estimating the causal effect of water scarcity on the groundwater use efficiency of rice farming in south india abstract there is no consensus among researchers on the influence of scarcity on common pool resource use some suggest that scarcity leads to prudent use whereas others suggest that it will cause over extraction of resources this issue is particularly of interest for developing countries where natural resources are becoming scarce at an alarming rate this paper investigates the causal association between water scarcity and groundwater use efficiency in a rice based cropping system in south india where groundwater is increasingly becoming a scarce resource contextualization of the work is done under the premise of reported contradictions concerning the scarcity efficiency nexus using a two stage approach the causality is estimated first farm level groundwater use efficiency gwue scores are calculated using non parametric efficiency analysis and then these inefficiencies are linked to farm level scarcity indicators using the inverse probability weighting method our results showed a negative causal association between farm level water scarcity and gwue indicating the existence of competitive appropriation behavior in the face of scarcity hence policy measures to conserve groundwater should include supply enhancement to remove the threat of immediate scarcity on farm to avoid inefficient pumping in addition to demand management measures and improved governance

recruiting smarter teachers in recent years many states have raised teacher salaries to attract more capable teachers since teacher labor markets are typically in a state of excess supply success of such policies is contingent on containing perverse feedbacks which arise among exit decisions vacancy rates and the willingness of prospective teachers to invest in occupation specific human capital using sat scores as a measure of ability we find that an across the board raise produces modest improvements in the work force at best indeed under plausible parameter values it is possible for mean ability to decline

how vouchers could change the market for education small probability that vouchers will in the foreseeable future be adopted on a large scale in any school district or state at the moment only three states have adopted publicly funded voucher programs and all of these programs are limited in scale nonetheless in recent years over 40 state legislatures have considered proposals to provide some type of voucher program or tuition tax credit for at least some families in a given state or school district and the children s scholarship fund see http www scholarshipfund org has helped create or expand privately funded voucher programs in numerous cities as vouchers become a more significant part of education policy debates the time is right to consider what we know and do not know about the likely effects of adopting various voucher schemes in the balance of this paper i describe both empirical and theoretical work on education that speaks to this topic i argue that we cannot confidently predict the outcomes that would result from various voucher schemes and i also stress that debates over vouchers per se are not informative details concerning funding targeting and discretion in the use of vouchers should greatly affect the outcomes associated with any particular voucher program still empirical evidence on the performance of public versus private schools as well as numerical results from existing simulation models suggest that policymakers should be able to design voucher programs that would be helpful to minority students in large cities public schools in large cities often perform poorly in minority neighborhoods and this is especially true in economically disadvantaged areas

measuring investment in education historic debates about the measurement of capital are even more complicated in the case of education and human capital as extensive research demonstrates education resources are not consistently related to student performance in existing elementary and secondary schools this inefficiency in public schools implies that spending and resource measures do not accurately capture variations in school quality this finding then has clear implications for both education policy and economic research because school inputs are poor policy instruments an alternative policy focus that appears much more productive is performance incentives related to student achievement

would higher salaries keep teachers in high poverty schools evidence from a policy intervention in north carolina abstract for a three year time period beginning in 2001 north carolina awarded an annual bonus of 1800 to certified math science and special education teachers working in public secondary schools with either high poverty rates or low test scores using longitudinal data on teachers we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program s implementation across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers and across eligible and barely ineligible schools results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 17 experienced teachers exhibited the strongest response to the program finally the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria our estimates most likely underpredict the potential outcome of a program of permanent salary differentials operating under complete information

watershed externalities shifting cropping patterns and groundwater depletion in indian semi arid villages the effect of alternative water pricing policies frequent droughts and groundwater depletion are critical constraints to improving agricultural productivity in the semi arid tropics india has been promoting integrated watershed management in drought prone areas to address these constraints watershed communities are being assisted to invest in groundwater re charging facilities while communities and the public bear such costs individual farmers capture irrigation benefits groundwater is a free common property resource and land users hold de facto use rights this has accelerated private irrigation investments and depletion of aquifers resulting in iniquitous distribution of irrigation water power subsidies and negligible pumping costs aggravate the problem these policy failures and low irrigation costs to farmers are displacing water efficient crops in favor of water intensive crops in water scare areas the paper reviews the village level externalities that aggravate groundwater depletion and evaluates potential policy options to enhance local collective action in water management using 3sls an econometric crop water productivity model is used to evaluate alternative water policy instruments the results indicate that different types of water user charges can be introduced with modest consequences on profitability and farm incomes if properly implemented and managed by the local communities pro poor policies could bring considerable sustainability benefits and also ensure enhanced equity in access to the resource

