the impact of ec environmental policy on british coal the courts and legal services act 1990 legalized a form of contingent contract between lawyers and clients in england and wales however it maintained the historic ban on american style contracts where lawyers receive a percentage of winnings in a successful case but nothing in the event of case loss the paper looks at the economic rationale for such american style contingent fees it then analyses the arguments used for and against them in britain in the 1989 90 pre legislation debate this is done with reference to the theoretical and empirical economic literature such fees have generated the arguments discussed concern access to justice the possibility of excessive contingent fees client lawyer conflicts of interest and the quantity of litigation under the fees the conclusion reached is that the british government s position on american style fees is acceptable except on the issue of excessive fees and that it should continue to consider introducing contingent fees copyright 1993 by oxford university press

optimal acid rain abatement policy for europe an analysis for the year 2000 acid rain causes greater environment damage than would occur if countries act cooperatively based on new estimates of sulphur abatement cost functions the potential gains from cooperation are calculated for europe various cooperative abatement rates are compared with the rates implied by recent international agreements the 30 club and the second sulphur protocol it is shown that the monetary gains from cooperation may be smaller than previously thought the distinction is made between primary and secondary abatement and their respective roles are discussed it is shown that agreed targets can only be met if primary measures eg fuel switching are adopted

crop prices and the demand for titled land evidence from uganda abstract i investigate how agricultural prices affect demand for titled land using panel data on ugandan farmers and a price index that weighs international crop prices by the structure of land use at the sub county level higher prices increase farmers share of titled land i also present evidence of a positive impact of prices on agricultural incomes the effect of prices on land tenure is stronger when farmers have access to roads and markets when they have undertaken investment on the land and when households fear land grabbing

sunk costs financial markets and contestability abstract this paper analyzes the proposition that the theory or contestable markets will yield good predictions for markets in which sunk costs although present are unimportant two results are of interest 1 if costs are at all sunk incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants 2 if no costs are sunk but firms finance investment by borrowing incumbent firms will be able to engage in strategic behavior with respect to entrants in these cases one must analyze strategic behavior of incumbent firms to analyze market performance

the value of squatter dwellings in developing countries the value of squatter dwellings for a sample in the philippines is estimated and the statistical relationship between value and housing characteristics is described the results of a survey approach indicate that while the discrepancies in the estimates are quite large for individual properties they are offset by using sufficiently large samples in addition when two estimates are highly correlated with one another they yield similar results when they are used as dependent variables in a hedonic price equation methodological considerations aside the determinants of the value of squatter dwellings tend to be similar to those of conventional formal sector dwellings the external appearance and quality of materials used in construction are among the most important variables water and sanitary facilities may not be valued as much as expected age may be positively correlated with value because housing services are improved more gradually in squatter communities and because longevity in a particular area is a sign of reduced risk overall squatter housing markets appear to behave as economically rational entities that valuate dwelling units similarly to conventional markets

the rise and fall of german hard coal subsidies abstract beginning with the coal crisis of 1958 the survival of the german hard coal mining sector has been heavily dependent on subsidies for several decades these subsidies are a complex system of almost 60 different measures often with conflicting objectives annual financial support for this subsidy system grew from 0 6 billion in 1958 to 7 5 billion in 1989 with the majority of the funding financed outside the public budget by a special fund based on the coal penny kohlepfennig in 1995 the abolishment of the coal penny in connection with budget constraints led to a significant subsidy decrease to 3 5 billion a recent agreement between the federal government and the mining state of north rhine westphalia in 2003 however seems to have fixed german hard coal subsidies at the 2 billion level for the time after 2012

