decision maker preferences for international legal cooperation why do some decision makers prefer big multilateral agreements while others prefer cooperation in small clubs does enforcement encourage or deter institutional cooperation we use experiments drawn from behavioral economics and cognitive psychology along with a substantive survey focused on international trade to illustrate how two behavioral traits patience and strategic reasoning of individuals who play key roles in negotiating and ratifying an international treaty shape their preferences for how treaties are designed and whether they are ratified patient subjects were more likely to prefer treaties with larger numbers of countries and larger long term benefits as were subjects with the skill to anticipate how others will respond over multiple iterations of strategic games the presence of an enforcement mechanism increased subjects willingness to ratify treaties however strategic reasoning had double the effect of adding enforcement to a trade agreement more strategic subjects were particularly likely to favor ratifying the agreement we report these results for a sample of 509 university students and also show how similar patterns are revealed in a unique sample of ninety two actual us policy elites under some conditions certain types of university student convenience samples can be useful for revealing elite dominated policy preferences different types of people in the same situation may prefer to approach decision making tasks and reason through trade offs in materially different ways

statistical efficiency of double bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation the statistical efficiency of conventional dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys can be improved by asking each respondent a second dichotomous choice question which depends on the response to the first question if the first response is yes the second bid is some amount greater than the first bid while if the first response is no the second bid is some amount smaller this double bounded approach is shown to be asymptotically more efficient than the conventional singlebounded approach using data from a survey of californians regarding their willingness to pay for wetlands in the san joaquin valley we show that in a finite sample the gain in efficiency can be very substantial

less filling tastes great the realist neoliberal debate this essay examines and reformulates the realist neoliberal debate focusing initially on the issue of the attribution of goals to states we argue that not only are goals merely the epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes but a re description of strategic environments that is although an attribution of goals may contribute to our characterization of outcomes a discussion of them is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts the outbreak of conflict and the patterns of cooperation instead we argue that the realist neoliberal debate should be recast so that our central research agenda is the development of substantively specific models that allow us to ascertain how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue specific subgames states play how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types how we can characterize the coordination problems associated with different equilibria how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium

corporate unity in american trade policy a network analysis of corporate dyad political action this essay examines factors that produce political unity among large u s corporations advocating free trade expanding on old debates these data and analyses validate the importance of organizational and class cohesion approaches to corporate political action methodologically the political unity of pairs dyads of firms in trade policy activism is analyzed with quadratic assignment procedure regression shared membership in prominent policy networks and board interlocks positively predict corporate political unity across three areas of trade policy influence from the executive branch to the legislature non network organizational indicators also significantly predicted corporate trade policy activism the findings support business unity accounts of corporate political action and suggest that higher levels of firm embeddedness within intercorporate networks facilitate collective corporate political action

a noncooperative analysis of hotelling s location game abstract we study the location equilibrium in hotelling s model of spatial competition as d aspremont et al have shown with quadratic consumer transportation cost the two sellers will seek to move as far away from each other as possible we show that the location game possesses an infinity of mixed strategy nash equilibria in these equilibria coordination failure invalidates the principle of maximum differentiation and firms may even locate at the same point journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43 l11

price matching policy and the principle of minimum differentiation this paper shows that if duopolists are allowed to choose their product locations a price matching policy and their prices sequentially and independently both tacit collusion and minimum differentiation occur copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

a bayesian model for benefit transfer application to national parks in spain valuing environmental goods through benefit transfer is based on information from the set of past empirical studies of similar or identical sites this paper proposes a bayesian approach to model prior information on mean consumer surplus the prior distribution is defined as a convex combination of the results from past empirical studies an advantage of the bayesian approach is that the prior distribution could be combined with on site sample information in order to improve predictions on the benefits of the policy site the model is applied to data from national parks in spain the results show that the benefits of policy sites are more sensitive to the prior information for smaller sample sizes this implies that the prior distribution can be seen as a substitute for on site sample information

