a model of entry exit decisions and capacity choice under demand uncertainty abstract many investment decisions of agribusiness firms such as when to invest in an emerging market or whether to expand the capacity of the firm involve irreversible investment and uncertainty about demand cost or competition this paper uses an option value model to examine the factors affecting an agribusiness firm s decision whether and how much to invest in an emerging market under demand uncertainty demand uncertainty and irreversibility of investment make investment less desirable than the net present value npv rule indicates the inactive firm is more reluctant to enter the market when it takes into account demand uncertainty because it preserves the opportunity of making a better investment later the active firm is more reluctant to abandon the investment because there is an option value of keeping the operation alive there is a greater distance between the entry and exit thresholds under the option value approach than under the npv rule due to demand uncertainty the results have implications for agribusiness decision making

asymmetries in price and quantity adjustments by the competitive firm focusing on the crucial role of inventory carry overs in the production and sales decision we describe the profit maximizing behavior of a dynamic competitive firm facing random prices each firm s behavior is incorporated into a stochastic equilibrium model of the competitive industry with uncertain demand the industry model exhibits asymmetric cyclical fluctuations of the keynesian sort when demand is weak output contracts while price holds at a fixed floor when demand is strong price increases as output is constrained by a ceiling even in a pure world of constant returns without increasing costs the inability to instantaneously coordinate production and sales along with the existence of inventories is sufficient to yield a backward i shaped supply curve for the short run journal of economic literature classification numbers 020 021 022

institutions governance and incentives in common property regimes for african rangelands the general distinctions between open access state property common property and private property are now well established in the academic literature when applied to african rangelands however common property admits a wide variety of resource management regimes to formulate effective policies it is necessary to understand the structure and operations of particular regimes in this paper we discuss three examples of common property regimes two from the southern african nation of lesotho and one from the west african nation of senegal to illustrate some of the key characteristics of common property regimes in particular it is important to understand the structure of governance the types of institutions that govern behavior and the compatibility between governance institutions and individual incentives a common property regime can only be effective if its institutions are compatible with the structure of governance the extent of its effectiveness also depends upon the incentives and expectations of individuals expected to enforce the rules of the institutions or comply with their terms at present most african governments lack the organizational capacity and political will necessary to implement state property regimes official regulations on resource use or individual property rights for rangelands resources in many cases it is more appropriate for governments to define and enforce group rights to particular resources then help to establish conditions in which internal group dynamics yield efficient resource management outcomes

frontiers and sustainable economic development exploiting new resource frontiers such as agricultural land and mineral reserves is a fundamental feature of economic development in poor economies yet frontier based development is symptomatic of a pattern of economy wide resource exploitation in developing economies that a generates little additional economic rents and b what rents are generated are not being reinvested in other sectors such development is inherently unsustainable the following paper explains this phenomenon and provides evidence that long run expansion of agricultural land and oil and natural gas proved reserves across poor economies is associated with lower levels of real income per capita the paper proposes a frontier expansion hypothesis to explain why the structural economic dependence of these economies on frontier land expansion and resource exploitation is not conducive to sustained long run growth the key to sustainable economic development in poor economies will be improving the economic integration between frontier and other sectors of the economy targeting policies to improved resource management in frontier areas and overcoming problems of corruption and rent seeking in resource sectors

contracts delivery lags and currency risks abstract this paper presents a competitive model in which exchange rate uncertainty has real effects on how trade contracts are written and executed in this model exporting firms have an incentive to delay delivery on trade contracts whenever they can sell their products on the domestic market for a higher price than the domestic currency value of the price specified by the trade contracts in general it is costly for a firm to offer a credible commitment to the promised delivery date of a trade contract we demonstrate that under certain conditions a firm can costlessly commit to a policy of no delivery lags by the appropriate choice of the currency of denomination of trade contracts

incorporating stochastic variables in crop response models implications for fertilization decisions most crop decision models focus on output variation in response to nonstochastic inputs little attention has been given to the effects of stochastic factors on the input use decision a crop decision model is developed to examine the impact of soil moisture on the nitrogen fertilization decision the model is applied to 15 different soil and weather conditions for corn production in indiana based on estimated response functions the profit maximizing nitrogen application rate varies from 156 to 185 pounds of actual nitrogen n per acre we evaluate the expected economic losses arising from applying to one set of conditions a rate deemed optimal for another