coal restructuring in spain continuity and uncertainty abstract the policies of coal energy are currently undergoing a significant change at the european community level energy concerns are dominated by environmental commitments that seem to demand coal s disappearance the countries that for years have supplied the european energy market with this resource have confronted their future challenges in differing ways the history of the energy sector in spain has been marked by important changes and coal has been a key factor in this process membership in the european union has constituted a clear transition for a historically subsidized and protected sector that now faces an uncertain role in the national energy market the aim of this paper is to offer an overview and analysis of the mechanisms that have been implemented in the energy sector the first part analyzes the rationalization policies that preceded spanish entry into the eu giving a detailed description of the complex programs designed by the government to help mining companies the second part analyzes later systems aimed at helping the coal industry that were implemented after the eu imposed new criteria and objectives these systems led to the so called mixed model of rationalization this model which is completely different from that implemented in other member states is based on maintaining a system of subsidies that discriminate between public and private companies the third part examines the objectives of the current system and the plans projected for the future in the context of the eu s adoption of an energy strategy that seeks to reconcile a self sufficient energy supply with adherence to environmental commitments

removing coal subsidies implications for european electricity markets denmark britain germany and spain have high coal shares in electricity generation denmark with no indigenous coal has the cheapest coal and electricity germany has the largest coal industry one of the most protected pays the highest price for coal and has high electricity prices the paper examines the possible impacts on electricity prices of dismantling coal subsidies and argues that much depends on the form of the subsidies and their method of finance removing subsidies in germany and spain might lower prices by 10 but in the uk where remaining subsidies are small by a negligible amount

power privatization and the uk coal industry abstract this article considers the impact of power privatization on the uk coal industry it notes the key importance of fuel costs in determining the profit levels of private generators and concludes that privatization will result in a premature closure of uk coal capacity which would otherwise be competitive with imported coal after 1990 it suggests that the basis of power privatization is essentially irrational and ideological

the effects of land sales restrictions evidence from south india abstract the effects of land sales restrictions on credit use land investment and cultivation decisions are investigated using data from two villages in south india sales restrictions are found to have little effect on credit supply and demand or demand for land improvements some household characteristics are found to affect investment demand on plots subject to sales restrictions in one village suggesting that the transactions effect of such restrictions may be inhibiting allocative efficiency however we also find that household characteristics influence investment on titled plots and that the magnitude of impact of such characteristics is greater on titled plots these results imply that sales restrictions are not a major source of inefficiency in the villages studied and suggest that the nature of village credit and land markets and enforcement of sales restrictions are critical determinants of the impacts of such restrictions

a reexamination of trends in primary commodity prices this paper conducts a reexamination of the prebisch singer hypothesis by employing the unit root test proposed by lee and strazicich 2003 and lee and strazicich 2004 that allow for up to two structural breaks given the higher power of these tests compared to the zivot and andrews 1992 and lumsdaine and papell 1997 tests rejection of the null can be considered as genuine evidence of stationarity the main findings of this paper are that eleven out of twenty four commodity prices are found to be difference stationary implying that shocks to these commodities tend to be permanent in nature the remaining thirteen prices are found to exhibit trend stationary behavior with either one or two structural breaks most of the commodities that do not exhibit difference stationary behavior seem to contain no significant trends there are fewer cases in relation to past studies of commodities that display negative trends thereby weakening the case for the prebisch singer hypothesis

coal subsidization and nuclear phase out in a general equilibrium model for germany the subsidization of domestic hard coal and the future of nuclear power generation are highly controversial issues of german energy policy this paper offers an analysis of a nuclear phase out scenario and a scenario of accelerated dismantling of coal subsidies within a dynamic general equilibrium model for germany the german economy is modeled in the context of the european union because european energy markets are becoming increasingly integrated it is found that the nuclear phase out has an effect both on the sectoral and the macroeconomic level including a modest decrease in gdp and a substantial increase in co2 emissions the accelerated removal of coal subsidies has a noticeable effect on the sectoral and macroeconomic structure as well but the effect on gdp is found to be rather negligible co2 emissions are reduced only slightly because domestic coal is mainly replaced by imported coal on the basis of these findings it is conjectured that policy making on these issues is likely to be based on politics rather than strictly macroeconomic considerations

property rights and natural resource management incentives do transferability and formality matter this article examines how property rights expectations affect resource management incentives it utilizes expected property rights over different timespans and of different strengths corresponding to a investments of different intensities and b farmers sense of security regarding their often de facto property rights the results suggest that property rights and their alienability in ten year time matter to intensive infrastructural investments although not to lighter investments formality of property rights is shown to be insignificant to investment incentives indicating that there is no functional difference between formal rights and customary rights at present in indigenous communities of the philippines copyright 2008 oxford university press