the gains debate framing state choice the theoretical bifurcation of international relations theory into neo realist and neo liberal camps has resulted in a gains debate that says little about an empirical world in which states exhibit both relative and absolute gains pursuit this article deploys prospect theory in an attempt to move beyond the gains debate the intent here is synthetic by bringing the predictions of both perspectives under a single theoretical umbrella we can model a broader set of state behavior the thesis developed demonstrates that states in a gains frame pursue absolute gains and are risk averse while states in a losses frame pursue relative gains and are risk acceptant this hypothesis is assessed against the behavior of the european community in the formation of the montreal protocol a regime intended to protect the earth s protective ozone shield the new model accurately predicts the timing and content of shifts in ec preferences suggesting that a synthesis of realist and liberal approaches is possible

resisting the protectionist temptation industry and the making of trade policy in france and the united states during the 1970s why were advanced industrial states able to keep their economies relatively open to foreign trade in the 1970s and the early 1980s despite declining u s hegemony and increasing economic difficulties this article argues that an international level change affected domestic trade politics and contributed to the maintenance of a liberal trading system examining the united states and france the argument proceeds in two steps showing first how domestic trade politics were changed and second how this change affected the policy process initially i argue that aspects of the increased international economic interdependence of the postwar period altered domestic trade politics by creating new anti protectionist preferences among certain firms firms with extensive international ties through exports multinational production and global intra firm trade have come to oppose protectionism since it is very costly for them evidence for these new preferences was apparent among both american and french industries despite different contexts firms in the two countries reacted similarly to the growth of interdependence next i ask whether firms preferences affected trade policy outcomes and show how these preferences were integrated into the policy process in both countries trade policy structures in neither country prevented firms preferences from affecting the policies adopted even in france a so called strong state firms preferences were a key influence on policy in the trade policy area then the french and american states did not appear to differ greatly in their susceptibility to industry influence even though their policy processes were different

a bayesian approach to double bounded contingent valuation in this paper we propose a bayesian approach to model double bounded contingent valuation data the double bounded elicitation method is interpreted as a two tier iterated process in which the subject is allowed to have a second thought about his her valuation for the environmental good prior information is modelled from the answers to the first dichotomous choice question the model is quasi bayesian q b in that the prior distribution refers to mean willingness to pay while the likelihood function refers to the proportions of a multinomial distribution this model is applied to empirical data from a contingent valuation survey involving the valuation expressed by european tourists for access to natural areas in the canary islands results show that point estimate of consumer surplus computed with the q b model does not differ substantially from single bounded model estimation in addition double bounded seems to be quite robust to the choice of the prior model of willingness to pay responses comparison with open ended suggests that the q b model might be useful to control for strategic response and starting point biases

testing theories of regime change hegemonic decline or surplus capacity two theories explain changes in the international regimes for major economic sectors a theory of hegemonic stability explains sectoral change as a consequence of ebbing hegemony a theory of surplus capacity attributes regime shifts to a serious global problem with excess production capacity in the sector the history of the world automobile industry shows that surplus capacity offers the better prediction and explanation for the timing of regime changes however a synthesis of the two theories is even more satisfactory hegemonic decline is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change surplus capacity in the absence of a hegemon creates the conditions necessary for change

the concentration of capabilities and international trade over the course of the previous two decades political scientists have become increasingly interested in the relationship between international politics and global trade much of the literature on this topic centers on the effects of a hegemonic distribution of power on commerce hegemonic stability theorists argue that hegemony is a necessary condition for the existence of a liberal economic order and that in the absence of a hegemon a liberal international economy is particularly difficult to establish and maintain however a growing number of theoretical and empirical critiques have been leveled against the gemonic stability theory and the issue of whether hegemony helps shape patterns of global trade continues to be the topic of heated debate

