does size matter reassessing the relationship between aquaculture and poverty in bangladesh abstract aquaculture has long been promoted by development institutions in bangladesh on the understanding that it can alleviate poverty most of this attention has focused on forms of the activity commonly referred to as small scale this article draws on concepts from the literature on agricultural growth and elaborates a typology of aquaculture based on relations of production which suggests that in bangladesh quasi capitalist forms of aquaculture may possess greater potential to reduce poverty and enhance food security than the quasi peasant modes of production generally assumed to do so the implications of this conclusion are explored

distributional weights in cost benefit analysis should we forget about them many argue that it is socially inefficient to use distributional weights in cost benefit analysis and that doing so implies large inefficiency losses when distributional matters can be dealt with trough income taxation instead our results question this view by showing a large range of cases when distributional weights are second best optimal to use one example is when different provided goods affect tax revenues equally per dollar spent utility functions that are separable in the provided goods is sufficient for this most results hold for linear and non linear income taxes and whether they are optimal or not general policy implications are discussed

behavioural development economics lessons from field labs in the developing world abstract explanations of poverty growth and development depend on the assumptions made about individual preferences and the willingness to engage in strategic behaviour economic experiments especially those conducted in the field have begun to paint a picture of economic agents in developing communities that is at variance with the traditional portrait we review this growing literature with an eye towards preference related experiments conducted in the field we also offer lessons on what development economists might learn from experiments we conclude by sharing our thoughts on how to conduct experiments in the field and then offer a few ideas for future research

corruption investments and contributions to public goods experimental evidence from rural liberia we analyze how corruption affects incentives to invest or contribute to public goods we obtain a proxy for corruption among liberian community leaders by keeping track of a flow of inputs associated with a development intervention measuring these inputs before and after giving them in custody to the chief we then use the gap between these measurements missing inputs to explain variation in investment behavior of villagers investment behavior is gauged with two simple artefactual field experiments our main results are that corruption i undermines incentives for voluntary contributions to local public goods and ii may reduce private investments of individuals subject to rent seeking by the chief in real life we also provide weaker evidence that the impact of corruption on investments and contributions to public goods is heterogeneous this impact may be gender specific and appears to vary with accessibility of communities

progressive taxation and the social marginal cost of public funds abstract this paper describes the calculation of the social marginal cost of public funds smcf for a progressive tax system which distorts individuals labour supply decisions a formula for the smcf indicates that the income and substitution effects of the labour supply response are weighted by the changes in individuals average and marginal tax rates respectively other well known formulas for the smcf are shown to be special cases of this formula the difference between this formula and the mayshar 1991 formula is shown to be due to different but equally valid ways of computing the change in the average tax rate the condition under which a marginal tax rate increase may lead to a reduction in revenues is derived

reconciling sustainability and discounting in cost benefit analysis a methodological proposal abstract the incorporation of the intergenerational equity objective has rendered the traditional cost benefit analysis cba approach obsolete for the evaluation of projects presenting an important number of environmental externalities and for those whose impacts extend throughout a long period of time based on the assumption that applying a discount rate rewards current consumption and therefore that it is only possible to introduce a certain intergenerational equity in a cost benefit analysis in this work we propose an approach to discounting based on a different rationale for tangible and intangible effects we designed two indicators of environmental profitability a the intergenerational transfer amount ita which quantifies in monetary units what the current generation is willing to pass on future generations when an environmental restoration project is carried out and b the critical environmental rate cer measures the implicit environmental profitability these concepts were tested through an empirical case study pertaining to the assessment of an erosion control project in the southeast of spain the results yield traditional profitability indicators that are higher and probably closer to the real values set by the contemporary society the information provided by the environmental profitability indicators proposed renders more transparency to the quantification of the levels of intergenerational equity applied thereby facilitating the difficult reconciliation of the cba technique with the objective of sustainability

project appraisal and planning twenty years on this paper discusses the use and usefulness of social cost benefit analysis it briefly recalls the main features of the procedures put forward in the book by the authors and addresses some of the issues that have arisen in theoretical work since the early 1970s particularly the implications of uncertainty an analysis of the value of project appraisal under uncertainty is provided the rise and decline of project appraisal in the world bank and elsewhere is charted and reasons are considered particular attention is given to the difficulty of using shadow prices and to the institutional environment it is argued that evidence from analysis of the world bank s projects is consistent with placing a high value on the process of economic appraisal the costs of appraisal are noted as is the need to avoid excessive complexity the paper argues for the importance of an economic appraisal system and of attending to the incentives that operate in such a system

looking ahead optimally in allocating aid summary the collier dollar approach to aid allocation among countries has been less than fully embraced by donors even those focused on poverty reduction partly because it conflicts with the approach to aid allocation implied by the millennium development goals these two approaches are shown to be special cases of a more general model of aid allocation in which donors care about future as well as current poverty this model is illustratively applied to data for developing regions adding a poverty decline adjustment to the allocation formulae used by donors could resolve the conflict between the two approaches

