contract enforcement and trade liberalization in mexico s footwear industry abstract the wave of formal legal system reforms sweeping developing countries provides only a partial solution to the problem of enforcing agreements between firms informal institutions govern the majority of interfirm transactions economic reform also necessitates changes in these institutions this paper examines the evolution of contract enforcement in the mexican footwear industry as trade barriers were removed in the closed economy geographic agglomeration of manufacturing allowed the manufacturers trade associations to maintain information about the behavior of retailers and gave retailers strong incentives to maintain reputations by providing an alternative source for procurement trade liberalization weakened the power of manufacturers

institutional selection in international relations state anarchy as order by the end of the medieval era three new competing institutions attempted to capture gains from trade and reduce feudal particularism sovereign territorial states cityleagues and city states by the middle of the seventeenth century city leagues and city states had declined markedly territorial states survived as the dominant form because they were able to reduce free riding lower transaction costs and credibly commit their constituents the selection process took place along three dimensions first sovereign territorial states proved competitively superior in the economic realm second states increasingly recognized only other sovereign territorial states as legitimate actors in the international system third other actors defected to or copied the institutional makeup of sovereign territorial organization the emergence of discrete territorial units in which only sovereign authorities represented their citizens as the predominant type of organization in international affairs created a new solution to the problem of markets and hierarchies

implications of ethnic diversity ethnically differentiated societies are often regarded as dysfunctional with poor economic performance and a high risk of violent civil conflict the author distinguishes between dominance in which one group constitutes a majority and fractionalization in which there are many small groups in terms of overall economic performance the research shows that both theoretically and empirically fractionalization is normally unproblematic in democracies although it can be damaging in dictatorships in terms of the risk of civil war the author shows that both theoretically and empirically fractionalization actually makes societies safer while dominance increases the risk of conflict a policy implication is that fractionalized societies are viable and secession should be discouraged

the environment and emerging development issues development economics for the most part has failed to recognize renewable environmental resources as economic goods yet the lives of the poor in developing countries are intimately tied to the fate of their local common property resources soil fuel wood water and so on ignoring the loss of common property renewable resources via degradation centralization or privatization in calculations of net national product can mask the destruction of resources available to a country s poor behind the false appearance of a growing national economy this paper describes the difference between the problem of managing local common property resources in developing countries and the problem of protecting the global commons such as the atmosphere and oceans it outlines the calculations that would include the local commons in the national income accounting of capital assets and argues that the interests of those most dependent on the increasingly scarce local commons will be best served by placing control in their hands while the central government provides infrastructure and educational support to control the pollution of the global commons on the other hand the paper sketches a plan in which most countries would have a high incentive to participate a global allocation of limited tradable permits to discharge defined pollutants

generalised morality and the problem of transition to an impersonal exchange regime a response to platteau this essay addresses the problem of transition from a personalised exchange regime that characterises most ldcs to the more impersonal form of exchange that marks advanced market economies this debate has received impetus from the discussion launched by platteau 1994 in the pages of this journal where he seeks to clarify the social conditions that allow the market system to evolve while the role of private and public order institutions in generating market order is recognised this is regarded as inadequate necessitating the invocation of generalised morality gm to complete the explanation it is argued here that gm does not need to be invoked the article pleads for taking a closer look at the historical role of risk bearing institutions especially financial institutions evidence from the bangladesh rice market is adduced in support of the contention that there exist elements even within a traditional exchange regime that can evolve into modern impersonal forms this is brought out by ex

truth trust and market transactions what do we know john humphrey and hubert schmitz have recently made an important contribution to the literature on trust and economic transactions between firms unfortunately the evidence that high levels of societal trust contribute significantly to economic growth is far less reliable than they suggest we need more research but research informed by greater conceptual clarity about trust and the institutional arrangements that contribute to trust the framework presented here for conceptualising the various sources of trust should help guide empirical research