testing choice experiment for benefit transfer with preference heterogeneity benefit transfer is a cost effective method for estimating the value of environmental goods that relies on information obtained in previous studies the multiattribute approach of choice experiments should provide advantages in terms of benefit transfer allowing differences in environmental improvements between sites as well as differences in socioeconomic and attitude characteristics between respondent populations this article investigates the capability of choice experiment method to be used in environmental benefit transfer when a random parameters approach is used to allow for preference heterogeneity we find that the inclusion of respondents taste heterogeneity reduces the magnitude of the transfer error

asymmetric equilibria in spatial competition abstract the main purpose of this paper is to study the impact of consumer concentration around the market center on the equilibrium locations of location price games in the case of symmetric triangular density it is shown that no symmetric equilibrium exists however we demonstrate the existence of asymmetric equilibria in pure strategies these equilibria are also characterized our secondary purpose is to study the sequential entry of two firms when the location space is not restricted to the market space this leads us to uncover a substantial first mover advantage which has been neglected in the literature

when misperception matters this essay is an analysis of the implications of misperception the inaccurate assessment by one actor of the other actor s preferences in international relations the author finds that misperception cannot affect the choice of an actor with a dominant strategy although it can affect that actor s expectations as long as both actors are self interested and seek to maximize their own payoffs misperception creates conflict only in a narrowly circumscribed range of situations and even then the misperceived actor has no incentive to mask its true preferences an actor who deceives does so in order to facilitate coordination through the other s misperception of its preferences and thus to avoid conflict not to create it three possible outcomes can occur when both actors misperceive and in only one of the three does misperception cause conflict that would otherwise be avoidable in a formal analysis of the limited set of situations that characterize international crises misperception is found neither to create conflict nor to lead to the escalation of crisis into war

the competitive effects of price floors using hotelling s model of locational competition we show that a moderate price floor destroys the maximal differentiation equilibrium resulting in minimum differentiation equilibrium prices are lower than prices in the absence of a floor a low price floor can lead to multiple equilibria with both minimum and maximum differentiation as possible outcomes

coordination and collaboration regimes in an anarchic world the study of regimes can contribute to our understanding of international politics only if regimes represent more than international organizations and less than all international relations the conceptualization of regimes developed here accepts the realist image of international politics in which autonomous self interested states interact in an anarchic environment yet there are situations in which rational actors have an incentive to eschew unconstrained independent decision making situations in which individualistic self interested calculation leads them to prefer joint decision making regimes because independent self interested behavior can result in undesirable or suboptimal outcomes these situations are labeled dilemmas of common interests and dilemmas of common aversions to deal with these states must collaborate with one another or coordinate their behavior respectively thus there are different bases for regimes which give rise to regimes with different characteristics coordination is self enforcing and can be reached through the use of conventions collaboration is more formalized and requires mechanisms both to monitor potential cheating and to insure compliance with the regime the article elucidates the assumptions of such an interest based approach to regimes assimilates alternative explanations into this framework and develops the implications for regime maintenance and change

growth waves systemic openness and protectionism there is a distinctively repetitive quality about trade policy problems domestic economic growth slows producers seek protection against foreign competitors and national decision makers raise barriers to trade while at the same time criticizing their counterparts in other governments for engaging in similar practices because trade is one of the more important topics in international and comparative political economy and because this scenario has played itself out more than a few times it is not surprising that a number of theorists have sought to model the underlying processes thought to produce movements toward and away from protectionism by now a variety of different types of approaches ranging from the cognitive to the systemic have been tried systemic structure ideas and ideology surplus capacity business cycles and shifts in elite orientation and domestic coalitions in response to external crises have been emphasized as principal theoretical foci our position is that the different levels of analysis and alternative foci all have merit and utility what they lack is an appreciation for the underlying systemic processes that link together these various facets of the political economy we seek to develop a theoretical argument that explicates these underlying processes the argument centers on recurring growth waves characterized in alternating pattern by the ascent of system leaders and the subsequent successful attempt of technological followers to catch up with the leaders the downturns of the growth waves produce conditions favoring protectionism but we contend the form and the intensity of protectionism that are likely to be produced will depend on which of the two types of growth waves is in progress ascent waves are characterized by the emergence of new technological leaders and a consequent increase in the gap between the leaders and the technological followers during the periods of structural transition and intense

