natural resources and sub national economic performance does sub national democracy matter abstract the differentiation in the impact of resources on economic growth is often explained by the specifics of institutional factors the aim of this paper is to investigate how sub national political differences influence the effect of natural resources on economic growth using a dataset of russian regions this paper demonstrates that sub national democratization influences the growth effects of resources and considers possible mechanisms for this influence the paper finds that in russia natural resources are only capable of promoting growth in the regions with non democratic political systems that at the same time have an efficient and non corrupt bureaucracy

diffusion and spillover of new technology a heterogeneous agent model for cassava in west africa understanding what determines the geographic spread of innovations can help guide the funding and implementation of research and extension programs our approach uses household survey data as model parameters to simulate behavior across the entire surveyed population and avoid the aggregation bias associated with representative farm models such a heterogeneous agent approach allows us to infer the distribution of a technology s impacts across one set of households and predict the potential for spreading to another set that shares similar characteristics with respect to natural resource endowments and farming systems we apply the technique to new cassava varieties in west africa finding a strongly poverty alleviating impact with substantial spillover potential from nigeria to neighboring countries

efficiency of research investments in the presence of international spillovers wheat research in developing countries expenditures on agricultural research in the public sector including the international agricultural research centers iarcs have stagnated and in some cases declined sharply in recent years this has focused attention on issues of efficiency of agricultural research systems especially the number size scope type and locations of their programs this paper examines the issue of research efficiency through a case study of wheat improvement research in developing countries the basic premise of this study is that the optimal level of research investment should be determined in a global model that incorporates direct research spill ins an analytical framework is developed to determine the threshold levels of crop production in a country or a region within a country needed to justify crop improvement research programs of different sizes in the presence of spill ins from abroad spill in coefficients are estimated from yield performance of varieties of different origins grown across a range of environments the model is then applied to analyze the efficiency of current investments in 69 wheat improvement research programs in 35 developing countries a major conclusion of the paper is that given the magnitude of potential spill ins from the international research system many wheat research programs could significantly increase the efficiency of resource use by reducing the size of their wheat research programs and focusing on the screening of varieties developed elsewhere 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

how hurricanes affect wages and employment in local labor markets currently a growing literature is emerging on estimating the impact of exogenous shocks using the difference in difference dd tech nique essentially this technique compares the impact of an unexpected event in a particu lar locale called the treatment experimental group to a location or set of locations called a control group similar to the experimental group in all respects except for the shock itself one challenge many dd studies face is how to choose the control group and there is now a growing literature on this joshua a angrist and alan b krueger 1999 jeffrey d kubik and john r moran 2003 and alberto abadie alexis diamond and jens hainmueller 2007 another challenge is whether one can general ize one s results based on a single experimental group as is typical for most dd analysis this paper adopts a generalized difference in dif ference gdd technique outlined in ariel r belasen and solomon w polachek forthcom ing to examine the impact of hurricanes on the labor market this technique incorporates many experimental as well as many control groups and as such this approach addresses a number of shortcomings in current dd analyses we find that earnings of the average worker in a florida county rise over 4 percent within the first quarter of being hit by a major category four or five hur ricane relative to counties not hit and rise about wa percent for workers in florida counties hit by less major category one to three hurricanes concomitantly employment falls between wi and 5 percent depending on hurricane strength on the other hand the effects of hurricanes on neighboring counties have the opposite effects moving earnings down between 3 and 4 percent in the quarter the hurricane struck to better examine the specific shocks we also observe sectoral employment shifts finally we conduct a time series analysis and find that over time there is somewhat of a cobweb with earnings and employment rising and falling each quarter over a two year time period

storms and jobs the effect of hurricanes on individuals employment and earnings over the long term hurricanes katrina and rita devastated the us gulf coast in 2005 we use job level data to compare the evolution of earnings for affected workers in four states with workers from matched control co

returns from research in economies with policy distortions hybrid sorghum in sudan conventional estimates of the economic return to agricultural research use market prices for the values of products and inputs on this basis economic rates of return are typically well above the cost of capital suggesting that more investment in research would be socially desirable but these estimates may be incorrect if as is often the case market prices are distorted by market failures or government policies and hence do not reflect social values this paper presents a simple partial equilibrium methodology with which to improve the measurement of social returns to research by taking account of multiple distortions in the market prices of products inputs and foreign exchange the method also takes account of variation in domestic and world prices making a product tradable in some years and nontradable in others the method is applied to the case of hageen dura 1 hd 1 sub saharan africa s first commercially successful hybrid sorghum hd 1 was released in the sudan in 1983 from the start of research in 1979 to 1992 the hd 1 breeding program had an estimated irr of 97 when all major policies in the sorghum market the fertilizer market and the exchange rate are taken into account the high rate of return to hd 1 research was due to the program s low cost and rapid payoff pointing to the potential value of small adaptive research programs taking full advantage of foreign technology and genetic material to produce locally appropriate crosses in a short period of time even in the highly distorted economies of africa such programs can yield very high payoffs

