optimal ngo financing of a resource management certification scheme the development of voluntary certification schemes in areas as diverse as fish coffee and forestry offer the promise of environmental improvements without the requirement of governmental regulation and intervention in many cases however the costs to landholders of making the transition are too large for them to do so at the same time the large intermediaries appear to have little economic incentive to introduce certification because the market does not adequately value the environmental benefits instead ngos and other aid and development agencies who would like to see small producers benefit from the change in production practices have typically stepped in to provide financial support for certification this paper shows how voluntary price discrimination in the form of donations by the consumers that most highly value certification can be used to finance a switch to environmentally sustainable practices and thus address a market failure this analysis shows that an ngo s optimal intervention depends on the size of its budget the elasticity of supply of the product and the elasticity of participation by producers ngos with smaller budgets rely more heavily on lump sum transfers to the intermediary and less heavily on volume and participation dependent subsidies volume and participation dependent subsidies are inversely related to the elasticity of supply and the elasticity of participation in a standard lerner relationship

the general equilibrium effects of inflation on housing consumption and investment in a mean variance portfolio choice model each of 3 578 households from the 1983 survey of consumer finances has calculated preferences over housing other consumption and risk each household is constrained such that any owner occupied housing in portfolio must match housing services consumed corporate taxes are modeled in some detail and regression coefficients are used to estimate the adjusted gross income itemizable deductions and statutory marginal tax rate of each household general equilibrium simulation results indicate that inflation does not necessarily increase total owner housing top bracket households increase their owner housing while others switch into bonds the greater number of households in low brackets implies that the homeownership rate can fall even if the amount of owner housing rises this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

political aspects of innovation abstract political aspects that enhance but also undermine the positive transformational power of public innovation policies are examined as such this paper follows michal kalecki in his 1943 paper that identifies the political aspects which enhance and undermine the positive transformational power of keynesian full employment policies similarly this paper provides a policy framework that identifies what government and business support as innovation policies the role of innovation stems from schumpeter s long run perspective but incorporates the more dynamic cyclical short term and trend perspectives of kalecki this paper critiques the strategy of public innovation policy in general and derives policy implications

recreational demands for maintaining instream flows a contingent valuation approach recreational uses of streams although nonconsumptive increasingly conflict with traditional off stream uses of water in arid regions recreational demands for instream flows have collective good attributes such that the recreationists preferences may be inadequately reflected in water allocation decisions the contingent valuation approach was adapted to impute instream flow shadow prices from a sample of recreationists on the cache la poudre river in northern colorado during periods of relatively low flows the estimated instream flow marginal value exceeds the marginal value of water in irrigation suggesting a need for altered water allocation policies

rate of return regulation and two part tariffs in choosing a two part tariff a monopoly subject to rate of return regulation will rely more on demand elasticities and less on marginal costs than would a welfare maximizing firm the rate of return regulated firm also will reduce its access fee or its marginal usage fee more depending on whether adding consumers or increasing output requires marginally the most capital in the typical case these effects will favor declining block rate structures which helps to explain their widespread use by rate of return regulated firms

using contingent valuation to enhance public participation in local planning o doherty r 1996 using contingent valuation to enhance public participation in local planning reg studies 30 667 678 this paper examines the adequacy of currency practices in public participation exercises from both theoretical and empirical perspectives it is concluded that the procedures adopted by planners are largely ineffective in allowing the general public to have a say in the shaping of their local environment a suggestion is made for the improvement of these procedures based on the use of the contingent valuation method in an attempt to minimize the cost of implementing this suggestion some empirical work incorporating a transferable demand function is reported the results of this initial fieldwork show some promising signs for future research o doherty r 1996 l utilisation de la methode de l estimation contingente afin d accroitre la participation publique a la planification locale reg studies 30 667 678 cet article cherche a examiner du point de vue a la fois theorique et em