sustainability and the intergenerational distribution of natural resource entitlements abstract the paper describes an olg economy with a single exhaustible resource that has amenity value the steady states of this economy form a continuum implying path dependency we compare three policy scenarios first a zero extraction policy of enforced conservation that avoids environmental degradation possibly at the expense of intertemporal efficiency second a grandfathering policy that endows the present generations with all resources and that ensures efficiency but cannot prevent a persistent decline in lifetime utility from one generation to the next third a trust fund policy where future generations receive claims for the natural resource of the three only the trust fund ensures efficiency and protects welfare of all generations

i struggled with this money business respondents perspectives on contingent valuation abstract in the long running debates about the validity and legitimacy of contingent valuation cv very little research has engaged directly with respondents during or after the survey to explore what individuals willingness to pay wtp figure meant this paper presents the results of qualitative research with respondents to a cv survey carried out as part of the appraisal of a specific nature conservation policy in the uk the results show that respondents questioned the validity of their wtp figures through discussion of the difficulties they experienced in framing a meaningful reply significant difficulties included problems in contextualising what the scheme was and how much it might be worth in both monetary and non monetary terms an inability to work out a value for one scheme in isolation from others in other parts of the uk and feelings that values for nature were not commensurable with monetary valuation turning to the legitimacy of cv participants in the research challenged claims that cv is a democratic process for ensuring that public values are incorporated in policy decisions recognizing that hard economic choices have to be made in order to achieve nature conservation goals participants argued for a decision making institution where local people could contribute to environmental policy decisions through dialogue with scientists and policy makers in the final part of the paper this project is compared with three studies that have also used qualitative approaches with respondents during and or after a cv survey the paper concludes that more context specific qualitative research with respondents is needed to explore further the conclusion that cv may not be a good methodology for capturing complex cultural values for nature and landscape

industry self regulation without sanctions the chemical industry s responsible care program industry self regulation the voluntary association of firms to control their collective action has been proposed as a complement to government regulation proponents argue that the establishment of

the limits of the equity efficiency tradeoff relatively inefficient transfer programs such as public housing food stamps and direct price regulation rent controls minimum wages are sometimes justified by arguments which say that it is possible in this way to transfer more to the poor than would be possible without such programs conversely it is sometimes argued as in the case of gasoline that prices cannot be allowed to rise to equilibrium levels because such increases will hurt the poor most and direct compensation will not actually be paid the argument advanced in this paper is that given enough time the political process will respond to such policies and those who advocate inefficient programs for increasing the wealth of the poor will succeed only in lowering the incomes of both the wealthy and the poor 13 moreover this argument is based on a simple and direct model of the political process one that only requires a weak form of responsiveness to voters intentions while the pareto criterion provides that every inefficient state is dominated by an efficient one it does not usually imply that every efficient state dominates every inefficient one however in our framework this does hold for policy comparisons so that a policy could be judged solely by its implications for efficiency without regard to equity considerations one policy which raised social income relative to another would be preferred by each and every person and so would dominate by the pareto criterion there was no need for the usual compensation principle arguments since compensation was not something that could occur but something that would occur potential improvements become actual improvements through the action of a responsive political system in comparing policies for income redistribution it is only their efficiency implications which are relevant

project evaluation with democratic decision making what does cost benefit analysis really measure abstract it is often argued that projects involving public good changes should be chosen on the basis of monetary valuation and cost benefit analysis cba however cba is not value free when used to measure welfare it is based on highly controversial value judgements when used to measure efficiency it is based on assumptions of limited relevance to democratic decision making processes cba measures total net willingness to pay neither more nor less while interesting in its own right the normative significance of this indicator is not obvious

project evaluation and uncertainty in practice a statistical analysis of rate of return divergences of 1 015 world bank projects this article analyzes the world bank s experience with project evaluation for a sample of 1 015 projects by comparing estimated rates of return at appraisal with reestimated rates of return when construction works are completed usually 5 to 10 years after appraisal the analysis highlights the high degree of uncertainty in project analysis a wide range of variables has been introduced to explain the observed divergence in appraisal and reestimated rates of return but only a relatively small part of the divergence can be explained even with the benefit of hindsight project analysis thus has to cope with a large degree of uncertainty which the traditional methods of project evaluation and selection have not been able to reduce

towards a fair constructive and consistent criticism of all valuation languages comment on kallis et al 2013 we provide critical notes to the paper by kallis et al 2013 on monetary valuation we evaluate the four criteria they propose for assessing valuation studies we argue that no clear distinction is made between monetary valuation and pricing instruments the selected criteria are more relevant to assessing policy than monetary valuation the examples provided are not representative of the diversity of valuation studies encountered in the literature moreover no clear examples are provided of where valuation and associated cost benefit analysis of environmental policy go wrong we plea for a more fair constructive and consistent criticism of all valuation languages and offer relevant issues for consideration

