spatial targeting of payments for environmental services a tool for boosting conservation benefits abstract payments for environmental services pes have become an increasingly popular market based instrument to translate external non market environmental services into financial incentives for landowners to preserve the ecosystems that provide the services however lack of spatial differentiation in the targeting mechanism may lead to efficiency losses addressing this challenge we construct an applied site selection tool which takes into account three variables that vary in space environmental services provided risks of losing those services and participation costs using data from costa rica s nicoya peninsula we empirically test the tool s potential to increase the financial efficiency of the forest focused pes program in place results show that given a fixed budget efficiency increases radically if per hectare payments are aligned to landowners heterogeneity in participation costs involving opportunity transaction and direct costs of protection respectively selecting sites based on environmental service potential also moderately increases efficiency overall additionality could in the best case be doubled but remains generally limited due to current low deforestation risks prevailing in costa rica to take advantage of the high efficiency potentials of flexible payments we propose inverse auction systems as a cost effective approach for the determination of micro level participation costs

women s changing participation in the labor force a world perspective this paper describes how the composition of the labor force changes with economic development it considers recent trends in women s labor force participation and the type of jobs held in various sectors as national per capita income increases the paper notes that women are more likely to work in the family or informal labor market if the labor costs to firms exceed the opportunity costs of female labor to family enterprises firms are at a relative disadvantage compared with families in the employment of less experienced and less skilled labor presumably because their labor costs are affected by such regulations as minimum wage social insurance premiums and limits on firing in asia and africa an increase in the proportion of employment in firms within the major sectors accounts for most of the rapid growth in women s overall share of wage employment in latin america however growth in the proportion of firm employment has been slower than elsewhere and the share of women in wage employment has even fallen overall in several countries it is not unreasonable to assume that women have lost more than men from market regulations and distortions but little research has addressed this proposition if it is true however these interventions in the labor market may be responsible for slowing women s transition from nonmarket and family work to firm employment this in turn may affect the rate and structure of economic growth

labor markets as gendered institutions equality efficiency and empowerment issues abstract labor markets are gendered institutions operating at the intersection of the productive and reproductive economies participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women reduction in gender differentials in earnings may be the result of harmonizing down rather than up discrimination against women may persist because in the absence of institutional changes it is profitable it is important to distinguish between static and dynamic and micro and macro efficiency labor market regulation has an important role to play in the institutional transformation needed to reconcile goals of efficiency and equality

caveat emptor cross country data on education and the labor force abstract cross country data on education and the labor force frequently are used to describe important dimensions of development and to estimate models of economic growth and growth determinants the impact of education and related phenomena this investigation finds 1 there are serious intertemporal and inter country comparability problems with these data that may importantly affect inferences about labor force size trends and productivity and schooling investments and impact 2 data gaps are systematically related to levels of development and literacy and 3 conclusions about the determinants or consequences of development based on constructed data that have been made available to fill data gaps can be seriously misleading

substituting for the state institutions and industrial development in eastern nigeria abstract this article examines the recent dynamic industrialization experience in one town nnewi part of eastern nigeria s industrial axis the article suggests that insights from institutional economics can be used to help explain the case of dynamic industrialization in an unpromising economic environment nnewi industrialists have successfully filled the gaps left by failures of both the market and the state in particular by using both international linkages and alternative culturally based networks they have reduced information uncertainties and principal agent problems lowering the transaction costs faced by other would be industrialists in nigeria

incentive based policy design for pollution control and biodiversity conservation a review this paper provides a succinct review of the main developments in the literature on incentive based policy mechanisms in the contexts of pollution control and biodiversity conservation dating from the early beginnings of the science in the 1960s a focal point in the review is on the design features of these policy mechanisms key developments in policy design were originally established in controlling externalities arising from pollution and have since been extended to policy design tailored towards biodiversity conservation special emphasis is given to the spatial characteristics of the environmental problems underlying both pollution control and biodiversity conservation the paper concludes by drawing some lessons and setting out elements of a future research agenda in both policy domains

dynamic entry reverse auctions and the purchase of environmental services this research uses economic experiments to examine the effectiveness of reverse auction institutions in an endogenous dynamic entry setting induced values are used to compare behavior in dynamic and static auction structures past research on this topic has understudied dynamic elements such as strategic entry and endogenous bidder selection that arise in a dynamic environment the results suggest complex behavioral patterns in which some sellers overenter early and others strategically wait this affects the owners abilities to extract rents in a dynamic setting this result impacts policy effectiveness because previous work overlooking these dynamic elements likely understates auction cost effectiveness

