common property rights as an endogenous response to risk in recent years considerable progress has been made in improving our understanding of rural institutions including property rights e g binswanger and rosenzweig on close inspection property rights often turn out to be multidimensional and complex bailey migot adholla et al despite the widely acknowledged advantages of private property rights regimes numerous authors have demonstrated the resiliency and surprising pervasiveness of common property rights bromley and chavas ciracy wantrup and bishop ostrom although variations in weather in general and rainfall in particular have often been recognized as important sources of production risk and thereby as important determinants of property rights almost all the attention has been directed to intertemporal variability virtually neglected have been the local spatial variability of rainfall and hence such important issues as a the extent to which the production risks of rural production covary from one local community to another b the behavioral and institutional adaptations to such environmental conditions and c implications for public policy several factors would seem to have contributed to the neglect of such issues a in the more heavily studied temperate and relatively humid zones of the world the local variability of rainfall is relatively small huff and shipp hutchison jackson johnson and dart mcconkey nicholaichuk and cutforth b there is a dearth of data from a multiplicity of weather stations in arid r gions c intertemporal variations of rainfall have been of greater interest than interregional ones and d because drought induced agricultural production shortfalls are generally associated with price increases price risk tends to offset production risk thereby lowering the overall importance of weather related risk for farm incomes however there is strong evidence from various arid and semiarid regions asars of the world that the local variability of rainfall is considerably greater than in the more temperate and humid areas thompson and wilson sharon 1972 1974 1979 1981 giovinetto 1972 1974 jackson such studies also show a that studies based on annual rainfall greatly understate the magnitude and impact of such variability over the relevant productive season of the year b that intertemporal and local variability tend to be rather highly correlated and c that in the more arid of asars rainfall may be insufficient for agriculture implying that only animal husbandry might be viable in such situations price changes are unlikely to offset production changes indeed in drought conditions animal herders are often forced to sell off their animals at low and falling prices distress sales implying that production and price risk are likely to compound rather than offset each other therefore income risk is bound to be considerably more important in the drier asars moreover with neither insurance nor credit markets accessible to asar residents for reasons identified by binswanger and rosenzweig the sharp terms of trade deterioration associated with drought often give rise to severe exchange entitlement failure and famine explaining why herders are especially prominent among those suffering from famine sen jeffrey nugent is a professor of economics at the university of southern california los angeles nicolas sanchez is an associate professor of economics college of the holy cross worcester massachusetts

informality property rights and poverty in china s favelas in this study of households living in informal settlements in three principal chinese cities we analyze the associations between informality property rights and poverty we propose that informality can be understood in terms of property rights presence absence strength completeness and ambiguity drawing on the property rights entitlements theories of sen de soto ostrom alchian and coase we refine a list of property rights effects that can be tested empirically using a household questionnaire survey of 1 208 respondents from a representative sample of 60 urban villages in beijing shanghai and guangzhou we use robust regression models to detect statistical relationships between household performance on six poverty domains as a function of four property rights domains controlling for income human capital and other influences we find evidence for what we call sen effects and de soto effects our models show that some property rights are associated with lower poverty indicators but we also find evidence to show that the absence weakness or ambiguity of property rights also reduce poverty indicators on particular domains through what we assume to be a substitution effect informal settlements permit poorer household to live at lower costs than is usually or officially acceptable and thus spend more on other welfare enhancing expenditures the distribution of property rights determines the size distribution and impacts of these trade offs and shapes the economic and social performance of informal settlements

