allow for stochastic trends and seasonals estimates of price and income elasticities could be seriously biased

decentralized corruption or corrupt decentralization community monitoring of poverty alleviation schemes in eastern india democratic decentralization and community participation often stand at the center of an agenda of good governance that aims to reduce corruption and increase the state s accountability to its citizens however this paper suggests based on empirical studies on the employment assurance scheme in rural west bengal that the strength of upward accountability especially to political parties is as crucial as downward accountability to communities when these vertical accountabilities are weak horizontal accountability structures between local civil society and officials can mutate into networks of corruption in which community actors become accomplices or primary agents

public policy reform and informal institutions the political articulation of the demand for work in rural india summary the emphasis on rights that individual citizens can claim from the state represents a significant institutional development for poverty alleviation policies in india important legislation was passed in 2005 to guarantee rural households 100 days of work paid at a statutory wage rate this right to work legislation has enabled the implementation of the world s largest public works program the mahatma gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme or nregs this study explores variation in policy outcomes under nregs within a rural district of north india uttar pradesh it finds that this variation is the product of the interaction between formal and informal institutions as such the demand for work benefits does not emerge spontaneously from self selecting rural citizens but is articulated by local elected officials who are pressurised to accommodate demands for rents from the bureaucracy specifically local elected officials are compelled to proceed to a selective activation of the demand for benefits to ensure the generation of a surplus which will form the basis of bureaucratic rent payments the study relies on qualitative data specifically interviews with past beneficiaries of the scheme bureaucrats tasked with policy implementation and elected village leaders the gram pradhans in the indian state of uttar pradesh to document the conditions under which a surplus is extracted and rent payments made the study shows that caste and political leadership structures at the local level affect the generation of surpluses and the payment of rents by gram pradhans to the bureaucracy while the right to work legislation represents progress for poverty alleviation policies such as nregs that emphasize rights and the expression of a demand for benefits need to consider more carefully the conditions under which this demand emerges as well as the ways in which discretionary authority can thwart the goals of public policy

irrigation reform in conditions of populist anarchy an indian case abstract it is true that the performance of india s canal irrigated agriculture could be substantially and cheaply improved by change in canal operating and maintenance procedures but current procedures allow some farmers and state officials to capture disproportionate benefits for themselves through a well institutionalised system of corruption these beneficiaries of the status quo make up powerful interes groups against reform the paper illustrates just how intensely political irrigation reform can be by tracing what happened when an attempt was made to carry out an apparently simple improvement in water allocation rules under a south indian canal the events suggest a wider process of cumulative causation making for low rates of growth of food production and weaker political authority the process is not inevitable however and the paper ends with some suggestions about how in the irrigation context public policy might help to offset the decline

a closer look at small hydropower projects in india social acceptability of two storage based projects in karnataka abstract associated with being green clean and small scale small hydroelectric power shp projects generally enjoy a positive image in india shp promises answers to issues such as meeting a growing electricity demand facilitating lucrative investment opportunities and climate change considerations the features of being green clean and small scale have contributed to the assumption of shp as an essentially uncontested technology empirical studies questioning this assumption are scarce research on shp has so far remained rather hypothetical and policy level focused this article investigates the social acceptability of small hydroelectric plants in india by empirically looking at how people engage with these plants it thereby underlines the importance of studying technologies in their local context based on a detailed case study analysis of two shp projects in karnataka india the article shows how shp projects are contested on the local level the engagement of local people played a crucial role in the contestation of the plants and led to significant and unexpected outcomes and effects the article highlights the importance of having a broader perspective in the development of shp that goes beyond a mindset of technological fixes this includes taking account of existing water infrastructure and a broader range of water users the article shows that the implementation of shp projects does not take place in a void rather complex existing physical and social realities on the ground matter for the development and performance of shp

why do foresters plant trees testing theories of bureaucratic decision making in central india summary there is growing awareness of the problems of applying blueprint approaches to public sector management in developing countries however scholars lack tools for context specific policy advice this paper develops an organitoring focuses on the short term sizing framework for theories of bureaucratic action and applies this theory to indian forest departments tree planting programs tree planting is implemented successfully in the central indian regions of maharashtra and andhra pradesh states but does not protect ecosystems or reduce poverty this partial success is driven by interplay between the self regarding behavior of bureaucrats and a professional logic of appropriateness and is a challenge to single issue reformers