targeted export promotion with several oligopolistic industries abstract we study export promotion policies in situations where several oligopolistic industries compete for the services of a sector specific factor of production the partial equilibrium argument for strategic subsidies must be modified to incorporate general equilibrium effects working through the factor market we find that these effects generally weaken the case for profit shifting subsidies in a benchmark case with symmetric exporting industries fixed coefficients technologies and an inelastic supply of the specific factor free trade is shown to be optimal

option values to conservation and agricultural price policy application to terrace construction in kenya policy reforms to liberalize agricultural markets in developing countries are likely to influence both the level and the variability of prices while considerable attention has been given to the impact of changes in price level on soil and water conservation there has been relatively little analysis of the role of price variability in conservation decisions we present a model of investment under uncertainty to analyze the effect of both level and variability of prices on the decision to invest in conservation the model is applied to adoption of fanya juu terraces in eastern kenya

traditional production communal land tenure and policies for environmental preservation in the south pacific abstract instead of maximizing the expected monetary return of land usage pacific islanders manage land so that it renders an optimal mix of cash income and non monetary cultural goods evidence from cropping patterns in fiji suggests that the production of these cultural goods is linked to traditional agriculture which produces less ecological deterioration than its commercial counterpart the capacity for village land to support traditional activities is highest under a regime of communal land tenure where decision making is centralized a regime of private land tenure lowers this capacity because decentralized decision making raises the coordination costs of preserving special areas of land for traditional purposes this means that if development planners rush to replace traditional regimes of communal land tenure with modern systems of private land ownership they might also observe a correlated increase in land degradation even if new codes of private property are perfectly enforceable a two sector growth model can be used to show that the welfare neutral bribe required from the government to increase the amount of village land preserved in the steady state is lower under a regime of communal land tenure one counterintuitive result is that a high subjective discount rate does not always imply a high level of environmental degradation observations from the south pacific have application for environmental policy in other developing countries

investment in site specific crop management under uncertainty implications for nitrogen pollution control and environmental policy this paper applies an option pricing model to analyze the impact of uncertainty about output prices and expectations of declining fixed costs on the optimal timing of investment in site specific crop management sscm it also analyzes the extent to which the level of spatial variability in soil conditions can mitigate the value of waiting to invest in sscm and influence the optimal timing of adoption and create a preference for custom hiring rather than owner purchase of equipment numerical simulations show that while the net present value npv rule predicts that immediate adoption is profitable under most of the soil conditions considered here recognition of the option value of investment indicates that it is preferable to delay investment in sscm for at least 3 years unless average soil quality is high and the variability in soil quality and fertility is high the use of the option value approach reveals that the value of waiting to invest in sscm raises the cost share subsidy rates required to induce immediate adoption above the levels indicated by the npv rule

offshore assembly provisions and the structure of protection abstract this paper derives the structure of protection afforded by tariffs that are subject to an offshore assembly provision oap the effects of an oap on the equilibrium price relationships are shown to depend on two sets of factors the amount of domestic consumption of the final good in relation to the level of output of the domestic component and assembly industries and the height of barriers to trade in the intermediate good compared to the tariff savings afforded by oap exemption of domestic value added an interesting result is that equilibrium under an oap scheme may entail two way trade in identical intermediate goods

household strategies and rural livelihood diversification this article reviews the recent literature on diversification as a livelihood strategy of rural households in developing countries with particular reference to sub saharan africa livelihood diversification is defined as the process by which rural families construct a diverse portfolio of activities and social support capabilities in order to survive and to improve their standards of living the determinants and effects of diversification in the areas of poverty income distribution farm output and gender are examined some policy inferences are summarised the conclusion is reached that removal of constraints to and expansion of opportunities for diversification are desirable policy objectives because they give individuals and households more capabilities to improve livelihood security and to raise living standards

indigenous land rights in sub saharan africa appropriation security and investment demand abstract we discuss the links between rights appropriation tenure security and investment demand in sub saharan africa common assertions regarding indigenous tenure are 1 a insecurity of tenure leads to suboptimal investment incentives and 2 b appropriation of land rights in the public domain is rent dissipating we argue that land use and investment decisions among african farmers often have two motives productivity and rights appropriation the usual assertions thus seem contradictory we offer a conceptual model to show that indigenous tenure may provide equal or higher investment incentives than private rights and may promote modes of rights appropriation that are productive rather than wasteful