the mining industry under the thumb of politicians the environmental consequences of the spanish coal decree abstract the so called coal decree royal decree 143 2010 and subsequent royal decree 1221 2010 have modified the historical use of coal trends in the spanish economy since 2010 the use of domestic coal in spain s electricity sector will be promoted by the royal decree until 2014 this energy strategy on the one hand and political decision on the other were advanced under the flag of energy security and the fulfillment of the 9th principle of the international council of mining and metals icmm which specified that sustainable development in mining areas should maintain among other things employment the mutual understanding between the government and the local mining industry is confronted with vast criticism at the institutional firm and social levels regarding a the disparities generated between electricity generation technologies b the increase of electricity market prices the national competition commission reported the royal decree and c subsequent environmental harm the coal decree has changed the gradual decrease of coal in the spanish energy mix since the end of the 1990s the environmental efficiency gains accumulated over the past several years would be lost as a result of this change of direction in policy in the last fifteen years the coal industry in spain has been under pressure from political decisions that have forced the dismantling of the industry a labor reconversion of mining areas and the conversion of coal fired power plants into combined cycle gas power plants this situation considerably reduced co2 emissions from coal combustion in spain improving the environmental efficiency of the entire economy for many years nevertheless the implementation of the royal decree has changed these trends this paper will examine the environmental consequences of the coal decree from 2010 to 2014 based on actual economic and energy demand requirements and actual electricity mix composition a post keynesian energy age model to forecast energy demand and the derived co2 emissions will be applied to evaluate the change in the reduction of emissions observed in the electricity sector since 2005 and in the spanish economy since 2010 the results will be compared to other alternative scenarios of co2 emissions evolution

coal policies and trade barriers abstract the purpose of this paper is to treat in some depth recent work performed by the iea secretariat in analysing barriers to coal trade in member countries the concept of the producer subsidy equivalent pse as a measure of financial transfers to the coal industry is described along with its advantages and limitations as illustration summary results for the years 1982 1988 are given the paper concludes with a discussion of the arguments for and against maintaining support for domestic coal production

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

impacts of land certification on tenure security investment and land market participation evidence from ethiopia this brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study entitled impacts of land certification on tenure security investment and land market participation evidence from ethiopia conducted between 2006 and 2011 in ethiopia the study observed the impact of land registration on tenure security land related investment and rental market participation using 900 randomly selected households and 4000 plots cultivated by the households on the household and land plots level certification resulted in significant reduction of tenure insecurity and an increase in land related investment the propensity to invest in water conservation increased between 20 and 30 percent from panel estimates the increased investment appears to be sustained over the long term the propensity to rent land increases by 9 to 13 percent the titling had significant positive impacts on the rate at which female headed households rented their land funding for the study derived from the gender action plan global land tools network and norwegian environmentally and socially sustainable development essd trust fund

land tenure and property rights theory and implications for development policy this article explores the nature of property rights systems their evolution and their effect on resource allocation it is argued that certain institutional arrangements for land rights have evolved in order to reduce uncertainty and increase efficiency in credit as well as in land markets of particular relevance to developing countries the article emphasizes the contribution of public sector infrastructure to effective land rights systems an appendix to the article presents a formal model analyzing the effects of security of land rights on land prices the intensity of cultivation and the use of credit empirical evidence from thailand supports several of the propositions derived from the model

the measurement of profitability and the diagnosis of market power this paper develops a model which yields the specification of an empirical test for the difference between price and marginal revenue which will be significantly positive if a firm exercises market power the test can be carried out with any of a number of commonly used measures of accounting profitability and embodies a specific functional form for the consideration of nonconstant returns to scale the model is estimated for four firms in the medical surgical supply industry and four firms in the motor vehicle industry the results are consistent with the hypothesis that product differentiation is an important basis for firm specific market power import quotas are shown to increase market power in the motor vehicle industry claims that accounting data cannot be used to analyze market power are rejected

