conform or challenge adjustment strategies of sanction torn companies the literature on sanctions often neglects the role of domestic firms in sender states although sanctions only have a real economic effect when senders firms reduce their activities on the target s market in contrast sanctions avoidance and increasing investments in the target country the observed behaviour of many companies facing the eu sanctions against russia imposed in 2014 mitigate the impact of these restrictive measures while sanctions increase the political risk for companies they also offer economic opportunities and previous studies could not settle the debate on which factor prevails by evaluating responses from british french german italian and polish enterprises to an online survey distributed in 2017 we analyse at the firm level how sanction torn companies adjust to new political orders and what drives their strategic decisions we find evidence that resource dependency induces strategies that challenge sanction policies in particular non fungible assets in the target country incentivise companies to further increase their engagement these defiance strategies diminish the real economic effect of sanctions and generate a new economic equilibrium which has negative long term implications on the choice set of policymakers to further pursue the imposition of sanctions and which even outlasts the lifting of these restrictive measures

bargaining enforcement and multilateral sanctions when is cooperation counterproductive scholars and policymakers generally assume that multilateral cooperation is a necessary condition for economic sanctions to be of any use however previous statistical tests of this assumption have shown that sanctions are more successful with lower levels of cooperation this puzzle calls into question established theories of economic statecraft as well as theories of international cooperation in this article i test possible explanations for the ineffectiveness of multilateral cooperation on sanctions events using james fearon s 1998 breakdown of cooperation into bargaining and enforcement phases as a framework for discussion the empirical results show that when multilateral economic sanctions fail their failure is due to enforcement not bargaining problems without the support of an international organization cooperating states backslide from promises of cooperation backsliding occurs because of domestic political pressures and uncertainty about the intentions of the other sanctioning countries backsliding causes an initial burst of cooperative behavior to decay over time without institutional support cooperation is worse than useless it is counterproductive this result suggests that international cooperation is a more fragile equilibrium than previously thought but undercuts realist arguments that international organizations are unimportant

are policy incentives for solar power effective evidence from residential installations in the northeast abstract state incentives for solar power have grown significantly in the past several years this paper examines the effectiveness of policy incentives to increase residential solar photovoltaic pv capacity we use county level panel data and control for demographic characteristics solar resources and pro environmental preferences results show that among financial incentives rebates have the most impact with an additional 1 per watt rebate increasing annual pv capacity additions by close to 50 factors that affect financial returns to solar pv such as electricity price and solar insolation are also found to be significant results also point to a significant positive relationship between hybrid vehicle sales and residential pv capacity growth indicating the importance of pro environmental preferences as a predictor of solar pv demand back of the envelope calculations suggest that the cost of carbon mitigation through rebates is around 184 per ton of co2

climate coalitions and international trade assessment of cooperation incentives by issue linkage this paper investigates climate control coalition games it studies whether incentives exist for non cooperating nations like the usa to join a coalition based upon issue linkage issue linkage is considered through increased r d expenditures triggering improved technological innovations that advance energy efficiencies model calculations demonstrate that incentives exist for non cooperating countries like the usa to join a climate control coalition if nations cooperate on technological innovations restrictions on trade such as sanction mechanisms against non cooperating countries are not necessarily an incentive to join a coalition technological spillover effects lead to improved economic situations and increased energy efficiencies in non cooperating countries

lignocellulosic ethanol production from woody biomass the impact of facility siting on competitiveness abstract just as temperate region pulp and paper companies need to compete with brazilian eucalyptus pulp producers lignocellulosic biofuel producers in north america and europe in the absence of protectionist trade policies will need to be competitive with tropical and sub tropical biofuel producers this work sought to determine the impact of lignocellulosic ethanol biorefinery siting on economic performance and minimum ethanol selling price mesp for both east and west coast north american fuel markets facility sites included the pine dominated pacific northwest interior the mixed deciduous forest of ontario and new york and the brazilian state of espirito santo feedstock scenarios included both plantation poplar willow and eucalyptus respectively and managed forest harvest site specific variables in the techno economic model included delivered feedstock cost ethanol delivery cost cost of capital construction cost labour cost electricity revenues and co product credits and taxes insurance and permits despite the long shipping distance from brazil to north american east and west coast markets the mesp for brazilian produced eucalyptus lignocellulosic ethanol modelled at 0 74 l 1 was notably lower than that of all north american produced cases at 0 83 1 02 l 1

vulnerability to terrorist attacks in european electricity decarbonisation scenarios comparing renewable electricity imports to gas imports the decarbonised future european electricity system must remain secure reliable electricity supply is a prerequisite for the functioning of modern society scenarios like desertec which partially rely on solar power imports from the middle east and north africa may be attractive for decarbonisation but raise concerns about terrorists interrupting supply by attacking the long unprotected transmission lines in the sahara in this paper i develop new methods and assess the european vulnerability to terrorist attacks in the desertec scenario i compare this to the vulnerability of today s system and a decarbonisation scenario in which europe relies on gas imports for electricity generation i show that the vulnerability of both gas and electricity imports is low but electricity imports are more vulnerable than gas imports due to their technical characteristics gas outages and potentially resulting blackouts are the very unlikely consequence even of very high number attacks against the gas import system whereas short blackouts are the potential consequence of a few attacks against the import electricity lines as the impacts of all except extreme attacks are limited terrorists cannot attack energy infrastructure and cause spectacular fear creating outages both gas and electricity import infrastructure are thus unattractive and unlikely terrorist targets

the global sanctions data base abstract this article introduces the global sanctions data base gsdb a new dataset of economic sanctions that covers all bilateral multilateral and plurilateral sanctions in the world during the 1950 2016 period across three dimensions type political objective and extent of success the gsdb features by far the most cases amongst data bases that focus on effective sanctions i e excluding threats and is particularly useful for analysis of bilateral international transactional data such as trade flows we highlight five important stylized facts i sanctions are increasingly used over time ii european countries are the most frequent users and african countries the most frequent targets iii sanctions are becoming more diverse with the share of trade sanctions falling and that of financial or travel sanctions rising iv the main objectives of sanctions are increasingly related to democracy or human rights v the success rate of sanctions has gone up until 1995 and fallen since then using state of the art gravity modeling we highlight the usefulness of the gsdb in the realm of international trade trade sanctions have a negative but heterogeneous effect on trade which is most pronounced for complete bilateral sanctions followed by complete export sanctions

rent and rent seeking in renewable energy support policies feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard abstract two popular policies for fostering electricity from renewable energy sources res e are fit feed in tariffs and rps renewable portfolio standards although it is essential for the government to intervene in the renewable energy market for a positive externality of res e poorly designed market regulations can lead to excess profits for the renewable energy sector which in turn increases policy costs in addition those who benefit from such regulations may actively seek rents this paper explores the rents or windfall profits generated through rps and fit and furthermore investigates which is more substantial for the case of south korea which has had experience with fit and rps over the past 10 years according to the results rents generated from rps were bigger than those from fit except for solar pv in south korea moreover this study also investigates the policy design elements that could curb these rents

