partial international coordination in the great fish war this study extends the great fish war model of levhari and mirman levhari d and mirman l 1980 bell journal of economics 11 322 344 by incorporating a multiple country context into the model and investigates the existence of a partial coordination nash equilibrium first findings of this paper suggest that a partial coordination scheme is sustainable only in limited cases any coalition that has more than two member countries cannot be sustained second the existence and the number of coordinating countries depend critically on the magnitude of the biological and preference parameters finally if the coalition is assumed to be a dominant player there always exist one or two welfare improving sustainable coalitions and the size of the sustainable coalitions depends on the parameters of the problem

sufficiency and consumer behaviour from theory to policy abstract it is increasingly obvious that for safeguarding environmental sustainability eco efficiency measures will need to be complemented by sufficiency in particular by strong sustainable consumption the theory of planned behaviour tpb and social practice theory spt offer different views on consumer behaviour and on ways to change it this paper briefly describes the challenges discusses the applicability of both theories and their meaningfulness for policy recommendations we suggest an approach combining results of both bodies of theory complemented by ideas from political economy to substantiate the prism of sustainable consumption we introduce as a heuristic sufficiency policy tool it is useful to identify affordability criteria for change in each dimension as the basis for deriving suggestions for effective policy interventions we conclude that i effective interventions are possible ii they have to address several dimensions of affordability simultaneously and iii the sufficiency policy space prism can be a useful tool in structuring planned interventions

approaches and methods for the econometric analysis of market power a survey and empirical comparison this study discusses two widely used approaches in the new empirical industrial organization neio literature and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the production theoretic approach pta and the general identification method gim for the econometric analysis of market power in agricultural and food markets we provide a framework that may help researchers to evaluate and improve structural models of market power starting with the specification of the approaches in question we compare published empirical studies of market power with respect to the choice of the applied approach functional forms estimation methods and derived estimates of the degree of market power thereafter we use our framework to evaluate several structural models based on pta and gim to measure oligopsony power in the ukrainian dairy industry the pta based results suggest that the estimated parameters of oligopsony power are significantly different from zero while gim based results do not indicate any evidence of oligopsony market power in the ukrainian dairy industry moreover estimations results vary substantially due to the employed estimation procedure

public good provision and ancillary benefits the case of climate agreements several studies found ancillary benefits of the provision of public goods to be of considerable size if these additional private benefits were noticed they would imply not only higher cooperative but also non cooperative provision levels however beyond these largely undisputed important quantitative effects there would be qualitative and strategic implications associated with ancillary benefits public policy would no longer be a pure but an impure public good in this paper we investigate these implications in a setting of non cooperative coalition formation in the context of climate change in particular we address the following question would ancillary benefits if they were taken in consideration increase participation in international climate agreements and raise the success of these treaties in welfare terms

measuring market power in multi product oligopolies the us meat industry this paper develops and estimates an economic model for measuring market power in a quantity setting oligopoly engaged in the joint production of demand related goods the model which allows for firms conjectures about both same and cross market responses to own output variation is applied to the us meat beef and pork industry he hypothesis that the industry s equilibrium reflects price taking behaviour is rejected the hypothesis of no cross effects cannot be rejected roughly half of the farm to retail price spreads for beef and pork appear to be attributable to market power

synthesizing the malthusian and senian approaches on scarcity a realist account food entitlement decline fed and food availability decline fad are two approaches to explaining famines that have different policy implications one focuses on the systemic level whereas the other is concerned with the individual level they therefore analyse relatively distinct causal mechanisms thus an important question is whether these approaches can be reconciled another related question is how fad and fed based explanations relate to classical malthusian views about rapid food requirement increase fri this paper analyses these questions and argues that these three approaches can indeed be reconciled within a single framework by outlining the causal sources of fad fed and fri this task requires among other things the separation of ontological categories and empirical measures as a consequence of this argument the paper suggests that there are only seven possible ontological combinations of how a famine situation can arise as a direct cause simultaneously it maintains that there are virtually an infinite number of ways in which these combinations may act as indirect causes rooted in economic political and social conditions the analysis is exemplified by the bengal famine of 1943 because that famine is a well known case the wider research and policy applicability of this general account are discussed but have yet to be tested in relation to other scarcity cases water land fish this synthesis is made possible by the incorporation of critical realist interventions into economic theory

