the environmental effects of agricultural trade liberalization in latin america an interpretation abstract the trade and environment debate has focused attention on the possible contradiction between promoting free markets while meeting domestic environmental objectives this paper takes a view from the south recent econometric models predict net effects of expanded agricultural trade to be positive for the global environment yet further pressure on degraded resources and marginal farmers and a reinforcement of sectoral policies that benefit commercial export crop growers as opposed to food producers may make increased trade more of a bane than a blessing for developing countries in the context of emerging regional trading blocks in latin america nafta and mercosur removal of trade barriers between participating nations has led to dislocation of production whose localized impacts it is hoped would be resolved through reconversion of agriculture in affected subregions it may be however that internalization of socio environmental costs of such dislocation would indicate that production despite competitive disadvantages would best have been left where it was to gain a better empirical understanding of the links between agricultural trade policy and the environment will require prediction of ecosystem stresses anticipated from alterations in how producers grow crops in specific geophysical settings rather than reliance on stylized facts

banking deregulation and industry structure evidence from the french banking reforms of 1985 we investigate how the deregulation of the french banking industry in the 1980s affected the real behavior of firms and the structure and dynamics of product markets following deregulation banks are less willing to bail out poorly performing firms and firms in the more bank dependent sectors are more likely to undertake restructuring activities at the industry level we observe an increase in asset and job reallocation an improvement in allocative efficiency across firms and a decline in concentration overall these findings support the view that a more efficient banking sector helps foster a schumpeterian process of creative destruction many economies around the world are characterized by heavily regulated bank

institutions and the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a crosscountry analysis for latin america africa and asia abstract the relationship between deforestation and income across 66 countries of latin america africa and asia is examined institutional characteristics as well as macroeconomic policies of each country are hypothesized to impact deforestation results show strong evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation for all three continents institutional structure and macroeconomic policy significantly affect the tropical deforestation process improvements in political institutions and governance significantly reduce deforestation the factors leading to deforestation differ across regions however and there is no one size fits all global policy recommendation for restraining the tropical deforestation process

skill biased technological change and rising wage inequality some problems and puzzles the recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to skill biased technical change sbtc associated with new computer technologies we review the evidence for this hypothesis focusing on the implications of sbtc for overall wage inequality and for changes in wage differentials between groups a key problem for the sbtc hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s despite continuing advances in computer technology sbtc also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality including the gender and racial wage gaps and the age gradient in the return to education

third world debt and tropical deforestation abstract the deforestation and degradation of tropical forests are taking place at an extremely rapid pace according to the food and agriculture organization fao the estimated annual rate of tropical deforestation during the 1981 1985 period was 113 846 square kilometers or 0 6 of the 1981 total forested area the implications of the loss of these forests are staggering myers n 1989 deforestation rates in tropical forests and their climatic implications friends of the earth london tropical forests are extremely rich ecosystems which support a disproportionately large share of the world s plant and animal species forests play a crucial role in both nutrient and hydrological cycling and may provide sustainable economic benefits through managed harvesting of timber and the collection of non timber products such as fruits nuts and rubber also deforestation is a significant source of global warming through its effects on the global carbon cycle this paper focuses on the relationship between debt and deforestation examining conceptual and empirical arguments that debt is a source of deforestation pressure our study develops a behavioral model which suggests that debt can lead to myopic behavior leading to deforestation rates that may not be optimal in the long run but are necessary in the short run to meet current constraints then country by country data on debt deforestation and other variables are analyzed with regression analysis it is shown that debt is significantly correlated with deforestation under a wide variety of assumptions and specifications our results indicate that debt is an important factor in the deforestation of tropical countries there are certainly other sources of deforestation both micro and macroeconomic which may vary significantly from country to country however we focus on debt because of its dominant role in the economies of developing countries and because of the increased use of debt for nature swaps the link between debt and deforestation that is suggested in this paper implies that debt for nature swaps may have a dual effect on deforestation first the contractual agreement is designed to preserve forests as part of the swap second the reduction in debt may itself reduce the pressure to deforest although this indirect effect is small our research provides evidence that reducing debt reduces deforestation which may be an argument to offer deforesting third world countries some form of debt relief and to utilize more fully debt for nature swaps as a tool for preserving environmental quality

