trade and protection in vertically related markets abstract we consider home country tariff and subsidy policies in a setting where a home firm is partially dependent on a foreign vertically integrated firm for supplies of a key input the firms are cournot competitors in the home market for the final product we show that a tariff on final product imports may cause the foreign vertically integrated firm to reduce the price charged for the input under circumstances where a simple monopoly supplier of the input would increase its price supply conditions for the input significantly affect whether imports of the input should be taxed or subsidized

learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

the theory of domestic content protection and content preference this paper investigates the resource reallocation effected by content protection and content preference schemes under alternative assumptions regarding the definition of domestic content the number of intermediate goods and the market structure of the domestic intermediate good industry content protection is shown to be equivalent to a combination of more familiar commercial policies however the extent of application of these policies is determined endogenously by parameters of the production functions for intermediate and final goods a number of anomalous and undesirable outcomes that may result from content protection and content preference are discussed

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

content protection and oligopolistic interactions in oligopolistic situations content protection can have unexpected effects as it changes the nature of interactions between input suppliers with a duopoly it does so in a manner that makes the foreign firm wish to match price increases and decreases of the domestic firm domestic input suppliers can therefore lose from such policies even when set at free trade levels the relation between input demands the form of protection and the degree of substitution between inputs is shown to define the effects of content protection and to provide the basis for understanding who might lobby for protection in different environments

health and agricultural productivity evidence from zambia we evaluate the productivity effects of investment in preventive health technology through a randomized controlled trial in rural zambia in the experiment access to subsidized bed nets was randomly assigned at the community level 516 farmers were followed over a one year farming period we find large positive effects of preventative health investment on productivity among farmers provided with access to free nets harvest value increased by us 76 corresponding to about 14 7 of the average output value while only limited information was collected on farming inputs shifts in the extensive and the intensive margins of labor supply appear to be the most likely mechanism underlying the productivity improvements observed

high and declining prices signal product quality high and declining prices signal a high quality product high prices are the efficient means of signaling because the consequent loss of sales volume is most damaging for lower cost lower quality products as time passes and the number of informed consumers increases the signaling distortion lessens resulting in a declining price profile the prediction of high and declining prices is robust across a variety of dynamic models and is consistent with recent empirical findings copyright 1991 by american economic association

chronic disease burden and the interaction of education fertility and growth abstract this study considers the eradication of hookworm disease from the american south circa 1910 as a test of the quantity quality q q framework of fertility eradication was principally a shock to the price of quality because of three factors hookworm i depresses the return to human capital investment ii had a very low case fatality rate and iii had negligible prevalence among adults consistent with the q q model we find a significant decline in fertility associated with eradication

content protection and tariffs under monopoly and competition abstract this paper compares the relative efficiency of local content schemes and tariffs as alternative means of achieving certain non economic distributional objectives the efficiency comparison is made under the alternative assumptions that an intermediate good component is produced a competitively and b by a single firm the paper shows how the ranking of tariffs and content schemes i is sensitive to these assumptions and ii depends on the local content ratio and the elasticity of demand for components the possible implications of vertical integration in the production process and rent revenue seeking behaviour are also considered insofar as they affect the ranking of policies

what matters and what does not in households decision to invest in malaria prevention this paper examines the take up of a new malaria control device by rural households in kenya and tests whether the demand curve for the device varies with the framing of marketing messages and with the gender of the person targeted by the marketing previous research suggests that the demand for malaria prevention is highly price sensitive jessica cohen and dupas 2008 even though the private returns to preventing malaria are very large christian lengeler 2004 in the standard model of investment in human capital individuals invest in a health product if the expected benefits from the product outweigh its costs michael grossman 1972 in this framework the low take up observed at relatively moderate prices by cohen and dupas 2008 could be due to people underestimating the expected benefits of investing in prevention or due to people being credit constrained and unable to pay the cost up front it is also possible that the standard model does not apply because people have time inconsistent preferences or because they are uncertain about their own preferences and rely on external cues to resolve their own uncertainty when they need to make a decision an extensive literature in psychology and marketing suggests that decision making can be affected by frames or cues that do not add information about a product but can be effective at persuading individuals to invest in it for example in a recent field experiment in south africa marianne bertrand et al 2008 found what matters and what does not in households decision to invest in malaria prevention

