explaining irrigation technology choices a microparameter approach water price reforms are increasingly being used to encourage improvements in irrigation efficiency through technology adoption a microparameter approach based on field level data is used to assess the effect of economic variables environmental characteristics and institutional variables on irrigation technology choices the results show that water price is not the most important factor governing irrigation technology adoption physical and agronomic characteristics appear to matter more the results demonstrate the importance of using micro level data to determine the effects of asset heterogeneity and crop type on technology adoption the continued growth of urban water demand acted a measure a b 3616 requiring irrigathe recent awareness of environmental and in tion districts in the state to draft best managestream water values and the virtual halt of wa merit practices for the use of irrigation water ter supply development have put increased de including farm level measures such as irrigamands on scarce water supplies in the western tion systems water price reforms are also inunited states recent legislation has called for creasingly used to encourage improvements in increased in stream water flows to enhance wa irrigation efficiency through technology adopter quality and restore wildlife habitat in a hum tion the federal central valley project imber of states especially california because ag provement act requires the u s bureau of recricultural water use accounts for the majority of lamation to adopt increasing block pricing for water consumption in the west growers are water provided to irrigation districts generally forced to bear the burden of reduced the literature on adoption of modern irrigadiversions necessary to enhance in stream tion technology is well established both empiri

proposal for a methodology to monitor sustainability in the production of soft drinks in ref pet this study proposes a methodology to view and monitor the economic social and environmental impacts of operational and strategic decisions in reverse logistics rl industries factor analysis was conducted to form indexes in these three dimensions of an integrated rl process unlike other research the proposed methodology is oriented towards managers decisions on all aspects of the triple bottom line simultaneously and is adaptable to various industries the methodology was tested in a retail company in brazil that markets the world s largest carbonated soft drink brand in ref pet the results provide a holistic view of the impact of decisions on the use of economic social and environmental resources enabling direct operational decisions and strategies in the search for a better balance of the triple bottom line thus managers can seek improvements in the inputs of the rl process avoiding undesirable outputs this study contributes to the implementation of the concept and the adoption of sustainability practices in the corporate strategy improving the communication flow between operational activities and economic performance regarding the consumption of scarce resources and reducing the negative social and environmental impacts for the benefit of the company the business community society and nature

education spillovers in farm productivity revisiting the evidence this paper exploits the social organization of india to revisit the question of education spillovers in farm productivity the fact that social interactions mainly occur within castes in rural india provides tools to show that the observed correlation between farm productivity and neighbors education is likely to be a spillover effect in particular there are no cross caste and no cross occupation effects which underlines that under specific assumptions which are stated and explored in the paper the education of neighbors does not capture the effect of group unobservables this evidence is complemented by separate estimations by crops which show results that are consistent with education spillovers the strategy used in this paper helps understand and interpret previous findings from the literature

integrated assessment of water energy ghg emissions tradeoffs in an irrigated lucerne production system in eastern australia robust understanding of possible trade offs and synergies between climate change energy and water sector policies is critical to achieving economically viable and environmentally sound agricultural production systems in a low carbon water constrained economy in which greenhouse gas ghg emissions are penalized and water savings rewarded accurate assessment of the potential costs benefits of investment decisions can help to optimize the economic efficiency of agricultural production while minimizing environmental impacts this paper presents a novel integrated framework based on carbon and water accounting which enables analysis of potential trade offs between water savings energy consumption ghg emissions and economic costs benefits associated with the adoption of new water efficient irrigation technologies the framework was applied to an irrigated lucerne cropping system in eastern australia and compares the costs benefits of old roll line sprinkler irrigation systems against new pressurized systems positive synergies were found with the adoption of the new technology which saved both water and energy use reduced total ghg emissions and resulted in net economic returns across a range of carbon prices the results of this study provide support for an integrated evidence based approach to policy development and strategic decision making and for the prioritization of investments on both economic and environmental grounds

