efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

war peace and the size of countries this paper studies the relationship between international con ict and the size distribution of countries in a model in which both peaceful bargaining and non peaceful confrontations are possible we show how the size distribution of countries depends on the likelihood bene ts and costs of con ict and war we also study the role of international law and show how better de ned international property rights may lead to country breakup and more numerous local con icts

bargaining in the shadow of power abstract often a bargainer can use some form of power legal military or political to impose a settlement how does the outside option of being able to impose a settlement albeit at some cost affect the bargaining and how does the probability that the bargaining will break down vary with the distribution of power between the bargainers these questions are examined by adding the option of imposing a settlement to rubinstein s game of dividing a pie each actor can accept an offer make a counteroffer or try to impose a solution imposing a settlement is however costly and each bargainer has private information about its cost journal of economic literatureclassification number c72

price indexes inequality and the measurement of world poverty i discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality with particular attention to the role of purchasing power parity ppp price indexes from the international comparison project global inequality increased with the latest revision of the icp and this reduced the global poverty line relative to the us dollar the recent large increase of nearly half a billion poor people came from an inappropriate updating of the global poverty line not from the icp revisions even so ppp comparisons between widely different countries rest on weak theoretical and empirical foundations i argue for wider use of self reports from international monitoring surveys and for a global poverty line that is truly denominated in us dollars

on the salience of ethnic conflict ray acknowledges support from the national science foundation under grants 0421852 and 0617827 esteban is a member of barcelona economics xrea and is grateful for support from the generalitat de catalunya and the cicyt sej 2006 00369 this research is part of the polarization and conflict research project cit2 ct 2004 506084 funded by the european commission dg research sixth framework program

cursing the blessings natural resource abundance institutions and economic growth summary since sachs and warner s sachs j d warner a m 1995a natural resource abundance and economic growth nber working paper no 5398 contribution there has been a lively debate on the so called natural resource curse this paper re examines the effects of natural resource abundance on economic growth using new measures of resource endowment and considering the role of institutional quality we find a positive direct empirical relationship between natural resource abundance and economic growth in both ols and 2sls regressions the positive resource effects are particularly strong for subsoil wealth our results also show no evidence of negative indirect effects of natural resources through the institutional channel

resource curse or not a question of appropriability this thesis presents three self contained essays focusing on empirical questions in growth and development economics each article addresses specific questions on why countries perform differently in particular i analyse the effect of democracy on economic development the relationship between natural resources and growth and the efficiency of foreign development assistance in the first essay democracy consolidation and growth i analyse the effect of democracy on economic growth in this context i argue that an important aspect to consider is how consolidated political systems are put simply i find that it is not only a question of how democratic countries are but also how long they have been democratic in other words economic performance tends to improve with the duration of uninterrupted democracy the performance of autocracies on the other hand tends to deteriorate over time however for newly established political systems there seems to be a cost of being democratic this implies that democracies only bear their fruit after some time the analysis has important policy implications to overcome initial straits international assistance focused on democratic consolidation may be important and a very good investment in fostering long run development the second essay resource curse or not a question of appropriability together with anne boschini and jesper roine is concerned with the relation between natural resources and economic development for most laymen as well as for most economists it would seem reasonable that countries richly endowed in natural resources also benefit from this wealth however a large literature has found a systematic negative effect of natural resource abundance on economic growth we suggest that this so called resource curse is not determined by resource endowments alone but rather by the interaction between the type of resources a country possesses and the quality of institutions in the country this combination of factors determines what we call the appropriability of a resource the concept of appropriability captures the likelihood of natural resources leading to rentseeking corruption or conflicts which in turn will harm economic development our results suggest that if institutions are good enough the curse may be turned into a blessing this may explain why some countries such as norway and botswana tend to benefit from their resources while others such as angola and sierra leone do not the third and final essay of this thesis foreign sectoral aid fungibility growth and poverty reduction is a contribution to the aid efficiency literature which is concerned with the question of whether aid helps or hinders economic development foreign development assistance is often targeted on specific public expenditure sectors if this aid is not used in the sector for which it was granted e g health education it is said to be fungible and donors may end up financing something completely different from what they intended e g military expenditures the major concern about sectoral fungibility is that the alternative use of aid may be less productive or less socially useful however measuring fungibility is not sufficient to determine whether foreign sectoral aid fungibility is actually harmful what is important is how the funds treated as fungible are used the essay starts by obtaining estimates of fungibility for 57 countries the results suggest that sectoral aid is indeed largely treated as fungible by recipient countries next to assess the economic and health effects of fungibility these estimates are incorporated into an empirical model of aid and growth as well as into a model of aid and infant mortality altogether i find no evidence of more fungible sectoral aid leading to worse performance