an evolutionary approach to norms iorms provide a powerful mechanism for regulating conflict in groups even when there are more than two people and no central authority this paper investigates the emergence and stability of behavioral norms in the context of a game played by people of limited rationality the dynamics of this new norms game are analyzed with a computer simulation based upon the evolutionary principle that strategies shown to be relatively effective will be used more in the future than less effective strategies the results show the conditions under which norms can evolve and prove stable one interesting possibility is the employment of metanorms the willingness to punish someone who did not enforce a norm many historical examples of domestic and international norms are used to illustrate the wide variety of mechanisms that can support norms including metanorms dominance internalization deterrence social proof membership in groups law and reputation

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed

economic incentives and international trade this paper studies the importance of incentives as a determinant of international trade flows we argue that barter countertrade and foreign direct investment can be seen as efficient institutions that mitigate contractual hazards which arise in technology trade marketing and imperfect capital markets paying an import with export goods rather than cash barter helps to overcome incentive problems that arise in debt repayment of highly indebted countries payment in export goods removes the anonymity of the medium of exchange and thus allows to create a collateral for the creditor furthermore tying an import with an export countertrade helps to solve the incentive problems related to the technology transfer to developing countries the export flow serves as a hostage that deters cheating on the quality of the imported technology good the predictions of the two models are consistent with the pattern of trade of actual barter and countertrade contracts

the impact of mitigating co2 emissions on taiwan s economy abstract in this paper a computationally multi objective programming approach and a leontief inter industry model are used to investigate the impact of mitigating co 2 emissions on taiwan s economy the estimated result shows that taiwan s gdp will drop 34 off the targeted gdp growth rate for the year 2000 and taiwan s economy will be seriously weakened if annual co 2 emissions are stabilized at the 1990 level when taiwan maintains co 2 emissions at 128 of the 1990 level then taiwan s economy will be able to show a 5 37 average annual growth rate up to year 2000 a 157 co 2 emission level would mean a 5 92 annual gdp growth rate and a 213 co 2 emission level for a 6 85 annual gdp growth rate in addition policy implications are presented in order to provide policy makers in economic planning

common pool resources and contextual factors evolution of a fishermen s cooperative in calcutta abstract the cpr school has successfully rebutted hardin s pessimistic tragedy of the commons model however in recent years critics have focussed on the inward orientation and lack of contextual analysis characterising the writings of the cpr school oakerson a model for the analysis of common property problems working paper r86 13 workshop in political theory and policy analysis indiana university 1986 and ostrom governing the commons cambridge cambridge university press 1990 have detailed the list of variables that have to be studied to understand the mechanics of collective action however these factors are internal to the community recent critics point out that the actions of individual agents are also influenced by the alternatives embedded outside the system these variables are collectively labelled contextual factors in our paper we have analysed the case of a fishermen s cooperative in the calcutta metropolitan district to show how the historic and economic context shapes targets of resource users and affects the feasibility of alternative courses to achieve the target by determining opportunity and transaction costs of actions this indicates the importance of contextual factors in explaining the formation and evolution of the resource regime

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

trust institutions and the generally speaking question a reply to uslaner in his critical reply on my article uslaner points to several issues amongst others the lack of observations in the principal components analysis and the fundamental relationship between micro and macro trust on the one hand and institutions on the other hand of these two i hold the second one to be most important and i will therefore focus on this issue i will also use this opportunity to position our trust discussion in the broader context of contemporary economic research on culture copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

a theory of trust based systems of intermediation recent studies have analysed the economic benefits of belonging to high trust networks and the biological foundations of individual trust but much scepticism remains regarding the precise role of trust in economic transactions as well as gaps between micro and macro concepts of trust this paper links individual and institutional trust by modelling the costs associated with accessing market law and trust based intermediation systems and identifies the conditions under which one of the three systems may be more advantageous for rational actors and thus more likely to emerge the discussion concentrates on examples drawn from development policy to illustrate how the three systems operate together and how the failing of the trust system affects the legal and market systems