who wins in an energy boom evidence from wage rates and housing this article presents evidence on the distributional effects of energy extraction by examining the effect of the recent u s energy boom on wage rates and housing the boom increased local wage rates in almost every major occupational category the increase occurred regardless of whether the occupation experienced a corresponding change in employment suggesting a tighter labor market that benefited local workers wage rates also increased substantially across the entire wage rate distribution although the percentage increase was slightly higher at the bottom of the distribution than at the top local housing values and rental prices both increased thereby benefiting landowners for renters the increase in prices was completely offset by a contemporaneous increase in income the results suggest that bans on drilling have negative monetary consequences for a large share of local residents jel j23 q33 r31

employment impacts of upstream oil and gas investment in the united states abstract we use dynamic panel methods at the state level to understand how the increase in exploration and production of oil and natural gas since the mid 2000s has impacted employment we find robust statistical support for the hypothesis that changes in drilling do in fact have an economically meaningful and positive impact on employment the strongest impact is contemporaneous though months later in the year also experience statistically and economically meaningful growth once dynamic effects are accounted for we estimate that an additional rig count results in the creation of 31 jobs immediately and 315 jobs in the long run robustness checks suggest that these multipliers could be even bigger our results imply that the national impact of upstream investment remains small perhaps due to the sector s small size and inter state migration

investments in african agricultural research abstract over the past three decades africa s public agricultural research systems have changed in substantive ways the total number of researchers increased fourfold the dependency on expatriate researchers significantly declined while the education levels of national researchers improved initially the growth in research staff was matched by growth in expenditures but since the late 1970s real research spending has stagnated in addition loans and grants from donor agencies now account for a sizeable share of total funding for many african agricultural research systems many of the developments of the past decade in personnel expenditures and sources of support for public sector research and development r d in africa are not sustainable spending per scientist has declined continuously during the past 30 years most dramatically during the 1980s resources are spread increasingly thin over a growing group of researchers which has negative effects on the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural research in africa

ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia public agricultural research has been conducted in africa for decades while many studies have examined its aggregate impacts few have investigated how it affects the poor this paper helps fill this gap by applying a new procedure to explore the ex post impacts of improved maize varieties on poverty in rural ethiopia plot level yield and cost changes due to adoption are first estimated using instrumental variable and marginal treatment effect techniques where possible heterogeneity is carefully accounted for a backward derivation procedure is then developed to link treatment effect estimates with an economic surplus model to identify the counterfactual household income that would have existed without improved maize varieties poverty impacts are finally estimated by exploiting the differences between observed and counterfactual income distributions improved maize varieties have led to a 0 8 1 3 percentage drop of poverty headcount ratio and relative reductions of poverty depth and severity however poor producers benefit the least from adoption due to the smallness of their land holdings

geographic dispersion of economic shocks evidence from the fracking revolution abstract we track the geographic and temporal propagation of local economic shocks from new oil and gas production generated by hydrofracturing each million dollars of new production produces 80 000 in wage income and 132 000 in royalty and business income within a county within 100 miles one million dollars of new production generates 257 000 in wages and 286 000 in royalty and business income roughly two thirds of the wage income increase persists for two years assuming no general equilibrium effects new extraction increased aggregate us employment by as many as 640 000 and decreased the unemployment rate by 0 43 during the great recession jel d86 l14 l81 l82

local high tech job multipliers in europe examining employment growth in local labor markets across europe this article finds that each worker in a high skilled occupation creates up to five extra jobs in local less skilled intensive services in the same region however it is also shown that there exist persistent differences in the size of this local high tech job multiplier across regions in particular we find that the multiplier is larger in regions with higher immigration an abundance of less skilled workers and lower gross output per capita at the country level we also show that this results in local high tech job multipliers that are larger in southern european countries than in the rest of europe