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

the political economy of stabilization commitment capacity and public response abstract political pressures are generally recognized as important in determining success or failure of economic stabilization and adjustment programs but there has been little comparative analysis of the politics of stabilization this study examines the factors affecting i political leaders commitment to stabilization measures often called political will ii governmental ability to implement stabilization measures and iii the responses of key interest groups and the public at large to those measures the study also discusses political implications of the design of programs and the attempted speed of stabilization and sketches the tactics available to governments to manage political risk including partial compensation persuasion diversion or obfuscation and containment of protest the discussion is based on case studies of stabilization efforts in five fairly poor small highly trade dependent countries ghana in the late 1960s and early 1970s and zambia kenya sri lanka and jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s a subsidiary theme within the broader discussion is the ways in which the political economy of stabilization may differ in such countries as compared to larger semi industrialized economies

poverty in south asia abstract south asia faces a difficult challenge in alleviating absolute poverty besides a sustained labour intensive employment oriented strategy of economic growth a direct assault on poverty is needed in addition to redistribution of land the political feasibility of which is very limited poverty alleviating measures in south asia are classified into three types a system of subsidized food distribution creation of assets mainly through credit targeted towards the poor for self employment and public employment schemes on public works projects among the conditions governing their success are widely based public support accurate identification of the poor and strong local government capable of implementing technically sound and economically efficient projects

the advantages of contingent valuation methods for benefit cost analysis the preceding is a taxonomic discussion of some reasons why contingent market methods may often be a superior means of generating data with which to value non market commodities we have argued that economists have erred in viewing the situations these methods posit as necessarily fictional that the data generated by the methods may for non marketed goods and the activities with which they are associated accord more closely with the conditions of received economic theory that the methods can make it easier to remove the difficulties of estimation and interpretation introduced by confounding variables and that they often permit one to deal more readily with phenomena that have not been in the range of historical experience nevertheless whatever the advantages a major disadvantage remains until detailed analytical knowledge is acquired of the manner in which expectations are formed there exists no way to refute empirical propositions established from contingent markets nevertheless the previously mentioned south coast air basin experiment where the bids obtained for clean air conformed fairly closely to the values implied in a residential property value study suggest that contingent valuations have a basis in the real decision processes of consumers

the effect of price and income changes on food energy intake in sri lanka data is used to analyze the food acquisition behavior of households from a 1980 81 survey designed to be nationally sectorally and regionally representative of sri lanka the poor are shown to be much more responsive to price and income changes than other income groups the urban population generally exhibits lower income elasticities of demand for food commodities the poor appear to efficient substitutors thereby mitigating the effects of a price change on caloric intake the important exception is rice whose elasticity of calorie consumption with respect to price was about 4 times higher than for any other commodity the reluctance of households to substitute for rice even when faced with rising prices coupled with its large budget share show rice to be the most important consumption good higher rice prices are an important determinant of poverty for landless and urban workers moderating food prices preferably through technological change is a key ingredient to raising consumption among the poor simulations show that even if there are rapid and proportional increases in expenditures of all income groups this will not dramatically increase caloric intake among the poor however if the absolute value of the increase in real expenditures were distributed equally to all households there would be a marked increase in the of households consuming an adequate diet

giving respondents time to think in contingent valuation studies a developing country application abstract this paper evaluates whether the time given people to think about their responses to cvm valuation questions influences their answers our study was conducted in nigeria as part of an evaluation of rural households willingness to pay for public taps and private connections to improved drinking water systems respondents who were allowed time to evaluate the proposed water system bid significantly less than those who did not have that time moreover this conclusion was upheld regardless of whether the water system was a public tap or a private connection

contingent valuation techniques for assessing environmental impacts further evidence abstract this paper provides further evidence on the development and application of the iterative bidding technique used to assess environmental impacts three specific issues the hypothetical nature of the survey technique the questionnaire information structure and the bidding procedure starting point are examined theoretically and empirically to determine their effect on individual bid behavior the empirical results indicate that the importance of these influences may have been overstated in earlier studies