in defense of health based standards abstract this paper explores the utilitarian ethical foundations underlying two standards for pollution control an efficiency standard and a health based standard the main point is that a health based standard can be defended quite easily on utilitarian grounds safety proponents need not be self serving irrational nor ignorant criticism of health based standards as too costly is not always persuasive since material consumption is not the only component of social welfare nor do consumption increases necessarily increase social welfare

the limits of monetization in valuing the environment a reply to gsottbauer et al we welcome the attention of gsottbauer logar and van den bergh thereinafter glv to our contribution however their critique misrepresents what our article was trying to do so it merits a response our article offered a framework for assessing the conditions under which one may or may not engage with processes that value nature in money terms glv argue that first we confuse monetary valuation methods with pricing policies and that most of what we have to say may be relevant for the latter but not for the former second they argue that the assessment criteria we propose are either obvious or unconvincing third they contend that the examples we give to illustrate the applicability of our criteria are not representative and finally they suggest that our concern with whether a particular monetary valuation study or pricing policy contributes to enclosures and neo liberalism is ideological an

public goods self selection and optimal income taxation using the self selection approach to tax analysis this paper derives a modified samuelson rule for the provision of public goods when the government deploys an optimal nonlinear income tax this approach gives a straightforward interpretation of the central result in this area generalises it and provides a simple characterisation of optimal policy in a wide range of circumstances the analysis also emphasises and clarifies the significance of the choice of numeraire for the optimality of decentralising public spending decisions it is well known that the famous samuelson rule for the provision of public goods may not be applicable when the tax revenues used to finance the public goods come from distorting taxes the principle was recognized as long ago as pigou 1947 long before the samuelson rule was devised pigou saw that in addition to the resource cost involved in transferring funds from the private to the public sector there was a deadweight loss involved from this insight he suggested that the criterion for providing public goods should be more stringent than the samuelson rule would later suggest in particular one might expect that the inclusion of the deadweight loss of taxes as part of the cost of providing a public good would lead to a reduction in its optimal provision relative to a situation in which lump sum taxes were available the problem was investigated more systematically by atkinson and stern 1974 who considered the case in which a public good is financed by a set of optimal commodity taxes all individuals were assumed to be identical so efficiency alone dictated the objective they found that no prima facie case could be made for the pigou position that the use of distortionary taxes called for a reduction in the supply of the public good their analysis clearly showed that there were two influences at work when the financing of a public good was by distorting taxes on the one hand

common property equality and development the appeal of common property ideas may be traced in large measure to the fact that they seem to embody widely held values of equality on the other hand empirical examination of common property institutions reveals that they can coexist with significant inequality in this paper the relationship between common property and equality is examined it is argued that the role of common property can only be understood in the context of the associated private property institutions common property in agriculture is interpreted as part of a system based on small scale peasant proprietorship of arable land common property institutions provide a method of capturing scale economies and thereby increasing the efficiency of small scale proprietorship in competition with large scale production based on wage labor

redistribution and the marginal cost of public funds abstract discussions of the marginal cost of public funds with distortionary taxation are often cast in the framework of a one consumer economy while the main justification of distortionary taxes is that they are needed for redistribution this paper analyzes the issue in a model with heterogeneous consumers and a linear income tax focusing on the tradeoff between labour market distortions and the redistribution from high wage to low wage workers in an optimal tax system the mcf will be the same for all sources of funds and under certain assumptions less than one without optimality the mcf will in general differ between different sources of finance

environmental issues and economic decisions in developing countries abstract this paper explains the key role of environmental economics in incorporating environmental concerns into decision making and in facilitating the more efficient management of natural resources as a step toward sustainable development it reviews concepts and techniques for valuation of environmental impacts for use in conventional cost benefits analysis as well as key related aspects including environmental impacts of economywide policies multicriteria analysis risk and uncertainty and discount rate issues several developing country case studies are summarized which cover a range of practical valuation methods the evidence presented suggests that the valuation techniques for determining use values may be applied successfully in appropriate cases but examples involving nonuse values are rare the use of multiobjective desicion methods also needs to be explored where economic valuation is not feasible

population consumption and resources ethical issues abstract this article is about the concept of optimum population and consumption even though it is primarily concerned with foundational issues the various ideas that have been discussed in the literature are tested in the context of economic models with limited resources it is argued that broadly speaking existing theories of optimum population and consumption are variants of average and what is often termed classical utilitarianism respectively both classes of theories are shown to have deficiencies in great measure because of their reliance on a defective concept of personhood it is also argued that contractual theories are of little use because potential people as opposed to future people cannot be parties to any contract a generation relative ethics is developed and is put to work in an overlapping generations model it is shown that generation relative ethics even when it is a variant of classical utilitarianism can prescribe a considerably lower population than classical utilitarianism