on stable and strategy proof rules in matching markets with contracts abstract this paper studies stable and one sided strategy proof rules in many to one matching markets with contracts not assuming any kind of substitutes condition or the law of aggregate demand we obtain the following results first the number of stable and strategy proof rules is at most one second the doctor optimal stable rule whenever it exists is the unique candidate for a stable and strategy proof rule third a stable and strategy proof rule whenever it exists is second best optimal for doctor welfare in that no individually rational and strategy proof rule can dominate it this last result is further generalized to non wasteful and strategy proof rules due to the weak assumptions our analysis covers a broad range of markets including cases where a unique stable and strategy proof rule is not equal to the one induced by the cumulative offer process or the deferred acceptance algorithm

environmental quality public debt and economic development this article analyzes the consequences on capital accumulation and environmental quality of environmental policies financed by public debt a public sector of pollution abatement is financed by a tax or by public debt we show that if the initial capital stock is high enough the economy monotonically converges to a long run steady state on the contrary when the initial capital stock is low the economy is relegated to an environmental poverty trap we also explore the implications of public policies on the trap and on the long run stable steady state in particular we find that government should decrease debt and increase pollution abatement to promote capital accumulation and environmental quality at the stable long run steady state finally a welfare analysis shows that there exists a level of public debt that allows a long run steady state to be optimal

from flexibility to insecurity how vertical separation amplifies firm level uncertainty this article presents a model where firms may endogenously externalize part of their production process we start from the premise that adaptation to uncertainty cannot be contracted upon in the worker employer relationship vertical separation then balances flexibility gains against hold up costs of opportunistic behavior by outside contractors in equilibrium the degree of separation is shown to depend on the degree of product market competition contractor s bargaining power and the volatility of demand shocks our main result is that an increase in the degree of vertical separation amplifies the elasticity to demand shocks of firms sales and employment it does not however amplify aggregate uncertainty evidence from firm level data is shown to be largely consistent with the main implications of our theory jel l16 l23 l24

it based technical change and job instability we investigate the impact of it diffusion on the stability of employment we document the evolution of different components of job instability over a panel of 348 cities in france from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s the evidence goes against the view that the diffusion of it has spurred job instability yet analysing long term differences in the occupational structure we find that it diffusion has increased the share of high skill occupations at the expense of low skill occupations this is consistent with french firms reliance on their internal labour market to meet the new skill requirements associated with it diffusion

incentives in organizations n 1975 steven kerr published on the folly of rewarding a while hoping for b the argument was simple you get what you pay for kerr distilled this unifying theme from a disparate set of examples involving politicians soldiers doctors orphanage directors professors and students as well as manufacturing and clerical employees and even human resource managers from these examples kerr pp 77980 concluded that two main causes of distorted incentives are fascination with an objective criterion where individuals seek to establish simple quantifiable standards against which to measure and reward performance and overemphasis on highly visible behaviors when some parts of the task are highly visible while others are not it took agency theory 15 years to express kerr s title not to mention to evaluate or extend his conclusions during this period agency theory was obsessed with the tradeoff between incentives and insurance even though clear eyed observations like kerr s about the design and performance of real incentive contracts suggested that several other issues are at least as important fortunately recent work has brought agency theory not only to kerr s position but beyond in this paper i summarize four new strands in agency theory that help me think about incentives in real organizations as a point of departure i begin with a quick sketch of the classic agency model i then discuss static models of objective performance measurement that sharpen kerr s argument repeated game models of subjective performance assessments incentives for skill development rather than simply for effort and incentive contracts between versus within organizations i con

changes in job instability and insecurity using monthly survey data this article provides evidence on changes in short term job instability and insecurity using the survey of income and program participation monthly measures from this data set are contrasted with annual measures from the survey of income and program participation and the panel study of income dynamics neither data set shows an increase in job turnover during the 1980s and 1990s we also examine indicators of increased insecurity these include the probability that a job ends involuntarily is followed by a spell of nonemployment or that the subsequent job has lower wages these indicators of insecurity also show no upward trend