estimating the benefits of plant breeding research methodological issues and practical challenges impact assessment studies consistently show that the benefits generated by plant breeding are large positive and widely distributed numerous case studies have concluded that investment in plant breeding research generates attractive rates of return compared to alternative investment opportunities that welfare gains resulting from the adoption of modern varieties mvs reach both favoured and marginal environments and that benefits are broadly shared by producers and consumers but just how reliable are the results of studies that estimate the benefits of plant breeding research this article reviews methods used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research and discusses theoretical and empirical issues that often receive inadequate attention in applied impact assessment work our objective is not to question the validity of the theoretical frameworks commonly used to estimate the benefits of plant breeding research but rather to examine problems that can arise when the widely accepted theoretical frameworks are used for empirical analysis most of these problems can be grouped into three basic categories 1 problems associated with measuring adoption and diffusion of mvs 2 problems associated with estimating benefits attributable to adoption of mvs and 3 problems associated with assigning credit among the various plant breeding programmes that participated in developing the mvs

do changes in oil prices affect welfare programs evidence from kern county abstract in this paper the intertemporal causal relationship between oil prices and welfare programs in kern county is studied using monthly data between 1999 7 and 2016 8 results from the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach show that there is stable long run equilibrium relationship between calfresh caseloads oil prices and unemployment they also show that adjustment in calfresh participation due to changes in oil prices and unemployment is slow and a 10 increase in unemployment led to a 3 3 increase in calfresh enrollment results from a modified granger causality method indicated causality running from unemployment to calworks and no causality from oil prices to calworks participation the girf confirmed that calworks is more responsive to changes in unemployment than to oil price shocks the fevdc results demonstrated that contributions of the oil price shocks in explaining variations in calworks were negligible

does government ideology influence deregulation of product markets empirical evidence from oecd countries this paper examines how government ideology has influenced deregulation of product markets in oecd countries i analyze a dataset of non manufacturing regulation indicators covering energy transport and communication industries in 21 oecd countries over the 1980 2003 period and employ two different indices of government ideology the results suggest that government ideology has had a strong influence on the deregulation process market oriented governments promoted the deregulation of the energy transport and communication industries this finding identifies remarkable differences between leftist and rightwing governments concerning the role of government in the economy and basic elements of political order

i can hear my neighbors fracking the effect of natural gas production on housing values in tarrant county tx abstract in this study we estimate the effect of hydraulically fractured natural gas wells on residential real estate prices we exploit variation in distance to nearby gas wells in home sale prices to estimate this effect in contrast to previous studies we focus on a relatively densely populated area a section of the dallas ft worth arlington urban area using a dataset of 127 556 observations from tarrant county texas over the period 2005 2011 we find robust evidence that increased proximity to a well leads to reduced home sale prices existence of wells within 3500 ft of a property reduces property values by approximately 1 5 3 we demonstrate that the reduction seems to be driven by unconventional rather than conventional wells and that well construction causes an added 1 2 reduction in home value

the economic and poverty impacts of maize research in west and central africa this article assembles the results of three multicountry surveys on variety performance and adoption patterns to measure the impacts of maize research in west and central africa from 1981 to 2005 and uses cost data since 1971 to compute social rates of return on public investments in maize research in the region adoption of modern varieties increased from less than 5 of the maize area in the 1970s to about 60 in 2005 yielding an aggregate rate of return on research and development r d investment of 43 the estimated number of people moved out of poverty through adoption of new maize varieties rose gradually in the 1980s to more than one million people per year since the mid 1990s over half of these impacts can be attributed to international maize research at iita and cimmyt the article concludes with a discussion of strategic options to enhance the impacts of maize research in the region

impacts of food crop improvement research evidence from sub saharan africa abstract the paper reviews and summarizes evidences of impacts of crop improvement research of major food crops in africa it provides evidence of increased availability of improved varieties of major food crops to farmers in africa increased food production in regions where adoption has occurred and positive returns to research investment indicating that agricultural research in africa has had productivity increasing impacts on its agriculture however research impacts vary considerably across countries and regions within a country as a result of agroclimatic factors and policy environment which affects the supply of seeds and other inputs and the continuity and stability of research investments the paper points to a number of important issues both internal and external to the agricultural research system organization that need to be addressed if agricultural research is to provide a stimulus for modernizing african agriculture given the small size of food crop production area in many african countries it is important for research systems to take full advantage of research spill ins from regional and international research organizations there is a great potential to increase the efficiency of research systems by improving the coordination among members of national research systems and continuing improvements in collaborations between narss and regional and international organizations