the assumption of equal marginal utility of income how much does it matter abstract in most applied cost benefit analyses individual willingness to pay wtp is aggregated without using explicit welfare weights this can be justified by postulating a utilitarian social welfare function along with the assumption of equal marginal utility of income for all individuals however since marginal utility is a cardinal concept there is no generally accepted way to verify the plausibility of this latter assumption nor its empirical importance in this paper we use data from seven contingent valuation studies to illustrate that if one instead assumes equal marginal utility of the public good for all individuals aggregate monetary benefit estimates change dramatically

disaggregated economic impact analysis incorporating ecological and social trade offs and techno institutional context a case from the western ghats of india economic valuation of ecosystem benefits and their aggregation in a benefit cost analysis bca framework is the norm in mainstream environmental economics but valuation and bca have also attracted criticisms internal criticisms point to the absence of alternative scenarios in valuation overlooking of ecological trade offs and dis services and inattention to context others criticize aggregation across diverse stakeholders and the problem of non monetizable benefits and dismiss bca as fatally flawed they suggest approaches such as deliberative decision making and multi criteria analysis we propose a middle path that uses the strengths of economic analysis for decision support while avoiding the pitfalls we disaggregate economic impacts by stakeholder groups link ecosystem changes to benefits as well as dis benefits and examine how socio technological context shapes the magnitude of economic impact we illustrate this approach by studying the impact of creating the biligiri rangaswamy temple wildlife sanctuary in the western ghats forests of southern india our analysis shows that while some stakeholders are net beneficiaries others are net losers changes in forest rights irrigation technologies and ecosystem dynamics influence the magnitude of benefits and sometimes convert gainers into losers such disaggregated analysis can provide useful information for deliberative decision making and important academic insights on how economic value is generated

the ideology of efficiency searching for a theory of policy analysis the potential pareto improvement criterion and other measures of economic efficiency do not pass the test of consistency and coherence within economic theory nor do such measures accord with what public decision makers seek in policy advice from economists such efficiency measures are nonetheless durable components of the ideology of economics in general and benefit cost analysis in particular the objectivity of the policy scientist has been confused with the objectivity of the science while economic efficiency has no claim to objectivity the policy scientist can be an objective analyst of policy choices

animal welfare and social decisions is it time to take bentham seriously abstract this paper analyzes and questions the standard welfare economics assumption of anthropocentric welfarism i e that only human well being counts intrinsically alternatives where also animal welfare matters intrinsically are analyzed both theoretically and empirically the general public s ethical preferences are measured through a survey of a representative sample in sweden and the responses from a clear majority suggest that animal welfare should indeed carry intrinsic weight in public decision making current legislation in many countries is consistent with this a brief review of moral philosophy on animal welfare indicates that a large majority of philosophers believe that animal welfare should count intrinsically it is moreover demonstrated that it is theoretically and practically possible to generalize welfare economics in order to give intrinsic value also to animal welfare the paper concludes that there are strong reasons to sometimes generalize welfare economics in order to take animal welfare into account directly i e in addition to effects through individual utilities the practical implications of doing so are likely to be more important over time as the scientific methods of measuring animal welfare are gradually improving

the sustainable residential water use sustainability efficiency and social equity the european experience abstract the present paper traces the operational conditions governing the sustainable use of water in cities towards this objective the paper first proposes a new comprehensive definition for the sustainable use of water next efficiency in use is proposed as a fundamental instrument in achieving sustainability in spite of prevailing opinions maintaining that sustainability and efficiency aim at different and probably conflicting objectives in this light several pricing modes that inhibit efficiency are examined and their effects are defined in this context egalitarian pricing which nevertheless prevents efficiency is also systematically evaluated until it is ascertained that it does not serve social equity in the use of water in the long run all the more the present paper advocates that certain egalitarian pricing systems such as the increasing block rates most prevalent at this time may have the reverse effect than the one intended and hence in the long run impose negative impacts on the welfare of low incomes as a result full cost prices are proposed as a necessary instrument for the sustainable use of water an instrument that promotes social equity in the long run the assumptions of the study are examined in a comparative analysis of representative european pricing systems and urban management modes

preferences for distributional impacts of climate policy what role do people think distributional aspects should play in the design of climate policy the literature assessing climate policies has shown that assumptions regarding peoples distributional preferences for climate change policy impacts are central for policy assessment but empirical evidence for such preferences is lacking we design a discrete choice experiment that varies how climate policies affect the income of future generations living in three geographical regions with distinctly different current and predicted future income levels the experiment is implemented on a sample of the danish population and preferences are modelled in a latent class model our results show that a small majority of the sample 60 hold preferences consistent with inequity aversion with respect to future income effects of climate policies across regions for the same group we find that preferences for co benefits for current generations reflect a form of altruism but not inequity aversion in both cases the altruistic aspects are moderated by an element of preferences for positive outcomes in own region too the remaining classes display preferences with a varying focus on impacts in their own region or simply no support for further climate policy our results provide some support for the inclusion of social preferences regarding distributional effects of climate change policies in policy assessments and hence for the significant impact on policy this inclusion will have