seasonal migration to mitigate income seasonality evidence from bangladesh in northwest bangladesh some 36 percent of poor households migrate every year during the lean monga period to cope with seasonal deprivation analysis of household survey data shows that the probability of seasonal migration is high for households with a high dependency ratio high dependency on wage employment and in villages with high unemployment but low in villages with microcredit access findings show that seasonal migration helps households to smooth consumption and those non migrant households who suffer during monga will likely benefit from deciding to migrate but the cost of migration and lack of networking are potential barriers the paper is structured as follows section one gives introduction the second section discusses the data and its major characteristics such as the incidence of seasonal migration as a coping strategy and its relation to seasonal hardships measured by starvation and meal rationing the third section presents an analytical framework of how seasonal migration can help smooth consumption during the lean season the fourth section analyses the determinants of seasonal migration while the fifth section assesses the potential effect of seasonal migration on rural households consumption smoothing behavior finally section six summarizes the study findings and their policy implications

from correlates and characteristics to causes thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective summary poverty and poverty reduction are currently the central concerns of development discourse and policy despite recent theoretical advances poverty analysis continues to be dominated by an income consumption conception of poverty we argue for understandings of poverty that go beyond measurement led conceptualizations to more adequately expose the causes of poverty chronic poverty is one such concept its focus on poverty duration and dynamics highlights the forms of social relations that produce poverty and which are often embedded within political institutions and economic structures poverty reduction does not simply require good policy it requires creating the capacity of poorer people to influence and hold accountable those who make policies

the institutional causes of china s great famine 1959 1961 this paper studies the causes of china s great famine during which 16 5 to 45 million individuals perished in rural areas we document that average rural food retention during the famine was too high to generate a severe famine without rural inequality in food availability that there was significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions and that rural mortality rates were positively correlated with per capita food production a surprising pattern that is unique to the famine years we provide evidence that an inflexible and progressive government procurement policy where procurement could not adjust to contemporaneous production and larger shares of expected production were procured from more productive regions was necessary for generating this pattern and that this policy was a quantitatively important contributor to overall famine mortality

gender and command over property a critical gap in economic analysis and policy in south asia abstract this paper focuses on a much neglected issue the links between gender inequities and command over property it outlines why in rural south asia where arable land is the most important form of property any significant improvement in women s economic and social situation is crucially tied to their having independent land rights better employment opportunities can complement but not substitute for land but despite progressive legislation few south asian women own land even fewer effectively control any why a complex range of factors social administrative and ideological are found to underlie the persistent gap between women s legal rights and their actual ownership of land and between ownership and control the necessity of collective action by women for overcoming these obstacles and the aspects needing a specific focus for policy and action are also discussed

calm after the storms income distribution and welfare in chile 1987 94 after rising during most but not all of the 1960 85 period inequality in chile seems to have stabilized since around 1987 following the stormy period of economic and political reforms of the 1970s and 1980s no statistically significant lorenz dominance results could be detected since 1987 scalar measures of inequality confirm this picture of stability but suggest a slight change in the shape of the density function with some compression at the bottom being compensated for by a stretching at the top as inequality remained broadly stable sustained economic growth led to substantial welfare improvements and poverty reduction according to a range of measures and with respect to three different poverty lines poverty mixed stochastic dominance tests confirm this result all of these findings are robust to different choices of equivalence scales

cyclicality mortality and the value of time the case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in colombia recent studies demonstrate procyclical mortality in wealthy countries but there are reasons to expect a countercyclical relationship in developing nations we investigate how child survival in colombia responds to fluctuations in world arabica coffee prices and document starkly procyclical child deaths in studying this result s behavioral underpinnings we highlight that 1 the leading determinants of child health are inexpensive but require considerable time and 2 as the value of time declines with falling coffee prices so does the relative price of health we find a variety of direct evidence consistent with the primacy of time in child health production

how important is improving food availability for reducing child malnutrition in developing countries abstract do increases in the food supply per person in a country i e national food availability contribute substantially to reductions in malnutrition among its children this paper sets out to answer this controversial question using panel data from 63 developing countries over 1970 1996 this paper gives evidence in support of a statistically significant and strong positive impact of national food availability on child nutrition finding that increased food supplies have resulted in significant reductions in malnutrition since the 1970s despite population increases over the period however per capita food supplies have a declining marginal impact their effect is quite strong for countries with very low food availability e g most countries in sub saharan africa and south asia but weak or non existent for those with high levels e g most countries in the near east and north africa further non food factors such as women s education and status and the quality of health environments are also important determinants of children s nutritional status depending on the state of food availability in any particular geographic area and relative costs these factors may merit greater priority in policies to reduce malnutrition