war is in the error term at least since thucydides students of international relations have sought rational explanations for the advent of war rationalist explanations assume purposive action states are said to make reasoned decisions about the use of force although rationalist explanations have proven persuasive durable and offer the basis for cumulative theorizing they also imply substantial limits on what we can know about war i show that the most general rationalist explanation for war also dictates that the onset of war is theoretically indeterminate we cannot predict in individual cases whether states will go to war because war is typically the consequence of variables that are unobservable ex ante both to us as researchers and to the participants thinking probabilistically continues to offer the opportunity to assess international conflict empirically however the realization that uncertainty is necessary theoretically to motivate war is much different from recognizing that the empirical world contains a stochastic element accepting uncertainty as a necessary condition of war implies that all other variables however detailed the explanation serve to eliminate gradations of irrelevant alternatives we can progressively refine our ability to distinguish states that may use force from those that are likely to remain at peace but anticipating wars from a pool of states that appear willing to fight will remain problematic for example we may achieve considerable success in anticipating crises but our ability to predict which crises will become wars will probably prove little better than the naive predictions of random chance the need for uncertainty to account for war means that the same conditions thought to account for war must also exist among states not destined to fight otherwise states themselves will differentiate between opponents in a way that either removes the motives for war or restores uncertainty it has long been accepted that social processes possess an element of uncertainty but the centrality of uncertainty to rationalist explanations for war means that the advent of war is itself stochastic war is literally in the error term

oil and resource backed aggression a common misperception about oil politics is that it has a uniform monolithic effect on policy development this paper argues that in fact the net political effect of oil varies dramatically depending on the nature of the petrostate it shows that oil income when combined with revolutionary governments in petrostates generates strong incentives for foreign policy aggression and international conflict the aggressiveness of petro revolutionary states is shown to have consequences in both military and economic spheres of international relations militarily the aggressiveness of this type of state leads to a high rate of armed conflicts economically the aggressiveness of petro revolutionary states shapes global oil markets and international economic relations the argument is tested using statistical analysis of international conflicts and economic sanctions the policy implications are then considered focusing on the negative global impacts of dependence on oil consumption

resource rents distribution income inequality and poverty in iran abstract our goal is to examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in iran we use survey based microdata that covers 140 000 individuals which include more than 36 000 iranian urban and rural households in 2009 we examine how direct distribution of oil and gas rents among all citizens and a subsequent direct income tax differ from distributional impacts of targeted policies on income inequality and poverty in iran our analysis shows that the resource dividend policy with a subsequent direct income tax has a significant decreasing effect on the household gini index while targeted policies are more effective in reducing number of households under the poverty line

why don t we see poverty convergence average living standards are converging among developing countries and faster growing economies see more progress against poverty yet we do not find poverty convergence countries starting with higher poverty rates do not see higher proportionate rates of poverty reduction the paper tries to explain why analysis of a new dataset suggests that at given mean consumption high initial poverty has an adverse effect on consumption growth and also makes growth less poverty reducing thus for many poor countries the growth advantage of starting out with a low mean is lost due to a high incidence of poverty jel d63 i31 i32 o15

peace war and the balance of power every possible relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war has been defended somewhere in the literature on international politics war is least likely if power is distributed equally war is least likely if power is distributed unequally and the distribution of power has no effect on the likelihood of war i try to settle this dispute by examining the effect of expectations about the outcome of war on the choice between war and negotiation i argue that each of these mutually contradictory propositions can be derived from some plausible set of premises and thus that which one is correct depends on which set of premises best describes a situation the most important factors affecting the relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war are 1 whether the terms of a compromise agreement that might be accepted in lieu of war affect the distribution of power between the antagonists and therefore the probability that the agreement will be enforced and 2 how many states interests will be affected by the outcome

the developing world is poorer than we thought but no less successful in the fight against poverty a new data set on national poverty lines is combined with new price data and almost 700 household surveys to estimate absolute poverty measures for the developing world we find that 25 of the population lived in poverty in 2005 as judged by what poverty typically means in the world s poorest countries this is higher than past estimates substantial overall progress is still indicated the corresponding poverty rate was 52 in 1981 but progress was very uneven across regions the trends over time and regional profile are robust to various changes in methodology though precise counts are more sensitive