a comparison of alternative crop response models three parsimonious models are hypothesized to represent com yield response to nitrogen and phosphorus each model imposes specific restrictions with regard to the elasticity of factor substitution and growth plateau nonnested hypothesis tests are used to evaluate the competing hypotheses the results support the restrictions imposed by the mitscherlich baule model for these data corn response is characterized by limited substitution between nitrogen and phosphorus and a growth plateau further the cost of using optimal input levels implied by the mitscherlich baule if it were not true is small relative to the other parsimonious forms and a translog approximation

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

us mexico employment effects of repealing the us offshore assembly provision the oaps are contributing to the actual displacement and impending displacement in the next few years of scores of thousands of unskilled and semi skilled factory production workers who are in the economy mainstream nathaniel goldfinger afl cio 1970 we believe that the only benefits derived from the existence of the oap are reached by transnational enterprises through increases in profits this however cannot offset the harm done to the thousands of american s whose livelihoods have been sacrificed in the pursuit of those profits mark anderson afl cio 1987 what my well intentioned but misinformed colleagues fail to realise is that without provisions like the oap products assembled in mexico would be 100 per cent made in asia the loss therefore would equal not only the jobs used in the assembly process in mexico but those used to manufacture the components produced here in the united states hon jim kolbe 1987 the employment effects of the offshore assembly provision oap are h

tariffs and growth in the late 19th century the paper estimates the correlation between tariffs and economic growth in the late 19th century in the context of three types of growth equation unconditional convergence equations conditional convergence equations and factor accumulation models it does so for a panel of ten countries between 1875 and 1914 tariffs were positively correlated with growth in these countries during this period economic theory is ambiguous as regards the relationship between trade policy and growth the growth literature of the past decade has produced an impressive array of models in which protection can either increase or reduce long run growth rates grossman and helpman 1991 rivera batiz and romer 1991 stokey 1991 young 1991 such theoretical ambiguity invites empirical research while new growth theory is ambiguous on the subject the new empirical growth literature has produced a consensus that free trade is positively associated with growth based on evidence from the late 20th century but see rodrlguez and rodrik 1999 for a sceptical review of the literature the clear

structural change power politics and community organizations in africa challenging the patterns puzzles and paradoxes abstract this paper explores two phenomena shaping processes of local institutional and organizational change in rural africa the first is the complexity of institutional layering and dissonance in which local organizations and institutions in rural africa coexist the second is the paradox often found in state local relations in africa central governments encourage local communities to take on responsibilities which the center cannot manage should significant organizational strength emerge at the local level however central powers often move expeditiously to destroy it illustrative material comes primarily from kenya and zimbabwe and selectively from several other countries we ask what new structures are emerging and what old ones are being adapted to new functions we argue that local organizations are critical for addressing ecological decline and restoring the productivity and sustainability of rural africa both localities and national governments have much to gain if the capacities of local organizations can become themselves a valued resource in the resource scarce setting comprising much of rural africa