economic integration and rules of origin under international oligopoly free trade agreements ftas have rules of origin roos to prevent tariff circumvention by firms of non member countries this paper points out that in imperfectly competitive markets roos have another role overlooked in the existing literature instead of focusing on the impacts of roos in the intermediate good markets we draw our attention to the final good markets to examine the effects of roos we find that under some conditions roos benefi tb othfirms at the expense of consumers under some other conditions roos benefi tt hefirm producing outside the fta and hurt the firm producing inside the fta

disease and development evidence from hookworm eradication in the american south this study evaluates the economic consequences of the successful eradication of hookworm disease from the american south the hookworm eradication campaign c 1910 began soon after i the discovery that a variety of health problems among southerners could be attributed to the disease and ii the donation by john d rockefeller of a substantial sum to the effort the rockefeller sanitary commission rsc surveyed infection rates in the affected areas eleven southern states and found that an average of forty percent of school aged children were infected with hookworm the rsc then sponsored treatment and education campaigns across the region follow up studies indicate that this campaign substantially reduced hookworm disease almost immediately the sudden introduction of this treatment combines with the cross area differences in pre treatment infection rates to form the basis of the identification strategy areas with higher levels of hookworm infection prior to the rsc experienced greater increases in school enrollment attendance and literacy after the intervention this result is robust to controlling for a variety of alternative factors including differential trends across areas changing crop prices shifts in certain educational and health policies and the effect of malaria eradication no significant contemporaneous results are found for adults who should have benefited less from the intervention owing to their substantially lower prior infection rates a long term follow up of affected cohorts indicates a substantial gain in income that coincided with exposure to hookworm eradication i also find evidence that eradication increased the return to schooling

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

raw materials processing activities and protectionism a country s export sector may encompass a raw material as well as a final commodity that processes that raw material a general equilibrium model is developed in a competitive setting to analyze a nation s optimal strategy in restricting raw materials exports when allowance is made for potential beneficial effects on the export price of processed goods when faced with a foreign tariff on exports of the processed commodity a country s optimal response could entail an easing of raw materials export constraints instead of retaliation illustrations are provided of the 1986 american tariff on canadian exports of cedar shakes and shingles

rules of origin and the eu med partnership the case of textiles this paper analyses the impact of rules of origin on patterns of trade in the context of the pan european system of diagonal cumulation the paper first highlights the importance of rules of origin in all preferential trading arrangements while arguing that those rules can easily lead to trade suppression and or trade diversion we then focus on the introduction of the pan european system in 1997 and show evidence to suggest that the introduction of the system materially impacted on trade between the eu and its cefta efta and baltic states partner countries the main body of the paper then empirically explores the impact of the lack of cumulation in the textile industry on the countries of the southern mediterranean the results suggest that rules of origin may indeed substantially constrain trade between non cumulating countries possibly by as much as 70 80 per cent in aggregate while preferential trading agreements thus serve to increase intra pta trade through the liberalisation of trade barriers they may also be doing so by effectively raising external barriers to trade through the use of constraining rules of origin to the extent that they do so increases the likelihood of trade diversion and trade suppresion

proliferating regional trade arrangements why and whither this paper investigates why regional trade arrangements rtas are proliferating extensively and how the effects of multiple rtas by interacting with each other evolve over time our empirical analysis based on an extended gravity model utilising a large panel dataset of 175 countries from 1948 to 1999 shows that rtas on average increase global trade by raising intra bloc trade without damaging extra bloc trade the net trade effects however heavily depend on the types of rta strategic evolution over time which we categorise as expansionary rtas duplicate rtas or overlapping rtas we find that countries excluded from an rta can benefit more from duplicating a separate rta than from joining an existing rta this result explains why the number of bilateral trade blocs rather than the membership size of existing rtas is currently exploding we also find that the net trade creating effects of rtas are substantially lower for countries participating in overlapping rtas this result suggests that it is less likely that the currently proliferating rtas will completely merge and lead the world economy to global free trade our empirical results are robust to controlling for the characteristics of countries that may influence the impact of rtas

the effects of a content requirement on a foreign duopsonist abstract this paper considers the operation of a local content requirement in a duopsony between domestic and foreign firms and demonstrates its consequences for the domestic producer of a final good it is shown that content protection may have perverse effects on a foreign firm s profits and may be welfare improving overall shifting profits from the domestic firm to both the foreign firm and domestic input producers