inspiration coalition and substitution external influences on postcommunist transformations there has been a recent explosion of interest in the external influences on the political and economic transformations of postcommunist states this article consolidates several analytical advances in this literature and distills three main functions of external actors namely to lengthen the time horizons of postcommunist politicians to expand the circle of interested reformers and to deter opponents of reform the article argues that a focus on external influences is a growth area for good conceptual work only if it addresses the union of foreign and domestic influences rather than treating them as stylized alternative explanations the central point is that outside actors should be considered as striving to influence the choices of existing domestic actors with whom they can be seen to form a kind of informal coalition at bottom outsiders do best through a combination of strategies strengthening domestic actors already committed to their approach winning over new domestic actors to their priorities and preventing the unconvinced from obstructing reforms

understanding the reductions in us corn ethanol production costs an experience curve approach the us is currently the world s largest ethanol producer an increasing percentage is used as transportation fuel but debates continue on its costs competitiveness and energy balance in this study technological development of ethanol production and resulting cost reductions are investigated by using the experience curve approach scrutinizing costs of dry grind ethanol production over the timeframe 1980 2005 cost reductions are differentiated between feedstock corn production and industrial ethanol processing corn production costs in the us have declined by 62 over 30 years down to 100 2005 tonne in 2005 while corn production volumes almost doubled since 1975 a progress ratio pr of 0 55 is calculated indicating a 45 cost decline over each doubling in cumulative production higher corn yields and increasing farm sizes are the most important drivers behind this cost decline industrial processing costs of ethanol have declined by 45 since 1983 to below 130 2005 m3 in 2005 excluding costs for corn and capital equivalent to a pr of 0 87 total ethanol production costs including capital and net corn costs have declined approximately 60 from 800 2005 m3 in the early 1980s to 300 2005 m3 in 2005 higher ethanol yields lower energy use and the replacement of beverage alcohol based production technologies have mostly contributed to this substantial cost decline in addition the average size of dry grind ethanol plants increased by 235 since 1990 for the future it is estimated that solely due to technological learning production costs of ethanol may decline 28 44 though this excludes effects of the current rising corn and fossil fuel costs it is also concluded that experience curves are a valuable tool to describe both past and potential future cost reductions in us corn based ethanol production

bilateralism and free trade we study a setting with many countries in each country there are firms that can sell in the domestic as well as foreign markets countries can sign bilateral free trade agreements that lower import tariffs and thereby facilitate trade we allow a country to sign any number of bilateral free trade agreements a profile of free trade agreements defines the trading regime our principal finding is that in symmetric settings bilateralism is consistent with global free trade we also explore the effects of asymmetries across countries and political economy considerations on the incentives to form trade agreements

does government r d policy mainly benefit scientists and engineers conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to r d significantly exceeds the private rate of return and therefore r d should be subsidized in the u s the government has directly funded a large fraction of total r d spending this paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity the majority of r d spending is actually just salary payments for r d workers their labor supply however is quite inelastic so when the government funds r d a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages using cps data on wages of scientific personnel this paper shows that government r d spending raises wages significantly particularly for scientists related to defense such as physicists and aeronautical engineers because of the higher wages conventional estimates of the effectiveness of r d policy may be 30 to 50 too high the results also imply that by altering the wages of scientists and engineers even for firms not receiving federal support government funding directly crowds out private inventive activity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

chasing phantoms the political economy of ustr trade barriers though usually considered welfare reducing are globally ubiquitous in light of the enormous clash between what is and what ought to be researchers have begun addressing the question of why countries so consistently pursue such apparently counterproductive policies

a review of uncertainties in technology experience curves abstract the use of log linear experience curves or learning curves relating reductions in the unit cost of technologies to their cumulative production or installed capacity has become a common method of representing endogenous technical change in energy economic models used for policy analysis yet there are significant uncertainties in such formulations whose impact on key model results have been insufficiently examined or considered this paper reviews the major types of uncertainty in log linear experience curves and their effect on projected rates of cost reduction uncertainties are found not only in the learning rate parameter of a log linear model but also in the functional form that determines the shape of an experience curve evidence for alternative forms such as an s shaped curve is reviewed along with case studies that demonstrate the uncertainties associated with cost increases during early commercialization of a technology a phenomena that is widely recognized but rarely quantified or incorporated in learning models additional factors discussed include the effects of learning discontinuities institutional forgetting and the influence of social economic and political factors we then review other models of causality which aim to improve modelers ability to explain and predict the influence of other underlying processes that contribute to technology cost reductions in addition to learning ignoring other types of underlying mechanisms can create a false sense of precision and overestimate the true contribution of learning currently however uncertainties in such multi factor models remain large due to the difficulties of estimating key parameters such as private sector r d investments and extending models of a specific technology to a broader suite of technologies and cost projections pending the development and validation of more robust models of technological change we suggest ways to significantly improve the characterization and reporting of current learning model uncertainties and their impacts on the results of energy economic models to help reduce the potential for drawing inappropriate or erroneous policy conclusions

international sanctions as international punishment much of the contemporary literature on the utility of international sanctions approaches the apparent riddle of why sanctions are embraced so eagerly when they are supposedly such an ineffective tool of statecraft by focusing on the instrumental and rational purposes of sanctions as a result one purpose that does not always lend itself to a rational means end calculus the purpose of punishment tends to be overlooked or more commonly dismissed outright this article explores punishment as both a useful and an effective purpose of international sanctions it argues not only that sanctions should be distinguished from other forms of hurtful statecraft but also that they are a form of international punishment for wrongdoing despite the difficulties of applying the term punishment in the context of international relations the article then examines the purposes of punishment and reveals that only some are understandable when a model of means end rationality is used suggesting that the element of the nonrational also plays an important role in international sanctions the argument is then applied to the case of u s sanctions imposed after the soviet union s invasion of afghanistan to demonstrate the different purposes of punishment at work in this case the article concludes that just as we cannot understand punishment as a purposive human activity solely by reference to a rational model of a means to a clearly delineated end so too we cannot entirely understand sanctions as a form of international punishment by an attachment to a rational model of policy behavior however some forms of punishment are exceedingly effective and this may explain why sanctions continue to be a popular instrument of statecraft

incentivizing wood based fischer tropsch diesel through financial policy instruments an economic assessment for norway the objective of this study is to evaluate a select set of financial incentive instruments that can be employed by the norwegian government for encouraging early investment and production experienc

energy tax credits and housing improvement this paper investigates whether federal and state tax credits allowed to households who make energy saving improvements to their residence lead to an increase in improvement activity a two period utility maximization model of household behaviour is used to determine the theoretical influence of tax credits energy prices and other factors on the optimal magnitude of conservation capital improvement regressions using various qualitative measures of conservation improvement as the dependent variable are estimated using household level energy consumption and improvement data consistent with evidence from earlier surveys the empirical results do not support the hypothesis that energy tax credits lead to more widespread or more extensive energy conservation improvement activity

strategic interaction and the statistical analysis of international conflict although strategic interaction is at the heart of most international relations theory it has largely been missing from much empirical analysis in the field typical applications of logit and probit to theories of international conflict generally do not capture the structure of the strategic interdependence implied by those theories i demonstrate how to derive statistical discrete choice models of international conflict that directly incorporate the theorized strategic interaction i show this for a simple crisis interaction model and then use monte carlo analysis to show that logit provides estimates with incorrect substantive interpretations as well as fitted values that can be far from the true values finally i reanalyze a well known game theoretic model of war bueno de mesquita and lalman s 1992 international interaction game my results indicate that there is at best modest empirical support for their model