toward a more complete model of individual transferable fishing quotas implications of incorporating the processing sector abstract economic analyses of individual transferable quota itq fisheries management traditionally have focused on the harvesting sector however harvester decisions impact the economic performance of co dependent processing firms this paper incorporates both sectors in an analysis of the effect of itqs on commercial fisheries results show that as a consequence of season elongation under a harvester only allocation of fishing rights capital nonmalleability implies that processor quasi rents will be redistributed to harvesters these losses could promote political gridlock and jeopardize adoption of an itq policy unless they are fully compensated or unless redistribution is avoided by a policy superior initial allocation of rights to both harvesters and processors

a note on efficiency vs distributional equity in legal rulemaking should distributional equity matter given optimal income taxation the question addressed in this paper is whether the choice of legal rules ought to be influenced by consideration of their redistributive effects the answer to this question would of course be simple were it assumed that there was no difficulty in redistributing income for then any socially undesirable distributional effect following from adoption of a particular rule could be undone by use of an appropriate redistributive tax scheme thus it would be best to choose legal rules only on the basis of criteria other than distributional equity and therefore in the model to be studied here to choose rules only on the basis of efficiency i however there is acknowledged difficulty in redistributing income and such difficulty will be assumed below to be due solely to the adverse effect of an income tax on the incentive to work in view of this problem an otherwise socially optimal distribution of income generally would not be achievable so that it might be expected that distributional equity as well as efficiency ought to enter into the choice of a legal rule suppose for example that the social preference is for income equality but that because an income equalizing tax would severely depress work effort and lower the aggregate product to be shared it would turn out to be best to employ only a mildly redistributive income tax consequently one might suspect that it would be desirable to accomplish some further redistribution by giving an advantage under the law to those with relatively low income but this line of thought does not recognize that an attempt at redistribution through the choice over legal rules would involve the same sort of problem as exists under the income tax if low income individuals are treated relatively favorably in a legal setting then there would be created a disincentive to work analogous to that associated with say a generous guaranteed minimum income under the tax schedule this suggests the result to be shown here that despite imperfect ability to redistribute income through taxation everyone would strictly prefer that legal rules be chosen only on the basis of their efficiency after proving this result i will comment on its interpretation and on its relationship to results in the literature on optimal income taxation

intergenerational discounting with intragenerational inequality in consumption and the environment it is now established that the consumption discount rate is determined by the growth of consumption multiplied by the elasticity of marginal utility but distributive concerns are rarely reflected in the literature assuming a social welfare function with inequality aversion we consider a consumption discount rate that can be decomposed into the growth effect and the intragenerational distribution effect the framework is then extended to include population change and inequality in the environment as an amenity in a utility with constant elasticity of substitution numerical examples illustrate that distributional effects turn non negligibly negative that may reduce consumption discount rate by 1 3 for plausible parameters once distribution is adjusted for both population and the environment

targeting agricultural research and extension for food security and poverty alleviation a case study of fish farming in central cameroon over 5 years of participatory on farm research market access profitability farming systems productivity and economic sustainability were compared on 100 small scale farms in central cameroon integration technology based on the use of agricultural by products as fishpond inputs was the driver for intensification over all farms fishpond productivity increased from 498 kg to 1609 kg fish ha 2145 kg ha yr during the project period the number of active fish farmers increased from 15 to 192 including 55 farms which participated only through information exchange over all farms net returns from aquaculture increased by 5 times over pre project levels productivity intensity and profitability increased more significantly in periurban areas with good market access compared to rural areas among farmers with good market access average net income from the aquaculture enterprise rose from 118 up to 1485 research extension team ret support cost an average of 61 300 per year over 5 years rural farmers recaptured 23 of the relevant ret investment compared to 442 by periurban farmers likewise increase in production attributable to ret intervention was higher for periurban 253 compared to rural 11 3 fish farmers within 3 years of the end of extension support rural farmers had returned to pre project production levels whereas periurban farms had better maintained their productivity and profitability findings indicate that in areas with little or no access to markets the number of fishponds and fish farmers can be increased and yields improved increasing local food supplies but sustainability in the absence of extension subsidies is questionable to achieve either of the two principal goals for the sector food security and or poverty alleviation investments need to be made in improving the availability of quality technical assistance to targeted farmers and finding means of reducing social conflict arising from perceived inequalities in the accrual of the benefits of development