the economic impact of the coal boom and bust in this paper we examine the impact of the coal boom in the 1970s and the subsequent coal bust in the 1980s on local labour markets in kentucky ohio pennsylvania and west virginia we address two main questions in our analysis how were non mining sectors affected by the shocks to the mining sector how did these effects differ between sectors producing local goods and those producing traded goods we find evidence of modest employment spillovers into sectors with locally traded goods but not into sectors with nationally traded goods

econometric estimation of a global spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology abstract an econometric approach using international and national yield trial data is employed to estimate a spillover matrix for wheat varietal technology the global spillover matrix is estimated based on international yield trial data from 1979 1980 to 1987 1988 that include 195 international trial locations and 209 wheat varieties the locations were classified across countries using the cimmyt s wheat megaenvironment system and varieties were classified by both their environmental and institutional origin the model gave good explanatory power and confirmed the location specificity hypothesis at least for the varieties developed by national programs nars the spillover matrix shows that nars varieties developed in the home environment generally perform better on average than varieties developed in other megaenvironments also the matrix is not symmetric cimmyt varieties perform better on average in irrigated and high rainfall environments than nars varieties developed for these environments the yield advantage of cimmyt varieties in many test megaenvironments indicates the potential of cimmyt varieties to spill over to these test megaenvironments results also indicate that national programs are efficient in selecting from among imported technologies analysis of international data is complemented by the analysis of country level data for pakistan and kenya that confirms the above results the country level analysis however indicates that cimmyt germplasm does not do so well in some sub environments such as the irrigated short duration environment the results of the spillover matrix have implications for the design of crop breeding programs both at the national and international levels information provided by the spillover matrix can be utilized by national programs to deploy their resources more efficiently by following a mixed strategy of direct importation of technology in some environments and local development of technologies in other environments which are unique to the country

returns to food and agricultural r d investments in sub saharan africa 1975 2014 research enabled growth in agricultural productivity is pivotal to sub saharan africa s overall economic growth prospects yet investments in research and development rd median 38 0 py around 78 5 of the evaluations relate to the commodity specific consequences of agricultural research while 5 5 report on the returns to an all agriculture aggregate the weight of commodity specific evaluation evidence is not especially congruent with the composition of agricultural production throughout africa nor to the best that can be determined the commodity orientation of public african agricultural r d

economic returns to crop management research in a post green revolution setting returns to research studies have neglected research on crop management cmr which may account for half of all crop research because cmr enhances the efficiency of input use returns to cmr are hypothesized to increase in settings characterized by high input levels and high yields a method is developed to estimate returns to cmr and this method is applied to wheat research in a post green revolution setting in northwest mexico the results suggest that returns to cmr are positive over a range of model assumptions

returns to public sector plant breeding in the presence of spill ins and private goods the case of bean research in michigan this article illustrates a methodology for assessing economic returns to a publicly funded breeding program in the presence of private sector investments and spill ins from other contemporary public institutions and past research efforts the approach consists of determining yield gains from bean improvement research applying these yield gain estimates to measure benefits attributable to different institutional players and time periods and then assessing the benefit cost ratios of investments in a bean improvement program since 1980 by michigan state university msu the results indicate that investments in msu s bean breeding program have yielded benefits to costs ratio in the range of 0 7 to 2 2 depending on the attribution rule used to estimate the benefits the estimated benefit cost ratios reported in this study are lower bound estimates as they do not account for potential benefits from area planted to msu varieties outside of michigan spillover effects which was 1 5 times greater than the area planted to msu bred varieties within michigan in the period 1998 2002 the implications of the increasingly privatized bean seed markets for the role of public sector research in bean improvement research are discussed

the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era built between 1974 and 1977 the trans alaska pipeline was the largest privately financed construction project in world history the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era provides an ideal opportunity to view labor market responses to a large anticipated and temporary shock to labor demand the paper presents several theoretical models of market responses to temporary demand shocks and then assesses the ability of each model to explain the alaskan data among the findings are that alaskan wages were very flexible labor supply was quite elastic on both the intensive hours per worker and extensive number of workers margins and even a major short run demand shock need not have a long run impact

public agricultural r d design and technological spill ins a dynamic model the paper presents a dynamic model for the analysis of the national agricultural research systems narss strategy in a context of increasing globalisation both intersectoral and international technology spill ins may greatly affect the nars design and this paper proposes an analytical framework for its study when major spill ins are present these spill ins are calculated by applying the yale technology concordance ytc methodology a var vec model is then specified to detect empirically given the calculated spill ins what nars design prevails in a dynamic framework the model is estimated for the italian agriculture data and provides evidence of close dependency on external r d sources