an optimal path to extinction poverty and resource degradation in the open agrarian economy this paper constructs a model of the open agrarian economy in order to explore the tendency of many such economies to evolve along paths characterised by severe environmental degradation it pays special attention to the importance of commodity prices and the transfer system in determining agricultural activity levels in ecologically delicate systems

rural income generating activities whatever happened to the institutional vacuum evidence from ghana guatemala nicaragua and vietnam this paper assesses the current rural development practice against the main trends in recent rural development thinking based on evidence from four country case studies while much progress has been made in understanding the need to look beyond only agriculture for the promotion of productive activities in rural areas and the institutional vacuum consistently identified in the rural non farm literature is gradually being filled much remains to be done one aspect on which more research is particularly needed is the development of better mechanisms to promote productive investment rather than just social investment and to assess the appropriate level community regional national at which to do this

agricultural development with rainforest conservation methods for seeking best bet alternatives to slash and burn with applications to brazil and indonesia abstract forests continue to fall for agricultural purposes throughout the humid tropics with immediate and potentially large consequences for climate change and biodiversity loss issues of key interest to the international community some of the actors directly responsible for forest conversion fell trees to meet food security needs and alleviate poverty issues of urgent interest to them and also to national policymakers this multiplicity of groups with differing often conflicting interests in the multifarious goods and services produced by tropical forests complicates the search for alternative agricultural activities for forest margins since these alternatives must satisfy such divergent objectives this paper sets out a conceptual framework for comparing the impacts of different land use systems and agricultural practices at the margins of tropical rainforests in terms of the concerns and objectives of two key interest groups small scale farmers seeking livelihoods at the forest margins and the international interests in the global public goods and services supplied by tropical rainforests this framework should be useful to a third key group the national and regional policymakers who must consider these and other policy objectives and then decide on courses of action the paper identifies data needs and analytical methods capable of supplying an empirical base for this conceptual framework based on quantifiable indicators it then presents preliminary results of the application of this conceptual framework in indonesia and brazil in association with a global collaborative multidisciplinary research program even using preliminary order of magnitude estimates to be replaced by more precise measurements as they become available this conceptual framework presents results in ways that allow researchers and policymakers to select clear best bets for development when they exist and to assess tradeoffs and options for complementary policy action and research efforts when they do not

trust in third parties independent decision makers are appointed to promote trust by shielding investors from rent appropriation efforts of insiders we conduct experiments to show how the appointment procedures for such third parties influence the trust of investors and the actual distributions of returns on investment we find that when the third party is randomly assigned investments significantly increase in response to positive returns on investment investments are similarly high when insiders select anonymous third parties however a simple one sided reputation mechanism between the third party and the insider but not the investor diminishes trust and eliminates the benefits of a supposedly independent third party in a second experiment we show that the trust of investors evidenced by their investment level surprisingly does not depend on whether the decision to delegate to an independent third party or not is taken by insiders themselves or exogenously imposed by a random device

measuring food insecurity the frequency and severity of coping strategies abstract defining and interpreting food security and measuring it in reliable valid and cost effective ways have proven to be stubborn problems facing researchers and programs intended to monitor food security risks this paper briefly reviews the conceptual and methodological literature on food insecurity measurment describes a particular method for distinguishing and measuring short term food insecurity at the household level and discusses ways of generalizing the method the method developed enumerates the frequency and severity of strategies relied on by urban households when faced with a short term insufficiency of food this method goes beyond more commonly used measures of caloric consumption to incorporate vulnerability elements of food insecurity as well as the deliberate actions of household decision makers when faced with food insufficiency