ecology sustainability and environment as capital abstract the idea of environment as capital has found widespread support in both the economic and ecological literature it is often suggested in a related sustainability literature that natural capital should remain intact if possible the popularity of this approach to exploring the human environment relationship is due in part to the way it is seemingly legitimised by ecological theory and practice this legitimation is important for emerging areas of human environment study such as ecological economics because ecology and other natural sciences have often dismissed economic constructions of the environment however a closer examination of the state of contemporary ecology suggests that there are problems with an ecological legitimation of the environment as capital approach first ecology itself is a troubled discipline and its ability to provide a comprehensive theory of human environment interactions is limited second emerging ecological discourse tends to undermine the ecological rationale for many natural capital related resource management recommendations this does not mean that the environment as capital concept is without considerable heuristic power it does imply however a need to return to a social construction of the environment in which different environmental possibilities are valued in terms of their potential contribution to human well being

entitlements missing markets and environmental uncertainty reply abstract at one level dore and ward seem intent on immunizing received doctrine they say that i did not prove that rights violated nozick s principles of justice and that i did not prove that missing markets were the problem more telling they allege i did not prove that my story was better than the particular story favored by dore and ward that is they argue that there is an alternative approach based on the theory of public economics which is indeed operational 3 they then use the bulk of their comment to explain and defend this alternative model they hope to convince the reader that the model of public economics survives intact in the face of my alternative model to the extent that their model allows one to define the problem away it is not difficult to see why they find it so compelling more seriously dore and ward fail to make a coherent argument about the concept of rights and duties and the logic of a particular rights structure that happens to prevail they seem concerned that my article was tampering with some sacred social construct the status quo rights structure and that my article threatened the received wisdom of both public economics and paretian walrasian bliss indeed theirs seems to be a genuine fear that if economists release their grip on the certitude of received orthodoxy the floodgates will be open to all manner of bumbling regulators seeking to shift rights and wealth positions across generations my article is apparently threatening because it seems to suggest that the received wisdom may at times be misleading

globalization and the environment determinants of firm self regulation in china critics assert that globalization is detrimental to the environment because it encourages location of polluting industries in countries with low environmental regulations we suggest that globalization might also have positive environmental effects because global ties increase self regulation pressures on firms in low regulation countries using survey data from firms in china we find that multinational ownership multinational customers and exports to developed countries increase self regulation of environmental performance

on international equity weights and national decision making on climate change abstract estimates of the marginal damage costs of carbon dioxide emissions require the aggregation of monetised impacts of climate change over people with different incomes and in different jurisdictions implicitly or explicitly such estimates assume a social welfare function and hence a particular attitude towards equity and justice we show that previous approaches to equity weighting are inappropriate from a national decision maker s point of view because domestic impacts are not valued at domestic values we propose four alternatives sovereignty altruism good neighbour and compensation with different views on concern for and liability towards foreigners the four alternatives imply radically different estimates of the social cost of carbon and hence the optimal intensity of climate policy

the behavioural economics of climate change this paper attempts to bring some central insights from behavioural economics into the economics of climate change in particular it discusses i implications of prospect theory the equity premium puzzle and time inconsistent preferences in the choice of discount rate used in climate change cost assessments and ii the implications of various kinds of social preferences for the outcome of climate negotiations several reasons are presented for why it appears advisable to choose a substantially lower social discount rate than the average return on investments it also seems likely that taking social preferences into account increases the possibilities of obtaining international agreements compared to the standard model however there are also effects going in the opposite direction and the importance of sanctions is emphasized

environmental regulations and the problem of sustainability moving beyond market failure abstract the standard metaphor of market failure is an impediment to the crafting of environmental policy that can escape policy lock in sustainability requires a policy process that can avoid this lock in sustainability concerns the creation of dynamic human processes that can respond to indeed anticipate unanticipated feedback from biological processes

altruism evolution and welfare economics henrich clearly presents the convincing evidence that the evolution of prosocial preferences altruism and altruistic punishment is both theoretically possible and empirically present in human populations henrich convinces us using only the most restrictive arguments if one goes beyond the assumptions of one gene one trait or recognizes the existence of social cognition caporael 1997 the case for the existence of prosocial behavior is overwhelming furthermore while henrich is probably correct in saying that large scale social cooperation is unique to the human species mounting evidence suggests that prosocial behavior is also present in such diverse non human species as lions meerkats fire ants and arabian babblers clutton brock 2002 so why is the reaction against the notion of pure altruism so strong in both economics and biology a likely reason is that it goes against the dominant cultural belief in progress through competition among individuals both evolutionary biology and political economy matured in victorian england where darwin s careful and cautious argument for evolution by natural selection was recast as survival of the fittest a metaphor which fit the dog eat dog world of commercial society rugged individualism is reflected in the gene based reductionism of biology as well as the agent based reductionism of welfare economics bergh and van den gowdy 2003 in his contribution henrich establishes the theoretical basis for cultural group selection based on large scale cooperation he shows that the existence of prosocial behavior cannot be explained by individual based characteristic alone such as kin selection reciprocal altruism or costly signaling this does not contradict darwinian natural selection which can operate on any statistically reliable pattern patterns of culture may vary widely in human societies based on the different kinds of cultural transmission including conformist transmission a short cut to reliable information prestige based transmission punishment of non conformists and normative conformity by which people want their behavior to match that of the group the interplay between these kinds of cultural transmission and the in