international human rights a regime analysis after laying out a typology of international regimes eight international and regional human rights regimes are analyzed in order to 1 examine the utility of regime analysis in noneconomic issue areas and 2 assess the nature extent and evolution of international cooperation on human rights there has been a remarkable growth of international action since 1945 when human rights were not even widely accepted as a legitimate issue area this growth can be explained largely by expanding perceptions of moral interdependence and community increased national commitment the growing ideological appeal of human rights and changes in the distributions of international power these same factors however suggest only limited future growth on a broader theoretical plane the case of human rights suggests a significant if limited and principally heuristic utility for regime analysis especially to the extent that international relations is becoming increasingly concerned with specific issues

meta analysis and benefit transfer for resource valuation addressing classical challenges with bayesian modeling abstract the use of meta regression models based on existing studies to estimate the value of resources at a new policy site has become a popular alternative to collecting original data in recent years there are two prevalent dilemmas associated with classical meta regression models the difference in the available set of regressors across source studies and the treatment of methodological explanatory variables in the construction of benefit transfer functions in this study we illustrate how these issues can be addressed efficiently within a bayesian meta regression framework we find that the bayesian model in contrast to its classical counterpart can estimate a relatively large set of parameters including indicators of unobserved study heterogeneity with reasonable accuracy even when the underlying meta sample is small the incorporation of information from regressor deficient source data in the specification of bayesian priors leads to a better model fit and tighter welfare estimates for benefit transfer in our application of freshwater angling

cooperation in the liberalization of international trade after hegemony what nations dwell in perpetual anarchy for no central authority imposes limits on the pursuits of sovereign interests because as states they cannot cede ultimate control over their conduct to an supranational sovereign they cannot guarantee that they will adhere to their promises the possibility of a breach of promise can impede cooperation even when cooperation would leave all better off yet at other times states do realize common goals through cooperation under anarchy

bargaining enforcement and international cooperation neoliberals and their neorealist critics have debated the relative importance of two main obstacles to international cooperation problems of cheating and enforcement and problems of relative gains by contrast i argue that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third distinct obstacle plays a crucial role almost regardless of the issue area states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement furthermore the bargaining and enforcement problems interact using a game model i show that if states must bargain to determine the deal to be enforced the shadow of the future cuts two ways a high expectation of continued interactions may make enforcing the agreement easier but it can also give states an incentive to bargain harder delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better deal empirical evidence from trade and arms control negotiations suggests that this mechanism may help to explain the costly standoffs that are often observed in international politics and are problematic for received neoliberal theories

design in context existing international agreements and new cooperation this research note highlights an important element missing from rational design theories of international agreements institutional context the presence or absence of existing and prior agreements between prospective partners in new cooperation if as rational design theorists argue agreement design is deliberate strategic and directed toward enhancing contracting parties ability to credibly commit to future cooperation then prior design successes should influence the terms of additional cooperation we test for this omitted variable problem in three agreement design outcomes ex ante limitations on agreement duration exit clauses and dispute settlement provisions through an augmentation and reanalysis of data from a key study in the rational design literature barbara koremenos s contracting around international uncertainty we show institutional context is positively correlated with inclusion of ex ante time limitations in negotiated agreements and negatively correlated with the inclusion of exit clauses and third party dispute settlement provisions institutional context also mediates and conditions the effects of the explanatory variable at the heart of existing rational design theories uncertainty about the future distribution of gains from cooperation our findings show that the collective appeal of particular design features varies not only with the nature of underlying strategic problems but also with degrees of shared institutional context