sharing a fish stock when distribution and harvest costs are density dependent we studied cooperative and competitive solutions for managing a trans boundary fish stock that has a stock size dependent distribution and harvesting costs using norwegian spring spawning nss herring clupea harengus as a case study this is among the first studies to investigate the effect of a dynamic distribution in a partition function game framework i e including externalities the special feature of nss herring is that it comes under the sole ownership of norway when the stock size is sufficiently low the three players in our game are differentiated by stock ownership cost per unit effort and stock elasticity of harvest we find that cost asymmetry improves the likelihood of forming a stable grand coalition as harvesting load can be assigned to each fishing zone according to a player s relative cost level and the density of fish a dynamic distribution increases the bargaining power of norway because of her ability to control both the total stock and the stock shares in different zones especially during the stock transition years however the bargaining power of norway may disappear if her cost of harvesting exceeds that of the other players this loss of bargaining power can take on two forms first a dynamic distribution may encourage a minor player to free ride because norway needing a coalition partner to improve her cost effectiveness would be less inclined to retaliate as retaliation hurts her ally as much as the free rider second in a stable grand coalition norway is not guaranteed to receive an allocation of benefit shares in proportion to not to say in excess of her stock ownership at the current stock condition the strategy where norway reduces stock abundance below the level where the stock becomes non migratory is found attractive only if the discounting rate is sufficiently high

the social and environmental influences of population growth rate and demographic pressure deserve greater attention in ecological economics abstract ecological economists accept that the global population cannot grow forever but papers discussing the relevance of population growth and the prospects for minimising it are rare in the literature on ecological economics even these papers treat population almost exclusively as an issue relating to the scale of human activity the many ways in which population growth rate and local demographic pressures drive negative social and environmental trends remain largely unarticulated the mistaken belief that action to reduce population growth requires involuntary control of people s reproduction has fostered a taboo on the topic and deterred analysis of demographic influences on issues such as inequality unemployment debt social cohesion and conflict this paper discusses how some of these influences relate to ecological economics discourses on natural resources labour capital and governance it argues that population stabilisation is not only ultimately required for a steady state economy but can be a powerful lever in a virtuous cycle of effects diminishing resource consumption and environmental impacts reversing income inequality and undermining the leverage enjoyed by capital over labour a richer more integrated treatment of population dynamics would greatly enhance the ecological economics research agenda in the coming decades

an empirical investigation of customer market analysis a microfoundation for macroeconomics the slow adjustment and stickiness of output prices is widely regarded as an important determinant of macroeconomic behaviour recently a number of writers have argued that customer market analysis can provide a microfoundation for price stickiness this paper develops the theory of a firm selling in a customer market and investigates the empirical implications of the theory the model is shown to imply a particular pattern of behaviour between retail prices and wholesale prices data on retail and wholesale prices for the united states the united kingdom and australia at various levels of aggregation is investigated and found to support the predictions of the customer market model in the conclusion the macroeconomic implications of the empirical conslusions are drawn out

international fisheries agreements a game theoretical approach this paper surveys the application of game theory to the economic analysis of international fisheries agreements the relevance of this study comes not only from the existence of a vast literature on the topic but especially from the specific features of these agreements the emphasis of the survey is on coalition games an approach that has become prominent in the fisheries economics literature over the last decade it is shown that coalition games were first applied to international fisheries agreements in the late 1990s addressing cooperative issues under the framework of characteristic function games then progressively this cooperative approach was combined with non cooperative elements such as the stability analysis of the agreements finally partition function games which model coalition formation endogenously were introduced and became the standard approach to study the formation and stability of international fisheries agreements a key message that emerges from this literature strand is that self enforcing cooperative management of internationally shared fish stocks is generally difficult to achieve hence the international legal framework and regulations play a decisive role on ensuring cooperation over the use of these resources