the distributional impacts of an energy boom in western canada in the energy rich region of western canada inequality rose over the past two decades while poverty declined begging the question of whether the recent energy boom was a contributing factor this study uses measures of inequality and poverty across local labor markets that vary in energy extraction intensity to identify these distributional impacts the evidence shows that overall the boom increased inequality and decreased poverty there are however a few notable cases where these relationships are reversed the significance and relative magnitude of growth across and between distributional segments were consistent with these findings

what goes up must come down the recent economic cycles of the four most oil and gas dominated states in the us abstract the recent boom and bust in the us oil and natural gas sector provide a unique opportunity to assess whether the impacts of energy development are symmetric across the differing phases of the energy cycle this study uses the synthetic control method to examine the boom and bust effects for the four most oil and gas dominated states louisiana north dakota oklahoma and wyoming the four states are chosen as case studies because of their status as top oil and gas producers and the stronger influence of the oil and gas sector on their overall economies the results reveal differing employment impacts across the four states in both the short and long run and asymmetry during the boom and bust phases variation in the overall impacts and asymmetry of impacts across the boom bust cycle are suggested to be at least in part connected to state and local government expenditures

labor market impacts of u s tight oil development the case of the bakken abstract there has been a recent boom in natural gas and oil production in the us due to high energy prices and technological advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling while north dakota oil production has increased significantly since 2005 with the development of bakken formation the impact on the rest of the economy including agriculture historically the largest industry in north dakota has received little attention we employ a variant of the corden neary resource development model to test the impact of the oil boom in north dakota caused by technical change on employment and wages in two tradable sectors of the state economy agriculture and energy alongside the rest of the state s economy using a vector error correction vec model marking the very first use of the dynamic vector autoregression var analysis in this theoretical framework it was determined that the oil boom as represented by the number of rigs in the state led to an increase in employment and wages in energy sector as expected but also in the rest of the economy oil development activity had no significant impact on agricultural wages both energy sector equations employment and wage suggest relative independence of these variables from the movements in agriculture and the rest of the economy and being impacted mostly by the changes in energy sector itself seasonality does not play significant role in energy sector employment and wages unlike in agriculture and the rest of the economy

linking technical change to research effort an examination of aggregation and spillovers effects we used a disaggregate approach to examine investment efficiency of wheat breeding research in india india s total research effort comprizes 20 research programs spread across 50 experiment stations a technology spillover matrix was constructed for both potential and actual spillovers spillovers and free riding were dominant characteristics of technical change during the period studied although the aggregate rate of return to wheat improvement research in india was estimated to be 55 eight programs were found to have earned a negative rate of return when spillins were taken into account research output is concentrated on a few strong programs the two strongest programs generated 75 of all the technical change benefits even though they claimed just 22 of research resources these two programs include a significant degree of overlap while on the other hand many farmers were not reached by any of the programs 56 and 78 of rainfed and durum area respectively in 1990 was still sown with pre 1976 varieties 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

exploring strategic priorities for regional agricultural r d investments in east and central africa the 11 countries of east and central africa have diverse but overlapping agroclimatic conditions and could potentially benefit from spillovers of agricultural technology across country borders this article uses high resolution spatial data on actual and potential yields for 15 major products across 12 development domains to estimate the total benefits available from the spread of new agricultural technologies around the region market responses and welfare gains are estimated using the dynamic research evaluation for management model taking account of current and future projections of local and international demand results suggest which crops countries and agroclimatic regions offer the largest total benefits downloadable data and program files permit different assumptions and additional information to be considered in the ongoing process of strategic priority setting

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

local labor market impacts of energy boom bust boom in western canada abstract the impacts of energy price boom and bust are analyzed through the differential growth in employment and earnings between local labor markets with and without energy resources in western canada the estimated differentials attributed to the boom induced labor demand shocks show significant direct and indirect impacts on the earnings and employment within the energy extraction and other non energy local sectors respectively the local job multipliers indicate that job creation within the energy extraction sector leads to modest job creation within the non energy local sectors during boom periods for every ten energy extraction jobs created during a boom period approximately three construction jobs two retail jobs and four and a half service jobs are created