debt for nature swaps as noncooperative outcomes abstract recently nongovernmental organizations have engaged in debt for nature swaps in an effort to slow the rate of deforestation the purpose of this paper is to provide analysis of the welfare properties that arise to self enforcing swaps we show that swaps may be self enforcing in that they can arise as noncooperative equilibria at high harvest and debt levels under these conditions a credit constrained ldc is likely to reduce harvest levels similarly if the ngo views preservation projects as complements it is likely to provide debt relief we provide simulations to demonstrate the effects of different parametric values for the utility functions of the ldc and ngo on the noncooperative and cooperative equilibria

agricultural expansion and deforestation modelling the impact of population market forces and property rights abstract this paper compares four different modelling approaches to agricultural expansion and deforestation and explores the implications of assumptions about the household objectives the labour market and the property rights regime a major distinction is made between population and market based explanations many of the popular policy prescriptions are based on the population approach assuming subsistence behaviour and limited market integration within a more realistic particularly for the long term effects market approach well intentioned policies such as agricultural intensification programmes may boost deforestation many forest frontier contexts are also characterized by forest clearing giving farmers land rights deforestation becomes an investment to the farmer and a title establishment strategy land titling and credit programmes may therefore increase deforestation

job tenure in britain 1975 1992 the authors examine eighteen years of a large cross section to build up a picture of job tenure in britain they look for changes in the distribution of job tenure over a turbulent period for the u k labor market the authors find some change in the mean job tenure a decrease in elapsed tenure of about 10 percent between 1975 and 1992 these are important changes but they do not support the view that the dramatic changes in the labor market technology and competition have spelled the end of jobs for life copyright 1996 by royal economic society

trends in job instability and wages for young adult men data and measurement problems have complicated the debate over trends in job instability in the united states we compare two cohorts of young white men from the national longitudinal surveys nls construct a rigorous measure of job change and confirm earlier findings of a significant increase in job instability we then benchmark the nls against other main data sets in the field and conduct a thorough attrition analysis extending the analysis to wages we find that the wage returns to job changing have both declined and become more unequal for young adults mirroring trends in their long term wage growth

computerisation and wage dispersion an analytical reinterpretation the rich countries have recently seen a dramatic rise in income inequality all the more surprising because the long term trend had been toward equality this paper examines one of the leading explanations computerisation in the workplace i offer a theory of computers impact on white collar work which goes far toward explaining the timing form and locus of recent labour market changes the theory looks at the bureaucratic and organisational applications of computers that have been first largest and most influential they have two effects on firms demand for labour at different skill levels

declining job security this article defines and analyzes job security in the context of implicit contracts designed to overcome incentive problems in the employment relationship contracts of this nature generate predictions concerning the relationship between job security parameters such as worker seniority and sectoral economic conditions and the probability of separations to test these predictions i estimate binomial and multinomial models of job separations using panel study of income dynamics psid data for the years 1976 93 the results are consistent with a decline over time in the incentives to maintain existing employment relationships for male workers and for skilled white collar women

deforestation and seigniorage in developing countries a tradeoff abstract most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets consequently they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues first we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues second a panel data econometric analysis over the 1990 2010 period confirms our findings consequently a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation third we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements

labor market reforms job instability and the flexibility of the employment relationship we endogenize separation in a search model of the labor market and allow for bargaining over the continuation of employment relationships following productivity shocks to take place under asymmetric information in such a setting separation may occur even if continuation of the employment relationship is privately efficient for workers and firms we show that reductions in the cost of separation owing for example to a reduction in firing taxes lead to an increase in job instability and when separation costs are initially high may be welfare decreasing for workers and firms we furthermore show that in response to an exogenous reduction in firing taxes workers and firms may switch from rigid to flexible employment contracts which further amplifies the increase in job instability caused by policy reform

conservation organizations and the option value to preserve an application to debt for nature swaps abstract this paper presents an analytical model of the option to preserve environmental goods motivated by the existence of debt for nature swaps conservation organizations option value arises from the option to reject or accept the terms of a bargain concerning the exchange of the debt holding of a conservation organization for land preservation from the resulting closed form solution of the option to preserve simulations are performed showing the importance of the conservation organization s willingness to pay for preservation and the correlation between the willingness to pay and the value of the asset to be exchanged on the option value