caste and tribe inequality evidence from india 1983 1999 abstract despite policies targeting scheduled castes sc and scheduled tribes st there remain large disparities of living standards between sc st and non sc st households in india the sc st households may be poorer because they possess lower human and physical capital but they may also earn lower returns to these assets this study finds that 30 50 of the welfare disparities are attributable to different returns such structural differences between the sc and the non sc st are partly because the sc earn lower returns to schooling a large part of the structural disparities between the st and the non sc st comes from the fact that the areas where the st live are different from those where the non sc st live in addition the st tend to earn lower returns even with controls for geographical conditions

optimizing an emission trading scheme for local governments a stackelberg game model and hybrid algorithm this study investigates a policy making problem for a local government to implement an emission trading scheme by considering the interactive production decisions of firms in its administrative region the market based allowance trading price formed freely among the firms in the region is investigated by taking into account regional environmental bearing capacities under the scheme the government sets the emission reduction target of the region and allocates tradable initial allowances to firms and firms plan their production according to their allowances on hand a stackelberg game model is formulated to analyze the decisions of the government and firms aiming to maximize the social welfare of the region and maximize the profit of each firm in view of the non concavity and discreteness of the decision model for the government we propose a hybrid algorithm to solve the game model efficiently this algorithm consists of a polynomial time dynamic programming binary search and genetic algorithm results reveal that i the stackelberg game model greatly supports local governments policy making on the market driven emission allowance trading scheme and that ii the social welfare is a great metric for policy making decisions on environmental regulations the market driven emission trading scheme is an effective mechanism for local governments to induce emission reduction through green technology adoption by firms however governments should set their emission reduction targets appropriately because a tight or easy regulation policy significantly affects the environmental and economic benefits as well as the social welfare

environmental resource planning under cap and trade models for optimization abstract under the conditions of a cap and trade c t program manufacturers are restricted in total greenhouse gas emissions but allowed with options to acquire and dispose environmental resource e g certified emission quota ceq or commercialized permit for emission of certain pollutant via a market system or conduct self purification sp to reduce emission level to satisfy their overall emission needs due to production or service activities this paper analyzes the operational decisions of production systems under cap and trade conditions in which the problem is modeled as a multi stage dynamic optimization problem for each planning period the model specifically addresses the decisions on purchasing ceq reducing emission via sp and carrying over surplus emission quota seq to meet the required emission level driven by production demand for the period it also makes sure that the sum of reduced emission over the whole planning horizon meets exactly a goal of emission reduction specified at the manufacturers discretion other important problem characteristics addressed include the unit cost for reducing emission level via sp to reflect the fact that the cost increases as accumulated emission reduction increases i e the more reduced the more difficult to reduce and time related cost associated with green investment for emission reduction e g interest cost of short term loans these characteristics make the model and related analysis useful for both practitioners and researchers in this area numerical experiments were designed and carried out to verify and validate the proposed concepts

comparisons of initial carbon allowance allocation rules in an o2o retail supply chain with the cap and trade regulation abstract this paper focuses on an o2o retail supply chain in the context of low carbon environment the decision models are constructed under three cases without cap and trade regulation cap and trade regulation based on grandfathering mechanism and cap and trade regulation based on benchmarking mechanism the emission reduction strategies of the supply chain members in the three cases are then discussed the paper compares the effects of the grandfathering and benchmarking mechanisms on the firm s decisions profits and social welfare firstly the results show that the unit carbon quota plays a decisive role in firm s decisions compared with the grandfathering methodology the benchmarking one can more effectively push manufacturers to produce low carbon products and motivate retailers to promote low carbon products secondly it is profitable for the retailer to cooperate with a manufacturer who has lower emission reduction cost simultaneously the retailer will prefer the benchmarking mechanism to the grandfathering mechanism thirdly for the government it is beneficial to use grandfathering mechanism for low carbon emission firms and use benchmarking mechanism for high carbon emission firms also the paper provides government and firms with conditions where the benchmarking allocation method is more suitable for sustainable development the government s decision on benchmarks is a critical factor in maximizing the social welfare