basic needs versus distributional weights in social cost benefit analysis the purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two alternative ways of bringing what we might loosely call distributional considerations into the machinery of social cost benefit analysis the first of these ways is an outgrowth of the utilitarian tradition that has been a part of economics at least since the times of bentham and mill it holds that the marginal utility of an extra dollar to a rich man is lower than that of the same dollar to a poor man alternatively this same notion can be thought of as applying distributional weights to the changes in welfare of different people that occur as a consequence of a particular project policy or program the second approach does not rely on differential weighting of the welfare of different individuals rather it imputes to some individuals external benefits connected with the improvement in the circumstances of others most people genuinely feel it is good for the sick to be healed the hungry fed the illiterate taught the homeless sheltered and so on they have demonstrated these feelings over the centuries through charitable acts in which their own money has been spent to bring about one or more of these objectives similar motivations may also lie behind legislation in which societies have accepted a collective responsibility for meeting the medical educational nutritional and housing needs of their less fortunate citizens i use the term distributional weights to characterize the first of these approaches and basic needs to describe the second in what follows i shall try to show that these two ways of introducing distributional considerations into social cost benefit analysis or into applied welfare economics more generally are really conceptually quite distinct and have very different implications for public policy and social choice while they are not in principle inconsistent with one another

distributional weights in environmental valuation and cost benefit analysis theory and practice abstract cost benefit analysis cba is built on the kaldor hicks efficiency criterion whereby projects that have aggregate positive net benefits are recommended even if those who lose are not compensated for their losses two kinds of problems can be identified with the use of the criterion first as income tends to affect monetary welfare changes positively the preferences of those with higher wealth have a larger weight in societal decision making second monetary welfare changes can be thought of as changes in real income which matter more for those with a lower initial wealth level both problems can be mitigated with distributional weighting despite their strong theoretical pedigree distributional weights have been largely neglected in practical cbas one exception being analyses in climate change economics we present the theory of distributional weighting and illustrate how weights can be applied empirically in an international environmental cba that deals with marine water quality improvements we show that different weighting schemes can result in different policy recommendations we also show that taking the income distribution within countries into account can change a country s willingness to participate in the water quality improvement program and that the income elasticity of willingness to pay wtp is an important indication of the direction of change

on the ir relevance of distribution and labor supply distortion to government policy should the assessment of government policies such as the provision of public goods and the control of externalities deviate from first best principles to account for distributive effects and the distortionary cost of labor income taxation for example is the optimal extent of public goods provision smaller than indicated by the samuelson rule because finance is distortionary or should environmental regulations fail to internalize externalities fully if the incidence of the regulations is regressive it is suggested that these questions are best addressed by considering distribution neutral implementation in which budget balance is achieved by choosing an adjustment to the income tax that offsets the distributive impact of the policy in question in basic cases both distribution and labor supply distortion are moot because the target policy and the tax adjustment produce offsetting effects on each thus traditional first best principles provide good benchmarks for policy analysis after all moreover even when actual implementation will not be distribution neutral in aggregate distribution neutral policy analysis has many conceptual and practical virtues that render it quite useful to investigators

justifying precautionary policies incommensurability and uncertainty abstract when decisions are taken in conditions of keynesian or knightian uncertainty and when there is a threat of serious or irreversible environmental damage the precautionary principle is often recommended to guide decision making however the precautionary principle has been widely criticised in response to these criticisms a qualitative version of the precautionary principle is developed which draws its normative content from a blend of formal decision theory and political philosophy it is argued that precautionary action can be justified by some flexible combination of uncertainty and incommensurability the greater the uncertainty the less incommensurability is required to justify precautionary action and vice versa throughout the paper the arguments are explored using the example of climate change decision problems

integration of environmental concerns into economic analyses of projects and policies in an operational context abstract the efficient use of natural resources both mineral and biological as well as man made capital and human resources is a vital prerequisite for economic and social development one key role of ecological economics is to help value environmental and natural resources more precisely and internalize the cost and benefits of using such resources into the decision making process this paper reviews current economic approaches to the analysis of projects and policies and discusses possibilities for better intergrating environmental concerns into public decision making it reviews current practices as they relate to project analysis the analysis of economic policies and national income accounting a major need at present is not for more theory or techniques but for application of existing methodology and approaches to concrete problems particularly in developing countries the major objective should not be to provide fine turned numbers but to indicate orders of magnitude some project and policy alternatives can be ruled out in this fashion also one can often identify the key estimates to which the decision is sensitive and focus more refined analyses on them cost benefit analysis should be used to the extent possible alongside one needs to consider and to the extent possible rigorously analyze consequences and risks that cannot be measured in monetary terms and use for example multi criteria analysis where possible this together with sound judgement are at present the best inputs into decision making