trade and protection with multistage production this paper analyses trade in manuf acutured goods that are produced via a vertical production structure with many stages where some value is added at each to an intermediate product to yield a good in process ready for the next stage we consider the stage at which a good is traded to be an economically endogenous variable with comparative advantage determining the pattern of production specialization by stages across countries we study how endowment changes and policy shifts move the margin of comparative advantage which thus provides a channel for resource allocation adjustment that is additional to the usual ones of factor substitution and changes in the quantity of output

the role of power in financial statement fraud schemes in this paper we investigate a large scale financial statement fraud to better understand the process by which individuals are recruited to participate in financial statement fraud schemes the case reveals that perpetrators often use power to recruit others to participate in fraudulent acts to illustrate how power is used we propose a model based upon the classical french and raven taxonomy of power that explains how one individual influences another individual to participate in financial statement fraud we also provide propositions for future research

farmers health and agricultural productivity agriculture is one of the most hazardous productive sectors around the world most previous studies have focused on health issues of farmers in developing countries while little attention has been paid to farmers health problems in developed countries the present study assesses the effect of farmers health conditions on agricultural productivity in norway employing stochastic frontier regression techniques we conclude that differences in farmers health help to explain the variance in agricultural production efficiency

vertical foreclosure and international trade policy international differences in the cost of production of a key intermediate product can mean that a domestic firm is dependent on supplies from a foreign vertically integrated firm this paper considers the incentives for the foreign firm and foreign country to supply the domestic firm when the firms compete in a cournot or bertrand market for the final product the vertical supply decision is significantly affected by domestic supply conditions for the input and a domestic tariff on final product imports optimal policy by the exporting country may require a tax on both exports or a subsidy on both exports countries that are dependent on imports of a key intermediate product or raw material from a dominant world supplier are often concerned about the price and the availability of imports a notable current example involves the computer industry japanese suppliers with the help of the japanese government recently restricted the exports of dram semiconductors substantially raising their price these suppliers control about 80 of the market for semiconductors and the higher prices and shortage in supply have forced u s producers of computers to curtail production and increase prices vertically integrated japanese firms such as toshiba and n e c have benefitted both from increased profits in the export market for semiconductors and from the improvement in their competitive position in the market for final computers as this example indicates the price and availability of imported supplies can depend on both public and private incentives in the exporting country in this paper we first examine the private incentives for a vertically integrated firm to export an intermediate product to a higher cost rival lowering its rival s costs the exporting firm may choose vertical foreclosure thus fully cutting off supplies we then consider the public interest of the exporting country does the exporting country gain by encouraging the export of the intermediate product or alternatively might government foreclosure occur the government is in a position to affect the quantity of exports of both the input and the final product by an appropriate choice of export tax and subsidy policies

household composition labor markets and labor demand testing for separation in agricultural household models this paper tests the separation of farm labor supply and labor demand decisions using the observation that household composition is an important determinant of farm labor use with nonseparation after assessing the conditions under which the test has power against several alternatives an empirical model is developed to test the proposition that farm employment is independent of family composition the model is estimated on a data set from rural java the null hypothesis that farm labor allocation decisions are independent of household structure is not rejected the results are robust to different specifications of the labor demand function copyright 1992 by the econometric society

micro loans insecticide treated bednets and malaria evidence from a randomized controlled trial in orissa india we describe findings from the first large scale cluster randomized controlled trial in a developing country that evaluates the uptake of a health protecting technology insecticide treated bednets itns through micro consumer loans as compared to free distribution and control conditions despite a relatively high price 52 percent of sample households purchased itns highlighting the role of liquidity constraints in explaining earlier low adoption rates we find mixed evidence of improvements in malaria indices we interpret the results and their implications within the debate about cost sharing sustainability and liquidity constraints in public health initiatives in developing countries

how high are rates of return to fertilizer evidence from field experiments in kenya the idea that peasant farmers are rational profit maximizers has been a staple of development economics since theodore schultz 1964 it has also been influential in shaping policy for example agricultural experts have stressed the importance of fertilizer use in raising agricultural yields pointing to impressive results on experimental farms and to huge differences in agricultural productivity across countries with different levels of fertilizer use robert evenson and douglas gollin 2003 historically many countries subsidized fertilizer in response but economists have been skeptical of claims that farmers are leaving money on the table noting that fertilizer may not have the same returns on real world farms as on experimental farms that returns to fertilizer may be low for many farmers even if they are high on average tavneet suri 2007 that fertilizer may require complementary inputs or may be risky many countries have withdrawn or scaled back fertilizer psychology and development theory and experimental evidence