mothers employment and their children s schooling a joint multilevel analysis for india this paper studies the relationship between mothers employment and children s schooling in india using the second national family health survey the results of a multilevel probit model show that the correlation between mothers employment and their children s schooling is negative women in poorer households are more likely to work but given the negative correlation their additional income does not seem sufficient to enable children s school attendance a sensitivity analysis on wealth deciles shows that this negative relationship disappears in urban areas and becomes weaker in rural areas at the top wealth deciles

regional differences pose challenges for food security policy a case study of india mahadevan r and suardi s regional differences pose challenges for food security policy a case study of india regional studies this paper examines factors affecting the calorie gap by considering the risk of calorie inadequacy or excess at the tails of food intakes non linear estimations accounting for rural urban differences in more and less developed states allow for policy making on two levels first the calorie gap was found to respond differently depending on the calorie status of the individual to various socio economic characteristics social assistance programmes as well as caste and religion second these impacts depended on rural urban differences and at other times on the development of the states these findings pose significant challenges towards achieving a balanced regional food security policy

willingness to pay for environmental practices implications for eco labeling consumer survey data collected in former west and east berlin after the unification of germany are used to address the issue of willingness to pay wtp for foods produced with techniques consistent with environmental stewardship results show differences in the wtp between residents of the two former german states attributed to area of residence residents of eastern city districts were generally less willing to pay a premium for foods produced with environmental friendly methods which suggests that marketing of such foods will be more successful in western districts unless educational efforts can be used to bridge the gap in the stated wtp

poverty in palanpur the meaning and identification of poverty are examined using three indicators of standard of living in the north indian village of palanpur the first is intended as a measure of apparent prosperity based on the personal assessments of investigators after intensive field work in the village over the full agricultural year 1983 84 the other two are income in 1983 84 and a measure of permanent income obtained by averaging incomes from four surveys conducted over a twenty six year interval a comparison of these three indicators shows that income measured in any one year may give a misleading impression of the incidence of poverty the risk of poverty for households is calculated vulnerability is high among low caste households and those which are involved in agricultural labor categories however are not homogeneous for example whereas the landless and widows are more likely to be poor some of such households are quite well off it is argued that poverty in a good agricultural year is a better indicator of sustained poverty than poverty in a bad year occupational mobility out of agricultural labor is low and changes in the distribution of land are largely accounted for by demographic processes such as household splits

considering the energy water and food nexus towards an integrated modelling approach the areas of energy water and food policy have numerous interwoven concerns ranging from ensuring access to services to environmental impacts to price volatility these issues manifest in very di

seasonal migration and welfare illfare in eastern india a social analysis over 500 000 people are regularly engaged in seasonal migration for rice work into southern west bengal this paper analyses social processes at work in the interactions between employers and workers and the welfare illfare outcomes group identities based on religion and ethnicity are strengthened through the experience of migration and deployed by some migrants to make this form of employment less degrading in west bengal seasonal migration can involve practical welfare gains importantly an informal wage floor has been put into place and managed by the peasant union allied to the largest party in the left front regime however the costs and risks of migration remain high

cost based modelling of optimal emission quota allocation abstract given that a fixed national emission reduction target could be achieved by imposing emission quotas among multiple decision making units under administration a novel nonlinear programming approach is proposed in this paper to obtain an optimal emission quota allocation in a least cost way marginal emission abatement cost curves are simulated based on the environmental performance and marginal emission abatement costs measured in a set of parametric directional output distance functions with multi inputs and multi outputs further the proposed model is applied to empirically investigate the optimal carbon emission quota allocation for china s building construction industry among thirty three provinces in three different regions the results indicate that the relatively developed eastern region in china has higher marginal emission abatement cost and can be imposed with more emission quotas while the central and western regions can undertake more emission reduction approximately 74 million rmb can be saved by implementing the optimal emission allocation proposed in this paper as compared to a uniform emission quota allocation the findings are of great theoretical methodological and practical significance for policymakers and social science researchers in terms of climate change mitigation