protection for maturing industries evidence from canadian trade patterns and trade policy 1870 1913 as industries mature experience is accumulated productivity increases trade performance improves on domestic and international markets and learning potential dissipates using theory consistent empirical specifications i find a strong robust negative relationship linking tariff rates to trade performance for manufactured products that matured during the first decade after canada prioritized protectionist policy objectives in 1879 this relationship also holds at a more aggregate industry level where i can use other measures of maturity control for import penetration use historically contemporaneous trade elasticity estimates link trade performance to trade restrictiveness and effective rates of protection and where i can instrument for import penetration and trade performance using a two stage iv gmm estimation approach the results suggest that after 1890 the canadian government carefully cut tariffs on products produced by maturing canadian producers and this retreat from protectionism significantly lowered the static deadweight losses resulting from canadian trade policy during the post 1890 period protection des industries en phase de maturite illustration par les modeles commerciaux et les politiques commerciales du canada entre 1870 et 1913 a mesure que les industries gagnent en maturite l experience s accumule la productivite croit les performances commerciales s ameliorent sur les marches nationaux et internationaux et le potentiel d apprentissage se dissipe a l aide de modeles empiriques conformes a cette theorie j ai degage une relation negative robuste entre les droits tarifaires et les performances commerciales pour les produits manufactures arrives a maturite au cours de la premiere decennie suivant la decision du canada de prioriser les objectifs de politique protectionniste en 1879 cette correlation est egalement valable a un niveau industriel plus general dans le cadre duquel il est possible d utiliser d autres mesures d evaluation de la maturite de controler la penetration des importations d utiliser des estimations historiquement contemporaines relatives a l elasticite des echanges de correler les performances commerciales aux restrictions des echanges et aux taux de protection effectifs et ou il est egalement possible de mesurer la penetration des importations et les performances commerciales gr ce a une approche estimative en deux etapes iv gmm les resultats suggerent qu apres 1890 le gouvernement canadien a pris soin de diminuer les droits tarifaires sur les produits fabriques par des entreprises canadiennes en phase de maturite et que ce renoncement au protectionnisme diminua significativement les pertes de poids mort statiques resultant des politiques commerciales du canada posterieures a 1890

economic feasibility of variable rate technology for nitrogen on corn the economic feasibility of three different fertilizer management strategies constant rate three rate and multiple rate technology in the application of nitrogen fertilizer to corn are compared under different probability distributions for field fertility a constant rate was more profitable than either variable rate technology system for homogeneous fields with low fertility the application area at which the relative profitability between systems changed was largely determined by the characteristics of the fertility distribution rather than by assumptions regarding costs variable rate technology improves groundwater quality in low fertility fields by reducing total fertilizer applied and in high fertility fields by increasing corn yield

the narrow moving band the dutch disease and the competitive consequences of mrs thatcher notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies abstract this paper presents a model of trade in which comparative advantage instead of being determined by underlying attributes of countries evolves over time through learning by doing in this model arbitrary patterns of specialization once established tend to become entrenched over time the model sheds light on three widely held views that do not make sense in more conventional models first is the view that temporary protection of selected sectors can permanently alter the pattern of comparative advantage in the protecting country s favor second is the view that seemingly favorable developments such as the discovery of exportable natural resources may lead to a permanent loss of other sectors and reduce welfare in the long run third is the possibility that a temporary overvaluation of a currency due to tight money can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness in some sectors

accounting for price changes american steel rails 1879 1910 a framework is developed for decomposing product price changes into changes in input prices technical efficiency and deviations of price from unit cost this framework facilitates the measurement of productivity growth in noncompetitive industries the history of american steel rail prices between 1879 and 1910 is analyzed and it is concluded in contrast with much recent work that productivity growth remained rapid until the twentieth century and that the steel industry was sufficiently collusive so that the rail producers received the benefits of that productivity growth as excess profits

technology adoption decisions under irreversibility and uncertainty an ex ante appproach empirical results demonstrate that uncertainty about costs and requirements for environmental compliance is an important determinant of dairy producers investment behavior ex ante forecasting of how uncertainty and irreversibility are likely to affect producers responsiveness to agricultural technologies has implications for the design of environmental policies simulation modeling methods are described the empirical analysis focuses on texas producers propensity to adopt free stall dairy housing free stall investments offer advantages for both productivity augmentation and pollution abatement yet uncertainty and irreversibility are obstacles to adoption implications of this ex ante paradigm for policy design and implementation are discussed

fuelwood subsistence foraging and the decline of common property abstract ideally common property can adapt to particularities in the social and physical environment to create environmentally sustainable regimes in practice common fuelwood foraging has been subject to numerous problems intimately linked to the historically changing role of common property schematic histories of fuelwood and forests in europe and java illustrate how common property systems have been undermined and the different implications their dissolution can have both cases indicate that fuelwood problems may be best interpreted within the rubric of subsistence foraging and the decline of common property rather than that of energy shortage and tree mismanagement