trade gaps analytical gaps regime analysis and international commodity trade regulation studies of international regimes have sought to describe international collaborative arrangements in more systematic terms than in the past and to analyze their development in terms of major schools of international relations theory this article refines the commonly used definition of regimes and elucidates the major hypotheses of one theoretical school structural realism the strength and nature of the international commodity trade regime are systematically described and their development is analyzed in terms of the major hypotheses of structural realism in large part these hypotheses are supported by the analysis of what is a relatively weak international regime

automobiles in international trade regime change or persistence the concept of a regime is frequently used to describe and explain behavior in international political economy peter cowhey and edward long attempting to test theories of surplus capacity and hegemonic decline advanced a version of a regime governing international trade in automobiles which was fundamentally liberal from 1966 to 1975 but then collapsed into protectionism their diagnosis is mistaken however because the trade regime for autos was neither as liberal as they assert during the 1950s and 1960s nor as protectionist as they believe it has become in the 1980s the discussion focuses on a new definition of the auto trade regime based on four fundamental rules that have persisted since the 1950s by examining data on auto imports since 1955 on a region by region basis it becomes clear that the trade expansion of the postwar years was not based on a global liberalization of the trade regime but on carefully managed regional arrangements that favored imports within the region or extra regional imports that did not threaten domestic producers the flurry of restraints on japanese imports in recent years is not a collapse into protectionism but a reinforcement of the fundamental regime rules the auto industry case illustrates the tendency of analysts to underestimate protectionist elements in industry trade regimes and to overestimate the amount of changes that take place in their fundamental rules

the international organization of third world debt third world debt grew very rapidly in the 1970s many states faced with sharply higher costs for energy and manufactured imports borrowed aggressively in unregulated offshore capital markets but what constrains sovereign states to repay this debt to commercial banks creditors do not turn to their home states to enforce payment rather the supervision of sovereign debt is largely a function of commercial banking arrangements especially lenders syndicates and the international monetary fund s conditional lending this political structure which involves unified private sanctions has ensured that no state defaults unless it is insolvent or is willing to accept a radical rupture in its international commercial relationships when the problem is insolvency creditors routinely convene ad hoc conferences in conjunction with an imfapproved stabilization program creditors can renegotiate debt service schedules and provide new financing if necessary these arrangements are distinctive among international economic regimes because they rely on nonstate actors as the primary source of rules norms and procedures

potential contributions of political science to environmental economics while political science has much to offer at least some of its contributions might be difficult to incorporate into economic models nevertheless we argue that environmental economics might benefit from supplementing combining or sometimes even replacing the rational choice approach with other approaches commonly used in political science we develop our argument by examining three core components of political science analysis ideas power and institutions for each component we review political science approaches and propositions with a view to determining what s in it for environmental economics

the unraveling of the multi fiber arrangement 1981 an examination of international regime change as competition between newly industrializing and advanced industrialized countries has increased trade protection has become a key issue in textile and apparel trade international regimes to regulate trade intervention have existed since the early 1960s the 1981 renewal of the multi fiber arrangement poses two puzzles first why did countries choose to continue to manage conflict through an international regime rather than through some other arrangement second why did the regime become weaker and more protectionist than in the past an international structure approach suggests that regimes are wanted to prevent arrangements in larger systems from being undermined to control the behavior of other countries and to reduce information costs variation in regime strength can be explained by asymmetry in the distribution of capabilities in various systems the nature of the regime is influenced by changes in international competition and by nesting a domestic structure approach on the other hand focuses on the relationships between state and societal groups the commission and member states in the case of the eec the relative strength of groups affects national policies and the development and characteristics of regimes a processtracing examination of international textile negotiations emphasizing the response of decision makers to structural constraints and incentives allows us to ascertain the relative influence of international and domestic structures on the negotiations and outcomes