in defence of degrowth abstract this article defends the proposal of sustainable degrowth a starting premise is that resource and co2 limits render further growth of the economy unsustainable if degrowth is inevitable the question is how it can become socially sustainable i e a prosperous and stable rather than a catastrophic descent pricing mechanisms alone are unlikely to secure smooth adaptation a full ensemble of environmental and redistributive policies is required including among others policies for a basic income reduction of working hours environmental and consumption taxes and controls on advertising policies like these that threaten to harm the economy are less and less likely to be implemented within existing market economies whose basic institutions financial property political and redistributive depend on and mandate continuous economic growth an intertwined cultural and political change is needed that will embrace degrowth as a positive social development and reform those institutions that make growth an imperative sustainable degrowth is therefore not just a structuring concept it is a radical political project that offers a new story and a rallying slogan for a social coalition built around the aspiration to construct a society that lives better with less

farsightedness changing stock location and the stability of international fisheries agreements changes in stock location may affect the stability of international fisheries agreements this paper offers a theoretical analysis of the stability of regional fisheries management organisations rfmos in a non cooperative coalition formation game based on the classic gordon schaefer model we employ a new stability concept which modifies farsighted stability chwe j econ theory 63 299 325 1994 we call this concept farsighted downwards stability fds we also employ the internal stability is concept for comparison analytical results regarding fds for symmetric players without changing stock location show stable grand coalitions for n le 4 player games and the possibility for partial cooperation sensitivity analysis deals with changing stock location and cost asymmetry stability decreases in n increases when costs are asymmetric and increases when fds is employed farsighted conjectures on behalf of rfmo members can thus help to maintain cooperation as stock location changes however fds is more sensitive to changes in stock location than is

partial enclosure of the commons abstract we examine the efficiency distributional and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially connected natural resource while the remainder is competed for by an open access fringe we refer to this as partial enclosure of the commons we obtain sharp analytical results regarding partial enclosure of the commons including 1 while second best it typically improves welfare relative to no property rights 2 all resource users can be made better off 3 positive rents arise in the open access area and 4 the resource maintains higher stocks under spatial heterogeneity we also characterize spatial regions that are ideal candidates for partial enclosure typically society should seek to enclose those patches with high environmental productivity and high self retention but whether high economic productivity promotes or relegates a patch may depend on one s objective

fishing as a supergame abstract this paper considers how cooperative solutions to games of sharing fish resources can be supported by threat strategies with highly mobile fish stocks the number of agents compatible with a cooperative self enforcing solution is not very high for reasonable values of the discount rate but sensitive to changes in the discount rate and costs and to cost heterogeneity with migrating stocks where growth and reproduction depend on how much all agents leave behind after harvesting the likelihood of a cooperative self enforcing equilibrium is increased with a dominant player and a competitive fringe the rents and optimum stock level of the dominant player fall quickly as the share of the competitive fringe increases

the stability likelihood of an international climate agreement results derived from empirical analyses on the stability of climate coalitions are usually very sensitive to the large uncertainties associated with the benefits and costs of climate policies this paper provides the methodology of stability likelihood sl that links uncertainties about benefits and costs of climate change to the stability of coalitions we show that the concept of sl improves upon the robustness and interpretation of stability analyses moreover our numerical application qualifies conclusions from a recent strand of literature based on stylised models with ex ante symmetric players that learning has a negative impact on the success of coalition formation in context of uncertainty

the incentives of private companies to invest in protected area certificates how coalitions can improve ecosystem sustainability abstract since the early 80 s the global demand on nature has exceeded the earth s capacity to reduce the overuse of the very resources on which human life depends protected areas have been developed worldwide typically national states ngos and charities have funded protected areas with limited investment from private companies this paper analyzes one option to increase private investment an international market for protected area certificates following a cost benefit analysis a three stage coalition game is developed the corporate dependency on ecosystems is modeled through the ecological footprint by implementing instruments such as side payments membership restriction and non compliance penalties the model shows that corporate environmental agreements reduce the individual cost of ecological protection and enhance social welfare the findings are supported by a sensitivity analysis conducted for the german tourism sector in zanzibar