the structure of a contract and the theory of a non exclusive resource the process of arriving at a useful concept of analysis is not only slow and painful but also may go astray and attain nothing useful someone begins with one example or observation followed by a theory which is intuitively plausible a theoretical term associated with a vague concept is coined examples of a seemingly different type emerge which call for another theory the process goes on as examples and theories continue to accumulate the different categories under the same heading of analysis serve only to confuse and each associated theory becomes ad hoc such has been the fate of the concept of externality a more useful approach i think is via contractual conditions the example chosen for illustration is marine fisheries where the fishing right is taken

learning by doing export subsidies and industry growth japanese steel in the 1950s and 1960s abstract the paper examines the japanese steel industry to evaluate the role of export subsidy policies export subsidies can be instrumental in increasing an industry s cost competitiveness in the presence of learning by doing a characteristic of production in the steel industry using a dynamic estimation model this paper identifies a significant learning rate of above 20 with little intra industry knowledge spillover simulations made with the model indicate that the subsidy policy had an insignificant impact on industry growth the paper finds that the export subsidy had a small effect in stimulating industry growth because the estimated steel supply function was relatively inelastic

emission permit banking pollution abatement and production inventory control of the firm abstract in this paper we present a dynamic model modified with emission permit banking and pollution abatement and investigate the effect of emission permit banking and pollution abatement on the production inventory strategy of the firm after introducing emission permit banking and pollution abatement the cost function consists of the inventory holding and production costs the cost of investment in abatement capital goods and the emission procurement selling cost furthermore the inventory holding costs are linear production costs are non decreasing and convex functions of the production level and the costs of investment in abatement capital goods are increasing and convex functions of the investment level we compare the optimal production inventory strategy before emission permit banking and pollution abatement and thereafter the mathematical investigation is based on the arrow karlin model

the management of common property resources collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources many writers on collective action and common property are sweepingly pessimistic about the ability of the people who face problems of common property to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves this paper shows with reference to prisoners dilemma garett hardin s tragedy of the commons and mancur olson s logic of collective action that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak in many situations of village based common property resource use there can thus be no general presumption that the collective action route to common property resource management will fail any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work the paper suggests a number of general factors to do with the characteristics of the resources the user group and group state relations on which chances of success depend

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

when and how should infant industries be protected abstract this paper develops and analyzes a welfare maximizing model of infant industry protection the domestic infant industry is competitive and experiences dynamic learning effects that are external to firms the competitive foreign industry is mature and produces a good that is an imperfect substitute for the domestic good a government planner can protect the infant industry using domestic production subsidies tariffs or quotas in order to maximize domestic welfare over time as protection is not always optimal although the domestic industry experiences a learning externality the paper shows how the decision to protect the industry should depend on the industry s learning potential the shape of the learning curve and the degree of substitutability between domestic and foreign goods assuming some reasonable restrictions on the flexibility over time of the policy instruments the paper subsequently compares the effectiveness of the different instruments given such restrictions the paper shows that quotas induce higher welfare levels than tariffs in some cases the dominance of the quota is so pronounced that it compensates for any amount of government revenue loss related to the administration of the quota including the case of a voluntary export restraint where no revenue is collected in similar cases the quota may even be preferred to a domestic production subsidy

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

market potential and the rise of us productivity leadership abstract today s globalization driven by lower barriers to trade has increased market potential for many nations and led to gains in gdp per capita we test whether this was true in the first wave of globalization by constructing market potential measures for a sample of 27 countries in 1900 and 1910 based on a general equilibrium model of production and trade cross sectional estimates suggest that market potential was an economically significant determinant of gdp per capita at this time to assess welfare effects we then study the general equilibrium impact of raising market potential by eliminating international borders in a quantitative counterfactual calculation for 1900 there are significant gains in real income per capita for all nations we use us per capita output as a benchmark since it attained leadership in this variable from the late 19th century and the literature frequently attributes this to its relatively large domestic market a market unconstrained by trade costs associated with international borders because market potential was already near that of the us the largest european countries do not entirely close their per capita income gaps with the us after removing all border barriers to trade within europe or even globally on the other hand many small european countries could have done so