do voters demand responsive governments evidence from indian disaster relief abstract using rainfall public relief and election data from india we examine how governments respond to adverse shocks and how voters react to these responses the data show that voters punish the incumbent party for weather events beyond its control however fewer voters punish the ruling party when its government responds vigorously to the crisis indicating that voters reward the government for responding to disasters we also find evidence suggesting that voters only respond to rainfall and government relief efforts during the year immediately preceding the election in accordance with these electoral incentives governments appear to be more generous with disaster relief in election years these results describe how failures in electoral accountability can lead to suboptimal policy outcomes

allocation under dictatorship research in stalin s archives we survey recent research on the soviet economy in the state party and military archives of the stalin era the archives have provided rich new evidence on the economic arrangements of a command system under a powerful dictator including stalin s role in the making of the economic system and economic policy stalin s accumulation objectives and the constraints that limited his power to achieve them the limits to administrative allocation the information flows and incentives that governed the behavior of economic managers the scope and significance of corruption and market oriented behavior and the prospects for economic reform

explaining the african food riots of 2007 2008 an empirical analysis abstract a sharp escalation in worldwide commodity prices precipitated the global food crisis of 2007 2008 affecting the majority of the world s poor causing protests in developing countries and presenting policymakers with the challenge of simultaneously addressing hunger poverty and political instability these food price shocks fomented violent civil responses in some countries but not others offering a unique opportunity to assess the factors that contributed to these disturbances we explore this question empirically with specific reference to africa where food riots occurred in at least 14 countries by examining the socio economic and political conditions facing african countries we attempt to answer why only some countries in africa witnessed food riots in late 2007 and early 2008 while others did not our empirical analysis demonstrates that higher levels of poverty as proxied by the human poverty index restricted access to and availability of food urbanization a coastal location more oppressive regimes and stronger civil societies are associated with a higher likelihood of riots occurring we also examine three country cases egypt mozambique niger which represent different circumstances and responses to the food crisis and identify specific factors that were associated with food protests in each case our study highlights the importance of pro poor policies and investments and improved governance in addressing the problems facing the poor and in helping secure political stability as the frequency and variability of natural disasters increase in response to climate change such policies can serve to protect the poor from the debilitating consequences of the resulting shocks

building on poor people s capacities the case of common property resources in india and west africa revised version of a paper commissioned by the international development research centre idrc of canada for a world bank conference on poverty environment growth linkages held in washington dc march 1999

entitlement failure and deprivation a critique of sen s famine philosophy 1 abstract this paper insinuates the conceptual foundation of sen s entitlement approach by pinpointing its major weaknesses first sen s critique of fad is inadequate because speculative not actual supply and demand forces determine short run commodity prices second sen s idea of exchange entitlement is inconsistent with the principles of capitalism since this economic system operates on the conceptual and legal framework of voluntary exchange third if food is considered as an entitled commodity other basic necessities of life such as healthcare education etc could claim the same status finally the approach is founded on a hidden hypothesis that income distributions in non communist states are economically and politically optimal

economic development and the escape from high mortality summary this paper studies the characteristic features of the escape from high mortality as recorded from the historical experience of northwestern europe and from the current experience of less developed countries the paper documents stylized facts of mortality change and measures the contribution of economic development represented by income per capita to the mortality decline during the second half of the 20th century the paper argues that improvements in economic conditions since the 18th century are an important factor behind the decline in death rates in developed countries and in the subsequent reduction of death rates in less developed countries we show that economic development lowers mortality through differential effects in infectious disease mortality and that quantitatively income growth is able to account for between one third and one half of the recent mortality decline