assessing the performance of conservation auctions an experimental study this work uses controlled laboratory experiments to investigate the budgetary and the economic performance of competitive tenders for allocating conservation contracts to landholders experiments have been replicated in two different countries to check for robustness of results we find that auctions outperform the more traditional fixed price programs only in the one shot setting with repetition the auctions quickly lose their edge the budget constrained auction performs similarly to the target constrained in the one shot setting but appears more robust to repetition our results suggest that previous estimates of conservation auction performance are too optimistic and we propose a method for improving such estimates

experimental tests of water quality trading markets abstract many watersheds in the u s have established water quality trading programs to help realize cost effective reductions in water pollution however the success of these programs has been limited this study highlights some of the unique features of water based credit trading markets that may explain the lack of success and uses laboratory experiments to isolate their effects in particular we compare two forms of a baseline and credit institution a pigouvian tax subsidy regulation and characteristic of air quality programs a textbook cap and trade regulation across these institutions we examine the effects of abatement technology adoption we find that a baseline and credit program when it requires firms to make upfront investments to generate tradable credits is less efficient than cap and trade and tax subsidy institutions furthermore we find that when efficient trading requires costly technology adoption institutions that involve inter firm trading including cap and trade are less efficient than the tax subsidy

entry versus success in the labor force young women s employment in sri lanka abstract in this paper we contribute to the understanding of women s labor force behavior in developing societies through a household level analysis of young single women in sri lanka we argue that in the context of saturated and imperfect labor markets of asian societies such as sri lanka it is important to 1 a differentiate between labor force participation and employment 2 b consider familial and cultural factors in addition to the standard determinants of labor supply and demand and 3 c examine the labor force activity of the current generation of single women in sri lanka where unemployment among young women is widespread our results strongly support the strategy of differentiating between labor force participation and employment that the determinants of these components of the employment process function in different ways is best illustrated by our findings regarding the effects of education higher education levels lead to greater labor force participation but highly educated women are also more likely to be unemployed than to be employed in addition our findings show that the labor market behavior of young women is shaped by familial expectations and resources in terms of the protected role of young daughters in the household cultural differences in the acceptability of young women working across ethnic groups the necessity for women to work across social classes and classbased advantages in access to information and channels that facilitate job acquisition

patriarchal norms religion and female labor supply evidence from turkey summary despite significant structural and social change the share of women working or seeking jobs in turkey has declined this paper focuses on the role of social conservatism as a constraint for women s labor force participation using 2008 demographic and health survey data in analyzing labor supply model i incorporate cultural constraints specifically the sexual division of labor in the household and broader gender ideology into the analysis i find that both patriarchal norms and religiosity are negatively associated with female labor force participation and that the impact of patriarchal norms is statistically significant after controlling for endogeneity

shifting fortunes the political economy of financial liberalization in nigeria abstract on the recommendation of the world bank nigeria began to liberalize its financial sector in 1986 contrary to the prediction of financial repression theory savings and investment decline in the wake of banking deregulation by 1995 the nigerian financial system was in a state of collapse the paper locates the main failure of nigeria s financial deregulation in the political and institutional setting of reform the institutional mechanisms needed to supervise and regulate banking under the new system were absent while private sector banking capacities were weak moreover financial liberalization was quickly captured by a clientalist state as a means of reallocating rents to strategic constituents an additional precipitating factor was macroeconomic instability the paper points to the importance of incorporating political and institutional variables into any model of financial reform or transformation

economic implications of emissions trading rules for local and regional pollutants in 1975 the united states environmental protection agency initiated an historic process of regulatory reform now known as the emissions trading program for nonuniformly mixed pollutants such as sulfur dioxides air quality is a function not only of the level of emissions but their location and stack heights as well the focus of this paper is how to protect local air quality and limit long range pollutant deposition caused by emission trades while allowing as much cost reducing trading activity as possible the authors examine the implications of two trading rules in two different airsheds using programming simulation models they find that the use of either trading rule represents a substantial improvement over relying exclusively on the current allocation of control responsibility