health nutrition and economic development the relationship between health and economic development is explored focusing on nutrition based health indicators the spotlight is placed on the inter related feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity on one hand and the influence of income on health status on the other disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature we evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results there is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity there is also evidence that at least among the very poor additional income is spent on improved nutrition there are two issues that have received little attention although we argue they are likely to be very important first measurement of health is discussed in detail evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages the same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health specifically calorie intake the key role of non linearities in these relationships is highlighted and we demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form authors

nudging farmers to use fertilizer theory and experimental evidence from kenya we model farmers as facing small fixed costs of purchasing fertil izer and assume some are stochastically present biased and not fully sophisticated about this bias such farmers may procrastinate post poning fertilizer purchases until later periods when they may be too impatient to purchase fertilizer consistent with the model many farmers in western kenya fail to take advantage of apparently profit able fertilizer investments but they do invest in response to small time limited discounts on the cost of acquiring fertilizer free deliv ery just after harvest calibration suggests that this policy can yield higher welfare than either laissez faire policies or heavy subsidies

does better nutrition raise farm productivity household level data from sierra leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity this is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis which has found only weak empirical support a farm production function is estimated accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice instruments include prices household demographic characteristics and farm assets the latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity the exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity providing solid support for the nutrition productivity hypothesis the marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake one result is a fall in the effective price of food a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories

free distribution or cost sharing evidence from a randomized malaria prevention experiment author s cohen jessica dupas pascaline abstract it is often argued that cost sharing charging a subsidized positive price for a health product is necessary to avoid wasting resources on those who will not use or do not need the product we explore this argument through a field experiment in kenya in which we randomized the price at which prenatal clinics could sell long lasting anti malarial insecticide treated nets itns to pregnant women we find no evidence that costsharing reduces wastage on those that will not use the product women who received free itns are not less likely to use them than those who paid subsidized positive prices we also find no evidence that costsharing induces selection of women who need the net more those who pay higher prices appear no sicker than the average prenatal client in the area in terms of measured anemia an important indicator of malaria cost sharing does however considerably dampen demand we find that uptake drops by 75 percent when the price of itns increases from zero to 0 75 i e from 100 to 87 5 percent subsidy the price at which itns are currently sold to pregnant women in kenya we combine our estimates in a cost effectiveness analysis of itn prices on child mortality that incorporates both private and social returns to itn usage overall our results suggest that free distribution of itns could save many more lives than cost sharing programs have achieved so far and given the large positive externality associated with widespread usage of itns it would likely do so at a lesser cost per life saved

analysis of perfonnance standards for direct foreign investments within the framework of a duopolistic model we investigate the impact of foreign investment standards on welfare output and employment minimum local content and export requirements reduce world output world welfare and the source country s welfare under certain conditions the decline in host country s consumer surplus resulting from diminished competition outweighs the shift of monopoly rent from the source country s firm to the host country s firm minimum content standards can increase host country s employment but only to a point marginal increases in the content requirement can actually reduce employment as the magnitude of foreign investment declines

self interest and business ethics some lessons of the recent corporate scandals the recent accounting scandals at enron worldcom and other corporations have helped to fuel a massive loss of confidence in the integrity of american business and have contributed to a very sharp decline in the u s stock market inasmuch as these events have brought ethical questions about business to the forefront in the media and public consciousness as never before they are of signal importance for the field of business ethics i offer some observations and conjectures about the bearing of the recent scandals on the literature on business ethics i defend the following contentions 1 recent events reveal serious weaknesses of the stakeholder theory about the social responsibilities of business which lacks prohibitions against fraud and deception this is a glaring deficiency of standard versions of the stakeholder theory but it is easily remedied by adding explicit prohibitions against fraud and deception in addition recent events highlight the stakeholder theory s very naive and unrealistic hopes and expectations for business executives as moral arbiters and agents of social improvement 2 recent events do not constitute an objection to the shareholder theory about the social responsibilities of business however these events make evident the implausibility of strong versions of the invisible hand theory 3 schemes of payment and reward often create perverse incentives for individuals to engage in unethical conduct 4 both the shareholder theory and the stakeholder theory need to add a constraint that requires executives to respect the professional obligations of employees