african aquaculture realizing the potential abstract despite 40 years of research and development and hundreds of millions of dollars spent aquaculture is struggling to realize its high biophysical potential in africa hampered by ineffective institutional arrangements and donor driven projects the substantial gains in desperately needed food security and economic growth predicted by development agencies have generally not been achieved nevertheless african aquaculture has demonstrated its competitiveness producing fishes that feed low on the food chain in a range of well adapted environmentally friendly and profitable farming systems that meet the needs of a broad spectrum of user groups key constraints to broader growth include lack of good quality seed feed and technical advice poor market infrastructure and access and weak policies that rather than accelerate impede expansion largely by emphasizing central planning over private sector initiative if african aquaculture is to make substantial and much needed contributions to the continent s development government policy should attempt to facilitate the alleviation of key constraints and rely more heavily on commercial investments to lead future growth evidence to date indicates that a pragmatic business approach focusing on small and medium scale private enterprises would produce more benefits for more people than centrally planned and government led development projects

the impact of economics on environmental policy abstract environmental economists have seen their ideas translated into the rough and tumble policy world for over two decades they have witnessed the application of economic instruments to several environmental issues including preserving wetlands lowering lead levels and curbing acid rain this essay examines the impact of the rise of economics in the policy world on the making of environmental policy i focus on two related but distinct phenomena the increasing interest in the use of incentive based mechanisms such as tradable permits to achieve environmental goals and the increasing interest in the use of analytical tools such as benefit cost analysis in regulatory decision making i argue that economists and economic instruments have had a modest impact on shaping environmental health and safety regulation but that economists will play an increasingly important role in the future although the role of economics is becoming more prominent it does not follow that environmental policy will become more efficient this apparent inconsistency can be explained by the political economy of environmental policy

toward a delineation of the circumstances in which cooperation can be sustained in environmental and resource problems play in standard laboratory public good games suggests that on average humans are quite prone to cooperate yet cooperation is often absent in real world social dilemmas including many environmental problems we propose that this discrepancy arises because in the public good game the worst freeriders can do is to not contribute to the public account while in many real world environmental situations freeriders can even appropriate contributions made by others before the public good is produced we introduce the claim game that modifies the public good game by allowing for appropriating the contributions of others before the public good is produced the impact of such possible takings on public good production is dramatic no public good is produced not even in the initial stages of interaction we link our findings to the relevance of common pool games for modeling environmental problems and stress the need to experimentally test environmental institutions within harsher social dilemmas than the standard public good game

estimating intergenerational distribution preferences resource management decisions influence not only the output of the economy but also the distribution of utility between groups within the community the theory of cost benefit analysis provides a means of incorporating distributional changes into the decision making calculus through the application of distributional or welfare weights however this practice has not been widely adopted in part due to difficulties in the estimation of distributional weights this paper addresses this problem by using the stated preference method of choice modelling to estimate distributional weights suitable for inclusion in a cost benefit analysis framework the findings of a choice modelling experiment designed to estimate community preferences with respect to intergenerational utility distribution illustrate the potential of this method in addressing distributional issues

the necessity for environmental taxes for the avoidance of environmental thievery a note on the paper environmental responsibility versus taxation abstract internalizing environmental costs is a necessary condition for an effective environmental policy since the majority of socio economic activities cannot be free of environmental impacts the noninternalized external environmental costs impose a peculiar thievery of welfare charging environmental costs through environmental taxes and other economic instruments is a necessary condition for avoiding welfare thievery in this context the anti tax approaches emerging within ecological economics are found to be misleading and directing away from an effective environmental policy environmental responsibility is a different issue from the charging of the environmental costs therefore environmental taxes should not be considered as an induction to less environmental responsibility and hence to environmental degradation

positive framing does not solve the tragedy of the commons we investigate whether positive framing increases cooperation in three social dilemmas with slightly different properties a linear public goods pg game a non linear pg game and a common pool resource cpr game results from our laboratory experiments show that contributions to a linear pg are higher if the externality is framed positively rather than negatively corroborating earlier findings by andreoni 1995 by contrast we find no such framing effects in the non linear pg game or the cpr game in these games the best response in the material payoffs is to contribute less if others contribute more counteracting effects of pro social preferences positive framing therefore does not help to solve the tragedy of the commons

is aquaculture pro poor empirical evidence of impacts on fish consumption in bangladesh summary aquaculture is widely held to contribute to poverty reduction and food security in the global south but robust evidence is limited using nationally representative data from bangladesh this study analyses changes in fish consumption from 2000 to 2010 rapid expansion of commercial aquaculture pegged down fish prices resulting in increased fish consumption by extreme poor and moderate poor consumers and those in rural areas these outcomes are closely linked to the pro poor nature of national economic growth during this period these findings contribute to a broadening of the debate on whether the growth of aquaculture in bangladesh has been pro poor