competitive and cooperative inventory policies in a two stage supply chain we investigate a two stage serial supply chain with stationary stochastic demand and fixed transportation times inventory holding costs are charged at each stage and each stage may incur a consumer backorder penalty cost e g the upper stage the supplier may dislike backorders at the lower stage the retailer we consider two games in both the stages independently choose base stock policies to minimize their costs the games differ in how the firms track their inventory levels in one the firms are committed to tracking echelon inventory in the other they track local inventory we compare the policies chosen under this competitive regime to those selected to minimize total supply chain costs i e the optimal solution we show that the games nearly always have a unique nash equilibrium and it differs from the optimal solution hence competition reduces efficiency furthermore the two games equilibria are different so the tracking method influences strategic behavior we show that the system optimal solution can be achieved as a nash equilibrium using simple linear transfer payments the value of cooperation is context specific in some settings competition increases total cost by only a fraction of a percent whereas in other settings the cost increase is enormous we also discuss stackelberg equilibria

microeconomics norms and rationality a divergence of views among microeconomists in general and game theorists in particular regarding the explanatory objectives of microeconomic theory has become apparent in recent years this divergence concerns most fundamentally the question whether institutions legal or customary rules or social norms are to be classified among the endogenous as opposed to the exogenous variables in the framework of microeconomic analysis the majority of economists are probably agnostic or ambivalent on this question not having confronted or not having had to confront the issue in their own work many have sidestepped it by treating institutions as immutable or by restricting their analyses to a given rule regime but rules do vary and change and among those who are concerned with studying variation in institutions two diverging views are increasingly identifiable sometimes coexisting even within the writings of the same author the first sees game theory and microeconomic theory in general as an analytical device useful for considering the comparative incentive features of and corresponding outcomes associated with different institutional regimes regimes that might be changed in one s capacity as a policymaker or that have varied in fact as the result of differential historical development in different regions the second position accepts this statement of the objectives of microeconomic theory vis avis institutions for the short run but takes it as the ultimate task of

the economic institution of international barter starting with the international debt crisis in the 1980s international barter increased substantially more recently barter has emerged in russia and south east asia this paper examines how barter can help highly indebted countries to finance imports if they cannot use standard credit arrangements we argue that payment in goods is easier to enforce than payment in money however debtors may pay with inferior quality products we rank goods with respect to these incentive properties and derive the economic institution of commodity money which explains the trade pattern in barter our theoretical predictions are consistent with data on barter contracts

low carbon energy scenarios for sub saharan africa an input output analysis on the effects of universal energy access and economic growth abstract meeting sub saharan african ssa human development goals will require economic development to be the priority over the coming decades but economic development at all cost may not be acceptable across these goals this paper aims to explore five development scenarios for the five largest economies in ssa to understand the implications to co 2 equivalent emissions co 2 e and off grid energy modernisation in 2030 within this scope gdp growth economic structure availability of energy resources international trade and the development of distributed generation for remote locations are considered regional co 2 emissions were studied using a multi regional input output model for africa under the scenarios analysed all five nations will be unable to reduce 2030 co 2 e emissions below 2012 levels whilst simultaneously achieving forecast gdp growth and universal access to modernised energy services 100 off grid modernisation is estimated to require a three fold increase in primary energy supply and a 26 1317 mt increase in 2030 co 2 e emissions total regional co 2 e emissions could be reduced from 45 to 35 by meeting a 50 renewable energy supply target by 2030 climate change policy would need to focus on multi sector reform to reduce regional emissions as the agricultural sector is the largest emitter in nigeria ethiopia and kenya

broader product line a necessity to achieve success strategic product line breadth decisions evoke differential responses from the manufacturing and the marketing areas manufacturing prefers keeping process disruptions to a minimum and as a result discourages product proliferation however marketing in its attempt to match products to heterogeneous consumer needs and gain market share emphasizes a broader product line we systematically investigate the market benefits and cost disadvantages of broader product lines on a large sample of over 1 400 business units our results indicate significant market share benefits and increases in firms profitability with broader product lines moreover widely held beliefs of increases in production costs are not empirically supported american manufacturing firms may indeed be flexible enough to accommodate product variety without significant detrimental effects on costs