the transformation of trade the sources and effects of regime change regimes can be analyzed both as outcomes to be explained and as mediating social institutions that affect international transactions in the case of postwar trade the changing outcomes can be predicted simply and with rough accuracy by a hegemonic model yet that model cannot explain the continuing reduction of tariffs the development of new nontariff codes and the persistence of crucial norms rules and institutions these durable features of modern trade suggest that the logic of regime maintenance is distinct from that of regime initiation nor can the hegemonic model account for the regime s highly uneven weakening the most prominent trade barriers are in mature basic industries the least prominent are in industries with differentiated products and extensive research and development expenditures one explanation which usefully complements a hegemonic model is that sectors differ systematically in their capacity to adapt competitively to imports and hence in their need to preserve their position by trade barriers despite the regime s uneven weakening trade volumes have continued their secular growth in sectors where the regime remains strong it has stimulated two way trade in similar products intraindustry trade where the regime is weaker new nontariff barriers diminish hypothetical trade growth but rarely aim at a permanent rollback in market shares or trade volume

the emergence of cooperation among egoists this article investigates the conditions under which cooperation will emerge in a world of egoists without central authority this problem plays an important role in such diverse fields as political philosophy international politics and economic and social exchange the problem is formalized as an iterated prisoner s dilemma with pairwise interaction among a population of individuals results from three approaches are reported the tournament approach the ecological approach and the evolutionary approach the evolutionary approach is the most general since all possible strategies can be taken into account a series of theorems is presented which show 1 the conditions under which no strategy can do any better than the population average if the others are using the reciprocal cooperation strategy of tit for tat 2 the necessary and sufficient conditions for a strategy to be collectively stable and 3 how cooperation can emerge from a small cluster of discriminating individuals even when everyone else is using a strategy of unconditional defection

environmental value transfer state of the art and future prospects abstract the main objectives of the paper are to 1 give an overview of the state of the art of environmental value transfer 2 discuss its prospects and potential role in cba as a decision support tool and 3 provide further guidelines for proper use and application environmental value or benefit transfer is a technique in which the results of studies on monetary environmental valuation are applied to new policy contexts the technique is controversial not least because of academic and political reservations over the usefulness and technical feasibility of economic valuation tools to demonstrate the importance of environmental values in project or programme appraisals testing of environmental value transfer so far has been unable to validate the practice taking into account the conditions set out in the literature for valid and reliable value transfer most transfers appear to result in substantial transfer errors this paper discusses why and addresses the question of which factors may have been overlooked it is argued that the problem is much more fundamental than previously acknowledged strict guidelines in terms of quantitative adjustment mechanisms to valid value transfer are meaningless if the more fundamental issue of differences in the very nature of the values elicited is not addressed at the same time

toward a business cycle model of tariffs a modified interest group model links movements in tariffs to changes in the level of economic activity within nations this model is introduced and tested for tariff behavior in the 19th and early 20th centuries in three nations the united states great britain and germany empirical analysis lends strong support to the model s central thesis that tariffs are sensitive to movements within a business cycle tariff changes occurring in the three nations with the exception of british tariff increases generally conform to the expectations of the model furthermore business cycle sensitivity provides an explanation of the behavior of tariffs superior to two prominent alternatives those based on ideology and on hegemonic stability

the gatt and the regulation of trade barrier regime dynamics and functions since the second world war complex and changing sets of norms and rules have governed trade relations among most countries they have largely originated from a unique and accidental international organization the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt we have labeled these norms rules and decision making mechanisms the gatt regime or global trade barriers regime the importance that gatt members have attached to certain norms has shaped the regime s procedural mechanisms rules and implementation of rules classifying those norms as sovereignty or interdependence norms we posit that the strength or autonomy of the regime can be established by analyzing the prominence of the interdependence norms in the issue area we close by exploring some of the functions of the regime in international trade and political relations