oil and resource backed aggression a common misperception about oil politics is that it has a uniform monolithic effect on policy development this paper argues that in fact the net political effect of oil varies dramatically depending on the nature of the petrostate it shows that oil income when combined with revolutionary governments in petrostates generates strong incentives for foreign policy aggression and international conflict the aggressiveness of petro revolutionary states is shown to have consequences in both military and economic spheres of international relations militarily the aggressiveness of this type of state leads to a high rate of armed conflicts economically the aggressiveness of petro revolutionary states shapes global oil markets and international economic relations the argument is tested using statistical analysis of international conflicts and economic sanctions the policy implications are then considered focusing on the negative global impacts of dependence on oil consumption

on the determinants of the success of economic sanctions an empirical analysis theory theories predicting the success of economic sanctions are tested on the universe of sanction episodes from 1914 to 1989 hypotheses the probability of success depends upon the cost to the target nation the extent of trade linkages between target and sender the stability of the target the amount of time sanctions are in force and whether financial sanctions are utilized method data are analyzed using logistic regression results the factors affecting success depend upon the goals of the sending nations when that goal is simply destabilization the principal determinant of success is the initial stability of the target for other goals the use of financial sanctions is most effective we also find evidence of a modest downward trend over time in the relative effectiveness of sanctions in the latter category

government policies market imperfections and foreign direct investment the internalization eclectic theory of foreign direct investment includes the important insight that government policies create market imperfections which make foreign direct investment an economically rational strategic alternative for firms this paper reexamines the effects of government policies on market imperfections and foreign direct investment fdi it broadens and refines the analysis of the impact of government policies by developing the following arguments 1 there is a wide range of government policies that affect firms fdi decisions via their effects on market imperfections 2 there are numerous dimensions of variability in government policies that need to be identified in order to understand fully the effects of government policies on market imperfections and hence fdi flows 3 some of the effects of government policies on market imperfections and fdi are the opposite of those previously noted in the fdi literature 4 the effects of government policies vary across the several individual components of fdi flows the paper thus examines the following variables and relationships more extensively and precisely than has the previous literature government policy variables as causal factors affecting fdi market imperfection variables as intervening factors in the causal connections between government policies and fdi and the multiple indicators of the various dimensions of fdi as dependent variables

the price for biofuels sustainability abstract the production and usage of biofuels has increased worldwide seeking goals of energy security low carbon energy and rural development as biofuels trade increased the european union introduced sustainability regulations in an attempt to reduce the risks associated with biofuels producers were then confronted with costs of sustainability certification in order to access the eu market hopes were that sustainably produced biofuels would be rewarded with higher prices in the eu based on a review of recent literature interviews with traders and price data from platts this paper explores whether sustainability premiums emerged and if so did they represent an attracting feature in the market for sustainable biofuels this article finds that premiums for ethanol and biodiesel evolved differently between 2011 and 2012 but have been in general very small or inexistent with certified fuels becoming the new norm in the market for different reasons there has been an apparent convergence between biofuel policies in the eu and the us as market operators perceive a long term trend for full certification in the biofuels market producers in developing countries are likely to face additional challenges in terms of finance and capacity to cope with the sustainability requirements

ostracism and forgiveness many communities rely upon ostracism to enforce cooperation if an individual shirks in one relationship her innocent neighbors share information about her guilt in order to shun her while continuing to cooperate among themselves however a strategic victim may herself prefer to shirk rather than report her victimization truthfully if guilty players are to be permanently ostracized then such deviations are so tempting that cooperation in any relationship is bounded by what the partners could obtain through bilateral enforcement ostracism can improve upon bilateral enforcement if tempered by forgiveness through which guilty players are eventually readmitted to cooperative society

a theory of buyer seller networks this paper introduces a new model of exchange networks rather than markets of buyers and sellers it begins with the empirically motivated premise that a buyer and seller must have a relationship a link to exchange goods networks buyers sellers and the pattern of links connecting them are common exchange environments this paper develops a methodology to study network structures and explains why agents may form networks in a model that captures characteristics of a variety of industries the paper shows that buyers and sellers acting strategically in their own self interests can form the network structures that maximize overall welfare

free entry and social inefficiency our goal is to provide a simple yet general exposition of the conditions under which the number of entrants in a free entry equilibrium is excessive insufficient or optimal our analysis compares the number of firms that enter a market when there is free entry with the number that would be desired by a social planner who is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market that is we consider the second best problem of choosing the welfare maximizing number of firms while we take as given their noncompetitive behavior after entry we demonstrate that the crucial conditions for establishing the presence of an entry bias can be stated quite simply in terms of the outcome of the postentry game played by entrants in contrast to previous work we do not need to model this postentry game explicitly

trading human rights how preferential trade agreements influence government repression a growing number of preferential trade agreements ptas have come to play a significant role in governing state compliance with human rights when they supply hard standards that tie material benefits of integration to compliance with human rights principles ptas are more effective than softer human rights agreements hras in changing repressive behaviors ptas improve members human rights through coercion by supplying the instruments and resources to change actors incentives to promote reforms that would not otherwise be implemented i develop three hypotheses 1 state commitment to hras and 2 ptas supplying soft human rights standards not tied to market benefits do not systematically produce improvement in human rights behaviors while 3 state commitment to ptas supplying hard human rights standards does often produce better practices i draw on several cases to illustrate the processes of influence and test the argument on the experience of 177 states during the period 1972 to 2002 i would like to thank mike colaresi dan drezner david lake lisa martin walter mattli john meyer mark pollack erik voeten jim vreeland and two anonymous reviewers for their detailed and thoughtful comments on various drafts of this manuscript as well as the many other people who have helped me by asking hard questions along the way i would also like to thank michael barnett charles franklin and jon pevehouse for advice during the dissertation research that supports this article and alexander h montgomery for assistance in data management all faults are my own for generous assistance in the collection of data i thank the national science foundation ses 2cdz414 and ses 0135422 john meyer and francisco ramirez for support during the writing of the article i thank nuffield college at oxford university and most importantly lynn eden and stanford s center for international security and cooperation

interests power and multilateralism multilateralism characterizes to varying degrees patterns of interaction among states and the formal organizations they construct the utility of multilateral norms or organizations varies with the type of cooperation problem states confront thus the functional logic of international cooperation leads to hypotheses about the conditions under which the institution of multilateralism may be a feasible and efficient solution as in coordination problems and those under which it will not as in collaboration problems within these constraints powerful states choose institutions that will serve their interests with multilateral arrangements becoming more attractive as the future is valued more highly multilateral institutions should be stable in circumstances of changing distributions of power relative to more hierarchical institutions the vulnerability of patterns of international cooperation to various exogenous changes depends on the type of strategic interaction underlying state behavior

