ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty strong sustainability according to the common definition requires that different natural and economic capital stocks be maintained as physical quantities separately yet in a world of uncertainty this cannot be guaranteed to therefore define strong sustainability under uncertainty in an operational manner we propose to use the concept of viability viability means that the different components and functions of a dynamic stochastic system at any time remain in a domain where the future existence of these components and functions is guaranteed with sufficiently high probability we develop a unifying and general ecological economic concept of viability that encompasses the traditional ecological and economic notions of viability as special cases it provides an operational criterion of strong sustainability under a mild form of uncertainty and for medium spatial and temporal scales we illustrate this concept and demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to livestock grazing management in semi arid rangelands publication ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty available from https www researchgate net publication 46490456 ecological economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty accessed apr 3 2017

threshold management in a coupled economic ecological system abstract economic analysis of optimal ecosystem management in the presence of a threshold has typically ignored the potential for induced behavioral responses this paper contributes to the literature on non convex ecosystem management by considering the implications of a particular behavioral response in a regional economy that of amenity led growth to changes in ecosystem services generated by a lake ecosystem subject to a eutrophication threshold the essential policy challenge is to achieve optimal levels of lake nutrients and urbanization given that improvements to water quality will induce additional migration and urbanization in the region with attendant ecological impacts we show that policies that ignore the recursive relationship between urbanization and water quality unintentionally exacerbate boom bust cycles of regional growth and decline and risk pushing the system towards long run economic decline in contrast the optimal policy accounts for the behavioral feedbacks to improved ecosystem services and balances regional growth and ecological degradation

the development of agricultural policies in central and eastern europe abstract agricultural and food subsidies and fixed prices imposed by the old central command system have been abolished recently throughout central and eastern europe cee however protectionist government regulations have been reintroduced this viewpoint argues that these policy changes are consistent with the results from the literature on new political economy or endogenous policy theory moreover as privatization of farms continues and the non agricultural sectors of the economy start growing this theory predicts that protectionist policies will increase in the agricultural sector in central and eastern europe in addition agricultural protectionism in western countries stimulates the increase in cee agricultural protectionism

does devaluation make sense in the least developed countries the exchange rate is a controversial instrument of economic policy especially in developing countries even in cases where currency overvaluation is clearly a major cause of an acute balance of payments crisis the governments of developing countries are frequently reluctant to devalue apparently for three main reasons a they doubt that export production import demand and domestic expenditures are very responsive to a change in the exchange rate elasticity pessimism b they fear the potentially disruptive side effects of devaluation on inflation employment and output growth as well as on real wages and income distribution and c they want to avoid political risk the focus of the present study is on the effects of devaluation in the deficit prone least developed countries where a large part of the population barely survives on a subsistence wage to be wholly successful devaluation generally requires a reduction of real wages to encourage the expansion of exports and of import substitution without a contraction of national income hence our lead question is devaluation an appropriate method of economic stabilization in the least developed countries where a decrease of real wages or earnings could result in severe economic hardship or even starvation more specifically the aim of our study is twofold 1 to investigate the short to medium term effects of devaluation on macroeconomic performance in the least developed countries subject to the condition that real wages or earnings

optimal pest control in agriculture abstract based on economic methodology we model an ecosystem with two species in predator prey relationship mice feed on grain and grain feeds on a resource with optimizing behavior of individual organisms a short run ecosystem equilibrium is defined and characterized that depends on the farmer s use of fertilizer and pesticide and on the mice population which in turn is affected by pesticides in that way a microfounded agricultural production function is derived linking a sequence of short run ecosystem equilibria yields the growth function of the mice population which is thus derived rather than assumed in each period the farmer harvests all grain in excess of some given amount of seed if she maximizes her present value profits optimal farming is characterized by either using no pesticide or a moderate amount of pesticide or by applying a chattering control pest eradication is never optimal on the other hand if the farmer takes into account steady state mice populations only it may be optimal to eradicate mice or to use no or a moderate amount of pesticide depending on prices as well as on the shape of the grain production function which is determined by microparameters of grain reproduction

on the relationship between the value of the mark and german production this study employs johansen s cointegration technique to determine the long run relationship between exchange value of the dm and german production it is shown that depreciation of the dm has a long run expansionary impact on german production this conclusion is based on a new method of selecting the order of var and the appropriate cointegrating vector simultaneously