can openness mitigate the effects of weather shocks evidence from india s famine era transformation of countries throughout history rural citizens in developing countries today however remain highly exposed to fluctua tions in the weather this exposure affects the incomes these citizens earn and the prices of the foods they eat recent work has documented the significant mortality stress that rural house holds face in times of adverse weather robin burgess olivier deschenes dave donaldson and michael greenstone 2009 masayuki kudamatsu torsten persson and david stromberg 2009 famines times of acutely low nominal agricultural income and acutely high food prices are an extreme manifestation of this mapping from weather to death lilian c a knowles 1924 describes these events as agricultural lockouts where both food sup plies and agricultural employment on which the bulk of the rural population depends plummet the result is catastrophic with widespread hun ger and loss of life though now confined to the world s poor est countries food shortages and famines were features of most preindustrial societies over time there has been intense debate over what role openness to trade in food might play in

poverty and famines an essay on entitlement and deprivation this book focuses on the causes of starvation in general and famines in particular the traditional analysis of famines is shown to be fundamentally defective and the author develops an alternative analysis

ethics economics and environmental management individuals derive utility from their access to resources provided by the biosphere through the satisfaction of a number of needs and necessities these needs however cannot often be met simultaneously since they compete with each other this conflict is not just relevant at an individual or even intragenerational level indeed it implies a number of uncertainties and irreversibilities into the future which should not be left to oblivion from an extended anthropocentric ethical position in which only human beings have immanent value and are therefore subjects of moral consideration the identification of economic values can be of great use to allocate resources and make decisions on the environment economic analysis provides a number of decision tools than can be used to optimise efficiency and equity the purpose of this paper is to reflect on some of the ethical constraints to the ability of conventional economic valuation techniques to inform decision making processes affecting the environment it will be argued that depending on the stage of development some environmental and natural assets might well be seen as a common heritage either from a natural or a cultural viewpoint rather than just a pool of economic resources that could be used to satisfy basic needs and depleted or transformed accordingly whether directly or indirectly furthermore this boundary is not static the same environmental asset will be demanded as a resource at lower stages of development both individual and socially and as a part of the common heritage at a later stage again individual and socially in the former the use of conventional methods to value environmental goods and services will be warranted whereas this would not be the case in the latter we will also stress upon the fact that this is something quite different from the approach taken in social project appraisal where the introduction of efficiency prices and distributive factors also provides a move from individual to social welfare maximization but without breaking away from the market logic

environmental entitlements dynamics and institutions in community based natural resource management abstract while community based natural resource management cbnrm now attracts widespread international attention its practical implementation frequently falls short of expectations this paper contributes to emerging critiques by focusing on the implications of intracommunity dynamics and ecological heterogeneity it builds a conceptual framework highlighting the central role of institutions regularized patterns of behavior between individuals and groups in society in mediating environment society relationships grounded in an extended form of entitlements analysis the framework explores how differently positioned social actors command environmental goods and services that are instrumental to their well being further insights are drawn from analyses of social difference new dynamic ecology new institutional economics structuration theory and landscape history the theoretical argument is illustrated with case material from india south africa and ghana

expected poverty under risk induced welfare variability two of the most widely accepted stylised facts about agriculture in south asia sub saharan africa and elsewhere are that income is highly uncertain from one year to another and that deep and widespread poverty exists and yet there has been very little analysis of the joint problems of poverty and risk this paper offers a methodological approach to the issue of how risk affects poverty and applies it to household level data for dry areas of rural india the following questions are addressed under what conditions can one expect an increase in the riskiness of an income or consumption stream to increase poverty how should one measure the contribution of risk to poverty and what long term benefits in terms of reduced poverty can be expected from policies aimed at stabilising incomes of the poor such policies have been widely discussed in the indian subcontinent of late and their effect on rural