trade law and product complexity abstract how does the quality of national institutions that enforce the rule of law influence international trade anderson and marcouiller argue that bad institutions located in the importer s country deter international trade because they enable economic predators to steal and extort rents at the importer s border we complement this research and show how good institutions located in the exporter s country enhance international trade in particular trade in complex products whose characteristics are difficult to fully specify in a contract we argue that both exporter and importer institutions affect international as well as domestic transaction costs in complex and simple product markets international transaction costs are a part of the costs of trade domestic transaction costs affect complex and simple products differently thereby changing a country s comparative advantage in producing such goods we find ample empirical evidence for these predictions countries that have good institutions tend to

modeling the role of retail price formats and retailer competition types on production schedule strategy abstract to study the determinants of choice between make to order mto and make to stock mts production scientists have traditionally focused on production specific factors however the choice can be also influenced by marketing specific factors such as the pricing strategy of retailers this paper therefore develops a modeling framework to link the determination of the optimal production strategy of mts mto to the retailing strategy of edlp hilo we characterize an optimal production strategy as one that maximizes total system wide profits in a centralized system we show that the optimum production strategy would depend on whether the manufacturer is delivering to an every day low pricing edlp store or to a high low pricing store hi lo additionally the production plan is demonstrated to be a function of the nature and type of competition in the market in particular we study the duopoly model of competition under both bertrand and stackelberg conjectures

the role of inventory in delivery time competition the paper operationalizes the notion of shortage cost by considering the behavior of customers and competing firms and examines the role of inventory in response time competition we start with a single firm production control model in which customers are characterized by their preferences of price quality and delivery time the optimal production inventory policy and the optimal choice between make to order and make to stock operations are determined in simple newsboy like formulas the basic model is then extended to an n firm market game in which firms compete for orders from the aspect of early delivery one could think of this setting as an oligopoly racing market the analysis shows that competition can breed a demand for produce to stock just as other economic phenomena such as economies of scale uncertainty or seasonality can induce make to stock and that delivery time competition increases the buyer s welfare while decreasing the producer s welfare

trust and inter firm relations in developing and transition economies the role of trust in facilitating economic growth has been highlighted in previous contributions to this journal in order to take this debate forward this article argues 1 that more attention needs to be given to the relationship between sanctions and trust and 2 that it is worth distinguishing between the minimal trust for making markets effective and the extended trust required for deeper kinds of inter firm co operation to work the article goes on to ask why minimal trust is lacking and so hard to construct in the republics of the former soviet union it then examines how extended trust grows or can be made to grow in industrial supply chains and clusters in developing countries

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

the emergence of property rights enforcement in early trade a behavioral model without reputational effects abstract the present article focuses on the conditions that allow governments to increase property rights protection because they expect enough income from such action we develop a behavioral explanation according to which the answer lies in the growth in the importance size and wealth of merchant guilds in the medieval era in western europe as well as a somewhat surprising effect of volatile price structures we add to prior research by showing that even uncoordinated embargo pressures among multiple guilds could get medieval rulers to offer high levels of property rights protection