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure presents a transcript of the presidential address delivered at the 94th meeting of the american economic association on december 29 1981 discussion of developments in the theory of industry structure welfare attributes of contestable markets behavior characteristics of oligopoly equilibrium intertemporal vulnerability to inefficient entry ebsco

land tenure security and investment incentives puzzling evidence from burkina faso abstract the commonsense logic associating higher land security and higher incentives to invest has been recently called into question in the case of african agriculture to be meaningful empirical tests have to be carefully designed so as to take account of the possible endogeneity of the land rights variable this is done in this paper by applying suitable econometric methods to the original data collected in burkina faso the results obtained cast doubt on the existence of a systematic influence of land tenure security on investment by reviewing the justifications for scepticism in the recent literature we are able to conclude that the traditional village order where it exists provides the basic land rights required to stimulate small scale investment

contestability vs competition analyzes the ultra free entry as normative contribution to industrial organization ultra free entry in context of the evolving field of industrial organization assessment of the conceptual validity of william baumol elizabeth bailey john panzar and robert willig s analysis in representing the nature of competition empirical issues in measuring and testing ultra free entry ebsco

contestable markets and the theory of industry structure alreview articleo phe new book by william j baumol john c panzar and robert d willig is the culmination of several years of research on the related problems of understanding multiproduct cost structures and their implications for competition and market performance it is a significant book for several reasons the empirical reality that forms the starting point for the theoretical work is i think widely recognized to be important cost structures constitute one of the foundations of competitive strategy and strongly influence industry structure notwithstanding this fact the amount of microeconomic theory directed toward competitively relevant attributes of costs has been if not minimal then certainly more limited than the subject deserves in fact prior to the work of our authors economists and business strategists did not have a language or a set of concepts with which to talk precisely about scale economies in a multiproduct setting we now have at least the beginnings of such a language and a body of theory that provides a grammar for using it the theory of contestable markets was the subject of baumol s presidential address at the american economic association meetings in washington in december 1981 both the theory and its presentation have generated controversy useful controversy i think because it helps clarify issues that need attention i shall have remarks to offer later in this review concerning the normative and descriptive relevance of the contestable markets hypothesis my plan for this review is as follows i begin by outlining some of the principal definitions and propositions of the theory this outline should not be mistaken for a complete summary of the book but the economist who has not yet read the book needs a reasonably detailed picture of the approach few of the propositions require long proofs in fact once they are stated the proofs are often simple exercises having outlined some of the principal concepts i comment upon their usefulness for understanding markets and finally i conclude by suggesting some ways in which the general subject may be pursued from this point forward

property rights and investment in urban slums this paper examines the effect of changes in tenure security on residential investment in urban squatter neighborhoods to address the endogeneity of property rights i make use of variation in ownership status induced by a nationwide titling program in peru in a difference in difference analysis i compare the change in housing investment before and after the program among participating households to the change in investment among two samples of nonparticipants my results indicate that strengthening property rights in urban slums has a significant effect on residential investment the rate of housing renovation rises by more than two thirds of the baseline level the bulk of the increase is financed without the use of credit indicating that changes over time reflect an increase in investment incentives related to lower threat of eviction jel o12 o18 p25 p26