climate policy instruments and industry effects and potential responses in the swedish context efficient policy instruments for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases are essential for the realization of a successful climate policy general economic policy instruments have the potential for providing efficient emission reduction as they equalise marginal costs for emission reduction between different actors they also provide incentives for a great variety of responses such as energy efficiency improvements fuel substitution and reduced consumption of carbon intensive products however as a result of the fact that it has so far been impossible to implement policy instruments on a global scale these instruments are often adapted in such a way that some of their potential advantages are eliminated in this paper the possibility of different policy instruments to contribute to reductions in industrial co2 emissions while preserving the competitiveness of industry is evaluated theoretically the consequences of increasing the cost of co2 emission in various industrial sectors are also discussed attention is directed towards carbon taxes emission trading and regulation co2 taxes without tax reductions and emission trading with allocation through auctioning have theoretical advantages in a global climate regime but may lead to significant disadvantages if implemented in a single or a small groups of countries emission trading with free intensity based allocation would in this case have a major advantage in combining incentives for emission reductions through efficiency improvements and fuel substitution with little impact on production levels less

cooking fuel choice in rural china results from microdata abstract unclean cooking fuel is widely used in the developing world and it is the main indication of energy poverty in rural china in this paper we investigate the situation transition and determination of fuel choice in china s rural household cooking using the large scale micro survey data of china health and retirement longitudinal study charls we find that there is a big gap in using commercial cooking fuels between rural and urban households 60 of the rural households adopt traditional biomass resource as their main fuel for cooking in 2011 while this figure is less than 5 in the urban we also identify a significant spatial divide in fuel choice in southeastern coastal areas about 40 of the rural households prefer solid fuels while this figure jumps to over 80 in northeastern areas the longitudinal data also reveal a significant transition from traditional to modern fuels from 2008 to 2012 moreover the distance to the most commonly used farmer s market education background coal price and female labor participation are all influential in determining the households choices

caste discrimination in the indian urban labour market abstract this the pioneering quantitative analysis of caste in the indian urban labour market examines the age old problem of caste in the light of discrimination theory and government policy using a survey of workers in delhi the gross wage difference between scheduled untouchable and non scheduled caste is decomposed into its explained and discrimination components and from a model of occupation choice into wage and job discrimination discrimination is found to exist and to operate at least in part through the traditional mechanism viz assignment to jobs with the scheduled castes entering poorly paid dead end jobs it is assisted by methods of recruitment based on contacts prevalent in the manual occupation which also cause past discrimination to carry over to the present its practice serves the economic interests of those who exercise a taste for discrimination

production optimization considering environmental performance and preference in the cap and trade system abstract many countries like china are in a dilemma between economic growth and environmental deterioration e g smog weather simultaneously a growing people concern the product s environmental performance along with their improving environment awareness this paper focuses on the impacts of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the production decision of emission dependent firms in the cap and trade system the cap and trade system uses the total cap to attain environmental goals and allows trade to achieve the effective scheduling through market regulation under this mechanism through analyzing the influence of carbon footprint and low carbon preference on the market supply and demand we build a production optimization model and develop the optimal decisions several interesting management insights on environmental preference and policy are concluded

how access to credit affects self employment differences by gender during india s rural banking reform abstract household survey data for 1983 2000 from india s national sample survey organisation are used to examine the impact of credit on self employment among men and women in rural labour households results indicate that credit access encourages women s self employment as own account workers and employers while it discourages men s self employment as unpaid family workers ownership of land a key form of collateral also serves as a strong predictor of self employment among the lower castes in india self employment is less likely for scheduled castes prone to wage activity but more likely for scheduled tribes prone to entrepreneurial work