international trade and institutional change medieval venice s response to globalization international trade can have profound effects on domestic institutions we examine this proposition in the context of medieval venice circa 800 1600 early on the growth of long distance trade enriched a broad group of merchants who used their newfound economic muscle to push for constraints on the executive that is for the end of a de facto hereditary doge in 1032 and the establishment of a parliament in 1172 the merchants also pushed for remarkably modern innovations in contracting institutions that facilitated longdistance trade for example the colleganza however starting in 1297 a small group of particularly wealthy merchants blocked political and economic competition they made parliamentary participation hereditary and erected barriers to participation in the most lucrative aspects of long distance trade over the next two centuries this led to a fundamental societal shift away from political openness economic competition and social mobility and toward political closure extreme inequality and social stratification we document this oligarchization using a unique database on the names of 8 178 parliamentarians and their families use of the colleganza in the periods immediately before and after 1297 we then link these families to 6 959 marriages during 1400 1599 to document the use of marriage alliances to monopolize the galley trade monopolization led to the rise of extreme inequality with those who were powerful before 1297 emerging as the undisputed winners jel codes d02 f10 n43

does the need for economic growth influence energy consumption and co2 emissions in nigeria evidence from the innovation accounting test abstract developing economies like nigeria are competing strategically to ensure a rise in sustainable economic growth and reduction in co2 emission the question is could this be possible amidst the series of energy crises facing the country it is against this development that this paper investigates empirically if the nexus between economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions in nigeria could provide a clue the study used time series data from 1971 to 2011 to ensure a robust result the study applied the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration the zivot andrew structural break test and the bayer hanck combine cointegration analysis the causality analysis was checked using the vecm model and this was validated using the innovative accounting and the impulse response test the findings of the study revealed that financial development stimulates energy demand but lowers co2 emissions economic growth lowers energy demand but increases co2 emissions in addition to that the study discovered how trade openness increases energy consumption but improves environmental quality by lowering co2 emissions energy consumption was on the other hand found to have significant increase on co2 emissions the granger causality analysis revealed a bidirectional causal relationship between financial development and energy consumption and the same inference was found in financial development and co2 emissions in this study trade led energy hypothesis and the existence of a feedback effect between economic growth and co2 emissions were discovered the study recommends massive investment in nigeria s financial sector with the motivation for these sectors to invest in efficient and sustainable renewable energy system how it should be done and why it should be done are carefully outlined in this study

specialization patterns and reduction of co2 emissions an empirical investigation of environmental preservation and economic efficiency abstract we study the effects that different degrees of specialization in the production of the global net output of a group of countries might have on the emissions of co2 the analysis is based on the sraffian notion of subsystems which allows us to study what the input output table of a country would look like under different hypotheses on the allocation of the available resources we use the wiod input output tables and the related environmental accounts for 1995 2009 we show that the environmental benefits deriving from appropriate specialization patterns could be substantial moreover our results suggest that co2 reduction is not necessarily detrimental to economic activity on the contrary with the appropriate exploitation of suitable patterns of specialization co2 reduction and gdp growth may even be pursued jointly

the dynamics of business ethics and economic activity the authors model the agency relationship between managers and investors through socialization ethical managers develop internalized norms that prevent them from acting opportunistically unethical managers lack these norms higher ethical standards on the part of managers increase economic activity in the short run however increased economic activity increases opportunities to profit from unethical behavior eroding ethical standards over the long run when this rate of erosion is high cycling of ethics and economic activity emerges otherwise ethics and economic activity converge to a stable long run limiting value

trade credit in zimbabwean manufacturing abstract credit from suppliers is an important but often neglected source of finance for manufacturing firms zimbabwe is no exception unlike credit from financial institutions trade credit does not rely on formal collateral but on trust and reputation contract enforcement is flexible network effects and statistical discrimination affect the screening of trade credit applicants black entrepreneurs are disadvantaged by their lack of business contacts and by the difficulty of distinguishing themselves from the mass of financially insecure and short lived african owned businesses in zimbabwe a vicious circle is created between weak financial base unreliability as a debtor and inability to gain access to credit