a comment on growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience by bhalla and glewwe the inaugural issue of this journal contained an article by bhalla and glewwe which addresses some problems that arise in attempting to assess the relative success or failure of policies in different countries or policy regimes bhalla and glewwe 1986 p 36 their conceptual framework contrasts two approaches to raising economic welfare the direct or basic needs approach and the indirect or economic growth approach p 61 from 1960 to 1977 sri lanka is seen as approximating the first regime while the subsequent period following the change of government in 1977 is cast as having a closer correspondence to the second the general conclusion invited by the paper is that the change in policy orientation has been for the better the evidence suggests that the post 1 977 policies have not been detrimental to equity objectives and may offer more promise than those which they replaced p 62 in what follows i will suggest that bhalla and glewwe have exceeded the interpretations which their data will support accordingly their case cannot be sustained much as one would like to have answers to the questions they raise for my own part i share the majority view that sri lanka s system of food subsidies was and to some extent remains inefficient but it is surprising to find that bhalla and glewwe also question performance in the social field between 1960 and 1977 and that they totally ignore sri lanka s current state of disruption in their optimistic prognosis

optimal two part pricing in a carbon offset market a comparison of organizational types author affiliation murray fulton johnson shoyama graduate school of public policy diefenbaker building university of saskatchewan saskatoon sk s7n 5b8 canada e mail murray fulton usask ca corresponding author james vercammen food and resource economics and sauder school of business 2053 main mall university of british columbia vancouver bc v6t 1z2 canada e mail james vercammen ubc ca acknowledgment the authors would like to thank tom ross and ralph winter for valuable comments on an early version of this article as well as the southern economic journal editor and two anonymous reviewers the usual caveats apply 1 introductionone of the consequences of the kyoto protocol kp and the increased focus on the role of greenhouse gases ghgs in climate change is that market based approaches to reducing ghg emissions are being actively developed in europe the european union eu operates an emissions trading scheme ets 1 while in the united states the chicago climate exchange ccx trades carbon offsets among exchange members 2 in canada a number of provinces have announced plans for carbon trading schemes four of them have joined the western climate initiative wci a consortium of canadian provinces and states developing a regional cap and trade system wci 2008 the wci and the regional greenhouse gas initiative rggi a consortium of northeastern and mid atlantic states see rggi 2008 are part of the international carbon action partnership a group of countries and regions from around the world that has formed to actively pursue the development of mandatory cap and trade systems in carbon 3the agriculture and forestry sectors are likely to be important suppliers of carbon offsets to the carbon market both through carbon sequestration activities for example the storing of carbon in the soil or in trees and through activities that reduce ghg emissions for instance estimates made by the united states at the time the kp was being negotiated projected that forest cropland and grazing land management sinks could have accounted for about half of u s reduction commitments u s department of state 2002 in canada the federal government estimated that agricultural and forestry sinks could provide in the order of 15 20 million metric tons of carbon offsets relative to a total of 270 300 million metric tons of reductions required under the kp government of canada 2005 food and agricultural organization fao estimates indicate that dryland soils in the world could sequester somewhere in the range of 12 000 16 000 million metric tons of carbon fao 2004 in the case of agriculture since carbon offsets are sold in units that are much larger than most individual farmers can supply carbon sequestration from a number of producers must be aggregated to fulfill contracts 4 as a consequence market intermediaries or aggregators as they are known are emerging to perform this economic function some of these aggregators are organized as for profit firms while others are organized by farmers associations examples of for profit firms are as follows c green aggregators ltd a privately owned company that contracts with farmers in manitoba saskatchewan and alberta for carbon sequestration the carbon they acquire is sold on the ccx c green aggregators 2008 and agcert international an irish company founded to generate emission reductions from livestock farms agcert international 2008 much of agcert s sales of carbon credits has been direct to individual emitters on the producer association side the iowa farm bureau has created agragate climate credits corporation to aggregate carbon credits for sale on the ccx agragate climate credits corporation 2008 agragate administers the project transacts trades on the exchange and distributes earnings to project participants

changes in the living standards of the poor in sri lanka during a period of macroeconomic restructuring abstract beginning in 1977 sri lanka moved away from its welfare oriented economy characterized by extensive government intervention in controlling prices and expensive consumer subsidies toward a more market oriented outward looking liberalized economy investment increased due largely to dramatic increases in the inflow of foreign capital combined with greater deficit financing unemployment declined and the rate of growth of gdp increased the major increase in foreign assistance coupled with deficit spending enabled the government to undertake the ambitious infrastructure projects that stimulated demand however this policy change had deleterious consequences for the poor rapid inflation which resulted in a decline of real wages coupled with dramatic decreases in the value of the food stamp scheme brought about a decline in calorie consumption for lower expenditure groups in addition levels of malnutrition as measured by acute wasting were higher after the policy change