the long term impacts of air pollution control policy historical links between municipal actions and industrial energy efficiency in kawasaki city japan abstract under the pressures of rapid industrialization and urbanization many asian countries are facing the challenge of reducing air pollution and co 2 emissions simultaneously while maintaining their economic growth under such a circumstance a growing attention is focused on successful implementation of co benefit policies that are designed to reduce both air pollutants and co 2 emissions however the concept of co benefit policies must be developed further in order to identify its quantitative and qualitative validity which can be assessed using a reliable methodology for the estimation of co benefits and through clarification of the importance of this approach for stakeholders in urban environmental policy making based on a systematic review of co benefit research and air pollution control policies in japan we investigated the local air pollution control policy in kawasaki city one of the industrial centers of japan and confirmed that it has contributed both to the sharp decline of atmospheric sulfur dioxide so 2 levels and to energy efficiency improvements in local industries our results suggest that preventive actions and local scale compliance enforcement tools that are uniquely designed and act as a form of agreement between government and individual firms could contribute significantly to successful implementation of co benefit policies in the long term we conclude our paper with a discussion of linkages between low carbon technology innovations and policy designs that could further nurture co benefits

sources of ethnic inequality in vietnam vietnam s ethnic minorities who tend to live mostly in remote rural areas typically have lower living standards than the ethnic majority how much is this because of differences in economic characteristics such as education levels and land rather than low returns to characteristics is there a self reinforcing culture of poverty in the minority groups reflecting patterns of past discrimination the authors find that differences in levels of living are due in part to the fact that the minorities live in less productive areas characterized by difficult terrain poor infrastructure less access to off farm work and the market economy and inferior access to education geographic disparities tend to persist because of immobility and regional differences in living standards but the authors also find large differences within geographical areas even after controlling for household characteristics they find differences in returns to productive characteristics to be the most important explanation for ethnic inequality but the minorities do not obtain lower returns to all characteristics there is evidence of compensating behavior for example pure returns to location even in remote inhospitable areas tend to be higher for minorities though not high enough to overcome the large consumption difference with the majority the majority ethnic group s model of income generation is a poor guide on how to fight poverty among ethnic minority groups nor is it enough to target poor areas to redress ethnic inequality policies must be designed to reach minority households in poor areas and to explicitly recognize behavior patterns including compensating behavior that have served the minorities well in the short term but intensify ethnic inequalities in the longer term it will be important to open up options for minority groups both by ensuring that they are not disadvantaged in labor markets for example and by changing the conditions that have caused their isolation and social exclusion

urban influences on rural schooling in india abstract many believe that low levels of schooling in rural areas of developing economies are a consequence of the low rate of return to schooling in agriculture this belies the possibility that rural schooling decisions are undertaken in response to the possibility of employment in urban areas this paper tests this hypothesis using three cross sections of household data for rural india it finds that urban rates of return do influence rural schooling particularly amongst households who are most likely to seek urban employment such as the landless the results suggest that low levels of rural schooling may reflect not just conditions in the local village economy but also the functioning and size of the relevant labor market

brokered livelihoods debt labour migration and development in tribal western india seasonal labour migration is an increasingly important aspect of rural livelihoods in tribal areas of western india such migration can no longer be viewed merely as an adjunct to an essentially agrarian way of life but has to be seen as integral to the coping survival and livelihood strategies of tribal farming families rural to urban migration is often viewed as a consequence of environmental crisis in which migrants as ecological refugees gadgil and guha 1995 are forcibly displaced by processes of deforestation soil erosion water scarcity land fragmentation declining agricultural productivity and population increase while increasing pressure on a fragile resource base has indeed contributed to widespread failure to meet subsistence needs among tribal households the research discussed in this study shows that the forces leading to migration are as much to do with the social relations of dependency and indebtedness which subsistence failure entails as with ecological decline the problem is