a laboratory study of auctions for reducing non point source pollution abstract non point source pollution such as nutrient runoff to waterways from agricultural production is an environmental problem that typically involves asymmetric information land use changes to reduce pollution incur opportunity costs that are privately known to landholders but these changes provide environmental benefits that may be more accurately estimated by regulators this paper reports a testbed laboratory experiment in which landholder sellers in sealed offer auctions compete to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the regulator to subsidize abatement in one treatment the regulator reveals to landholders the environmental benefits estimated for their projects and in another treatment the regulator conceals the potential projects environmental quality the results show that sellers offers misrepresent their costs more for high quality projects when quality is revealed so total abatement is lower and seller profits are higher when landholders know their projects environmental benefits this suggests that concealing this information may improve regulatory efficiency

emissions variability in tradable permit markets with imperfect enforcement and banking abstract in this laboratory experiment on emissions trading subjects face exogenous random emissions shocks after making production and emission control plans in some sessions subjects can bank their unused permits for future use after a reconciliation trading period following the shock realization subjects report their emissions to the regulatory authority and are placed in different inspection groups depending on their compliance history we identify important interactions between banking compliance and enforcement banking smoothes out the price variability arising from imperfect emissions control price stability comes at a cost however since noncompliance and emissions are significantly greater when banking is allowed

premiums to employment in larger establishments evidence from peru abstract examination of the employer size wage effect for males in urban peru suggests the following higher wages in larger establishments do not merely compensate for higher worker quality or inferior working conditions size differences in the use of rising wage tenure profiles cannot provide a market clearing explanation for the employer size wage effect unless workers are extremely impatient thus larger employers appear to pay premiums unionization explains none of the premiums and minimum wage compliance explains at best a small fraction shirking based efficiency wage explanations for premiums are implausible because peruvian job security legislation greatly inhibits dismissals in larger establishments explanations meriting further research involve the use of high wages to reduce turnover and to improve productivity enhancing morale

conservation auctions and compliance theory and evidence from laboratory experiments many agri environmental conservation programs are faced with the problem of imperfect monitoring this provides farmers with an incentive for noncompliance because they can receive subsidies without implementing the conservation scheme in this paper bidding behavior and auction performance are compared for discriminatory price and uniform price auctions in an imperfect monitoring environment our theoretical analysis suggests that auction performances are equalized between the discriminatory price and uniform price auctions however laboratory experiments reveal that although the discriminatory price auction has an advantage in terms of reducing policy costs it is more likely to cause adverse selection as a result the uniform price auction tends to have higher efficiency and cost effectiveness when compliance behavior is taken into account

do labor market opportunities affect young women s work and family decisions experimental evidence from india do labor market opportunities for women affect marriage and fertility decisions we provided three years of recruiting services to help young women in randomly selected rural indian villages get jobs in the business process outsourcing industry because the industry was so new at the time of the study there was almost no awareness of these jobs allowing us in effect to exogenously increase women s labor force opportunities from the perspective of rural households we find that young women in treatment villages were significantly less likely to get married or have children during this period choosing instead to enter the labor market or obtain more schooling or postschool training women also report wanting to have fewer children and to work more steadily throughout their lifetime consistent with increased aspirations for a career copyright 2012 oxford university press

why is the labour force participation of women declining in india summary this paper explores the recent fall in female labour force participation and its socio economic determinants in india the major contribution of this paper is to explore both micro and macro level factors which determine female labour force participation rate lfpr to examine the u shape female lfpr by examining the likely income and substitution effects of the real wage increase to identify the sub sectors within manufacturing and service sectors that could create jobs for new female job aspirants and those older women displaced from agriculture in recent years and thus to understand the conditions under which female lfpr could be raised using both macro level and household survey nss data we find that the recent fillip in the process of structural transformation has pushed a large number of females out of agriculture the growing mechanization in agriculture and rising capital intensity in manufacturing sectors together have limited the opportunity for females because of their low education and skill and due to other cultural constraints we also found that the rise in real wages in rural areas and the consequent improvement in the standard of living has produced a strong negative income effect which outweighs the positive substitution effect and as a result female lfpr has declined substantially however with the massive increase in female enrollment in secondary and higher levels of education it could be expected that the substitution effect of the increase in real wage would become stronger if appropriate measures are taken by the government which are suggested

a laboratory comparison of uniform and discriminative price auctions for reducing non point source pollution auctions allow regulators to identify land management changes with substantial environmental benefit and low opportunity cost this paper reports an experiment in which seller subjects compete in sealed offer auctions to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the experimenter regulator to subsidize pollution abatement one treatment employs uniform price auction rules whereas another treatment employs discriminative price auction rules we find that most offers in the uniform price auction are within 2 of cost whereas most offers in the discriminative price auction are at least 8 greater than cost nevertheless the discriminativeprice auction has superior overall market performance