addressing global environmental externalities transaction costs considerations is there a way to understand why some global environmental externalities are addressed effectively whereas others are not the transaction costs of defining the property rights to mitigation benefits and costs is a useful framework for such analysis this approach views international cooperation as a contractual process among country leaders to assign those property rights leaders cooperate when it serves domestic interests to do so the demand for property rights comes from those who value and stand to gain from multilateral action property rights are supplied by international agreements that specify resource access and use assign costs and benefits including outlining the size and duration of compensating transfer payments and determining who will pay and who will receive them four factors raise the transaction costs of assigning property rights i scientific uncertainty regarding mitigation benefits and costs ii varying preferences and perceptions across heterogeneous populations iii asymmetric information and iv the extent of compliance and new entry these factors are used to examine the role of transaction costs in the establishment and allocation of property rights to provide globally valued national parks implement the convention on the international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora execute the montreal protocol to manage emissions that damage the stratospheric ozone layer set limits on harvest of highly migratory ocean fish stocks and control greenhouse gas emissions jel d23 p14 q22 q51 q54 q58

market structure in the us electricity industry a long term perspective we estimate changes in market structure in the us electric power industry during the last three decades using two independent approaches first we estimate an industry wide conjectural variations parameter we find that industry concentration was generally rising during the 1970s but has been gradually and consistently falling since the early 1980s to check the robustness of these results we then use a translog production function to estimate the lerner index the results confirm that the industry was becoming less concentrated during the 1980s though the lerner index tended to fluctuate during the late 1980s and early 1990s our results suggest that the current state of the electricity industry may have more to do with long term changes in market structure than recent attempts to establish competitive wholesale electricity markets

multimarket market power estimation the australian retail meat sector a new technique for estimating market power in several markets simultaneously is developed and applied to the australian retail beef lamb and pork markets the hypotheses that market power is zero and that market power is the same for each meat cannot be rejected nor is there evidence that market power increased over the period of analysis little bias is created by examining markets is isolation rather than within a system when markets are competitive but that bias can be large when market power exists in some markets in the system

a great fish war model with asymmetric players this paper analyzes the coalitional great fish war model under the assumption that players differ in their time preferences and use different discount rates we derive the equilibrium payoffs of this coalitional game and investigate the impact of the asymmetry assumption on the extreme schemes of cooperative and non cooperative equilibria we then proceed to the computation of stable coalitions using time consistent harvest sharing policies for the partial coordination scheme in the case where players are divided into two groups high and low discount rates we find that asymmetry has a significant impact on the way the resource is shared and on the profitability of coalitions we also find that asymmetry is not a sufficient feature to overcome the puzzle of small coalitions

a structural model of the analysis of retail market power the case of fluid milk we derive a structural model of firm behavior that is composed of the generalized quadratic almost ideal demand system to represent both consumers milk preferences and firm profit maximization conditions that allow for a range of competitive scenarios the importance of this specification is found in its fuller representation of consumer preferences as opposed to the linear approximate almost ideal demand system used in previous analyses we apply this structural framework to investigate retailer conduct in the sale of beverage milk in a u s market using product level data our lerner index estimates show that retailers are not perfectly competitive however this deviation is small copyright 2012 oxford university press

equilibrium binding agreements a comment abstract to construct their equilibrium binding agreements ray and vohra j econ theory 73 1997 30 78 define a concept of an equilibrium between coalitions and prove its existence for any coalition structure we show that this result crucially depends on the quasi concavity of the utility functions which in turn depends on the type of mixed strategies used by the coalitions when coalitions use uncorrelated mixed strategies utility functions may not be quasi concave and an equilibrium may not exist however if coalitions use correlated strategies an equilibrium always exist