bargaining uncertainty and property rights in fisheries garrett hardin s tragedy of the commons metaphor is commonly invoked to account for the unfortunate state of world fisheries but the world s oceans are no longer a global commons and have not been so for the past two decades open access regimes have persisted within many exclusive economic zones eezs during this time but coastal states authority to regulate domestic fisheries has existed for more than a generation faced with the prospect of hardin s tragedy coastal states have had more than twenty years to devise institutional constraints that would prevent it this article asserts that the dismal experience with eezs is in large part attributable to distributive bargaining problems that arose within coastal states in the wake of eez extension moreover the article argues that high levels of uncertainty that characterize the early stages of institutional development have exacerbated these problems finally the article demonstrates how the variety of institutional designs and paths of institutional development that are observed in the cases of iceland norway and atlantic canada result from the different configurations of political power and political structure within each case while the empirical discussion is focused upon property rights and fisheries the theoretical discussion of bargaining and uncertainty has widespread application across comparative and international politics

minimal and maximal product differentiation in hotelling s duopoly abstract hotelling s 1929 model of duopolistic competition is re examined a family of utility functions is used which has as a special case hotelling s original utility function in a two stage location price game it is shown that an equilibrium exists when the curvature of the utility functions in the space of characteristics is sufficiently high the subgame perfect equilibrium never exhibits minimum product differentiation on the other hand not all equilibria are at maximal product differentiation

prospects for the use of choice modelling for benefit transfer abstract many of the earliest studies that sought to test the validity of benefit transfer which typically involved the use of contingent valuation or travel cost applications produced negative findings one of the recommendations from this early testing was to trial alternative methods to produce source studies for benefit transfer including multi attribute techniques subsequently there have been a number of studies conducted that have sought to test the validity of benefit transfer using choice modelling the purpose of this paper is to review these studies and to assess the current state of knowledge regarding the validity of using choice modelling for the purpose of benefit transfer we also describe and consider the merits of an alternative approach for extending the use of choice modelling in benefit transfer bayesian benefit transfer

hegemons ios and markets the case of the substitution account for eighteen months between 1978 and 1980 the international monetary fund and imf members attempted to reform the international monetary system by establishing a substitution account designed to enhance the stability of the monetary system the proposed substitution account would have accepted dollar deposits from foreign central banks in return issuing certificates denominated in special drawing rights the collapse of negotiations about the account in early 1980 confirms the hypothesis of hegemonic stability theorists that the distribution of systemic costs is problematic in the absence of a hegemonic power the case thereby qualifies recent assertions that a small group of nations can supply stability to the international economy however two factors outside the realm of hegemonic theory also helped produce the outcome of the negotiations the division of power within the united states between congress and the executive and changes in international market conditions during 1979 and early 1980

explaining the non proliferation regime anomalies for contemporary international relations theory this article reconciles common policy usage with scholarly definition the system of cooperation on non proliferation has often been termed an international regime but there has not been any systematic effort to determine if this is actually true the discussion also attempts to reconcile the formation and maintenance of this system of cooperation with contemporary international relations theory the central argument is that the system of international cooperation on non proliferation does constitute a regime but that such a regime presents a serious anomaly for contemporary theory the article concludes that power and egoistic self interest are inadequate to account for the regime s formation and maintenance the inadequacies of both the hegemonic stability and functional theories point towards another independent variable that needs central consideration in regime analysis knowledge and learning

protectionism and world politics much unwarranted gloom and doom has been written of late about the new protectionism it has been widely held to be a major hindrance to third world development an obstacle in the path of world economic recovery and even a threat to good international relations the facts about trade in recent years suggest a different story and the need to look far more critically at some of the myths propounded by liberal economists for it was not protectionism that was responsible for starting the depression of the 1980s any more than that of the 1930s then as now it was financial uncertainty and the consequent shrinkage of credit that slowed both growth and trade nor is protectionism a serious menace not only has it failed to stop the flood of industrial exports from asian countries there afe good reasons of state and corporate self interest why it need not be feared in the future far from being a threat to the international economic order as imf and gatt ideologues would have us believe bilateral trading agreements between states and corporations are sustaining continued growth in trade despite financial disorder