caste discrimination and transaction costs in the labor market evidence from rural north india abstract this paper is an empirical attempt to quantify caste based discrimination in the labor market using household data taken from rural north india in the regression analysis transaction costs associated with entry into the labor market and reservation wages are estimated simultaneously along with market wages the estimation results provide evidence of the existence of transaction costs in the labor market and discrimination against backward classes with regard to access to regular employment in line with previous studies the results suggest that the achievements of india s reservation policy so far have at best been limited in addition a comparison between the estimates from the model employed in this paper and conventional reduced form approaches shows that discrimination in labor market entry is likely to be underestimated in the conventional reduced form approaches

employers discriminatory behavior and the estimation of wage discrimination this paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups introduced by oaxaca 1973 to a theoretical model of employers discriminatory behavior it is shown that conditional on different assumptions about employers discriminatory tastes oaxaca s estimators of wage discrimination can be derived that the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination based on the assumption that within each type of labor e g unskilled skilled the utility function capturing employers discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups the estimators are compared empirically in an application to male female wage differentials

what has luck got to do with it a regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural india this article explores the role of agro ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in india using a new operationalisation of agro ecological factors and incorporating within state variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural development which in turn in associated with poverty reduction promotion of agriculture in less favoured areas in unlikely to have similar effects on agriculture in less favoured areas is unlikely to have similar effects on agricultural growth even if the effects of agricultural growth on poverty remain similar unless conditions for irrigation are favourable or rainfall is sufficiently abundant and reliable this suggests that considerable caution may be needed in drawing policy conclusions from empirical analysis by state alone and without regard to their underlying f

jobs off the farm wealth human capital and social group in rural eastern india abstractthis study examines the effects of wealth human capital and social group on the occupational choice and income of farm households to gain an understanding of the mechanism underlying the

caste and credit a woeful tale this paper examines caste based differences in farmers access to bank loans in rural india we investigate whether banks practice taste based discrimination on the basis of caste in order to identify potential discrimination we consider loan applications and approval decisions separately we find significant inter caste differences in application rates and evidence of discrimination against scheduled tribe borrowers at the approval stage to rule out the role of statistical discrimination we simulate unobserved credit histories with various distributions evidence for taste based discrimination persists despite accounting for unobservables however we find that this discrimination does not affect small farmers

the effect of allocation above emissions and price uncertainty on abatement investments under the eu ets abstract the european union emission trading scheme eu ets by far the largest in its kind has inspired several other carbon markets in the world based on interviews with plant managers from almost all belgian ceramics lime and cement producers this study describes how manager s perceptions on emission trading affected investment decisions in line with behavioural economics reference dependence is found to explain why free allocation below emissions creates a greater incentive to abatement investment compared to allocation above emissions in the ceramics sector allocation above emissions refrained managers from including carbon gains in payback times this contradicts the famous coase theorem which predicts that free allocation has no effect on abatement incentives the results indicate that auctioning part of the emission rights will reduce barriers to abatement investment carbon price uncertainty is seen as a disincentive for abatement investment by some managers and as an incentive by others intermediate levels of uncertainty add option value to abatement investments because the associated gradual learning adds flexibility in an uncertain carbon constrained future however high levels of uncertainty creating a risk of offshoring even when companies innovate creates an option value to postpone abatement investments narrow framing misperceiving the risk hedging counter cyclicality of carbon costs reinforces the option value to wait therefore policy should aim to reduce price uncertainty for very low and very high carbon prices not for an intermediary price range