the dutch disease a disease after all many third world oil producers are encountering serious problems in building up a diversified export base while west european oil and gas producers netherlands united kingdom are suffering a decline in their traded goods manufacturing sector induced by real wage pressures it is becoming increasingly clear that high but temporary oil revenues may be somewhat ora mixed blessing the quip of the economist notwithstanding the mechanism behind this unbalance is clear enough part of the oil revenues is spent on non traded goods which leads to a real appreciation i e a rise in the relative price of non traded goods in terms of traded goods this in turn draws resources out of the non oil traded sector into the non traded goods producing sector corden and neary 1982 van wijnbergen 1980 one may say that this is an efficient response to the increase in income from oil production the united kingdom mexico egypt simply should move into oil derived industries and non traded goods and forget about their manufacturing sector until oil reserves are exhausted however many developing countries are hesitant to take this advice after all the post world war ii success stories in economic development involve without exception countries that promoted their traded goods sector aggressively moreover it is a well established stylised fact that technological progress is faster in the traded non sheltered sectors of an economy than in the non traded sector balassa 1964 is an early reference considering the hypothesis that technological progress rather than taking place exogenously with the passage of time is a function of accumulated experience the concern of countries like egypt mexico or indonesia is much easier to understand since solow 1957 and denison 1962 it is known that capital accumulation explain only a small part of economic growth if most of economic growth is caused by learning by doing induced technologica

political consequences of military strategy expanding and refining the spiral and deterrence models analyses of military strategy often overlook its political consequences its effect on the adversary s basic goals and understanding of the defender s resolve as a result they prescribe the wrong type of military policy and reduce states security this article explores how a variety of factors interact to produce political consequences these factors include the type of adversary specifically its motives for expansion the type of military strategy the defender adopts offensive or defensive and unilateral or bilateral the source of the adversary s misperceptions and the process through which political consequences are generated the article reformulates jervis s spiral and deterrence models and argues that they overlook types of adversaries including most importantly insecure greedy states that shifts in the adversary s balance of domestic power offer an alternative to individual learning as the basic way in which political consequences are generated that national level failures of evaluation provide an alternative source of exaggerated insecurity and that these differences can require the defender to follow different policies final sections explore military options for managing political consequences and implications for u s security policy

do natural resources fuel authoritarianism a reappraisal of the resource curse a large body of scholarship finds a negative relationship between natural resources and democracy extant cross country regressions however assume random effects and are run on panel datasets with relatively short time dimensions because natural resource reliance is not an exogenous variable this is not an effective strategy for uncovering causal relationships numerous sources of bias may be driving the results the most serious of which is omitted variable bias induced by unobserved country specific and time invariant heterogeneity to address these problems we develop unique historical datasets employ time series centric techniques and operationalize explicitly specified counterfactuals we test to see if there is a long run relationship between resource reliance and regime type within countries over time both on a country by country basis and across several different panels we find that increases in resource reliance are not associated with authoritarianism in fact in many specifications we generate results that suggest a resource blessing

a test for cross subsidies in local telephone rates do business customers subsidize residential customers recent regulatory and technological changes suggest that the local telecommunications market may soon present opportunities for profitable entry bypass activity by businesses combined with the generally higher business rates suggests that business service revenues may be subsidizing residential access to the local network before regulators allow wide scale entry into local telecommunications they need to know if local phone service rates exhibit cross subsidies using data supplied by new england telephone this article tests a new set of sufficient conditions for cross subsidization that do not require observations on stand alone cost the results indicate that business service revenues subsidize residential service provision at nearly 65 of the suburban central offices the sufficient conditions for a residential to business cross subsidy fail for all central offices in the sample

the distributional impact of a resource boom abstract sizeable export growth led by a booming natural resource extraction sector has recently been experienced in a number of countries this form of growth holds potentially important implications for the distribution of income and in this paper a simple general equilibrium trade model is presented which is aimed at exposing the effects of a resource boom on factor owners real incomes the analysis highlights the critical role played by the real exchange rate and also explores the consequences of a resource boom in the presence of real international capital flows and endogenous protection wherein one group of factor owners uses commercial policy to maintain the group members real incomes

state capacity conflict and development the absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states this paper reports on an ongoing project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities the paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modeled as forward looking investments by government the approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict the degree of political instability and dependence on natural resources throughout we link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth

incidence and impact the regional variation of poverty effects due to fossil fuel subsidy reform since fossil fuel subsidy reforms can induce significant distributional shifts and price shocks effective compensation and social protection programs are crucial based on the statistical simulation model by araar and verme 2012 this study estimates the regional variability of direct welfare effects of removing fuel subsidies in nigeria uncompensated subsidy removal is estimated to increase the national poverty rate by 3 4 on average however uniform cash compensation that appears effective at the national average is found to fail to mitigate price shocks in 16 of 37 states thus putting livelihoods and public support for reforms at risk states that are estimated to incur the largest welfare shocks coincide with hotspots of civil unrest following nigeria s 2012 subsidy reform attempt the study illustrates how regionally disaggregated compensation can be revenue neutral and maintain or reduce pre reform poverty rates in all states overall it highlights the importance of understanding differences in vulnerability and designing tailored social protection schemes which ensure public support for subsidy reforms

absolute and relative gains in international relations theory the problem of absolute and relative gains divides neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism the former assumes states focus primarily on their absolute gains and emphasizes the prospects for cooperation the latter supposes states are largely concerned with relative gains and emphasizes the prospects for conflict existing work in international relations theory generally traces the differences between these two theories to different assumptions about states preferences using a simple game theoretic model this essay offers a reformulation of the problem of absolute and relative gains that links changes in the states behavior the feasibility of cooperation and especially the states concern for relative versus absolute gains explicitly to changes in the constraints facing the states many of the differences between neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism appear as special cases of the model

the slippery slope of concession we show that with common knowledge and a common rate of time preference the potential loser can always avoid wasteful conflict through a time consistent series of small concessions we examine how the failure of each of these assumptions may explain why conflicts arise we also debate which actions may be helpful in such unfortunate circumstances

institutions and the resource curse countries rich in natural resources constitute both growth losers and growth winners we claim that the main reason for these diverging experiences is differences in the quality of institutions more natural resources push aggregate income down when institutions are grabber friendly while more resources raise income when institutions are producer friendly we test this theory building on sachs and warner s influential works on the resource curse our main hypothesis that institutions are decisive for the resource curse is confirmed our results contrast the claims of sachs and warner that institutions do not play a role

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

the guardian state and its economic development model abstractthis article outlines the core features of a particular resource led development model the oil rich guardian state its key distinguishing feature from other resource rich economies consists in its strong economic welfare objective function which in line with its exceptional oil wealth renders its population amongst the wealthiest nations in the world however the guardian state also illustrates some of the negative externalities associated with resource wealth namely the policy dilemma of directing seemingly abundant financial resources into the economy the state faces a high propensity for waste and for the systemic dilution of market incentives thereby rendering sustained and self generating economic growth more difficult than in less resource rich economies

finessing the unintended outcomes of price cap adjustments an electric utility multi product perspective performance based regulation for electric utilities is now a foreseeable future reality in the united states and in many cases some form of a price cap is likely to be its modus operandi viewing electricity in a multi product context a utility that is constrained by a price cap will likely see either its exogenous sales mix change over time within any customer class or different rates of sales growth among its customer classes in either event the unintended and adverse effect may be a change in the utility s average rate level that results in a price cap violation starting from a base year average rate and moving on to the future the traditional rpi x price cap percentage adjustment provides the utility with a new and violation prone price cap we show that the addition of a specific monetary value to that percentage adjustment will negate any possibility of an unintended price cap violation and thus help the utility stay financially sound we also show how to compute that value from data that are readily available to the utility we do this in the spirit of helping regulators worldwide to restructure energy markets along competitive lines so as to enhance consumer welfare in a wider context this price cap formulation is potentially applicable to price cap regulation in other types of industries that have a multi product and or a multiple customer class context

resource rents redistribution and halving global poverty the resource dividend summary this paper considers the proposal that each country distributes its resource rents directly to citizens as a universal and unconditional cash transfer or resource dividend and estimates its potential impact on global poverty for the years 2000 06 using a global dataset on resource rents and the distribution of income i find that if every developing country implemented the policy then the number of people living below 1 a day would be cut by between 27 and 66 depending on the year and the assumptions made looking ahead poverty could be better than halved as long as commodity prices do not drop below their 2004 level

price cap regulation problems and solutions the problems of price cap regulation include the transformation from rate of return regulation the adoption of a price cap formula cross subsidization and the relationship between regulation and competition the experience of price cap regulation reveals that it does not protect monopoly customers and it allows utilities to engage in cross subsidization these results imply that the regulator must periodically review price cap results to realign prices with the cost of service and to ensure that a level playing field that would nurture competition develops in every market