the economics of teacher quality abstract concern is often voiced about the quality of american schoolteachers this paper suggests that while the relative quality of teachers is declining this decline may be the result of technological changes that have raised the price of skilled workers outside teaching without affecting the productivity of skilled teachers growth in the price of skilled workers can cause schools to lower the relative quality of teachers and raise teacher quantity instead evidence from the national longitudinal survey of youth demonstrates that wage and schooling are good measures of teacher quality analysis of u s census microdata then reveals that the relative schooling and experience adjusted relative wages of u s schoolteachers have fallen significantly from 1940 to 1990 moreover class sizes have also fallen substantially the declines in class size and in relative quality seem correlated over time and space with growth in the relative price of skilled workers

policy instruments for sustainable land management the case of highland smallholders in ethiopia degradation of land continues to pose a threat to future food production potential in many developing economies various approaches mainly based on command and control policies have been tried with limited success in the past to encourage adoption of erosion control practices by farm households high transactions costs and negative distributional impacts on the welfare of the poor limit the usefulness of standards and taxes for soil and water conservation one innovative approach is the use of interlinked contracts which create positive incentives for land conservation this study analyses the social efficiency of such policies for erosion control in the ethiopian highlands using a non separable farm household model incentive contracts linked with conservation seem to be promising approaches for sustainable resource use in poor rural economies this may suggest that conservation programs should give greater consideration to better fine tuning and mix of policies that help achieve both economic and environmental objectives

understanding the twentieth century growth in u s school spending persistent increases in spending on elementary and secondary schools have gone virtually undocumented real expenditure per student increased 3 percent per year over the period 1890 1990 decomposition of the spending growth shows that it resulted from a combination of falling pupil staff ratios increasing real wages to teachers and rising expenditure outside of the classroom although the expansion of education for the handicapped has had a disproportionate effect on spending most of the growth in expenditure during the 1980s came from other sources significant teacher salary increases particularly for females have failed to keep up with wages in other occupations

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

teacher quality in public and private schools under a voucher system the case of chile chile is unusual in having long term experience with nationwide school vouchers a key criticism of school voucher systems is that they make it easier for private schools to attract better teachers to the detriment of public schools this paper uses longitudinal data from chile to estimate a discrete choice dynamic programming dcdp model of teacher and nonteacher labor supply decisions and to explore how wage policies affect the composition of the teacher labor force in public and private schools in the model individuals first decide whether to get a teaching degree and then choose annually from among five work home sector alternatives empirical results show that private voucher schools attract better teachers than public schools however the existence of the private voucher sector also draws higher productivity individuals into the teaching profession

market segmentation self selection and product line design the purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of market segmentation based on consumer self selection the extant theory is based on the third degree price discrimination model of pigou central assumptions of which are that the firm can directly address individual segments and isolate them by using consumer self selection i am relaxing these assumptions in the context of a monopolist designing a product line i show that this relaxation has significant implications for how the products and prices are chosen and what they look like in particular segments may be aggregated even though there are no economies of scale furthermore consumer self selection enables us to model cannibalization and competition among firms

do alternative opportunities matter the role of female labor markets in the decline of teacher quality abstract this paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented using standardized test scores undergraduate institution selectivity and positive assortative mating characteristics as indicators of quality in contrast the quality of young women becoming professionals increased the roy model of self selection highlights how occupational differences in the returns to skill determine teacher quality estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality

firm strategies in the mid tail of platform based retailing while millions of products are sold on its retail platform amazon com itself stocks and sells only a very small fraction of them most of these products are sold by third party sellers who pay amazon a fee for each unit sold empirical evidence clearly suggests that amazon tends to sell high demand products and leave long tail products for independent sellers to offer we investigate how a platform owner such as amazon facing ex ante demand uncertainty may strategically learn from these sellers early sales which of the mid tail products are worthwhile for its direct selling and which are best left for others to sell the platform owner s cherry picking of the successful products however gives an independent seller the incentive to mask any high demand by lowering his sales with a reduced service level unobserved by the platform owner we analyze this strategic interaction between a platform owner and an independent seller using a game theoretic model with two types of sellers one with high demand and one with low demand we show that it may not always be optimal for the platform owner to identify the seller s demand interestingly the platform owner may be worse off by retaining its option to sell the independent seller s product whereas both types of sellers may benefit from the platform owner s threat of entry the platform owner s entry option may reduce consumer surplus in the early period although it increases consumer surplus in the later period we also investigate how consumer reviews influence the market outcome