short run subsidies and long run adoption of new health products evidence from a field experiment short run subsidies for health products are common in poor countries how do they affect long run adoption a common fear among development practitioners is that one off subsidies may negatively affect long run adoption through reference dependence people might anchor around the subsidized price and be unwilling to pay more for the product later but for experience goods one off subsidies could also boost long run adoption through learning this paper uses data from a two stage randomized pricing experiment in kenya to estimate the relative importance of these effects for a new improved antimalarial bed net reduced form estimates show that a one time subsidy has a positive impact on willingness to pay a year later inherit to separately identify the learning and anchoring effects we estimate a parsimonious experience good model estimation results show a large positive learning effect but no anchoring we black then discuss the types of products and the contexts inherit for which these results may apply

industrial targeting in free trade areas with policy independence we investigate the limits of a mechanism for free trade area fta formation that simultaneously satisfies internal industrialization targets for arbitrary targets we find necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee that the mechanism is efficient for member countries individually even if other members do not implement the efficient policy when the objective is conservative designed to protect the level of industrialization previously achieved by the target industry member countries are guaranteed gains from the efficient policy and their fta participation the analysis covers cases with transportation costs and explains why minimally restrictive rules of origin support efficiency and policy independence on etudie les limites d un mecanisme de formation d une zone de libre echange zle qui simultanement rencontre certains objectifs internes d industrialisation pour des cibles arbitraires on definit les conditions necessaires et suffisantes qui garantissent que le mecanisme est efficient pour les pays membres individuellement meme si d autres membres ne mettent pas en place la politique efficiente quand les objectifs sont conservateurs tentant seulement de proteger le niveau d industrialisation auquel on s est donne acces anterieurement dans l industrie ciblee on peut garantir des gains pour les pays membres decoulant de la politique efficiente et de la participation a la zle l analyse examine aussi des situations avec couts de transport positifs et explique pourquoi des restrictions minimales sur l origine des produits assurent l efficacite et l independance des politiques

the discriminatory nature of specific tariffs this paper quantifies the distortions from specific tariffs levied by the european union eu the most favored nation mfn specific tariffs levied by the eu translate into higher tariff barriers for poor countries exporting low price goods the author shows that for poor countries these higher tariff barriers from specific tariffs offset the gains from preferential tariffs the author apply a two stage analysis to show that the specific tariffs levied by the eu on its agricultural imports wash away more than half of the welfare benefits enjoyed by the sub saharan african countries from eu preferential tariffs the results provide the first quantitative estimate of the distortions associated with specific tariffs

the impact of rules of origin on trade flows a great deal of post war trade liberalization resulted from regional preferential trade agreements preferential trade agreements cut tariffs on goods originating only in those nations that have signed the agreement therefore they need rules of origin to determine which goods benefit from the tariff cut rules of origin have long been ignored for two good reasons they are dauntingly complex and at first sight appear mind numbingly dull the third standard reason for ignoring them the assertion that they do not matter much turns out to be wrong we show that rules of origin are important barriers to trade moreover such rules are emerging as an important trade issue for three additional reasons first preferential trade deals are proliferating worldwide second the global fragmentation of production implies complex international supply chains which are particularly constrained and distorted by rules of origin third the extent to which regionalism challenges the wto based trading system depends in part on incompatibilities and rigidities built into rules of origin our empirical results exploit a natural experiment that was created by technical changes to europe s lattice of rules of origin roos in 1997 this change known as diagonal cumulation relaxed the restrictiveness of rules of origin on trade among the eu s free trade agreement fta partners without changing the degree of tariff preference our analysis allows us to establish a lower bound and upper bound estimate of trade impact of roos reduced trade among the eu s trade partners the lower bound we find is something like 10 while the upper bound is around 70 the second part of the paper draws the policy lessons that arise from considering the implications of our empirical findings the most direct lessons are for fta writers we argue that europe s implementation of cumulation is a good way of reducing the welfare reducing impact of overlapping rules of origin without gutting their fraud fighting ability we also suggest a three part procedure for establishing a more multilateral framework for rules of origin which would be more transparent flexible administratively feasible and negotiable patricia augier michael gasiorek and charles lai tong