how to spend it resource wealth and the distribution of resource rents natural resource revenues differ from other government revenues both in their time profile and in their political and legal status they are volatile and exhaustible and belong to all citizens of the country in which they are located this paper discusses the theory of natural resource revenues and examines expenditure practices in a range of resource rich countries it considers both the distributional impact and the efficiency of expenditure policies focusing on the extent to which they succeed in providing all citizens with their share of the benefits due to natural resources

capabilities uncertainty and resolve a limited information model of crisis bargaining this paper presents and solves a crisis bargaining game under limited information the sides alternate offers from three possible offers with war and its costs starting if the target s counteroffer is rejected the equilibrium of the model falls into four different cases these four cases are analyzed to determine how the sides communicate through their offers and how the costs of war initial beliefs misperceptions and distribution of capabilities drive the probabilities of a crisis and war the model demonstrates a joint selection bias misspecification problem in empirical studies of crises arising from the unobservable nature of beliefs several empirical studies of crisis bargaining are discussed in the light of this methodological problem new patterns of evidence are found that support the presence of the selection problem and their conclusions are reexamined

mediation and peace this article applies mechanism design to the study of international conflict resolution standard mechanisms in which an arbitrator can enforce her decisions are usually not feasible because disputants are sovereign entities nevertheless we find that this limitation is inconsequential despite only being capable of making unenforceable recommendations mediators can be equally effective as arbitrators by using recommendation strategies that do not reveal that one player is weak to a strong opponent a mediator can effectively circumvent the unenforceability constraint this is because these strategies make the strong player agree to recommendations that yield the same payoff as arbitration in expectation this result relies on the capability of mediators to collect confidential information from the disputants before making their recommendations simple protocols of unmediated communication cannot achieve the same level of ex ante welfare as they preclude confidentiality

green growth degrowth and the commons the concepts of green growth and degrowth occupy central positions in the public debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment while proponents of the former approach claim that environmental measures can promote growth by for example more efficient use of natural resources proponents of the latter maintain that environmental integrity can only be upheld by slowing down growth this paper argues that both approaches constitute inadequate foundations for public policy as they fail to appropriately conceptualize social welfare we show how policy aimed at social welfare can be understood as managing a portfolio of capital stocks some of which exhibit the characteristics of commons i e common pool resources and public goods we then propose a programme of welfare diagnostics which aims at establishing minimum thresholds for capital stocks essential to welfare as a guide for real world policy formulation and discuss the role of appropriation of natural resource rents for its practical implementation we conclude by highlighting the central role of scientific policy advice in determining how different conceptions of welfare would be reflected in setting targets and choosing the means to achieve them

cheap talk can matter in bargaining this paper describes an intuitive way in which cheap talk can matter in a twostage bargaining game in which talk may be followed by serious negotiation the intuition that all buyers would claim to have low reservation prices is incorrect in our model instead if good faith participation is endogenously determined then the parties can use talk to trade off bargaining position against the probability of continued negotiation our cheap talk equilibrium features bargaining behavior that could not be equilibrium behavior in the absence of talk

tax revenue and or trade liberalization abstract with the public finances of many developing and emerging market countries still heavily dependent on trade tax revenues further trade liberalization may be hindered unless they are able to develop alternative sources of revenue against a background of and to inform heightened theoretical controversy as to the appropriate balance between trade and other taxes not least the vat this paper uses panel data for 117 countries over 32 years cleaned for a variety of problems in standard data sources to address a central question of fact have countries recovered from domestic taxes the revenues they have lost from past episodes of trade liberalization for high income countries the answer is clearly yes for middle income countries there are robust signs of strong replacement both concurrently with the revenue loss and essentially dollar for dollar in the long run signs of significant recovery by low income countries are flimsier however and their experiences appear to have varied widely the picture that emerges for low income countries is thus that replacement has been and become higher than previous studies have suggested but sufficiently incomplete in many cases to give cause for concern

crisis stability in the nuclear age in the logic of crisis stability first strike advantages may still be destabilizing although even a successful first strike cannot protect a state from a terribly costly retaliatory second strike if there is an advantage to striking first and if war seems sufficiently likely launching a preemptive first strike may seem to be the least of evils i reconsider the logic of crisis stability by studying games that are completely stable although there are first strike advantages four general conditions ensure stability identifying these conditions refines our understanding of crisis stability by also identifying the potential sources of instability and this more refined understanding shows that the logic of crisis stability focuses attention too narrowly on first strike advantages stability results from a more subtle interaction of several factors of which a first strike advantage is only one