a review of learning rates for electricity supply technologies a variety of mathematical models have been proposed to characterize and quantify the dependency of electricity supply technology costs on various drivers of technological change the most prevalent model form called a learning curve or experience curve is a log linear equation relating the unit cost of a technology to its cumulative installed capacity or electricity generated this one factor model is also the most common method used to represent endogenous technical change in large scale energy economic models that inform energy planning and policy analysis a characteristic parameter is the learning rate defined as the fractional reduction in cost for each doubling of cumulative production or capacity in this paper a literature review of the learning rates reported for 11 power generation technologies employing an array of fossil fuels nuclear and renewable energy sources is presented the review also includes multi factor models proposed for some energy technologies especially two factor models relating cost to cumulative expenditures for research and development r d as well as the cumulative installed capacity or electricity production of a technology for all technologies studied we found substantial variability as much as an order of magnitude in reported learning rates across different studies such variability is not readily explained by systematic differences in the time intervals geographic regions choice of independent variable or other parameters of each study this uncertainty in learning rates together with other limitations of current learning curve formulations suggests the need for much more careful and systematic examination of the influence of how different factors and assumptions affect policy relevant outcomes related to the future choice and cost of electricity supply and other energy technologies

insiders and outsiders in wage determination a firm starts with a group of insiders or seasoned workers there is also a large pool of outsiders who are initially less productive but are transformed into insiders after one period of employment the firm gains from having a large pool of insiders some of whom may be laid off in bad years insiders gain from keeping their numbers small if the insiders set their wage unilaterally they will choose a path that in this extreme case prevents employment of outsiders even if future employment prospects are good if the wage path is set by bilateral bargaining the extra advantage to the firm permits employment of some outsiders in some situations

theocracy and resilience against economic sanctions abstract this paper provides a simply theory to explain the impact of sanctions on a regime s policies and behavior sanctions are generally put to strip the target country from its available rents and weaken the government s stance against growing discontent in the population we show however that sanctions may give legitimacy to an incumbent government by influencing the optimal level of religious ideology provided by the state and further stabilizing its grip to power and rents while in a good state of nature sanctions build resilience as long as religious ideology among the population is strong at bad times they compel the target country to move towards ideological moderation in a world of asymmetric information the target country always finds it optimal to send a signal that truly represents the prevailing state of nature in order to induce learning and reach a win win outcome

cooperation with network monitoring this paper studies the maximum level of cooperation that can be sustained in perfect bayesian equilibrium in repeated games with network monitoring where players observe each other s actions either perfectly or not at all the foundational result is that the maximum level of cooperation can be robustly sustained in grim trigger strategies if players are equally well monitored comparative statics on the maximum level of cooperation are highly tractable

sanctions some simple analytics governments often seek influence beyond their borders one way is through what thomas schelling 1960 1966 calls brute force taking direct physical control less extreme methods are to promise rewards for taking desired actions or to threaten punishments for not carrying them out sanctions sanctions involve two parties the sender and the target to help identify pronouns antecedents we consider a feminine sender and masculine target the sender s objective is to influence the target by threatening to impose some measure against him for acting contrary to her interest sanctions have long been important in international relations athens imposed a trade embargo against megara ultimately setting off the peloponnesian war 431 404 bc sanctions are central to such international agreements as the united nations charter the world trade organization and the montreal protocol governing chlorofluorocarbons u s law prescribes the use of sanctions in circumstances related for example to national security human rights intellectual property and international trade do sanctions actually achieve senders objectives a common claim is that they usually fail and are costly to senders recent u s legislation proposes to limit unilateral u s sanctions except trade related ones on the grounds that they cost more than they are worth history provides examples of sanctions that were costly and ineffectual such as the league of nations sanctions against the italian occupation of abyssinia or u s sanctions against cuba united nations sanctions against iraq remain in place having achieved less than full success to say the least see gary hufbauer et al 1990 more systematic studies suggest that sanctions often do succeed particularly when objectives are modest hufbauer et al 1990 examine 116 episodes of sanctions with military or political objectives deeming about one third successful sanctions imposed under u s trade law have worked even better about three fourths of the time see e g sykes 1992 thomas bayard and kimberly a elliott 1994 elliott and j david richardson 1997 here we develop a simple framework to explain how sanctions can worl and what is required for them to succeed our framework exploits advances in the theory of repeated games and bargaining under incomplete information while a game theorist would recognize the flavor of our results the setting here is a fresh one 2 we find success more likely when the threatened measure costs the sender little relative to the gain from modifying the target s behavior while the damage to the target is large relative to his cost of complying with the sender s will results consistent with both intuition and empirical evidence as well as with adam smith 1776 book iv ch i moreover a more patient sender is more likely to succeed while the target s patience can work to the sender s disadvantage 3

unemployment and the efficiency wage hypothesis there has been much recent discussion of the reasons why prices in certain markets and in particular in labour markets may not adjust to eliminate excess supply the absence of speedy adjustment of prices is an essential feature of the recent models of disequilibrium macroeconomics but for the most part no explanation for this absence is provided from within those models one explanation that has been around in the literature for some time and has been receiving increasing attention recently is the efficiency wage hypothesis initially applied to developing economies see leibenstein i957 it has more recently been adapted to developed economies by weiss i 980 and used in the context of a keynesian macroeconomic model by hart i 980 similar concepts have been applied to the credit market by stiglitz and weiss i98i the purpose of the present paper is to explore further the conditions under which the notion of an efficiency wage is applicable and can provide an explanation of involuntary unemployment the essential feature of the efficiency wage hypothesis is that the productivity of a firm s employees increases as their wage is increased at least over an economically relevant part of its range if the wage paid by the firm is denoted by w the number of employees by l and the productivity of each employee by p w where p w o then the effective labour force of the firm e can be represented by

how many hands to make sanctions work comparing eu and us sanctioning efforts abstract one of the core disputes in the literature on economic statecraft addresses the conditions under which multilateral sanctions are more successful than unilateral ones our game theoretic model implies that extant assessments do not sufficiently differentiate between the varying abilities of multilateral and unilateral senders in credibly threatening and carrying out sanctions we introduce a selection argument that focuses on the complex decision making process of the european union eu to impose sanctions in comparison to the united states us the institutional structure of the eu and conflicting economic interests of multiple principals make the imposition of sanctions much more difficult in addition the international organization is less accountable vis a vis the voters both mechanisms render sanction threats by the eu less credible since the united states as a unilateral sender can issue more credible sanction threats imposed us sanctions are a negative selection of cases and thus less successful than restrictive measures imposed by the eu we test these propositions with a new dataset on threatened and imposed sanctions by the european union and the united states for the period between 1989 and 2015 the empirical evidence demonstrates that eu sanctions are indeed more successful than those by the us in contrast us sanction threats are more successful than those by the eu we provide evidence for the difficulties of multilateral senders to impose sanctions by showing that eu sanctions are both less likely and less severe the more varied the economic links of the multilateral sender with the sanctioned state are