policies and institutions in transition economies a political economy perspective on the agri food sector abstract this paper argues that since democratic governments are vulnerable to political pressure they should intervene with policies and institutions only when the net economic benefits exceed the costs incurred through increased political access if governments in transition economies are to exercise control it is important that public institutions within and supporting the agri food sector are designed in such a way as to restrain political incentives in practice this means that they should be built so as to take advantage of inherent scale economies

bioeconomic analysis and management this article discusses bioeconomic analysis and different management strategies in fisheries it reviews recent developments which show the need to expand the analysis to multispecies fisheries and management significant gains can be made if the interdependencies between species and or jointness in inputs for many fisheries are identified both common property resource management and individual transferable quotas itqs can be fruitful strategies in different settings the article suggests that there is scope for the development of a multiple use management approach of marine resources besides the aim of an efficient use of fish stocks equal attention should be given to other values from aquatic ecosystems like ecological services biodiversity and recreation possibilities

directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities this paper propses directly unproductive profit seeking dup activities as a general concept that embraces a wide range of recently analyzed economic activities including the subset of rent seeking activities considered by krueger it then proceeds to provide a synthesis and generalization of the welfare theoretic analysis of such activities by developing a fourfold categorization of cases depending on the levels of distortions before and after the dup activity thus a unification and overview of the subject are achieved

ecosystems externalities and economies this paper incorporates an ecosystem model into a model of a simple economy the decisionmaking agents in the ecosystem are individual organisms aggregated to the species level a species may provide utility directly to humans or it may provide utility indirectly because it is used either as a raw material in goods fabrication or as sustenance for other species we describe a comparative static equilibrium of the ecosystem where species demands for other species are equal to the supplies of those other species and energy is conserved the ecosystem is then embedded in the economy so that the effects of human intervention can be traced through both the ecosystem and the economy human intervention creates ecosystem externalities such that ecosystem equilibria are shifted and the new equilibria affect the utility or the production processes of other humans this framework allows us to describe in principle which ecosystem services can be efficiently usurped by humans which waste flows can be efficiently allowed into ecosystems and which ecosystem organisms and physical attributes can be efficiently maintained

the economics of non convex ecosystems introduction the word convexity is ubiquitous in economics but absent from economics in this paper we explain why and show what difference it makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non convexities are taken seriously a simple proof is provided of the connection between self similarity and power laws we also provide an introduction to each of the papers in the symposium and draw out the way in which they form a linked set of contributions

are devaluations contractionary recently a number of authors have criticized the role of devaluations in traditional stabilization programs it has been argued that contrary to the traditional view devaluations are contractionary and generate a decline in aggregate output in spite of the renewed theoretical interest in the possible contractionary effects of devaluations the empirical evidence on the subject has been quite sketchy in this paper the khan and knight 1981 model is extended to empirically address the issue of contractionary devaluations the extended model considers the effect of money surprises fiscal factors terms of trade changes and devaluations on the level of real output the results obtained using a variance components procedure on data for 12 developing countries provide some support to the short run contractionary devaluation hypothesis the results obtained indicate that in the short run a devaluation will generate a decline in aggregate output it is also found that after one year a devaluation will have an expansionary effecton output the evidence suggests that in the long run devaluations will have no effect on output this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

efficient redistribution through commodity markets efficiency in redistribution is measured in terms of deadweight loss generated per dollar of economic surplus transferred between consumers and producers of a commodity by means of market intervention the implications of supply and demand elasticities for efficiency in redistribution are examined with special attention to the comparison of production control and deficiency payment programs the results may be used to aid in the evaluation of commodity programs and as a basis for consideration of the hypothesis that observed policies are efficient given the political power of interest groups

are devaluations contractionary in mena countries currency depreciation reduces aggregate supply by raising cost of imported inputs and increases aggregate demand by increasing its net export component depending on the relative strength of the two effects depreciation could be expansionary or contractionary we employ the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction modelling to evaluate the effects of exchange rate depreciation on output growth both in the short and in the long run across a sample of mena countries exchange rate fluctuations are found to be important to fluctuations in real output growth in the short run anticipated exchange rate depreciation may induce long run expansionary or contractionary effects on output supply consistent with theory s predictions the expansionary effect of unanticipated depreciation is only transitory on output growth nonetheless unanticipated depreciation is found to have a contractionary effect on output growth in the long run via an increase in the cost of imported inputs