demand side policies for environmental protection and sustainable usage of renewable resources abstract since many renewable resource systems such as tropical and temperate forests coral reefs and wild fisheries are often exploited at unsustainable rates studies aimed at reducing these trends have focused on the market failures associated with over exploitation within this framework the literature devised what we term supply side policies to correct these market failures here we introduce demand side policies into the mix of renewable resource and environmental management policies these policies are designed to increase the demand for goods produced in a sustainable fashion by 1 promoting the long term conservation of natural capital assets 2 promoting the attainment of economic efficiency and 3 providing greater political acceptability relative to supply side policies

poverty policies and deforestation the case of mexico this study examines the determinants and policy implications of deforestation in mexico and includes a brief review of the relevant empirical literature and a description of the theoretical model land use patterns and socioeconomic and physiogeographic factors are determinants data were obtained from digital maps of land use and soils and the 1990 population and 1991 agricultural censuses a simple 2 period equation formalizes the relationship between deforestation and poverty government policies and local land tenure in period 1 representative producers in municipalities have 4 options in allocating labor time wage generation agricultural production deforestation on land without clear property rights and investment in technology during period 2 the options are to farm on available land and deforested areas or work in the wage sector findings reveal that 1 communal land tenure ownership by the ejido did not increase deforestation 2 pricing that favors maize production which is very land intensive increased deforestation and technical assistance reduced deforestation and 3 poverty was related to higher rates of deforestation prices were the most important immediate factor in unsustainable resource use but other factors had an impact the government policy mix did not support sustainable development reduced subsidies would benefit the environment the government should provide safety nets to increase the level of rural investment and reduce poverty and should improve land productivity with technical inputs trade liberalization and elimination of subsidies should be sensitive to the poors need for real wages

long run trends in workers beliefs about their own job security evidence from the general social survey in recent years federal reserve chairman alan greenspan former u s secretary of labor robert reich and many journalists have argued that workers are more anxious about losing their jobs than they were in the past i use the 1977 96 general social survey to document trends in workers beliefs about their own job security during the 1990s workers have been more pessimistic about losing their jobs in the next 12 months than workers were during the 1980s workers have also been more concerned about suffering future job loss that would have resulted in a decline in earnings or a spell of unemployment

is job stability in the us falling reconciling trends in the current population survey and panel study of income dynamics this article considers whether two commonly used sources of information on employer tenure the panel study of income dynamics and the current population survey yield systematically different trends in employer tenure little evidence of a discrepancy between the data sets in the 1980s or 1990s is found when comparable samples variable definitions and time frames are used neither data set shows a significant trend in the share of workers with 1 year or less of tenure while both data sets show an increase in the fraction of men with less than 10 years of tenure starting in the late 1980s

land use and income diversification comparing traditional and colonist populations in the brazilian amazon this article compares and analyzes land use and income diversification among two distinct groups of farmers in the brazilian amazon recent colonists in ouro preto do oeste rondonia and traditional long term residents along the tapajos river para we investigate the hypothesis that farmers who diversify their cash income sources clear less forest on an annual basis and we compare these livelihood choices across colonist and traditional populations in particular we develop a conceptual model based on the household production framework and use econometric models to identify determinants of diversification and forest clearing we find that diversification of agricultural cash crops is negatively correlated with forest clearing by colonists providing limited evidence for the hypothesis other significant covariates of diversification and forest clearing include cash income levels stage in family life cycle cattle ownership and chemical inputs differences in these variables and differences in household response to these variables explain variation in diversification and forest clearing across the two populations

has job stability declined yet new evidence for the 1990 s we update the evidence on changes in job stability through the mid 1990s using recently released current population survey data for 1995 that parallel earlier job tenure supplements in the aggregate job stability declined modestly in the first half of the 1990s moreover the relatively small aggregate changes mask rather sharp declines in stability for workers with more than a few years of tenure nonetheless the data available to this point do not support the conclusion that the downward shift in job stability for more tenured workers and the more modest decline in aggregate job stability reflect long term trends