are smart sanctions feasible this article reviews the literature on the smart sanctions approach developed in the late 1990s in response to the failure of conventional sanctions and questions the efficacy of this instrument smart sanctions modify the conventional sanctions tool by targeting the culpable political elites by means of arms embargoes financial sanctions and travel restrictions and by cushioning vulnerable groups children women the infirm and the elderly by exempting specified commodities such as food and medical supplies from embargoes this two pronged sanctions approach is designed to hit the real perpetrators directly and spare potential innocent victims thus leading to the speedier change of sanctionee behavior although the special design of smart sanctions may seem logically compelling and politically attractive this article argues that the numerous operational problems involved combined with the intricacies of the political processes of the un security council will make a smart sanctions regime difficult to establish and enforce effectively

does high income promote democracy the authors construct a statistical model with which to test whether the regularity that democracy is more commonly found among wealthy countries stems from a democratizing effect of high income or is due entirely to other factors such as the historical context various features of the institutional setting and simultaneity with the process of leadership change even after correcting for these many other influences the democratizing effect of income remains as a statistically significant factor promoting the emergence of democratic political institutions the authors go on to find that leaders risks of losing power rise during their time in office and that these risks are higher in more democratic countries the authors confirm the finding by burkhart and lewis beck that the democracy promoting effect of income is stronger among the european countries they suggest that high income has a more powerful democratizing effect among the southern european countries because it interacts with pressure from major trading partners to democratize this suggests a revaluation of policies designed to foster the replacement of authoritarian regimes by democratic ones through free trade

domestic opposition and signaling in international crises this article explores the effect of domestic political competition on the escalation of international crises it combines an incomplete information model of crisis bargaining with a simple model of two party electoral choice one state has two strategic actors a government and an opposition party both of which declare openly whether they support the use of force to alter the status quo the rival state updates its beliefs and selects its strategy in response to both signals the parties payoffs depend upon a retrospective evaluation by the domestic electorate the model shows that the inclusion of a strategic opposition party decreases the ex ante probability of war by helping to reveal information about the state s preferences this finding has important implications for research on democracy and international conflict since it suggests a mechanism through which democratic states can overcome informational asymmetries which have been identified as a central obstacle to negotiation

sanctions in networks the most unkindest cut of all the extensive literature on sanctions has mainly focused on a dyadic interaction between sender and target in contrast this paper examines sanctions when the sender and target are embedded in a network of linkages to other agents the sender can assemble a sanctioning coalition of neighbors to sever their links execute multi link cuts to the target and her allies efficacy of sanctions is now crucially dependent on the network architecture we characterize the structural properties of networks in which a sender can effectively sanction a target in the short run when links can only be deleted and the long run when links can be both deleted and added

the impact of rising ethanol production on the brazilian market for basic food commodities an econometric assessment the controversial debate on the impacts of rising biofuel production on food commodity markets is of great policy relevance in brazil this paper contributes to the discussion by applying panel data regression models with fixed effects using ols our dataset comprises annual production harvested area data for sugar ethanol and five other staple commodities ranging from 1981 to 2009 for 24 brazilian states our results indicate that rising ethanol production exerts statistically significant positive impacts on sugarcane negative impacts on rice beans and soybeans acreage but no statistically significant effect on the areas for corn and manioc the negative impacts on commodities acreage have implications for the associated prices ceteris paribus rising ethanol production puts some upward pressure on the prices for rice beans and soybeans however the economic implication of these direct land use effects is attenuated due to the moderate scale of any effect

distinguishing characteristics of degrees of success and failure in economic sanctions episodes this paper uses 104 episodes from the hufbauer et al 1985 1990 dataset to examine the correlates of classes of outcomes of economic sanctions the parsimonious equations presented identify the characteristics of sanctions episodes conducive to success rather than marginal success and the characteristics productive of failure rather than marginal failure failure is most likely if there is significant third party assistance to the target and if the pre existing trade linkage between sender and target is small success is most easily achieved when the objective is not classified as modest and when pre sanction relations between sender and target are cordial or neutral the equations presented overcome data and methodological flaws of earlier studies exhibit reasonable predictive accuracy and satisfy a battery of tests of statistical significance hypothesized coefficient sign goodness of fit high likelihood and informational efficiency

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

does issue linkage work evidence from european alliance negotiations 1860 to 1945 though scholars widely claim that issue linkage the simultaneous negotiation of multiple issues for joint settlement can help states conclude international agreements there exist some notable skeptics resolving this debate requires empirical evidence however beyond a few case studies there exists no direct and systematic evidence that issue linkages actually increase the probability of agreement i address this lack of direct and systematic evidence by combing original data on failed alliance negotiations with data from the alliance treaty obligations and provisions atop database using matching techniques i find that for alliance negotiations between 1860 to 1945 offers of trade linkage did substantially increase the probability of agreement besides confirming issue linkage s ability to help clinch an agreement this article s research design and evidence have far reaching implications for the study of negotiations and alliances the research design illustrates the value of considering the dogs that didn t bark as it identifies both successful and failed negotiations the article s evidence explains the high rate of alliance compliance identified by previous scholars and highlights a need to rethink the alliance formation process

the political effectiveness of terrorism revisited terrorists attack civilians to coerce their governments into making political concessions does this strategy work to empirically assess the effectiveness of terrorism the author exploits variation in the target selection of 125 violent substate campaigns the results show that terrorist campaigns against civilian targets are significantly less effective than guerrilla campaigns against military targets at inducing government concessions the negative political effect of terrorism is evident across logit model specifications after carefully controlling for tactical confounds drawing on political psychology the author concludes with a theory to account for why governments resist compliance when their civilians are targeted

social capital and social quilts network patterns of favor exchange we examine the informal exchange of favors in societies such that any two individuals interact too infrequently to sustain exchange but such that the social pressure of the possible loss of multiple relationships can sustain exchange patterns of exchange that are locally enforceable and renegotiation proof necessitate that all links are supported any two individuals exchanging favors have a common friend in symmetric settings such robust networks are social quilts tree like unions of completely connected subnetworks examining favor exchange networks in 75 villages in rural india we find high levels of support and identify characteristics that correlate with support

when are sanctions effective a bargaining and enforcement framework although a considerable literature identifies the conditions under which sanctions are more likely to be successful few studies examine the question of when sanctioning states or senders are willing to enforce their sanctions laws against their firms using a game theoretic model we argue that imposing sanctions creates a strategic dilemma for senders we demonstrate that senders often have disincentives to enforce their sanctions policies given that the restriction on economic transactions with targeted states may undermine their firms competitiveness the model indicates that sanctions are more likely to succeed when the sender s firm retains a moderate share of the target s market relative to its foreign competitors however the model also demonstrates that sanctions are likely to be imposed only when the conditions do not favor their success the empirical implications of the model are tested using the threat and imposition of economic sanctions ties data set

economic interdependence bargaining power and political influence bargaining theory is used to evaluate the proposition that asymmetrical economic interdependence among states is a source of political power it is shown that asymmetrical economic interdependence does not imply that less dependent actors will be able to exercise political influence over more dependent ones the use of economic interdependence for political influence requires instead that the exchange of economic resources for political concessions make both parties to a relationship better off than they would be if they bargained over the distribution of the gains from the economic relationship alone whether this is true is independent of the degree of asymmetry in the economic relationship or its direction an explanation is given for the fact that other scholars have reached different conclusions and the implications of these results for our understanding of a variety of types of relations among governments are derived