economics of technological change and the natural environment how effective are innovations as a remedy for resource scarcity abstract the paper aims to substantiate the importance of endogenous innovations when evaluating the compatibility of natural resource use and economic development it explains that technological change has the potential to compensate for natural resource scarcity diminishing returns to capital poor input substitution and material balance restrictions but is limited by various restrictions like fading returns to innovative investments and rising research costs it also shows how innovative activities are fostered by accurate price signals and research favouring sectoral change the simultaneous effects of increasing technical knowledge decreasing resource inputs and increasing world population largely determine the chances of long run sustainable development consequently future research has to be directed at a more thorough understanding of the mechanisms driving innovations in the presence of natural resource scarcity

farsightedness in a coalitional great fish war we explore the implications of the farsightedness assumption on the conjectures of players in a coalitional great fish war model with symmetric players derived from the seminal model of levhari and mirman bell j econ 11 649 661 1980 the farsightedness assumption for players in a coalitional game acknowledges the fact that a deviation from a single player will lead to the formation of a new coalition structure as the result of possibly successive moves of her rivals in order to improve their payoffs it departs from mainstream game theory in that it relies on the so called rational conjectures as opposed to the traditional nash conjectures formed by players on the behavior of their rivals for values of the biological parameter and the discount factor more plausible than the ones used in the current literature the farsightedness assumption predicts a wide scope for cooperation in non trivial coalitions sustained by credible threats of successive deviations that defeat the shortsighted payoff of any prospective deviator compliance or deterrence of deviations may also be addressed by acknowledging that information on the fish stock or on the catch policies actually implemented may be available only with a delay dynamic farsightedness in that case the requirements are stronger and the sizes and number of possible farsighted stable coalitions are different in the sequential move version which could mimic some characteristics of fishery models the results are not less appealing even if the dominant player or dominant coalition with first move advantage assumption provides a case for cooperation with the traditional nash conjectures

international fish wars the strategic roles for fleet licensing and effort subsidies abstract this article examines the problem of noncooperative international fishing by analyzing the strategic rent shifting roles for such well known national management policies as fleet licensing and effort subsidies it is shown that the noncooperative equilibrium in each policy takes the form of a prisoner s dilemma with dissipated rents in the fishery it is also shown that strategic effort subsidies can only lead to incomplete rent dissipation but strategic fleet licensing can lead to complete rent dissipation the models developed in this article may help to provide an explanation for the persistence of large and excessively subsidized national fleets that exploit depleted international fish stocks

estimating the degree of market power in the beef packing industry a technique for assessing the degree of monopoly power developed by appelbaum 1979 1982 is extended here to permit measurement of monopsony power as well data from the u s beef packing industry are examined the results reveal small but statistically significant monopoly monopsony price distortions in slaughter cattle and wholesale beef markets but in spite of a recent trend toward heightened concentration in the industry give no indication that performance has become appreciably less competitive of late this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

unifying studies of scarcity abundance and sufficiency abstract this paper advances the idea that socio ecological inquiry could benefit more by analyzing the dynamics between states of scarcity abundance and sufficiency sas instead of viewing them as distinct branches of inquiry the paper identifies three weaknesses in the literature postulating scarcity normative opposition of sas and conceptual entanglement in bridging these the paper proposes a unified agenda for sas studies this agenda includes a a definition of the cases population of sas b a causal map of the determinants of sas c an outline of key strategies individuals employ to handle sas this agenda relies on the language of probability to systematize sas studies this approach subsumes the allocation problem of neoclassical economics within a super set of problems recalibrating socio ecological inquiry to research the dynamics of scarcity abundance and sufficiency will not only cast new light on old problems but also discover new problems that traditionally have been reserved for neoclassical economics