coping with shocks in rural ethiopia based on household survey data and event history interviews undertaken in a highly shock prone country this paper investigates which shocks trigger which coping responses and why we find clear differences in terms of coping strategies across shock types the two relatively covariate shocks that is economic and natural shocks are more likely to trigger reductions in savings and in food consumption while the sale of assets and borrowing is less common coping with relatively idiosyncratic health shocks is met by reductions in savings asset sales and especially a far greater reliance on borrowing as compared to other shocks reductions in food consumption a prominent response in the case of natural and economic shocks is notably absent in the case of health shocks across all shock types households do not rely on gifts from family and friends or on enhancing their labour supply as coping approaches the relative insensitivity of food consumption to health shocks based on the shocks coping analysis presented here is consistent with existing work which examines consumption insurance however our analysis leads to a different interpretation we argue that this insensitivity should not be viewed as insurability of food consumption against health shocks but rather as an indication that a reduction in food consumption is not a viable coping response to a health shock as it does not provide cash to meet health care needs

is democracy good for the poor many scholars claim that democracy improves the welfare of the poor this article uses data on infant and child mortality to challenge this claim cross national studies tend to exclude from their samples nondemocratic states that have performed well this leads to the mistaken inference that nondemocracies have worse records than democracies once these and other flaws are corrected democracy has little or no effect on infant and child mortality rates democracies spend more money on education and health than nondemocracies but these benefits seem to accrue to middle and upper income groups

libertad para competir en el mercado recursos procesos y resultados freedom to compete in the market resources processes and resultsherein we analyze three concepts of market competition although the different aspects of freedom can be appreciated in each one of them they make an especial contribution to some of them we propose that the neoclassical general equilibrium chiefly contributes to the discussion of the outcomes of an economic activity the barriers to entry approach calls for a study of the resources necessary to compete and the competition as a process approach emphasizes the competitive activity itself moreover as we move from the first onwards enriching the meaning of competition the possibility of losing opportunities to participate in the market becomes more evident entry and exit are part of the competitive process each concept of competition responds to theories that specify or allude to certain types and distribution of economic agents freedoms to manoeuvre throughout this study we often quote amartya sen with the purpose of buildingbridges between the study of competition and the approach of development as freedom

when fishery rhymes with poverty a first step beyond the old paradigm on poverty in small scale fisheries abstract in this paper we first look retrospectively at the perceptions embraced by academics international agencies and practitioners of the relation between fisheries and poverty in developing countries and we try to identify the underlying paradigms which have structured these perceptions the review reveals how the debate has focused on the economic low income and biological overexploitation aspects of the problem we then revisit these perceptions in the light of the recent conclusions drawn from other sectors and in particular from the new consensus on poverty proposed by the international community incorporation of the recent research on poverty helps to show how socio institutional mechanisms governing people s access to fisheries resources rather than the resources themselves play such a critical role in vulnerability to poverty finally a typology identifying four different categories of intrasectoral exclusion mechanisms is developed and illustrated through empirical studies derived from african and asian fisheries

measuring household livelihood security at the family and community level in the developing world abstract this paper highlights one of the recent attempts to measure progress at the family and community level the household livelihood security approach the objective of this approach and an experimental household livelihood security index is not national or even large scale subnational crosscomparison instead it is a participatory rapid community assessment technique that helps to identify the constraints to peoples well being its use is to help communities and their partners develop a profile of these constraints and to discuss and design effective programs to overcome the barriers to better health nutrition housing education and livelihood security this paper addresses the following themes a introduction b a brief progress measurement history c the household livelihood security approach d the household livelihood security index e how the index is used f future issues problems and prospects and g conclusions

the performance of rice markets in bangladesh during the 1974 famine recent discussions have further emphasised the role of speculation in foodgrains as a cause of famine hartmann and boyce i 979 sobhan i 980 rashid i 980 sen i98i greenough i982 by this reasoning famine is attributed to the expectation on the part of foodgrain stockholders of a substantial future price increase or future rationing there is a weakness in this explanation as arrow remarks in his review of sen i98i

the economics of cain and abel agro pastoral property rights in the sahel the complementarity of the economic systems of nomads and farmers is often overshadowed by the conflicts inherent in the competition over the control of land the conflict is one of property rights a dynamic programming model of the west african sahel is presented that simulates the emergence of a dual economy based on the comparative advantage of the farmer and the pastoralist the model illustrates that exclusive private property rights have no claim to optimality the analysis of risk in an intertemporal framework suggests the optimality of another type of property right the right to flexible adjustment typically claimed by the pastoralist multiple property regimes provide optimal settings for farmers and pastoralists