fixed term contracts and the dynamics of labour demand abstract we estimate a model of labour demand that accounts for dynamics arising from the relative costs of hiring and firing workers on either indefinite term contract itc or fixed term contract ftc we use a panel of 1000 french firms for which we can measure the number of entries and exits for each type of contract between 1988 and 1992 our estimates suggest that 1 it is much more costly to lay off workers under itc than to hire them 2 it is much less costly to adjust the number of ftc than to adjust the number of itc 3 the asymmetry between hiring and layoff costs is more important for non production than for production workers

deforestation and the environmental kuznets curve an institutional perspective institutions for secure property rights and better environmental policies for moving the system towards a sustainable growth path can reduce the height of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation this study examines the impact of these specific institutional factors on the ekc relationship for deforestation across latin american african and asian countries the factors related to agricultural production population economy and governmental policies of each country are hypothesised to affect deforestation results of the latin american countries show significant evidence of an ekc relationship for deforestation and also relevance of the institutional factors to reduce the rate of deforestation improvements in institutions for secure property rights and better environmental policies can thus significantly reduce the rate of deforestation without hindering the level of economic growth evidence also suggests that the effect of agricultural production on deforestation could be halted by strengthening institutional factors there was found to be complementarity between the institutional factors and forest sector polices and an additive effect between the institutional factors and forest products export promotion policies which could also eventually reduce the rate of deforestation

redd and forest transition tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract international attention is focused on finding ways to reduce emissions from deforestation because of the emerging concerns over climate change however the causes of deforestation are rooted in current economic and development paradigms the causes of deforestation also vary across different geographical regions and have implications for the forest transition attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing deforestation have achieved little success despite over 30 years of un negotiations new initiatives from redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could provide financial incentives to curb deforestation hence alternative development paths for forest cover changes and forest transition are analyzed for the redd policy within the framework of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for deforestation the ekc models are estimated for geographical regions of latin america africa and asia the results based on the panel data analysis of 43 countries covering the period 1970 1994 provides evidence that an inverted u shaped ekc fits for latin america and africa while a u shaped ekc applies to asia the results also indicate that strengthening agricultural and forestry sector policies are important for curbing deforestation the ekc models estimates could provide guidance for decisions on financing the redd policy as specific to each region

forest resource depletion soil dynamics and agricultural productivity in the tropics abstract a two sector dynamic model for agriculture and forestry is proposed agricultural yields are a function of the rate of deforestation the forest stock and purchased inputs we examine the impact of changes in the social discount rate net returns to agriculture and direct marginal benefits of the forest stock benefits on the optimal deforestation path under the assumption of a quadratic agricultural yield function finally steady state comparative static analysis is conducted

changes in job security and their causes an empirical analysis for france 1982 2002 abstract in this paper we analyze the changes in the risks of involuntary job loss in france between 1982 and 2002 we find that these risks are higher in the 1990s than they were in the 1980s we develop an econometric analysis to separate the effects of institutional changes from the effects of new technologies our estimates show that the rise in job loss rates is significantly more pronounced in industries that have the largest share of r d workers and the largest rate of new technologies users these findings suggest that technological changes contribute to decreasing the incentive to keep workers for long period of time and to increasing job insecurity

job stability in the united states two key attributes of a job are its wage and its duration much has been made of changes in the wage distribution in the 1980s but little attention has been given to job durations since hall we fill this void by examining the temporal evolution of job retention rates in u s labor markets using data assembled from the sequence of current population survey job tenure supplements there have been relative declines in job stability for some of the groups that experienced the sharpest declines in relative wages however we find that aggregate job retention rates have remained stable

population tenure and natural resource management the case of customary land area in malawi abstract this paper analyzes the factors determining conversion of woodlands to agricultural land changes in tree cover and maize yield for the last two and a half decades by using aerial photos and field survey data in 57 communities in malawi the econometric analysis revealed that population pressure led to greater land conversion but had no effect on yield or tree cover changes areas where greater changes in traditional tenure systems have occurred are associated with reduction in tree cover and expansion of agricultural land these results suggest the importance of strengthening institutions to manage natural resources