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

cooperation in the commons with unobservable actions we model a dynamic common property resource game with unobservable actions and non linear stock dependent costs we propose a strategy profile that generates a worst perfect equilibrium in the punishment phase thereby supporting cooperation under the widest set of conditions we show under what set of parameter values for the discount rate resource growth rate harvest price and the number of resource users this strategy supports cooperation in the commons as a subgame perfect equilibrium the strategy profile that we propose which involves harsh punishment after a defection followed by forgiveness is consistent with human behavior observed in experiments and common property resource case studies

relative and absolute scarcity of nature assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation abstract our aim in this essay is to identify and analyze some of the difficulties with interdisciplinary integration of economic and ecological contributions to the study of biodiversity loss we develop our analysis from a widely accepted definition of economics which is based on the concept of scarcity taking a closer look at this notion we find that economics actually limits itself to a very particular aspect of scarcity which we denote as relative scarcity we describe in what respect the economic approach towards biodiversity is based on this notion and also reflect on the specific understanding of the relation of humans and nature behind the economic approach we then turn to absolute scarcity as another notion of scarcity and show that this is not within the scope of economics but has been a theme of ecology and ecological economics we describe in which way ecological and ecological economic approaches towards biodiversity are based on the idea of absolute scarcity and also reflect on the specific understanding of the human nature relationship behind this notion of scarcity against this background we discuss the roles of economics and ecology for nature conservation we conclude that the interdisciplinary integration of ecology and economics requires a philosophical underpinning and suggest a framework for further research

effects of wholesaler concentration on retailers by format evidence from japanese brand level price data using unique brand level wholesale price data this article examines how purchase prices of commodities for retailers are influenced by wholesale concentration compared with studies focusing on retail prices little empirical work has measured the impact of wholesale concentration on wholesale prices economic theory suggests that the sensitivity of purchase price in response to degree of wholesale concentration is smaller for large retail formats than for small retail formats in the presence of intra format retail competition to test the validity of the theoretical implication i measure the impact of the concentration on purchasing prices for retailers by format empirical findings support the hypothesis that the large retail format tends to draw advantageous purchase prices when wholesalers become increasingly oligopolistic

a behavioral economics view of poverty standard theorizing about poverty falls into two camps social scientists regard the behaviors of the economically disadvantaged either as calculated adaptations to prevailing circumstances or as emanating from a unique culture of poverty rife with deviant values the first camp presumes that people are highly rational that they hold coherent and justified beliefs and pursue their goals effectively without mistakes and with no need for help the second camp attributes to the poor a variety of psychological and attitudinal short fallings that render their views often misguided and their choices fallible leaving them in need of paternalistic guidance we propose a third view the behavioral patterns of the poor we argue may be neither perfectly calculating nor especially deviant rather the poor may exhibit the same basic weaknesses and biases as do people from other walks of life except that in poverty with its narrow margins for error the same behaviors often manifest themselves in more pronounced ways and can lead to worse outcomes in what follows we illustrate the kinds of insights that might be gained from a behaviorally more realistic analysis of the economic conditions of the poor and we propose that alternative policies for alleviating poverty be considered

prices and market structure an empirical analysis of the supermarket industry in chile this article investigates empirically the relationship between market structure and consumer prices in the supermarket industry in chile a panel of monthly data from 16 cities in the period january 1998 september 2006 is used we find that the more concentrated the industry in a city the higher the prices while the participation of major national chains in cities tends to lower prices in terms of magnitude this latter effect prevails over the former moreover the dominant local chain is found to behave differently depending on whether or not one of the national chains is present in the city finally we find that prices rise when a national chain acquires another chain and both were previously in a city inmerge while if only one of the two was present outmerge prices fall

stability and success of regional fisheries management organizations according to international law straddling fish stocks should be managed cooperatively through regional fisheries management organizations rfmos this paper analyzes the stability and success of these organizations through a game in partition function form based on the classical gordon schaefer bioeconomic model results show that the larger the number of fishing states that compete for the fish stock the higher are the relative gains from full cooperation but the lower is the likelihood of large rfmos being stable it is also shown that new entrants increase the incentives of rfmo members to leave and decrease the incentives of non members to join it moreover the success of coalition formation is positively correlated with the degree of cost asymmetry among fishing states and negatively with the overall level of efficiency