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

on the measurement of poverty official statistics in the united states and the united kingdom show a rise in poverty between the 1970 s and the 1980 s but scepticism has been expressed with regard to these findings in particular the methods employed in the measurement of poverty have been the subject of criticism this paper re examines three basic issues in measuring poverty the choice of the poverty line the index of poverty and the relation between poverty and inequality one general theme running through the paper is that there is a diversity of judgments which enter the measurement of poverty and that it is necessary to recognize these explicitly in the procedures adopted there is likely to be disagreement about the choice of poverty line affecting both its level and its structure in this situation we may only be able to make comparisons and not to measure differences and the comparisons may lead only to a partial rather than a complete ordering the first section of the paper discusses the stochastic dominance conditions which allow such comparisons illustrating their application by reference to data for the united states the choice of poverty measure has been the subject of an extensive literature and a variety of measures have been proposed in the second section of the paper a different approach is suggested considering a class of measures satisfying certain general properties and seeking conditions under which all members of the class which includes many of those proposed give the same ranking those sceptical about measures of poverty often assert that poverty and inequality are being confounded the third section of the paper distinguishes four different viewpoints and relates them to theories of justice and views of social welfare

the impact of carbon policies on supply chain design and logistics of a major retailer abstract the energy used to move freight comprised about 17 of all the energy consumed in the united states in 2010 this percentage was an increase from 8 7 in 1970 even though fuel efficiency gradually improved over the period one major reason of this phenomenon is that the longer supply chains of many industries caused by globalization increase freight movement various carbon policies have been discussed and even implemented for some industry sectors in the european union to reduce carbon emissions however the emissions of surface transportation have not been well studied this paper investigates three of the most common carbon policies carbon emission tax inflexible cap and cap and trade the impact on a company may include the redesign of its supply chains and different choices of transportation modes truck rail or waterway this paper proposes optimization models for major retailers who make a huge contribution to freight movement to design their supply chains under various carbon policies the results from the models can help policy makers to predict the impact of policies on overall emissions in the freight transportation sector the model may also be incorporated into the integrated assessment models for climate change analyses furthermore a sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the impact of the policy parameters on carbon emissions and logistics cost this research uses the supply chain of a major u s retailer i e wal mart to demonstrate how to use the models and conduct the sensitivity analysis in order to realize significant emission reduction a redesign of supply chains of major retailers is necessary and will be triggered only by a high carbon tax rate a high carbon price or a very strict carbon cap which all may involve high social and or economic complexity numerical experiments show that different policies have different impacts on the costs and the effectiveness of emission reduction how to choose policy parameters is critical to the effectiveness of a carbon policy the different sensitivity also implies different challenges during the implementation of the policies such as the high cost preventing retailers from accepting any carbon taxes and the difficulty of reaching an agreement on the carbon caps between retailers and policy makers

caste stratification and wealth inequality in india summary we analyze the relationship between wealth inequality and caste divisions in india using nationally representative surveys on household wealth conducted during 1991 92 and 2002 03 according to our findings the groups in india that are generally considered disadvantaged known as scheduled castes or scheduled tribes have as one would expect substantially lower wealth than the forward caste groups while the other backward classes and non hindus occupy positions in the middle using the anogi decomposition technique we estimate that between caste inequality accounted for about 13 of overall wealth inequality in 2002 03 the stratification parameters indicate that the forward caste hindus overlap little with the other caste groups while the latter have significantly higher degrees of overlap with one another and with the overall population using this method we are also able to comment on the emergence and strengthening of a creamy layer or relatively well off group among the disadvantaged groups especially the scheduled tribes

can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship abstract an inverse relationship between both farm productivity and labor intensity and farm size is a common empirical finding in developing country agriculture the traditional explanation has been imperfect labor markets recently it has been suggested instead that the inverse relationship is a statistical artifact resulting from omitted land quality using a farm level data set from java i investigate whether omitted variable bias can explain the inverse relationship i show that the inverse relationship and accompanying wage responses are inconsistent with a model of neoclassical farm behavior that ignores omitted variable bias instrumental variables techniques yield parameter estimates in which the inverse relationship is eliminated and the estimated wage elasticities are more in line with economic theory further econometric investigation hints that a model of omitted land quality may be a possible source of the inverse relationship these results emphasize the importance of considering the sources of cross sectional variation in estimating microeconomic relationships