urban bias of consequences classes and causality choice theoretic accounts of urban bias ub in ldcs are popular because they also explain rural bias in richer countries such misguided elegance notwithstanding class theoretic not simply marxist productionist accounts are preferable why 1 ub alleges persistently inefficient and or unfair i anti rural outcomes ii intra rurally biases towards rural elites who in return deliver surpluses townwards 2 if ub declines for one outcome it must increase for others unless pro urban classes weaken relative to pro rural thus farm price ub fell in 1975 90 in many ldcs but with urban rural class power balances little changed public expenditure ub rose to compensate 3 yet long term development transforms such balances shifting many outcomes from ub to rural bias 4 explaining 2 and 3 involves understanding urban rural class relations when and to obtain which outcomes do rural elites seek rural rather than urban alliances choice game coalition theories help but only within i

traveling agents political change and bureaucratic turnover in india abstract we develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns and the consequent implications for bureaucrats career investments unique microlevel data on indian bureaucrats support our key predictions politicians use frequent reassignments transfers across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats high skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts we find evidence of two alternative paths to career success officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill but caste affinity to the politician s party base also helps secure important positions

the fruits and fallacies of neoliberalism the case of irrigation policy abstract neoliberal doctrine provides the analytic basis for a convincing explanation and critique of irrigation policy in the third world there is a strong case for subjecting capital and recurrent decisions to the discipline of scarcity pricing however it is rarely practicable to apply scarcity pricing rigorously because of the economic and technical infeasibility of volumetric water pricing in most third world irrigation schemes the taiwanese experience illustrates that political and institutional mechanisms for promoting managerial performance can be effective where the neoliberal prescription fails

is energy cost an accurate indicator of natural resource quality abstract the use of energy cost as an indicator of natural resource quality is examined energy cost is the direct and indirect energy used to produce a unit of a resource commodity different approaches to the role of energy in the economy are discussed and it is demonstrated theoretically that energy cost can give false indications of changes in resource quality this is because energy cost is only an accurate indicator of resource quality if either energy is the single primary factor of production and the economy can be represented by an input output model or if there is substitutability between the factors of production then marginal products must be proportional to the factors embodied energy these conditions are tested empirically using data from the us agricultural sector the results show that there is substitutability and marginal products are not proportional to embodied energy however the strong neoclassical assumption of price taking profit maximization can be rejected at a 5 level of significance though not at the 3 5 level the generality of the empirical results may be restricted due to data limitations but the theoretical framework can be applied to other data sets other resources and even other indicators

an evaluation of indian government rice policy in tamil nadu abstract the indian government procures rice from wholesalers or producers at a price below the market price and then distributes it to low income consumers at a subsidized price this paper uses a simulataneous equations econometric model to evaluate the effects of this policy on supply demand of rice in the state of tamil nadu between 1956 and 1985 results show that production is more responsive to power for irrigation and fertilizer prices than to output prices because supply is inelastic producers bear the burden of the tax imposed by procurement even though rice is procured from the wholesaler rice distributed by the government displaces rice demanded in the open market and thus the government distribution of rice has not increased the total consumption of rice

asymmetric substitutability between energy and capital evidence from the manufacturing sectors in 10 oecd countries abstract this paper investigates the substitutability between energy and capital in the manufacturing sectors of ten oecd countries since 1980 by applying a cost function approach that has been widely used to analyze industrial energy demand first we attempt to determine the source of the disagreement in the literature on the substitutability between energy and capital and reach a conclusion regarding the substitutability between energy and capital dividing energy and capital into sub inputs we analyze their substitutability the empirical results indicate that fuel tends to complement capital in most countries whereas electricity and capital are substitutes thus this study confirms that heterogeneity in energy sources is a primary component of the systematic variation in the substitutability between energy and capital second we examine asymmetric substitutability between energy and capital by estimating the morishima elasticity of substitution the estimates of the morishima elasticity of substitution demonstrate that the substitution of energy for capital has dominated the substitution of capital for energy this asymmetric substitutability is natural from the producer perspective because capital costs are much greater than energy costs in most countries these results imply that the adoption of energy saving technologies has not been induced in response to increased energy prices

can analytic narrative inform policy change the political economy of the indian electricity irrigation nexus abstractagricultural electricity subsidisation has led to high electricity demand groundwater depletion and public financial burdens the policy persists although paralleled by fundamental changes in electricity governance how can lock in and policy trajectories be explained theories of institutional public choice and regulation are reviewed two game models are built to analyse narratives based on interviews and secondary historical data the findings reveal path dependencies inherent in the existing action situations resolving the current equilibrium requires changes outside the political or regulatory process such as the electricity distribution level where coordination failure impedes infrastructure improvements contributing to resistance among the agricultural electorate