the effects of a natural gas boom on employment and income in colorado texas and wyoming improvements in technology have made it profitable to tap unconventional gas reservoirs in relatively impermeable shale and sandstone deposits which are spread throughout the u s mostly in rural areas proponents of gas drilling point to the activity s local economic benefits yet no empirical studies have systematically documented the magnitude or distribution of economic gains i estimate these gains for counties in colorado texas and wyoming three states where natural gas production expanded substantially since the late 1990s i find that a large increase in the value of gas production caused modest increases in employment wage and salary income and median household income the results suggest that each million dollars in gas production created 2 35 jobs in the county of production which led to an annualized increase in employment that was 1 5 of the pre boom level for the average gas boom county comparisons show that ex ante estimates of the number of jobs created by developing the fayetteville and marcellus shale gas formations may have been too large

the price of policy risk empirical insights from choice experiments with european photovoltaic project developers managing the transition to a renewable energy future is an important policy priority in many countries solar photovoltaic pv technology is expected to make an important contribution but due to relatively higher cost its growth to date has been largely driven by public policy notably feed in tariffs feed in tariffs have been implemented in various countries however with widely differing outcomes in terms of installed pv capacity previous research indicates that the level of policy risk may be an important driver for differences in renewable energy policy effectiveness more specifically we suggest that investors who take a decision between pv investment opportunities in different countries carefully weigh feed in tariff induced returns against a set of policy risks and choose the country with the most favorable risk return profile we empirically test this model based on a stated preference survey among european pv project developers consisting of 1575 choice decisions by 63 investors the findings of our study demonstrate that risk matters in pv policy design and that a price tag can be attached to specific policy risks such as the duration of administrative processes or uncertainty induced by an approaching capacity cap governments can build on our empirical results to design policies that will be effective in attracting private pv investment while at the same time maintaining efficiency by providing an adequate compensation for policy risk

local labor markets and natural resources a synthesis of the literature a primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor with greater extraction requiring more workers shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings the main labor market outcomes or through changes in the population and income more generally these changes may spillover into the nonresource economy leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out be spread unequally across the population thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate or influence educational attainment as people choose between additional schooling and work in this review the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider this synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years it also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta analysis

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

the gains from research into tradable commodities this paper develops a model for assessing the aggregate level and distribution of the benefits of reseach into tradable commodities it estimates gains to australia and to the rest of the world from research into the wool and wheat industries

economics of modern energy boomtowns do oil and gas shocks differ from shocks in the rest of the economy abstract the us shale boom has intensified interest in how the expanding oil and gas sector affects local economic performance research has produced mixed results and has not compared how energy shocks differ from equal sized shocks elsewhere in the economy what emerges is that the estimated impacts of energy development vary by region empirical methodology as well as the time horizon that is considered this paper captures these dimensions to present a more complete picture of energy boomtowns utilizing us county data we estimate the effects of changes in oil and gas extraction employment on total employment growth as well as growth by sector we compare this to the effects of equal sized shocks in the rest of the economy to assess whether energy booms are inherently different the analysis is performed separately for nonmetropolitan and metropolitan counties using instrumental variables we difference over 1 3 6 and 10 year time periods to account for county fixed effects and to assess responses across different time horizons the results show that in nonmetro counties energy sector multiplier effects on total county employment first increase up to 6 year horizons and then decline for 10 year horizons we also observe positive spillovers to the non traded goods sector while spillovers are small or negative for traded goods in metro counties there are no significant effects on total employment although positive spillovers are present in some sectors yet equal sized shocks in the rest of the economy produce more jobs on average than oil and gas shocks suggesting that policymakers should seek more diversified development

costs benefits and the malleability of public support for fracking abstract public opinion plays an important role in shaping the policy debate over hydraulic fracturing at both the state and national level however most americans report having little to no information about this controversial practice that has transformed the u s energy market employing an experiment embedded on a nationally representative survey we examine how citizens respond to arguments concerning the costs and benefits of fracking and incorporate them into their policy preferences arguments emphasizing the economic benefits of fracking bolster support for the technique however these gains are completely canceled if paired with a discussion of fracking s environmental costs additionally we find mixed evidence of partisan motivated reasoning in how this information is processed individuals whose partisan attachments and preexisting beliefs about global climate change conflict are particularly responsive to arguments about the benefits and costs of fracking our results have important implications for scholars and policymakers concerned with partisan polarization in public opinion toward energy and environmental policy

how disasters affect local labor markets the effects of hurricanes in florida this study improves upon the difference in difference approach by examining exogenous shocks using a generalized difference in difference gdd technique that identifies economic effects of hurricanes based on the quarterly census of employment and wages data worker earnings in florida counties hit by a hurricane increase up to 4 percent whereas earnings in neighboring counties decrease over time workers experience faster earnings and slower employment growth than workers in unaffected counties hurricanes have a greater impact in coastal and panhandle counties and powerful hurricanes have greater economic effects than weaker ones further the gdd technique is applicable to analyze a wider range of exogenous shocks than hurricanes