raw materials profits and the productivity slowdown a factor price frontier framework is used to clarify the analogy of an increase decrease in raw material prices with autonomous technological regress progress factor price profiles are estimated for the manufacturing sector of the united states the united kingdom germany and japan the production model in conjunction with estimates obtained from the factor price frontier attributes much of the slowdown in manufacturing productivity to the rise in relative raw material prices part of the apparent productivity riddle may have to do with the use of double deflated national accounting measures of value added which have an inherent measurement bias

does devaluation improve the current account this paper incorporates the link between devaluation foreign interest payments and the current acccount into a fairly general macroeconomic model in which exchange rate changes influence aggregate demand through exports imports and expenditures as well as aggregate supply via the cost of imported factors of production on the basis of avaliable statistical estimates of the behavioral and structural parameters of the model an attempt is mafe to assess the empirical importance of this link among others in a group of highly indebted industrial and developing countries by and large the empirical results indicate that high foreign debt and interest payments tend to reduce the short to medium run effect of devaluation on national income expecially in the ldcs but make little difference to its generally positive effect on the current account

market emergence and transition arbitrage transaction costs and autarky in china s grain markets using trimonthly chinese provincial grain prices from 1988 to 1995 we estimate a parity bounds model of interregional trade for four subperiods to characterize how multiple aspects of market performance change during the process of economic transition for each period we estimate the extent to which arbitrage opportunities are realized by traders the transaction costs between location pairs and the likelihood that regions do not trade trade restrictions cannot explain the pattern of uneven market development over time infrastructure bottlenecks managerial incentive reforms and production specialization policies all were likely important factors affecting market performance

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

does devaluation cause stagflation the traditional view that devaluation tends to increase domestic real income and output has been challenged in recent years on the grounds that trade flows including factor imports are relatively insensitive to exchange rate changes especially in developing countries this paper presents a simple macro economic model in which devaluation influences real income and output both through the cost of imported inputs on the supply side of the economy and through exports imports and expenditures on the demand side statistical estimates of the structural parameters of the model for a group of ten industrial and developing countries are used to show that the demand effects dominate the cost effects in most cases thus supporting the traditional view that devaluation has positive real effects in these countries in the short to medium run est ce que la devaluation engendre la stagflation le point de vue conventionnel veut que la devaluation tende a accroitre le niveau du revenu et de la production domestiques c est un point de vue qui a ete remis en question ces dernieres annees parce que dit on les flux de commerce international y compris les flux d importation de facteurs de production semblent relativement insensibles aux changements dans le taux de change ce memoire developpe un modele macro economique simple dans lequel la devaluation influence le niveau de revenu et de production en termes reels via le co ut des facteurs de production importes du cote de l offre et via les exportations les importations et les niveaux de depenses du c6te de la demande les auteurs utilisent la calibration statistique des parametres structurels du modele pour un groupe de dix pays industrialises et en voie de developpement pour montrer que les effets du cot6 de la demande dominent les effets de cofuts dans la plupart des cas voila qui supporte le point de vue traditionnel qui veut que la devaluation ait un impact positif reel dans les pays devaluateurs a court et a moyen tenne

a positive theory of agricultural protection the present paper analyses the political economy of agricultural protection in a general equilibrium framework rational politicians offer protectionist policies in return for political support from their constituency individuals in the economy have different factor endowments politicians exploit these differences in establishing redistributive policies when maximizing political support changes in economic variables such as the urban rural income gap capital intensity the share of agriculture in total output and total employment and the share of food in consumer expenditures affect the political equilibrium policy the analysis concludes that the observed correlation between economic development and agricultural protection is caused by a multiplicity of factors

economic land use ecosystem services and microfounded species dynamics abstract in an integrated economy ecosystem model humans choose their land use and leave the residual land as habitat for three species forming a food chain the size of habitat determines the diversity and abundance of species that biodiversity generates in turn a flow of ecosystem services with public good characteristics for human consumption the ecosystem submodel yields rather than assumes population growth functions with each species growth depending on the size of habitat first the relationship between habitat and species growth sustenance decline and extinction is explored the laissez faire economy is shown to result in an underprovision of habitat making the case for land use restrictions for nature protection the optimal land use policy is characterized with full regard of ecosystem dynamics finally labor augmenting technical change is introduced to generate ever increasing pressure towards further habitat reductions in the laissez faire economy the habitat is consequently squeezed to zero in the long run so that all species are doomed social optimality demands however to refrain from using all land for economic purposes despite ever growing labor productivity