russia s commercial policy 2008 11 modernization crisis and the wto accession this paper examines the commercial policy of russia during 2008 11 a time of global financial crisis which coincided with an announced russian modernization programme in 2008 russia introduced a development strategy to limit its dependence on natural resources however the government relied heavily on this income for the planned modernization programme the falling price of oil in 2008 9 led to a tightened government budget constraint this situation induced russia towards wider use of more traditional instruments of trade policy such as tariff policy as well as an import substitution strategy the creation of the customs union and a pause in the wto accession process russia has been found by the global trade alert gta initiative to be one of the main users of protectionist policies since november 2008 with the oil price recovery from september 2010 russia had been back in the wto accession process on revised terms and conditions the wto ministerial conference in geneva approved the accession package of the russian federation on 16 december 2011 copyright 2012 oxford university press

the price differential between domestic and imported steel abstract in most years since the late 1950 s the price of imported steel has been below the domestic price this low import price has been a recurrent worry to steel workers and producers who fear that imports will force domestic mills out of business little help is expected from buyer loyalty to american steel steel is steel and the buyer need only find the cheapest source the concerns of the steel producers and workers seem at first well founded in economic theory two products which substitute perfectly in use simply cannot sell at different prices either the higher price will fall to meet the competition or production of the higher priced one will stop but the production of domestic steel has not stopped even though domestic producers have lost some ground to imports since the late 1950 s when imports first became low priced the demand for imports has grown steadily and sometimes suddenly as in 1968 still the amazing story is not that imports have grown swiftly but that they have grown slowly in 1962 imports had 6 percent of the u s market in 1976 14 years later they had 14 percent so each year on the average imports have increased their share of the market by less than one percent author

can real option values explain apparent storage at a loss since decisions to sell grain are irreversible waiting to sell grain can have a real option value this real option value may explain why producers appear to store too long a new seasonal mean reversion model is estimated that allows prices to be a random walk with drift within a season but mean reverting across crop years unless prices are extremely low selling before mean reversion begins is optimal thus the real option value of waiting does not explain why some producers seem to store at a loss in the latter part of crop years

testing for common versus private property comment abstract conceptual confusion over common property persists in the literature an attempt by clark and carlson to test for common property versus private property is flawed by their misspecification of common property they test instead for private property versus nonproperty open access

the welfare effects of repealing the u s offshore assembly provision abstract this paper develops new estimates of the welfare and domestic production effects of repealing the us offshore assembly provision oap although the controversy surrounding the oap has recently intensified the only such estimates of repealing the oap weredeveloped by finger 1976 the estimates are developed by applying a partial equilibrium trade model of a two stage production process to nineteen productct categories in which oap trade was important in 1986 the paper find that repael of the oap reduces domestic welfare however the effects are small and almost negligible in percentage terms the important effects of repeal are distributional

stochastic technology risk preferences and adoption of site specific technologies a model of farmer decision making is developed to determine the extent to which uncertainties about soil fertility and weather affect the value of site specific technologies ssts using jointly estimated risk and technology parameters uncertainty can lead risk averse farmers to apply more fertilizers and generate more pollution than in the certainty case ignoring uncertainty and risk aversion would overestimate the economic and environmental benefits of ssts and underestimate the subsidy required to induce adoption accounting for uncertainties and risk preferences might explain the low observed adoption rates of ssts improving the accuracy of ssts would increase the incentives for adoption

property relations and economic development the other land reform abstract continued concern for development has led to the suggestion that private property rights should be created to stimulate economic development this suggestion derives from an incomplete understanding of the property relations on the public domain lands in the arid tropics and from a confusion of cause and effect between property and economic productivity a model of the private public boundary in land is developed that challenges the view that wealth would increase if land at the extensive margin were privatized the various types of property regimes in land are defined and explained

infant industry protection in the steel rail industry abstract this paper examines a particular instance of infant industry protection the case of the u s steel rail industry it analyzes the joint roles of learning by doing changing resource endowments and tariff protection in the emergence of this industry making use of estimated demand and cost parameters the paper simulates what would have happened to prices production and welfare under free trade i calculate that despite strong learning effects the steel rail tariff hurt rail users in both the short and long runs the tariff s overall effect on welfare was positive but fairly small

the volatility of offshore investment abstract offshore investment often bears the image of footloose industry with little to hinder movement to the most favorable environment an effort to describe this particular segment of u s direct investment supports some elements of the colorful anecdotal portrait painted by critics in the third world semiconductor assemblers are moderately sensitive to wage rates and adjust quite rapidly in maintaining what they perceive as a diversified portfolio of risky ldc production locations on the other hand this reaction is small enough to guarantee that modest increases in wages will not send all investment fleeing from an export platform new methods of modelling direct foreign investment when risk diversification is important in explaining industrial location decisions are introduced in this paper