the genesis and spread of economic corruption a microtheoretic interpretation abstract this paper argues that the ability to engage in corruption arises from the possession of quasi monopoly power or authority by one of the parties to corruption this authority is passed on routinely through delegation of functions in state and publicly owned enterprises or acquired by explicit or implicit contract with another party or by solemn promise to act in good faith corruption tends to spread by enlisting the support of more individuals within and across activities this support is needed to overcome risks to solve problems of indivisibility and to reap benefits of network externalities

politics and public goods in developing countries evidence from the assassination of rajiv gandhi abstract this paper employs an instrumental variables strategy to identify the effect of party ideology on policy outcomes exogenous variation in party representation is generated by the assassination of the leader of the congress party which occurred midway through india s national elections in 1991 and dramatically increased the probability of congress victory for a subset of constituencies representation by the congress party leads to a substantial increase in the provision of public goods favored by the poor consistent with the party s expressed populist agenda among the salient changes are increases in the availability of drinking water and primary education and declines in agricultural and industrial electrification and telephone coverage i compare these effects to those obtained using a regression discontinuity design and find that the latter yields little effect of congress representation on public goods allocations

limits to substitution and irreversibility in production and consumption a neoclassical interpretation of ecological economics abstract there are many methodological approaches within ecological economics one of the principal modes of analysis is a modified version of the standard neoclassical model this paper examines the parallels which emerge between the ideas of some ecological economists concerning production and the ideas of others concerning consumption when these ideas are interpreted in the neoclassical paradigm it is well known that ecological economics is characterized by arguments concerning limits to substitution between inputs energy natural capital etc vs manufactured capital labor etc in production and the implications these have for sustainability however various authors have also expressed concerns regarding limits to substitution in consumption either between environmental assets and other goods or between basic needs commodities and other goods though the specific reasons for non substitution are different in the production and consumption cases the underlying theme is that individual commodities and other inputs have unique physical or other properties which make them poor substitutes ideas about irreversibility in production and economic development are also prominent in ecological economics likewise many authors have argued for similar irreversibilities in consumption behavior in analogy to the term technological change i coin the term preferential change to describe these phenomena the linking themes in this case are that the economy environment system is evolutionary in character and that external effects intended and unintended consequences of actions or processes imposed on other parties or resources are all pervasive

the market for public office why the indian state is not better at development abstract how and why officials are transferred from one post to another can in india does have far reaching consequences for the effectiveness of public service organizations such as irrigation agriculture forestry and soil conservation departments the transfer mechanism used in many departments of indian states involves a kind of internal labor market a truer market than in the way that term is often used by labor market economists it allows pressures for corrupt behavior to bear down on the incumbents of certain posts and itself amplifies those pressures frequently the pressures on officials to be corrupt cause them to behave in ways contrary to the ostensible objectives of their departments why is the indian state not better at promoting development to an important degree because of the corruption transfer mechanism and its effects on bureaucratic initiatives

development studies findings frontiers and fights abstract very low incomes and relatively low mobility in ldcs limit the scope for lessons for dcs three areas remain however analogues interactions and above all conceptual transfers development studies have moved away from adding up individual responses to change towards examining interactions that produce systemic outcomes examples are analyzed from the evolving debates about a peasant response as related to tenure and risk b farm systems vs village systems analysis c impact of the green revolution on the poor d unemployment development studies show analysts of developed countries especially in case d above that adding up approaches ignoring interactions and total systems produce very misleading results

modelling loss of resilience in agroecosystems rangelands in botswana economists have recently begun to consider the questions raised by the ecological concept of resilience a measure of the degree to which a system can be perturbed before it switches from one stability domain to another at a theoretical level it has been argued that the loss of resilience in an ecological economic system involves a change in its long run productive potential but no consideration has yet been given to the empirical investigation of this this paper discusses an econometric approach to the problem using the example of semi arid rangelands the long run productive potential of the system is regarded as an unobserved state variable change in which is irreversible or at least only slowly reversible it is estimated by applying the extended nonlinear kalman filter the paper illustrates the approach using data from botswana for the period 1965 1993 the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters associated with the loss of resilience mechanism are non zero they indicate a small loss of resilience event at the end of the long drought in the 1980s however these parameters are very imprecisely estimated and are therefore statistically insignificant we find that the sensitivity of the system to exogenous shocks varies with fluctuations in both economic and non economic parameters contrary to what is usually thought to be the case the sensitivity of the system to exogenous shocks is only weakly affected by variations in offtake prices but is very strongly affected by variations in the cost of herd maintenance this suggests that offtake prices may be a weak tool for controlling the size of cattle stocks and preventing a loss of resilience on the other hand taxes on cattle stocks or grazing fees may be very effective