valuing public goods a comparison of survey and hedonic approaches although the theory of public goods has progressed rapidly since paul samuelson s seminal article the empirical measurement of the value of demand for public goods only recently has received increased attention perhaps the best known and most widely accepted empirical approach has been the use of hedonic prices wherein for example it is assumed that either wages or housing values reflect spatial variation in public good characteristics of different communities this indirect approach based on theoretical work of charles tiebout kelvin lancaster sherwin rosen and others has proven quite successful among public goods or bads which have been valued using the hedonic approach are climate i hoch air pollution robert anderson and thomas crocker d harrison and d rubinfeld social infrastructure r cummings et al and other community characteristics such as noise level j nelson and ethnic composition ann schnare an alternative approach is to directly ask households or individuals to state their willingness to pay for public goods using survey techniques despite arguments that strategic bias will invalidate survey results there exists the need for an alternative to the hedonic approach as an example consider the case of a remote and unique scenic vista valuable to recreators which is threatened by air pollution from a proposed coal fired plant a typical situation in the western united states although it is possible in principle to impute the value of clean air and visibility from the relative decline in local visitation which might follow construction of a power plant information on the value of visibility at the site is needed prior to construction for socially optimal decision making on plant location and pollution control equipment the hedonic approach is unavailable both because the scarcity of local population as opposed to recreators makes use of wage or property value data impossible and because scenic vistas may themselves be unique for these reasons a randall et al first applied survey methods for valuing visibility and other environmental effects of large coal fired power plants in the four corners region of new mexico since this initial application the survey approach has been widely used to value environmental commodities where market data for hedonic analysis is difficult to acquire see for example brookshire ives and schulze rowe et al brookshire et al other early attempts to value public goods using the survey approach include r davis peter bohm and j hammack and g brown although results of using the survey approach for estimating the value of public goods appear to be internally consistent replicable and consistent with demand theory see schulze et al little work on external validation has been reported thus the purpose of this paper is to report on an experiment designed to validate the survey approach by direct comparison to a hedonic property value study the los angeles metropolitan area was chosen for the experiment because of the well defined air pollution problem and be assistant professor university of wyoming assistant professor university of missouri rolla associate professor university of wyoming and professor university of wyoming respectively the research reported here was funded under a grant methods development for assessing air pollution control benefits from the u s environmental protection agency we would like to give special thanks to alan carlin and shelby gerking for their helpful suggestions and contributions additional helpful comments were received from a myrick freeman iii john tschirhart and james murdoch all conclusions are of course our sole responsibility

on the political economy of stabilization abstract joan nelson 1984 includes sri lanka in the period 1977 1982 in a series of case studies of the factors affecting the political acceptability of stabilization and adjustment programs this is misleading because unlike the other countries dealt with sri lanka was not faced with an economic crisis when it accepted large multilateral loans under policy conditionality in fact the economic policies pursued in sri lanka after 1977 reflect the interests and political program of the domestic capitalist class the existence of such a class introduces dimensions to the analysis of the politics of adjustment not dealt with in nelson s framework

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

opportunism and ngos entrepreneurship and green north south transfers abstract through the lens of entrepreneurship this paper applies the new institutional economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations ngos in latin america to clarify their political economic roles southern ngos that rely on northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods these nonprofit ngos take their place alongside for profit firms as contributors to economic production employment institutional innovation and technology transfer the theoretical framework proposed assumes that self interested behavior coexists with loyalty commitment and altruism as well as opportunism

public expenditures in sub saharan africa during a period of economic reforms abstract public expenditure restraint is the most direct means of reducing balance of payments and budget deficits and is consequently a key aspect of macroeconomic adjustment programs the results of this study indicate a steady increase in total central government and social services spending during 1977 1989 in sub saharan africa the growth in population however contributed to an overall erosion in per capita expenditures while total government expenditures as a share of gdp have been stable during the past decade they have declined net of interest repayments which represent an increasingly large share of total spending an analysis of spending in the three years before and after donor financed adjustment programs began reveals no pattern of increase or decrease in real levels of total and social sector expenditures or in social sector spending as a share of the total expenditures elasticities of health and education spending with respect to gdp were found to be greater than unity in recent years indicating that as countries develop social spending will constitute a larger share of gdp