precision guided or blunt the effects of us economic sanctions on human rights this study analyzes the consequences of economic sanctions for the target country s human rights situation we offer a political economy explanation for different types of human rights infringements or improvements in reaction to economic shocks caused by sanctions based on that explanation we derive hypotheses linking sanctions to four types of human rights economic rights political and civil rights basic human rights and emancipatory rights we use endogenous treatment regression models to test those hypotheses by estimating the causal average treatment effect of us economic sanctions on each type of human rights within a uniform empirical framework unlike previous studies we find no support for adverse effects of sanctions on economic rights or basic human rights once the endogenous selection of sanctioned countries is modelled with respect to women s rights our findings even indicate a positive effect of sanctions that is associated with improvements in women s economic rights only our results for political rights and civil liberties suggest significant deterioration under economic sanctions we conclude that it is important to account for the potential endogeneity of economic sanctions and to distinguish different dimensions of human rights as the effects of economic sanctions along those dimensions may vary considerably

explaining the reductions in us corn ethanol processing costs testing competing hypotheses abstract the processing costs of us corn ethanol have declined by 45 since 1983 as production volumes have increased seventeen fold we investigate the role of various factors that could explain this including economies of scale cumulative experience induced innovation in response to rising input prices an autonomous technological change and trade induced competition from imported ethanol using data on dry mill ethanol processing costs over the 1983 2005 period we find evidence to show that us corn ethanol production exhibited decreasing returns to scale that learning by doing played an important role in reducing these processing costs with a learning rate of 0 25 and that sugarcane ethanol imports contributed to making the corn ethanol industry more competitive other factors such as the rising prices of energy and labor did induce lower processing costs but the effect is not statistically significant the inclusion of these competing explanations for the reduction in processing costs of us corn ethanol lead to a significantly higher learning rate than otherwise and this learning rate is found to be robust across specifications

markets market failures and development a central question in development economics is how can we account for differences in the levels of income and the rates of growth between the developed and less developed economies in the 1950s and 1960s there was a standard answer to this question the poor are just like the rich except they are poorer they have less human and nonhuman capital there was an immediate prescription for this diagnosis increase the resources of ldcs either by transferring capital to them either direct aid or education or by encouraging them to save more today these answers seem less convincing that they did two decades ago if the problem were primarily a shortage of physical capital the return to capital should be much higher in ldcs than in developed countries and the natural avarice of capitalists would lead to a flow of capital from the more developed to the less developed economies see howard pack 1984 and my 1988 paper if the problem were primarily a shortage of human capital then the educated in ldcs should receive a higher absolute as well as relative income than the educated in more developed economies how then can we account for high levels of unemployment among the educated and the migration of the educated from ldcs to more developed economies moreover the predictions of the standard neoclassical growth model of a convergence of growth rates in per capita income with permanent differences in per capita consumption being explained by differences in savings rates and reproduction rates do not seem to have been borne out these observations suggest that the ldcs differ from the developed countries in at least some other important respects and this view is corroborated by those studies which have looked at the productivity of similar plants operating in developed and less developed economies see pack 1984 1987 the difference can be attributed perhaps tautologically to differences in economic organization to how individuals factors of production interact and to the institutions which mediate those interactions among the most important of these institutions are markets it is by now well recognized that there are many instances of market failures in more developed economies see bruce greenwald and myself 1986 in some cases market failures may be ameliorated by nonmarket institutions if for instance capital markets do not function well perfectly if only because of costly and imperfect information nonmarket institutions internal capital markets within large conglomerates may develop market failure is more prevalent in ldcs and the nonmarket institutions that ameliorate its consequences are at least in many instances less successful in doing so the objective of this paper is to explore the causes and consequences of these market failures and the failure of private nonmarket solutions and to suggest possible roles for government intervention tdiscussants anne 0 krueger duke university stanley fischer world bank

how market efficiency and the theory of storage link corn and ethanol markets this article uses the theories of market efficiency and supply of storage to develop a conceptual link between the corn and ethanol markets and explores statistical evidence for the link we propose that a long run no profit condition is established in distant futures markets for ethanol corn and natural gas and then use the theory of storage to define an inter temporal equilibrium among these prices the relationship shows that under certain conditions future price expectations will influence nearby futures prices and that a short term relationship between input and output prices will exist we demonstrate validity of the theory using a structural price model and then by means of time series techniques

the hidden hand of economic coercion why do policymakers consistently employ economic sanctions even though scholars consider them an ineffective tool of statecraft game theoretic models of economic coercion suggest the success rate may be understated because of selection effects when the targeted country prefers conceding to incurring the cost of sanctions it has an incentive to acquiesce before the imposition of sanctions the bulk of successful coercion episodes should therefore end with sanctions threatened but not imposed this contradicts the recent literature on sanctions which assumes that sanctions rarely if ever work at generating significant concessions from the targeted country and are imposed for domestic or symbolic political reasons if the game theoretic argument is correct the crucial cases to study are those in which coercion is threatened but not implemented a statistical analysis of data on sanctions in pursuit of economic or regulatory goals strongly supports the gametheoretic argument these results suggest that the significance of economic coercion has been undervalued in the study of statecraft and international relations more generally

job security work incentives and unemployment this paper analyzes how firms can use job security as an incentive mechanism the author examines how macroeconomic job security measured by the reemployment probability may affect productivity differently from microeconomic job security measured by the probability of being retained the authors describe the circumstances under which job security stimulates work effort then incumbent workers insiders may have an opportunity to raise their wages above the market clearing level without being replaced by unemployed workers outsiders in this context involuntary unemployment can arise copyright 1988 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

modelling production cost scenarios for biofuels and fossil fuels in europe competitive production costs compared to conventional fuels are imperative for biofuels to gain market shares as current tax advantages for biofuels are only temporary comparing production costs of different biofuels with fossil fuels is a challenge due to the complexity of influencing factors the objective of this research paper is threefold 1 to project future bio fuel feedstock prices based on the crude oil price development the price index for agricultural products growth in world population growth in wealth per capita income and change in energy consumption per capita 2 to simulate production costs under consideration of likely economies of scale from scaling up production size and technological learning and 3 to compare different biofuels and fossil fuels by scenario analysis a calculation model for biofuel production is used to analyse projected production costs for different types of biofuels in europe for 2015 and 2020 unlike engineering oriented bottom up approaches that are often used in other biofuel studies the macro economic top down approach applied in this study enables an economic comparison and discussion of various fuel types based on reference scenarios of crude oil prices of 50 100 150 and 200 per barrel depending on the specific raw material prices as well as the conversion costs the analysis delivered a differentiated view on the production costs and thus on the competitiveness of each individual type of fuel the results show that 2nd generation biofuels are most likely to achieve competitive production costs mid to long term when taking into account the effects from technological learning and production scale size as well as crude oil price scenarios between 50 and 200 per barrel for both reference years in all crude oil price scenarios bioethanol from lignocellulosic raw materials as well as biodiesel from waste oil are associated with high cost saving potentials which enable them to outperform fossil fuels and 1st generation biofuels