supermarket competition the case of every day low pricing every day low pricing edlp strategy has proved to be a successful innovation resulting in higher profits to supermarkets adopting it in competition with promotional pricing promo conventional wisdom attributes this success either to lower costs or to edlp better serving time constrained consumers while discouraging cherry pickers who seek promotions however it is unclear that such cost savings are being fully realized since edlp stores also engage in price promotions also continued existence of promo stores means that costs are not the only factor and they compete effectively without relying just on the cherry pickers furthermore experimental evidence suggests that a supermarket cannot obtain higher profits by merely setting constant low prices leading to the question exactly what makes edlp successful this question is of particular relevance to both academics and practitioners who have been intrigued by the success of this retailing strategy more generally the retailing issues addressed in this paper the economic analysis of competition and the empirical findings should be of interest to the broader community of researchers and managers we investigate the factors contributing to edlp s success by analyzing the competition between supermarkets through a game theoretic analysis of a market consisting of both time constrained consumers and cherry pickers key features of our model are consumers shop and purchase a basket of goods based on price announcements by stores and rational expectations of unannounced prices stores carry more than one good and compete through prices service convenience and appropriate communication strategies and no exogenous cost asymmetries we derive the conditions under which retailers choosing different strategies edlp and promo is a perfect nash equilibrium our analysis shows that the edlp store s offering of constant every day low prices is an equilibrium outcome endogenously determined successful implementation of the edlp strategy involves communication of relative basket prices implying that merely setting constant low prices is not viable we further demonstrate that while time constrained consumers find every day low prices at edlp attractive and cherry pickers the promotions at promo clientele effects are in fact more complicated specifically in equilibrium the promo store offers a higher service level as desired by time constrained consumers and the edlp store a lower service level in keeping with the needs of cherry pickers this choice of service by the two stores results in a cleaner segmentation of the market the higher relative basket price and service at the promo store results in a larger base of time constrained consumers to shop at the promo store and a larger base of cherry pickers to shop at the edlp store even though some cherry pickers continue to visit the promo store to avail of the price specials in this way our results contradict the conventional wisdom on edlp strategy as being mainly geared towards time constrained consumers finally industry profits are higher in an edlp promo equilibrium than when stores adopt identical strategies our analysis and results also offer a more complete characterization of the edlp and promo strategies indeed we show that edlp and promo strategies are positioning strategies rather than merely pricing strategies with different elements price promotions service and communications while the edlp store uses basket prices to attract both segments the promo store uses service and price specials to compete in the time constrained and cherry picking segment respectively given these different approaches of the two stores the communication strategies of the edlp and the promo stores emphasize these differences as well in this way we show as suggested by corstjens and corstjens 1994 that positioning in a retail context involves developing multidimensional strategies appealing to all segments while each element of the strategy may focus on a different consumer segment this is in contrast to the traditional view of segmentation in which different products in a product line for example are designed to appeal to different segments we complete the analysis by examining the data from the trade press and a survey conducted in a major metropolitan area these data while limited in scope support our theoretical results

market institutions trust and norms exploring moral economies in nigerian food systems informal market institutions and small scale traders are responsible for feeding nigerian cities this study analyses a range of economic relationships and institutions that have evolved in the context of inadequate formal institutions such as banks and legal contracts through examining both personal relationships and institutional based trust the paper explores the role of moral norms trust is shown to be related to sanctions information on other parties and a range of norms that are drawn on both calculatively and habitually the perceived moralities of different forms of institution such as credit systems trader associations and commission agents are also examined

insecure land rights and share tenancy evidence from madagascar most studies of tenurial insecurity focus on its effects on investment this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and land tenancy contracts based on distinct features of formal law and customary rights in madagascar this paper augments the canonical model of sharecropping by making the strength of the landlord s property right increasing in the amount of risk she bears within the contract using data on landlords subjective perceptions in rural madagascar empirical tests support the hypothesis that insecure property rights drive contract choice but offer little support in favor of the canonical risk sharing hypothesis

from ascribed to earned trust in exporting clusters abstract this paper is concerned with the role of trust in export manufacturing it asks how trust has developed in two industrial clusters which are located in developing countries and export most of their output to north america and europe the main conclusion is that trust was based initially on socio cultural ties between clustered firms and later on conscious investments in inter firm relationships