the impact of fracking activities on oklahoma s housing prices a panel cointegration analysis abstract fracking drilling has opened a discussion on the role of technological developments in economies engaged in shale oil and gas formations oil and natural gas production opened new possibilities for employment benefits and housing prices decreases this paper explores for the first time the impact of fracking on housing prices across oklahoma s counties spanning the period 2000 2015 through panel methods the findings show a positive effect on housing prices while this positive effect gains statistical significance only over the period after the 2006 fracking boom the results survive a robustness check that explicitly considers distance and groundwater dependency issues

the impact of regulatory governance and privatization on electricity industry generation capacity in developing economies this article assesses whether a regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are associated with superior outcomes in the electricity industry the analysis for 28 developing economies over 1980 2001 draws on theoretical and empirical work on the impact of telecommunications regulators in developing economies controlling for privatization and competition and allowing for country specific fixed effects both regulatory law and higher quality regulatory governance are positively and significantly associated with higher per capita generation capacity this positive impact increases for more than 10 years as experience develops and regulatory reputation grows the results are robust to estimating alternative dynamic specifications including error correction models to inclusion of economy governance political risk indicators and to controlling for possible endogeneity biases the article concludes with a short discussion of causality in panel data modeling of governance models and the policy

agricultural intensification in ghana evaluating the optimist s case for a green revolution abstract while there are valid reasons for a renewed interest in adapting the lessons of the asian green revolution to the african setting research must go further in identifying the main and potentially unique drivers of agricultural intensification within and across african countries in this study we look at the case of ghana to identify whether fast population growth and the remarkable agricultural performance the country has enjoyed in recent years have resulted in favorable conditions for the adoption of asian style green revolution technologies through descriptive analysis combined with empirical assessment of the economic efficiency of agriculture in different production systems and agroecologies we are able assess the relevance of green revolution technologies for agricultural production in ghana in particular we analyze whether fertilizer use in ghana is associated with high population density and intensive cereal production and whether land intensive innovations are associated with more efficient production practices overall we do not find evidence of asian style green revolution agricultural intensification in ghana in fact we find no correlation between population density and input intensity we also find that labor costs still play a major role in ghanaian agricultural development in limiting the adoption of labor intensive technologies even in relatively high population density areas

international and institutional r d spillovers attribution of benefits among sources for brazil s new crop varieties reported rates of return to agricultural r d are generally high but they are likely to be biased particularly because of attribution problems mismatching research benefits with costs the importance of attribution biases is illustrated here with new evidence for brazil during 1981 2003 varietal improvements in upland rice edible beans and soybeans yielded benefits of 14 8 billion in present value 1999 prices terms attributing all of the benefits to embrapa a public research corporation accounting for more than half of brazil s agricultural r d spending the benefit cost ratio would be 78 1 under alternative attribution rules the ratio drops to 16 1

psychological pressure in competitive environments evidence from a randomized natural experiment much like cognitive abilities emotional skills can have major eects on performance and economic outcomes this paper studies the behavior of professional subjects involved in a dynamic competition in their own natural environment the setting is a penalty shoot out in soccer where two teams compete in a tournament framework taking turns in a sequence of ve penalty kicks each as the kicking order is determined by the random outcome of a coin ip the treatment and control

the impact of agricultural research on productivity and poverty in sub saharan africa while it is widely recognized that agricultural research is a key driver of broad based technological change in agriculture that benefits the poor in many different ways little is known about its aggregate impacts on productivity growth and poverty reduction in sub saharan africa ssa using a polynomial distributed lag structure for agricultural research within a simultaneous system of equations framework this paper first demonstrates that agricultural research contributes significantly to productivity growth in ssa productivity growth is again shown to raise per capita incomes with income increases finally having significant poverty reducing effects with an aggregate rate of return of 55 the payoffs to agricultural research are also impressive agricultural research currently reduces the number of poor by 2 3 million or 0 8 annually while the actual impacts are not large enough to more than offset the poverty increasing effects of population growth and environmental degradation the potential impacts of agricultural research are far greater apart from low research investments ssa faces several constraints outside the research system that hinder realization of potential research benefits the results show that doubling research investments in ssa would reduce poverty by 9 annually however this would not be realized without more efficient extension credit and input supply systems