investments in the schooling and health of women and men quantities and returns this paper surveys the evidence on recent trends in the growth of human capital investments in women that raised womens productivity in thus century in most countries patterns in school investments in men and women across regions and across birth cohorts within countries indicate that expected years of school enrollment is converging between low and high income countries to where the gaps have closed from about seven years in 1950 to five years in 1985 women today are receiving nearly as many years of education as men in industrially advanced high income countries latin america south east and east asia are relatively similar to the high income countries at the other extreme in most of the countries of south and west asia and north and sub saharan africa women receive about two fifths to three fourths the number of years of schooling as men do in every region however the ratio of female to male expected years of enrollment increased from 1950 to 1985 gender differences in mortality and nutritional status reveal that there has been a dramatic but largely unexplained advance in female longevity relative to male in the 20th century in most countries with the exception of certain countries in south asia this development is associated with the shift of populations from dependence on agriculture to working in urban areas these changes are a major source of decreasing inequality within and between countries in this century market failure could be responsible for families investing less than the socially efficient amount in girls than boys there are problems in measuring without bias these private and social return empirical patterns across countries in estimated returns to schooling illustrate that private returns at the primary secondary and higher education levels can vary for women and men

to lobby or to partner investigating the shifting political strategies of biopharmaceutical industry associations in innovation systems of south africa and india the role of industry associations in shaping policy through various lobbying activities is well established in most cases while such activities are deemed essential from an industry perspective they also carry negative connotations connected to narrow rent seeking and the pursuit of elites interests which run counter to the public good and discourage competition and subsequent innovation as such industry associations have long been excluded from discussions regarding the relational dynamics and evolution of innovation systems in contrast this paper builds upon more recent work that places industry associations as key intermediary actors that facilitate knowledge exchange and institutional capacity building particularly in the context of developing countries where limited institutional capacities and substantial knowledge gaps can limit both innovation and development employing a qualitative cross national comparison this paper examines the changing roles and activities of biopharmaceutical industry associations in the development of the south african and indian pharmaceutical industries with a particular focus on government industry relations for doing so the paper captures developments during three main periods through which both the south african and indian biopharmaceutical industries have similarly evolved although within different national contexts 1 pre liberalization 2 expanding pluralism and 3 increasing partnership we argue that in south africa and india particular historical trajectories and lack of institutional capacities are shifting industry associations away from ineffective lobbying to a new political approach that emphasizes partnering with government in the pursuit of not only narrow industry objectives but also broader development aims

an experimental investigation of hard and soft price ceilings in emissions permit markets tradable emissions permits have been implemented to control pollution levels in various markets and represent a major component of legislative efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions because permits are supplied for a fixed level of pollution allowing the market for permits to determine the price price control mechanisms may be needed to protect firms from price spikes caused by fluctuations in the demand for permits we test permit markets in an experimental laboratory setting to determine the effectiveness of several price control mechanisms with special attention on the soft price ceiling we focus on a static setting similar to some of the earliest experimental work focused on price ceilings results indicate that both permit supply adjustments and price ceilings hard ceilings effectively limit elevated prices in this setting by contrast reserve auctions to implement soft ceilings do not consistently control prices especially when a minimum reserve permit price is applied furthermore the grandfathering of permits allows permit sellers to realize significant welfare gains at the expense of buyers under a soft ceiling policy our results thus highlight several advantages of hard ceilings for controlling short term price increases

the regulation of non point source pollution under imperfect and asymmetric information abstract this paper develops a bayesian framework for discussing the role of information in the design of non point source pollution control mechanisms an ambient concentration tax is examined allowing for spatial transport among multiple zones imposition of the tax requires costly measurement of concentrations in selected zones and the selection of zones for measurement must be undertaken without perfect information regarding several parameters of the problem potentially crucial information issues discussed include a the impact of asymmetric priors regarding fate and transport b the cost of measuring ambient concentration and c the optimal acquisition of information regarding fate and transport

using automatic tax changes to control pollution emissions abstract in the absence of information about abatement costs the level of emissions tax needed to achieve a target level of pollution abatement is unknown this problem can be overcome by using an iterative procedure in which the tax is adjusted when current emissions exceed or fall short of the target this idea has become part of the standard textbook material but there has been no formal analysis of its dynamic properties we find that emissions can be reduced to the target whether firms behave strategically or not but the strategic element changes the welfare properties of the mechanism