despairing over disparities explaining the difference between willingness to pay and willingness to accept this paper examines the three major explanations for the disparity between willingness to pay wtp and willingness to accept wta observed in contingent value surveys and laboratory experiments a belief that the results must be biased in some fashion hanemann s 1991 substitutes hypothesis and the loss aversion model proposed by tversky and kahneman 1991 starting from the assumption that individuals make utility maximizing choices we develop structural equations that yield parametric tests of the hypotheses within a single non experimental framework the approach is flexible enough to incorporate a variety of functional form and distributional assumptions and can be applied to either data from either open ended bids or dichotomous choice questions the usefulness of the approach is demonstrated using data from a survey that asked both wtp and wta questions the results provide weak support for loss aversion

in the market but not of it fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification as market based social change summary this paper discusses two well known market based social change initiatives fair trade coffee and forest stewardship council certification which harness market forces to pursue social and environmental objectives a serious challenge for both is to operate in the conventional market without undermining their original objectives a global commodity chain analysis approach is combined with insights from economic sociology embeddedness theory to explore the social cultural and organizational factors shaping the initiatives governance structures both initiatives are seen to move along opposite organizational trajectories but face similar pressures from conventional market logics practices and dominant actors a preliminary framework is proposed for comparative assessment focusing on distribution of benefits how conventional market institutions may be questioned and how internal governance manages diverse stakeholder interests and influence

a comparison of contingent valuation method and random utility model estimates of the value of avoiding reductions in king mackerel bag limits this paper estimates the value of king mackerel bag limit changes with both stated and revealed preference methods the 1997 marine recreational fishery statistical survey allows estimation of the value of avoiding bag limit reductions with the random utility model and the contingent valuation method using the contingent valuation method the willingness to pay to avoid a one fish reduction in the bag limit is 2 45 per year using the random utility model the willingness to pay to avoid a one fish reduction in the bag limit is 2 24 per trip and 7 71 for a two month time period considering several methodological issues the difference in willingness to pay between the stated and revealed preference methods is in the expected direction

willingness to pay and compensation demanded experimental evidence of an unexpected disparity in measures of value aside from possible income effects measures of the maximum amounts people will pay to avoid a loss and the minimum compensation necessary for them to accept it are generally assumed to be equivalent unexpectedly wide variations between these sums however have been noted in survey responses to hypothetical options this paper reports the results of a series of experiments that confronted people with actual money payments and cash compensations the results indicate that the compensation measure of value seems to exceed significantly the willingness to pay measure which would appear to call into some question various rules of entitlement damage assessments and interpretations of indifference curves

leading the left to the right populist coalitions and economic reform abstract democratic political parties with a history of commitment to statist economic policies face internal stresses when they come to power and preside over programs of wholesale economic liberalization how do such parties and coalitions avoid splintering and manage to maintain electoral support examining the recent experiences of argentina and mexico edward gibson suggests that one can understand these achievements by treating each party as a combination of two separate components performing distinct functions a metropolitan policy component and a peripheral or rural electoral component his framework travels well beyond latin america and helps illuminate the different politics underlying three recent waves of economic liberalization in sri lanka

optimal departures from marginal cost pricing focuses on departures from marginal cost pricing optimal allocation or resources level of tax revenue that will be collected by the government theorems developed for resource allocation ebsco

growth and equity in developing countries a reinterpretation of the sri lankan experience in the important debate between the proponents of direct basic needs and indirect economic growth measures of promoting welfare sri lanka has frequently been cited as one country which has successfully pursued the direct approach it has raised living standards without much cost in terms of reduced growth this conclusion however is based on analyses which do not account for the initial conditions of the countries being compared after methodologically incorporating these concerns neither the improvement in living standards nor the 2 0 percent per capita growth rate during the period of direct policy measures 1960 78 was exceptional in contrast during the period of more indirect growth promoting policies 1977 84 i economic growth more than doubled to an average rate of 4 3 percent per capita per annum ii expenditure inequality did not significantly change iii consumption expenditures of the population and the poor generally increased and iv several living standard indicators continued to improve