plant breeding and poverty can transgenic seeds replicate the green revolution as a source of gains for the poor 1 abstract improved farm technology helps all main groups of the poor small farmers farmworkers other low wage labour when it raises labour value productivity but raises land and or water value productivity faster and cuts staples prices but raises smallholders total factor productivity faster from 1965 the green revolution walked these two tightropes largely by luck though targeting bigger piles of rice and wheat it cut poverty through consumption nutrition smallholder income employment risk reduction and ecological sustainability yet large areas were left out and from 1985 progress slowed in the new environment for research and agriculture how can transgenics revive and spread poverty reduction what has been the evidence so far what determines whether new varieties have traits conducive to poverty reduction who owns the research or what crop science is

a methodology for allocating transmission losses due to cross border trades transmission pricing of cross border trades is often difficult since individual countries may use incompatible internal transmission pricing regimes and they are usually unwilling to disclose any sensitive information about their own systems in this paper the use of a tracing methodology is proposed to overcome these problems using loss allocation problem as an example firstly a modification of the tracing methodology is presented in which the loss is allocated in a direct way then a unifying tracing based methodology of transmission pricing for cross border trades is proposed the only data required are the flows in the tie lines and the charges to be applied to the border nodes in each country no information is required about individual transactions load generation profiles or internal networks the methodology is illustrated on the ieee 118 node network divided into four areas each with a different internal transmission pricing methodology the proposed methodology is shown to be simple transparent and very fast and it can deal effectively with cyclic flows

what is a fair co2 tax increase on fair emission reductions in the transport sector we examine how individual preferences for fair reductions of carbon dioxide co2 emissions affect the support for increases in the co2 tax on gasoline and diesel we assume that people not only care about their own material welfare but also have preferences for fairness in policy design and we explore the implications using original data from a mail questionnaire sent to a representative sample of the swedish population the main result is that fairness in policy design does matter those respondents who adhere to a fairness principle tend to be relatively more positive to increases in the co2 tax one possible explanation for this result is that there is a relatively high degree of reciprocity regarding the origin of emissions and the fairness regarding who should bear the burden of co2 reductions via a split sample analysis we also find that the relative importance of fairness principles is dependent upon whether one uses a car often or not this sheds light on the potential goal conflict between the importance of fairness principles and self interest in the form of a need for private car transportation

confronting the coffee crisis can fair trade organic and specialty coffees reduce small scale farmer vulnerability in northern nicaragua summary this paper links changing global coffee markets to opportunities and vulnerabilities for sustaining small scale farmer livelihoods in northern nicaragua changing governance structures corporate concentration oversupply interchangeable commodity grade beans and low farm gate prices characterize the crisis in conventional coffee markets in contrast certified fair trade and organic are two alternative forms of specialty coffee trade and production that may offer opportunities for small scale producers a research team surveyed 228 farmers to measure the impact of sales on organic and fair trade markets the results suggest that participation in organic and fair trade networks reduces farmers livelihood vulnerability 2004 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

democracy the market and the logic of social choice this article compares the types of knowledge democracy and the market require to rationally allocate resources i argue that high levels of public ignorance and voters inability to compare the effects of different parties policies make it difficult for parties and elections to rationally allocate resources markets mitigate these problems because the simultaneous existence of multiple firms products facilitates comparisons that mimic the conditions of scientific experimentation the economy of knowledge involved in such comparisons indicates there are epistemic advantages to using firms and markets instead of political parties and elections to allocate scarce resources however in contrast to arguments that markets merely provide better information than political decisions i argue markets epistemic advantages are derived from the way they facilitate comparisons that minimize decision makers need for knowledge or understanding