resource rents universal basic income and poverty among alaska s indigenous peoples abstract the alaska permanent fund dividend pfd program provides universal basic income ubi to all residents from investment earnings of a state sovereign wealth fund created from oil rents this paper evaluates the effect of the pfd to mitigate poverty among the state s rural indigenous alaska native peoples a population with historically high poverty rates living in a region with limited economic opportunities errors in recording pfd income in data used to calculate official poverty statistics cause them to misrepresent poverty in alaska and understate the effect of the pfd estimating poverty rates with and without pfd income therefore requires reconstruction of family incomes from household level data estimated poverty rates from reconstructed income show that the pfd has had a substantial although diminishing mitigating effect on poverty for rural indigenous families the pfd has had a larger effect on poverty among children and elders than for the rural alaska native population as a whole alaska native seniors who receive additional sources of ubi derived primarily from resource rents besides the pfd have seen a decline in poverty rates while poverty rates for children have increased evidence has not appeared for commonly hypothesized potential adverse social and economic consequences of ubi

intervention and peace intervention often does not lead to peace but rather to prolonged conflict indeed we document that it is an important source of prolonged conflicts we introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyse how peace can be achieved either a hot peace between hostile neighbours or the peace of the strong dominating the weak non intervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak hot peace can be achieved with sufficiently strong outside intervention the latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak

global income distribution from the fall of the berlin wall to the great recession we present an improved panel database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008 in 2008 the global gini index is around 70 5 having declined by approximately 2 gini points china graduated from the bottom ranks changing a twin peaked global income distribution to a single peaked one and creating an important global median class 90 of the fastest growing country deciles are from asia while almost 90 of the worst performers are from mature economies another winner was the global top 1 hence the global growth incidence curve has a distinct supine s shape with gains highest around the median and top

modeling the forms of international cooperation distribution versus information the problems of distribution and information impede international cooperation they arise when actors select how they will cooperate an exploration of the interaction between these problems using a limited information model of cooperation leads to six conclusions first leadership solutions to coordination problems always exist but leadership here is very different from hegemonic provision of public goods second actors can cooperate in the face of anarchy even without a shadow of the future third diffuse reciprocal strategies arise naturally in coordination problems fourth norms and institutions are intertwined within successful cooperation fifth the form of cooperation on an issue varies with the relative importance of distribution and information finally and most important distributional and informational problems interfere with each other arrangements to cooperate can successfully address one but not both of these problems

diversification incentives under price based and cost based regulation this article considers two schemes of regulationforfirms that serve both monopoly markets and markets subjected to substantial competition the first form cost based regulation combines elements of rate of return regulation on monopoly markets with filly distributed cost pricing much like the form of regulation currently in place in the domestic telephone industry the secondform price based regulation would establish rate caps on noncompetitive services and allow the firm to enter into competitive markets and charge whatever prices it might like in those markets models of both forms of regulation are developed and analyzed with respect to incentives for cost misreporting choice of technology cost reducing innovation choices of prices and output levels and diversification into competitive markets

natural resource abundance and economic growth this paper explores whether natural resource abundance leads other things equal to slower growth rates we distinguish between natural resource dependence rd and the natural resource endowment re we estimate three models using world bank data on national capital stocks in a one equation model we show that rd has a negative effect on growth rates apparently confirming the main results of the resource curse literature re however has a positive impact on growth we then estimate a twoequation model in which the impacts of re are much weaker finally we estimate a three equation model in which the impacts of natural resources on growth disappears

rational deterrence in an imperfect world this chapter applies recent economic research on games with incomplete information to the calculus of deterrence 1 we do not attempt to provide a complete theory of rational deterrence the focus is on the role of reputation and signaling in establishing deterrence we show how strategic players signal a reputation for strength from the perspective of an internally consistent equilibrium model

what do we know about global income inequality in this paper we review the recent literature on global interpersonal income inequality while all estimates agree that the level is very high with a gini of between 0 630 and 0 686 in the 1990s there is no consensus regarding the direction of change we discuss methodological issues including the use of national accounts versus survey based estimates of mean income or consumption and the choice of purchasing power parity exchange rates findings of a rise or fall in global income inequality are not robust across different estimation methods and datasets given the diversity of estimates and various sources of uncertainty including gaps and errors in the underlying data we conclude there is insufficient evidence to determine the direction of change in global interpersonal inequality in recent decades