agricultural technology adoption and child nutrition enhancement improved maize varieties in rural ethiopia adoption of improved crop varieties can lead to multiple benefits to farm households including increased productivity incomes and food consumption however possible impacts of adoption on child nutrition outcomes are rarely explored in the literature this article helps bridge this gap through an impact assessment of the adoption of improved maize varieties imvs on child nutrition outcomes using a recent household survey from rural ethiopia the conceptual linkage between imv adoption and child nutrition is first established using an agricultural household model instrumental variable estimation suggests the overall impacts of adoption on child height for age and weight for age z scores to be positive and significant quantile instrumental variable regressions further reveal that such impacts are largest among children with poorest nutrition outcomes finally by combining a decomposition procedure with system of equations estimation it is found that the increase in own produced maize consumption is the major channel through which imv adoption affects child nutrition

estimating the benefits of public plant breeding beyond profits in this study we estimate increases in producer revenue total exports and welfare effects from the genetic gains of the rice breeding program at the university of arkansas system uofa division of agriculture from 1983 to 2016 rice producers are paid based on both the quantity and quality of rice therefore we implement a cluster specific fixed effects model based on location and year to identify the contributions of the uofa breeding program for both paddy yields quantity and head rice yields quality attribute over time additionally the estimated increased yield was imputed into the riceflow trade model to estimate price and export effects including spillover benefits from uofa varieties we find that on average u s rice producers gain 30 9 million usd annually the expansion of u s long grain rice exports facilitated by the uofa is estimated to be 53 000 milled metric tons annually which is enough to lower rice prices by over 1 in low income countries such as haiti panama and nicaragua overall the public breeding program at the uofa contributes to 1 positive genetic gains 2 additional revenue in the mid south and 3 increased trade between the u s and rice consuming countries

independent regulatory agencies and rules harmonization for the electricity sector and renewables in the mediterranean region the paper analyses the existing regulatory framework for the electricity and renewables sectors and the role of regulatory agencies in northern africa and middle east countries under the promotion by the european union using data collected through an original survey directed at regulators ministry departments and energy companies of the southern mediterranean the study is aimed at assessing the extent of agencies independence looking at three main dimensions of independence regulatory instruments available to regulators and decision making autonomy regulators organizational autonomy and regulators accountability results show that those countries having established an independent regulator have a more credible regulatory framework than those countries in which such a body does not exist in particular the analysis shows that turkey croatia and jordan have defined a regulatory framework that limits administrative expropriation and consequently creates an environment more suitable for attracting investments in the electricity and renewables sector on the institutional ground this is probably related with the harmonization of regulatory standards promoted by the european union through the neighboring policy for the jordan case and the membership perspective in the turkish and croatian cases

oil abundance and income inequality the paper empirically investigates the impact of natural resource abundance in particular oil on income disparities it employs common correlated effects pooled mean group methodology for estimation to account for the cross country heterogeneity and cross section dependence in the oil inequality nexus in a sample of developed and developing countries we find that oil abundance as well as oil dependence reduce income inequality this inequality reducing effect is highly likely to operate from better education attainments and improved health status due to oil booms

estimating overall returns to international agricultural research in africa through benefit cost analysis a best evidence approach this study offers a best evidence approach to summarizing recent benefit cost analyses of international agricultural research in africa first from an extensive literature review and the resulting global inventory of impact studies 23 studies are identified that calculate aggregate rates of return for consultative group on international agricultural research cgiar and partner investments in sub saharan africa ssa these studies are then appraised against a review framework consisting of principles criteria and indicators for study rigor subsequently the economic benefits reported by studies grouped on the basis of its analytical rigor are aggregated and set against total investment by the cgiar and national agricultural research systems to determine if the total investment to date can be justified by documented benefits under a range of assumptions as a result the study finds that aggregate investment is justified under a fairly wide range of suppositions under all scenarios the vast majority of documented benefits stem from a relatively limited array of activities with a majority of benefits stemming from biological control 80 close to 20 of total benefits result from crop genetic improvement and less than 1 result from all other activities the implications of these results for research investment strategies in ssa and impact assessment are discussed

the economic aftermath of resource booms evidence from boomtowns in the american west the current us oil and gas boom is injecting labour capital and revenue into communities near reserves will these communities be cursed with lower long run incomes in the wake of the boom we study the oil boom and bust cycle of the 1970s and 1980s to gain insights using annual data on drilling to identify western boom and bust counties we find substantial positive local employment and income effects during the boom in the aftermath of the bust however we find that incomes per capita decreased and unemployment compensation payments increased relative to what they would have been if the boom had not occurred