contestable markets an uprising in the theory of industry structure comment a situation traditionally identified as conducive to imperfect competition is when average costs decline and the cheapest scale of production is large relative to the size of the market however some of the more recent literature on industrial organization has emphasized a supposed distinction between fixed costs of production and sunk costs of production a point frequently made is that while the possibility of sunk costs can create genuine barriers to entry pure fixed costs per se do not inhibit competitive market performance this approach finds its logical extreme in the norm or abstraction of perfect contestability perfect contestability is essentially a theory of the polar case of frictionless entry and exit as william baumol stated a contestable market is one into which entry is absolutely free and exit is absolutely costless p 3 certainly this is the most reasonable interpretation of a situation where potential entrants feel free to disregard an incumbent s price response suppose every potential and actual producer has access to the same technology in a perfectly contestable market there are no set up or shut down losses the main result is that even with declining average costs of production the incumbent firm does not dare to post a price higher than average cost price above cost invites being undercut by a hit and run shadow entrant capable of producing at the same flow rate and at identical unit cost during just the briefest instant of time i argue that this line of reasoning is misleading perfect contestability gets around the problem of increasing returns only by in effect assuming it away a hit and run technology makes the firm behave as if it is competitive in a market precisely because the convexity preconditions for competition are de facto being met in that market this comment shows that strictly speaking there is no such thing as a pure fixed cost unless there are sunk costs located somewhere in the relevant production technology all costs are variable as a matter of formal theory you cannot have a range of decreasing average cost without sunk costs presumably there is also an approximation theorem which states that when sunk costs are close to being negligible then average production costs are practically nondecreasing perfect contestability holds approximately in a market only to the extent that production costs for the market are approximately nondecreasing my discussion will be restricted to the familiar case of a single well defined homogeneous fully divisible commodity while more general approaches are possible for the sake of simplicity the following definition is used the average cost function a c y t describes say the minimum cost per unit of output produced at a uniform flow rate y throughout the time interval 0 t especially in applications to industrial organization theory it is essential to remember that cost functions are not generally timeless and that writing ac as a function of y alone can be dangerously vague behind the free entry and exit of a hitand run technology in a perfectly contestable market is the abstraction of no sunk costs investments are fully reversible because nothing is lost in setting up or shutting down production

behavioural and material determinants of production relations in agriculture in this essay we develop a framework for analysing the major institutions governing the production and exchange of output and the primary factors of production in rural areas the analysis incorporates general considerations of risk and information constraints jointly with the principal material attributes of agriculture and of agricultural production factors the framework is used to analyse barriers to the existence of the major intertemporal and factor markets it is applied specifically to land scarce environments for which it provides an internally consistent explanation for many of the well documented institutional features of such settings in addition the analysis provides new implications for among other phenomena the inter relationships among ownership holdings operational scale family size and factor productivity for the scarcity of animal rental markets and use of animals as collateral for the renting out of land by small landowners and for the existence of plantations for certain crops

codetermination as a strategic advantage abstract a theoretical model of codetermination is considered where consistent with german institutions firm owners bargain with employees representatives about employment but not about wages a duopoly and a more general oligopolistic situation are analyzed for some range of bargaining power a prisoner s dilemma exists codetermination leads to increased profits if the other firm is a traditional profit maximizer bargaining is the dominant strategy although joint profits would be maximized with unrestricted profit maximization the theory is tested with data from 22 german firms who operate in the same markets over 23 years codetermined firms actually show a different behavior than other companies

the price of land for housing in jakarta in spite of its potential value to governments detailed information as to how land prices vary spatially within third world cities is usually lacking this paper discusses the distribution of land prices in jakarta using information provided on a neighbourhood basis by experienced real estate brokers appraised prices were given for different types of residential plot distinguished by tenure and infrastructural provision analysis of the data in jakarta shows the relative importance of infrastructural provision and tenure land title for land prices examination of such data over time makes it possible to test whether and where there has been a spiralling of land prices and in the case of jakarta it is found that recent price increases have been consistently greater in suburban areas and in informal sector plots arising from the massive demand from low income households for affordable housing the paper concludes by drawing out policy implications

the political economy of coal subsidies in europe abstract both the mining and the burning of coal is polluting so we might expect to observe taxes on coal production and consumption yet several countries of western europe subsidize coal production and most east european countries subsidize coal consumption the first part of this paper shows that those subsidies which are emulated by other rich and poor countries respectively have become enormous neoclassical political economy is used to examine why governments adopt such inappropriate policies when they are so wasteful of resources and damaging to the environment several new and offsetting political forces have been at work in western europe in recent years though causing some countries to dismantle their coal producer subsidies the paper concludes that these pressures for reform will continue to operate in the few remaining protectionist countries if coupled with more commercial diplomatic pressure from coal exporting countries they could be sufficient to see the end of such protection by early next century