a computable general equilibrium model of international sanctions in iran we detail recent international sanctions against the iranian economy and its government imposed by a subset of developed countries the effects of these sanctions on the iranian economy in general and upon upper and lower income rural and urban iranian households as well as the iranian government are modelled using a computable general equilibrium cge model we supplement the global trade analysis project 8 data set using income and expenditure shares from the urban and rural household income and expenditure survey from the statistical centre of iran sci the model is calibrated to simulate the effects of international sanctions as closely as possible we use endogenous trade taxes to simulate the effects of sanctions on iranian oil and petrochemical exports and iranian imports of petroleum products metal products and motor vehicles our study finds that international sanctions reduced aggregate iranian welfare by 14 15 rural households in iran suffered welfare losses which were almost double those experienced by urban households and the poorest urban and rural households experienced the largest welfare losses in the order of 5 10 but the government of iran sees a decrease in real revenue of 40 50 due to the large negative effect of sanctions on the iranian oil sector

energy tax credits and residential conservation investment evidence from panel data using panel data on individual tax returns and variation in state tax policy we measure the impact of government tax policies to encourage residential conservation investment on the probability of making these investments unlike previous work we account for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for energy saving activities and its possible correlation with tax policy at the state level we find that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is very important based on our preferred point estimate of the tax price coefficient a 10 percentage point change in the tax price for energy investment would lead to a 24 percent increase in the probability of making an investment

state owned mncs and host country expropriation risk the role of home state soft power and economic gunboat diplomacy expropriation risk has a binding effect on foreign direct investment fdi however state owned multinational corporations may counter the monopoly power of the host state by leveraging the political influence of their home government the magnitude of this counter force we argue may vary depending on the strength of political relations between the home and host state and the level of economic dependence of the host country on the home market we find supporting evidence of our hypotheses using chinese firm level fdi information between 2003 and 2010

how international sanctions worked domestic and foreign political constraints on the brazilian informatics policy from 1985 to 1989 a trade conflict between the united states and brazil developed around brazil s protectionist information technology policy during that period and under the threat of trade sanctions some changes were made in the brazilian policy the effectiveness of sanctions in promoting policy changes in brazil resulted not only from economic losses but also from the shift provoked in the balance of political support for the policy within brazilian society moreover sanctions were effective not because they affected the interests of groups benefiting from the policy but because they pushed previously uncommitted groups to join the opposition to it

sanctions and civil conflict using a formal general equilibrium framework this paper analyses how sanctions imposed on the contestants in civil conflict affect the welfare of these contestants and the allocation of resources to conflict it is shown that weak sanctions can hurt the contestant they are supposed to help while strong sanctions augment the expected welfare of their intended beneficiaries moreover sanctions are more likely to be successful if the contestant who is subject to sanctions can expect to derive a positive income in case of compliance the likelihood of success rises as this income increases

do economic sanctions destabilize country leaders do economic sanctions destabilize the governments they target a form of foreign pressure sanctions are typically meant to alter the policies of other countries there is much pessimism on whether they ever work this article shows that economic pressure works in at least one respect it destabilizes the leaders it targets i present a theoretical argument that explains why destabilization is a necessary condition for successful coercion i find evidence that pressure destabilizes in a large panel of cross country time series data the destabilization finding indicates that sanctions may be more effective at altering policies than we think i conclude by noting that greater optimism regarding the effectiveness of sanctions should be balanced by a careful consideration of the policy s real and sizeable costs for those caught in the middle

when do imposed economic sanctions work previous research has documented only a modest success rate for imposed sanctions by contrast the success rate is higher in cases that are settled at the threat stage in this article the authors provide new insights about the circumstances under which sanctions cause behavioral change only after being imposed first the target must initially underestimate the impact of sanctions miscalculate the sender s determination to impose them or wrongly believe that sanctions will be imposed and maintained whether it yields or not second the target s misperceptions must be corrected after sanctions are imposed a game theoretical model with incomplete information is used to develop and clarify the argument

sanctions in networks abstract in this paper we contribute to the sender target models of sanctions by explicitly incorporating the linkages social political or economic that bind the sender and target to other agents given any network model and architecture we draw attention to two factors that play a key role in determining the efficacy of sanctions in reducing the frequency of violations these are respectively strategic complementaritiesbetween the sanctioning action deleting link with target and number of direct links of the sender and the externalities imposed on the sender by third parties we examine the role played by these factors both in the short run when links can only be deleted and the long run when links can also be added as well as when sanctions are unilateral the sender can only delete own links or multilateral the sender can impose on common allies to sever links to the target our analysis allows an active role to the target to build an opposing coalition to deflect sanctions and to third parties to engage in sanction busting it also extends to multiple senders and targets existence of interest groups within sender and target with dissimilar objectives and signed networks allowing both antagonistic and cordial bilateral relationships

the effect of sanctions on u s foreign direct investment for years the united states has imposed economic sanctions to com pel countries to alter their behavior an important concern is whether government sanctions influence private foreign direct investment fdi decisions the largest source of foreign capital in the first study to assess empirically the relationship between economic sanctions and fdi we consider whether u s sanctions influence u s fdi inflows into targeted countries using panel data for 171 countries from 1965 to 2000 we find strong evidence that u s investors pull out of countries targeted for u s sanctions prior to their imposition this disinvestment is not permanent and invest ment tends to return after the sanctions are imposed the results provide support for fdi studies that show the effect of risk on investor decision making the use of economic sanctions by the united states to compel countries to alter their behavior has increased in recent years at the same time u s foreign direct investment fdi has expanded with u s multinational corporations mncs rep resenting the largest share of global fdi despite the growth of u s fdi and the u s government s imposition of sanctions no empirical work has considered the relationship between sanctions and u s investor decisions how do u s mncs react to the use of u s sanctions and does u s fdi make sanctions more or less effective in this article we analyze the impact of u s sanctions on investment decisions made by u s mncs building on investors risk calculations that are critical to the fdi literature 1 we propose several reasons why risk linked to economic sanctions influences fdi flows we hypothesize that u s firms significantly draw down their investment in tar geted countries prior to the imposition of sanctions as risk levels are most height ened however after sanctions have been in place long enough for investors to understand their specific restrictions uncertainty surrounding the amount of risk decreases and u s fdi is expected to return to levels near the pre sanction period

understanding cost reduction of china s biomass direct combustion power generation a study based on learning curve model abstract during the critical transition towards cleaner production cp the developing and transition countries should pay extra attention to displace traditional biomass utilization with cp concepts such as biomass direct combustion power bio dcp china has witnessed impressive growth in its bio dcp sector from 2006 to 2014 the further industrial expansion and policy making of bio dcp in china and other countries in transition call for a deeper understanding of cost reduction mechanisms in this study the learning curve models i e electricity production cost as a function of multiple factors including cumulative installed capacity operation maintenance costs feed in tariff and cogeneration were developed to i empirically estimate the learning rates of china s bio dcp and ii investigate the impacts of past technological developments and policies on the cost development main findings include i the overall learning rate of china s bio dcp is 4 54 over the period 2006 2014 ii the raised feed in tariff in 2010 shows a positive effect on the learning of bio dcp iii the circulating fluidized bed projects show a higher learning rate compared to that of the grate boiler projects based on the above results suggestions regarding the bio dcp s future development are offered including discriminative subsidies biomass waste supply chains cogeneration and multi industry parks

consumption risk sharing in social networks we develop a model of informal risk sharing in social networks where relationships between individuals can be used as social collateral to enforce insurance payments we characterize incentive compatible risk sharing arrangements and obtain two results 1 the degree of informal insurance is governed by the expansiveness of the network measured by the number of connections that groups of agents have with the rest of the community relative to group size twodimensional networks where people have connections in multiple directions are su ciently expansive to allow very good risk sharing we show that social networks in peruvian villages satisfy this dimensionality property thus our model can explain townsend s 1994 puzzling observation that village communities often exhibit close to full insurance 2 in second best arrangements agents organize in endogenous risk sharing islands in the network where shocks are shared fully within but imperfectly across islands as a result network based risk sharing is local socially closer agents insure each other more