adverse selection in reverse auctions for ecosystem services this paper examines how auctions for ecosystem services introduce adverse selection limiting cost effectiveness induced value experiments test theory and examine the extent of adverse selection in these markets in comparison to the baseline of either doing nothing or the optimality of an externality correcting tax a discriminatory reverse auction and two screening contracts are tested in limited budget situations the auction achieved the lowest social surplus while screening contracts that rely upon the government observing the development value yield the highest relative social surplus these results are important because recent environmental policy trends are focused on expanding fiscally costly reverse auctions jel q57 q58

feminization of the labor force the effects of long term development and structural adjustment abstract using crosscountry data pooled for 1985 and 1990 we analyze the relationship between women s share of the labor force and the processes of long term economic development and macroeconomic changes associated with structural adjustment we find that the relationship between long term development and women s share of the labor force is u shaped controlling for the feminization u we also find that structural adjustment policies have led to an increase in feminization of the labor force via worsening income distribution and increased openness

socioeconomic context family regimes and women s early labor market experience the case of colombia and venezuela abstract this paper compares the early labor market experience of mature and young cohorts of women in bogota and caracas the cross country cross cohort comparisons demonstrate the importance of both rising women s human capital and family regimes to women s labor market behavior while divorce was a central stimulus of women s work in both contexts the more stable patriarchal family regime in bogota more strongly conflicted with employment than the matrifocal and flexible pattern in caracas results also show important changes in the dynamics of female employment as younger cohorts exhibit more intermittent and unstable employment patterns

ambient taxes when polluters have multiple choices economic research on environmental policy design has largely been concerned with the merits of emissions based economic incentives e g emissions charges emissions reduction subsidies transferable discharge permits ambient based tax subsidy schemes have drawn considerable interest in nonpoint pollution literature as alternatives to emissions based instruments expanding especially on segerson s seminal article this article examines the optimal design and budget balancing properties of ambient tax subsidy schemes under more realistic assumptions about the dimensions of firms choice sets than prior research

rising incomes and the shift from self employment to firm based production abstract as economic development brings increasing mean revenue to both self employed and firm based producers the cost advantages risk neutral firms derive from being able to offer workers implicit insurance likely rise relative to the disadvantage of having to monitor labor this allows firm based production to expand drawing labor out of self employment

research issues in nonpoint pollution control research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution or to ambient pollution concentrations both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution however input based incentives will generally have to be second best to make implementation practical design issues include which inputs to monitor and the rates to apply to them the limited research indicates that second best input based incentives can be effective in adjusting input use in environmentally desirable ways alternatively ambient based incentives have theoretical appeal because efficient policy design appears to be less complex than for input based incentives these incentives have no track record nor close analogues that demonstrate potential effectiveness however research on how households and firms might react in response to ambient based incentives is needed before these instruments can be seriously considered

efficient pollution regulation getting the prices right this paper argues for efficient environmental regulations that equate the mar ginal damage of pollution to marginal abatement costs across space the paper estimates the source specific marginal damages of air pollution and calculates the welfare gain from making the current sulfur dioxide allowance trading pro gram for power plants more efficient the savings from using trading ratios based on marginal damages are between 310 and 940 million per year the potential savings from setting aggregate emissions efficiently and from includ ing more sources of air pollution are many times higher jel h23 q53 q58

adapting auctions for the provision of ecosystem services at the landscape scale abstract auctions or competitive tenders can overcome information asymmetries to efficiently allocate limited funding for ecosystem services most auctions focus on ecosystem services on individual properties to maximise the total amount provided however for many services it is not just the total quantity but their location in the landscape relative to other sites that matters for example biodiversity conservation may be much more effective if conserved sites are connected adapting auctions to address ecosystem services at the landscape scale requires an auction mechanism which can promote coordination while maintaining competition multi round auctions in which bidding is spread over a number of rounds with information provided between rounds on the location of other bids in the landscape offer an approach to cost effectively deliver landscape scale ecosystem services experimental economic testing shows these auctions deliver the most cost effective environmental outcomes when the number of rounds is unknown in advance which minimises rent seeking behaviour it also shows that a form of bid improvement rule facilitates coordination and reduces rent seeking where the biophysical science is well developed such auctions should be relatively straightforward to implement and participate in and have the potential to provide significantly better outcomes than standard one shot tenders