understanding community benefit payments from renewable energy development abstract it is increasingly common for renewable energy projects to make financial or in kind payments to local communities these arrangements are variously described as benefits payments or compensation schemes similar approaches are now being recommended for other forms of development with potential to engender opposition from local communities e g nuclear power and fracking while such payments are common the level of payment the institutional frameworks involved and the nature of discourse varies greatly existing literature has sought to record rather than explain the diversity of arrangements to a large extent this diversity is rooted in the power dynamic between developer and community three uk case studies are used to highlight the diversity of arrangements meanings and power balances within benefits arrangements finally a typology is developed to illustrate the spectrum of potential arrangements this typology gives insight into why various arrangements emerge in response to their specific contexts

environmental sustainability as the first principle of distributive justice towards an ecological communitarian normative foundation for ecological economics abstract the ecological economic concern with environmental sustainability embodies the normative orientations of the field this concern is foremost a matter of distributive justice the definition of which determines the relevance of the appropriate scale and efficient allocation criteria yet it would appear that the discipline lacks a shared internally consistent set of ethical premises by which this concern might be legitimized various authors have embraced a rawlsian conception of liberal justice as the appropriate banner for ecological economics in place of the consequentialist libertarian foundations of neoclassical economics including environmental economics it is argued here that this is insufficient in so far as it is premised on a vision of a discrete self sufficient economic actor instead it is posited that an ecological economic ethic must proceed from an understanding of the economic actor as community member a recognition implicit in recent ecological economic contributions focused on discourse ethics and deliberative democracy an ecological communitarian conception of distributive justice which views the well being of the individual as inseparable from the integrity of its implicate mutually constituting human and non human natural communities is advanced as the appropriate basis for the ecological economic world view in this light the thermodynamic foundations of ecological economics are seen to provide the necessary departure point for normative decision making oriented towards ensuring sustainability in economic organization

state led land reform and local institutional change land titles land markets and tenure security in mexican communities summary this article focuses on the interactions between state and community mechanisms in the design and delivery of a titling program and a land market reform in rural mexico whereas the titling program did provide a greater sense of tenure security among landholders legalizing transactions has unexpectedly generated an informal land market resulting in tenure insecurity for the corresponding buyers these contrasting outcomes are not a matter of technical failure unaffordable fees or rent seeking rather they can be traced back to differentiated processes of policy delivery by the administration officials with regard to acknowledging prevailing local institutions and managing local information

ejido reforms in mexico conceptual issues and potential outcomes the evolving privatization of the ejido system in mexico represents a challenge to standard economic models of common property regimes these models tend to emphasize human interrelations while discounting the ecological conditions which form the environment for human interactions a risk spreading safety first model capturing interrelationships between nature and humans is developed to analyze the potential implications of mexico s privatization efforts recognizing that the majority of ejido lands are communal not parcelized located primarily in arid areas the model supports the prediction that privatization will occur and be most successful on irrigated ejido lands with modern social and economic infrastructure

temporary protection and technology adoption evidence from the napoleonic blockade this paper uses a natural experiment to assess whether temporary protection from trade with industrial leaders can foster development of infant industries in follower countries using a new dataset compiled from primary sources i find that in the short run regions departements in the french empire which became better protected from trade with the british for exogenous reasons during the napoleonic wars 1803 15 increased capacity in a new technology mechanised cotton spinning to a larger extent than regions which remained more exposed to trade temporary protection had long term effects in particular by exploiting the fact that the post war location of the cotton industry was determined to a large extent by the historical accident of the wars i first show that the location of cotton spinning within france was persistent and firms located in regions with higher post war spinning capacity were more productive 30 years later second i find that after the restoration of peace exports of cotton goods from france increased substantially consistent with evolving comparative advantage in cottons third i show that as late as 1850 france and belgium both part of the french empire prior to 1815 had larger cotton spinning industries than other continental european countries which were not protected from british trade during the wars this suggests that adoption of the new technology was far from inevitable