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

the termination of international sanctions explaining target compliance and sender capitulation abstract with the proliferation of sanctions after the end of the cold war the termination of these punitive measures has become a ubiquitous phenomenon in international politics yet research has hitherto almost exclusively focused on sanctions implementation and effectiveness whereas their termination has received little attention in this paper we draw on studies analyzing the varying duration of sanctions to examine under which conditions they end in contrast to prior research that has mostly treated the end of sanctions as a single category our analysis disaggregates sanctions termination by target compliance and sender capitulation we run a competing risks model using novel dyadic sanctions data and show that the determinants of both outcomes significantly diverge while poor economic health and high political volatility in the target country make it significantly more likely to comply political alignment between the sender and target and leadership changes in the sender country lead to a higher probability of sender capitulation

economic structure and international security the limits of the liberal case the theory that a liberal international economic structure is associated positively and a mercantilist structure negatively with international security is widespread but the case in favor of liberalism and the case against mercantilism are both one sided and the whole attempt to link economic structure to international security anyway overestimates the influence that economic structure has on the use of force political and military factors provide explanations more convincing than economic ones for the propensity of states to resort to or refrain from the use of force liberal and mercantilist structures each have both positive and negative impacts on the use of force but these impacts become important only when they are complemented by noneconomic factors governing the use of force hence security grounds cannot be used convincingly either as a reason for maintaining the current liberal system or as a reason for opposing a shift toward a more mercantilist structure of international economic relations

food vs fuel the effect of biofuel policies the rise in food commodity prices since 2004 which reached record highs in 2008 has coincided with the tripling of corn ethanol production from 15 billion liters bl to 50 bl over the 2004 2010 period this has spurred the food vs fuel debate and raised questions about the extent to which biofuels have contributed to the increase in food crop prices estimates of the impact of observed levels of biofuel production differ widely across studies and lie between 20 and 60 hochman et al 2011 biofuel production in the united states us has surged as a result of government policies like the renewable fuel standard rfs volumetric ethanol excise tax credit veetc for blenders of ethanol and tariffs that restrict the imports of sugarcane ethanol the rfs authorized by the energy independence and security act eisa of 2007 has set ambitious targets of increasing biofuel production sixfold to 136 bl by 2022 with over 60 of it to be met by advanced biofuels produced using non corn starch based feedstocks a 0 12 liter veetc is provided to blenders of ethanol to reduce their costs of meeting the rfs while a tariff of 0 14 liter and an ad valorem tariff of 2 5 were enacted to prevent transfer of the tax credit to ethanol producers in brazil the current veetc and import tariff expired in 2011 with increasing federal debt and concerns about the impact of these policies on food and feed prices political support for the

dynamics of energy technologies and global change technological choices largely determine the long term characteristics of industrial society including impacts on the natural environment however the treatment of technology in existing models that are used to project economic and environmental futures remains highly stylized based on work over two decades at iiasa we present a useful typology for technology analysis and discuss methods that can be used to analyze the impact of technological changes on the global environment especially global warming our focus is energy technologies the main source of many atmospheric environmental problems we show that much improved treatment of technology is possible with a combination of historical analysis and new modeling techniques in the historical record we identify characteristic l such network e ects yield high barriers to entry even for superior competitors these simple observations allow three improvements to modeling of technological change and its consequences for global environmental change one is that the replacement of long lived infrastructures over time has also replaced the fuels that power the economy to yield progressively more energy per unit of carbon pollution from coal to oil to gas such replacement has d they also include endogenous generation of s we show that doing so can yield projections with lessened environmental impacts without necessarily incurring negative e ect on the economy arriving on that path by the year 2100 depends on intervening actions such as incentives to promote greater diversity in technology and lower barriers to entry for new infrastructures that could accelerate historical trends of decarbonization 1999 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

the theory of international economic sanctions a public choice approach comment william kaempfer and anton lowenberg in this review september 1988 have developed an engaging model of the sanctions process grounded in public choice they identify potentially influential private forces that might affect the nature of a sanctions package while the spirit of their effort is laudable the model fails to incorporate some absolutely essential information about the legal institutional and strategic framework in which sanctions decisions are made as a consequence they reach a conclusion that flies in the face of existing facts contrary to what is suggested by kaempfer and lowenberg kl and contrary to the implications of their model the evidence clearly indicates there is an unequivocal bias against the use of import restrictions in favor of export controls the recent history of economic sanctions shows that only somewhat more than one third of sanction episodes involved both export and import controls further gary hufbauer and jeffrey schott 1985 observe that in instances where only one or the other is invoked export controls are almost always preferred to restrictions on imports 2 an almost exclusive reliance on export controls in economic foreign policy measures is particularly evident in the actions of the united states in the 1970s 3 the purpose of this comment is to explore the causes of this asymmetry there are at least three reasons why export controls have been favored over import controls reasons that play no part in the kl model first the general agreement on tariffs and trade gatt has institutionalized a bias against import barriers in favor of export controls second in the united states domestic legal constraints favor export controls and discourage import controls third as will be argued export controls are more easily reversed than import controls and reversibility is a desirable component in any foreign policy based trade intervention consider these points in turn in the 1946 1948 period during which time the gatt was first negotiated trade barriers were identified most often with those artificial impediments to trade that restrict foreign access to domestic markets especially tariffs for this reason gatt rules and actions have sought primarily to dismantle import barriers john jackson 1969 p 502 notes that despite the fact that extensive export controls do exist there has been only one complaint with respect to such controls reflected in gatt documents this is the czechoslovakian complaint against the united states in 1949 for the imposition of discriminatory export controls 4 jackson p 502 observes that there is very little if any effective gatt policing of export control policy and he comments later p 539 that insofar as any gatt obligations can be avoided without consequences this avoidance operates in effect as an exception this suggests that those foreign policy export controls that are pro department of economics university of arizona tucson az 85721 i thank alan deardorff bernard hoekman and robert stem for helpful discussions on work related to this note my thanks also to two anonymous referees for their constructive comments see p 28 and tables 4 1 4 5 pp 70 77 hufbauer and schott 1985 2ibid p 28 3see for example richard cooper 1987 pp 301 302 and p 305 and kenneth abbott 1981 p 741 4this is confirmed more recently by barry carter 1988 p 97 the only other event involving export restrictions challenged before the gatt was the u s embargo against nicaragua in 1985 which involved both import and export restrictions