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

preference utilisation and tariff reduction in eu imports from acp countries textabstractdespite the long relationship between the eu and the african caribbean and pacific acp countries aimed at encouraging their exports while stimulating growth and investment the acp states still face difficulties in integrating into the world economy this paper examines the non least developed acp countries preferential trade with the eu the objective is to explain the determinants of preferential exports of acp countries towards the eu and to assess the impact of preferences on trade volumes we also investigate the existence of a threshold in the offered duty reduction under which traders have no incentives to ask for preferences

estimating individual discount rates in denmark a field experiment we estimate individual discount rates with respect to time streams of money using controlled laboratory experiments these discount rates are elicited by means of field experiments involving real monetary rewards the experiments were carried out across denmark using a representative sample of 268 people between 19 and 75 years of age individual discount rates are estimated for various households differentiated by socio demographic characteristics such as income and age our conclusions are that discount rates are constant over the 12 month to 3 year horizons used in these experiments and that discount rates vary substantially with respect to several socio demographic variables hence we conclude that it would be reasonable to assume constant discount rates for specific household types but not the same rates across all households

dispensing with nafta rules of origin some policy options the objective of this paper is to use a computable general equilibrium cge methodology to estimate the economic gains for both canada and mexico of 1 adopting a north american customs union cu that would also liberalise rules of origin roo and 2 reviving the wto scenario of multilateral free trade thereby eliminating preferential commerce and thus the need for preferential roo across free trade agreements ftas such a cge methodology is useful as the approach permits computation of an efficiency or ex post cost of roo that might in some contexts be more relevant than the existing ex ante indices of roo restrictiveness which are unable to account for the fact that the use of preferential access in an fta and the concomitant roo compliance is an option not an obligation the paper shows that the erosion of nafta tariff preferences at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s which resulted from a different phasing of the nafta and uruguay round measures has reduced the efficiency cost of nafta roo making these rules economically less relevant especially for canada and therefore limiting somewhat the gains from liberalising them through a cu given this the wto scenario of multilateral free trade remains the approach that would deliver the largest economic gains in terms of gdp and welfare while making preferential commerce and roo obsolete

coherent arbitrariness stable demand curves without stable preferences economic theories of valuation generally assume that prices of commodities and assets are derived from underlying fundamental values for example in finance theory asset prices are believed to reflect the market estimate of the discounted present value of the asset s payoff stream in labor theory the supply of labor is established by the tradeoff between the desire for consumption and the displeasure of work finally and most importantly for this chapter consumer microeconomics assumes that the demand curves for consumer products chocolates cds movies vacations drugs and so forth can be ultimately traced to the valuation of pleasures that consumers anticipate receiving from these products because it is difficult as a rule to measure fundamental values directly empirical tests of economic theory typically examine whether the effects of changes in circumstances on valuations are consistent with theoretical prediction for example whether labor supply responds appropriately to a change in the wage rate whether compensated demand curves for commodities are downward sloping or whether stock prices respond in the predicted way to share repurchases however such comparative static relationships are a necessary but not sufficient condition for fundamental valuation e g summers 1986 becker 1962 was perhaps the first to make this point explicitly when he observed that consumers choosing commodity bundles randomly from their budget set would nevertheless produce downward sloping demand curves

the normalization of deviant organizational practices wage arrears in russia 1991 98 we apply a normalization of deviance model to understand the prevalence of the illegal practice of wage arrears the delayed payment of wages in russia during the 1990s viewing organizational dev

rules of origin as commercial policy instruments this article examines the role of rules of origin as a commercial policy instrument that targets the input composition of imports using a three country partial equilibrium structure we demonstrate conditions under which the imposition of a binding rule will be welfare improving for an importer facing competitive export suppliers we further show that employing rules of origin in this way would be complementary to rather than a substitute for conventional optimal tariffs copyright economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

if it pays it stays can agribusiness internalize the benefits of malaria control might a malaria control intervention entail agricultural effects that allow a commercial agribusiness to offset its costs the randomized allocation of 39 936 insecticide treated mosquito nets among 81 597 smallholder cotton farming households in 1 507 clusters helps evaluate this in the context of zambia s cotton outgrowing industry but despite large health impacts on treated households no impact on cotton deliveries to the agribusiness is detected with some caveats the results tend to strike a discord with recent evidence on the agricultural productivity effects of malaria control