disciplining trade finance the oecd export credit arrangement the salience of tariffs quotas and other import restrictions in current discussions of trade policy obscures what may well become a more significant form of government intervention subsidized export promotion over the past two decades subsidized trade finance has been one of the most widely used instruments of export promotion this article offers an historical description and a theoretical explanation for the success of the organization for economic cooperation and development oecd export credit arrangement an international regime restricting the provision of subsidized trade finance the explanation emphasizes three factors the structure of government institutions the relative power of states and the functional value of information more generally the analysis demonstrates the inherent weaknesses of monocausal explanations of international cooperation and the advantages of explanations based on a conception of international cooperation as a multistage process each stage of which may be explained by a separate theory

partial collusion fosters minimum product differentiation we investigate a spatial duopoly in which the firms simultaneously select locations at the beginning of time once chosen the locations are fixed forever but the firms will choose prices in each of a countably infinite succession of time periods we are interested in equilibrium behavior when the firms will collusively arrange a trigger strategy equilibrium in prices and will select their locations knowing that a particular such trigger strategy price equilibrium will ensue specifically we restrict our attention to prices that support an outcome on the profit possibility frontier at which the ratio of firm 1 s profits to those of firm 2 is positively related to the similar ratio of profits at the single shot noncooperative equilibrium for these profit sharing rules the resulting location equilibrium is unique and involves the pairing of firms at the market center

valuing environmental goods and services using benefit transfer the state of the art and science abstract the purpose of this special issue of ecological economics is to elucidate the state of the art and science of environmental benefit transfer and to assist in the design and reporting of future benefit estimation research compiling the insights of thirty two international experts from seven countries the special issue reviews the latest developments in transfer techniques as well as ongoing efforts to standardize and validate them taken together the papers in this special issue provide fresh answers to some long standing questions offer original research insights on state of the art issues and identify fruitful areas for future research this introductory paper provides background and context for the issues addressed by the contributing authors its purpose is to place the interdisciplinary thinking contained here in a comparative context highlighting the need for integration and collaboration to maintain the momentum that has propelled environmental benefit transfer into a widely used approach for estimating the economic value of environmental goods and services worldwide

coordination versus prisoners dilemma implications for international cooperation and regimes the study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the prisoners dilemma pd game model but there is a mistaken tendency to treat pd as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation by relaxing the assumptions of 2 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game i show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in pd the analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions number of strategies available number of iterations of the game numbers of players and the distribution of power among them the discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored the basic solutions for pd and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization stability and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system however the coordination model does not replace the pd model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions these results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations

tariff protection in developed and developing countries a cross sectional and longitudinal analysis four political models the international system rational domestic economic policy intragovemmental politics and interest group influence may explain the cross national structure of average nominal levels of tariffs on manufactures using available data measuring or approximating the explanatory variables for the time periods 1902 and 1971 selected hypotheses were tested in regression equations the 1971 tariff levels are best predicted by rational economic policy variables while for 1902 international power variables provide the best predictions of the tariff in general the causal forces influencing the cross national pattern of tariff levels appear to have shifted in the 20th century from those indicating international power to those measuring domestic politico economic development these results provide evidence relevant to some of the general propositions about size and development suggested by the contemporary political economy literature they also lend support to those who argue that a rising level of international interdependence has resulted in long term changes in the pattern of influences on national public policies

the relative gains problem for international cooperation modern realism claims that the fear that others will enjoy relatively greater benefits frequently impedes international cooperation recent articles in this review by duncan snidal and robert powell modeled conditions under which the impact of relative gains varied joseph grieco criticizes snidal s model as based on assumptions that allow him to avoid rather than confront the realist arguments he also argues that powell s model while constructive ignores important additional sources of sensitivity to relative gains in response powell discusses the value of alternative assumptions about preferences and constraints in international relations snidal defends his analysis and presents an additional proof to support the independence of his central result the diminishing impact of relative gains with increasing numbers of states from assumptions of concern to grieco both responders emphasize their work as contributing to a contextually rich theory of international politics that builds on elements of both realism and neo liberalism

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