salesforce compensation plans in environments with asymmetric information in this paper we present a theory of salesforce compensation plans to provide insights into why it may be advantageous for a profit maximizing firm to offer members of its salesforce the opportunity to choose from a menu of compensation plans although such contractual arrangements are not commonly used in the industry they have been introduced and implemented by firms such as ibm and st regis paper as in our previous work on salesforce compensation plans basu lal srinivasan and staelin basu a k r lal v srinivasan r staelin 1985 salesforce compensation plans an agency theoretic perspective marketing sci 4 fall 267 291 we use an agency theory framework in this paper we relax the assumptions of information symmetry and salesforce homogeneity and show the conditions under which it is optimal to offer a menu of compensation plans we also show that even when these assumptions are relaxed there are situations where offering a single plan characterized by basu lal srinivasan and staelin basu a k r lal v srinivasan r staelin 1985 salesforce compensation plans an agency theoretic perspective marketing sci 4 fall 267 291 is still optimal insights gained from the analyses are discussed in the context of an existing compensation scheme

optimization models for salesforce compensation abstract this paper reviews models which address the design of optimal salesforce compensation schemes the discussion starts with agency theoretic models that are able to derive the optimal form for a compensation scheme under assumptions regarding the degree of information asymmetry and heterogeneity within the salesforce for the four resulting extreme cases models are presented that allow for the determination of optimal parameter values for specific compensation schemes such as fixed salary plus commission bonus for quota achievement and menus of plans finally there follows an examination of approaches through which commission rates or bonuses can be optimally differentiated such that the salespersons allocate their selling time in their own and at the same time in the firm s best interest all of these models are reviewed in particular with respect to their applicability in practice

price versus quantity monitoring in an adverse selection context this article explores the relative usefulness of price information over quantity information the main finding is that price monitoring can induce a sales level that is greater than the full information sales level this imposes additional selling costs on the agent and reduces that agent s rents the analysis identifies sufficient conditions for the principal to prefer price monitoring over quantity monitoring business format franchises exhibit many of the features of the setting analyzed here and the article s findings have implications for designing information systems in that sector of the economy

teacher quality and earnings abstract the effect of cognitive ability as indicated by a vocabulary test score on earnings by teachers and selected other occupations is estimated although test scores increase earnings for non teacher occupations the effect of test scores on teacher earnings is zero

complementarity between water pricing water rights and local water governance a bayesian analysis of choice behaviour of farmers in the krishna river basin india to ensure efficient water allocation and use policy designers have adopted various strategies including price setting decentralising irrigation water management or improving water rights most of these strategies have been applied individually without considering the complementary relationships between them this paper uses a discrete choice model to analyse the scope for combinations of tools for irrigation water demand management and farmers acceptance of these in terms of local irrigation water governance the presence or absence of collective irrigation water management in the form of a water users association is considered water rights are specified in terms of the duration and quality of the entitlement and its transferability finally four types of water pricing methods area crop block and volumetric pricing are considered using a choice experiment we elicit the most preferred water pricing method under different water rights situations at different price levels and under various contexts for local irrigation water governance our results indicated that under conditions of improved water rights preference for volumetric pricing increases whilst the presence of a water users association reduces this preference furthermore it was found that using an appropriate combination of water demand management tools considerably increases the willingness to pay for a change in scenario

an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration this paper investigates the effect of product substitutability on nash equilibrium distribution structures in a duopoly where each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer which may be either a franchised outlet or a factory store static linear demand and cost functions are assumed and a number of rules about players expectations of competitors behavior are examined it is found that for most specifications product substitutability does influence the equilibrium distribution structure for low degrees of substitutability each manufacturer will distribute its product through a company store for more highly competitive goods manufacturers will be more likely to use a decentralized distribution system this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 2 pages 161 191 in 1983

the salesperson as outside agent or employee a transaction cost analysis this descriptive study explores the reasons for integration of the personal selling function i e the use of employee direct salespeople rather than manufacturers representatives reps a hypothesized model is developed based on both transaction cost analysis and the sales force management literature data from 13 electronic component manufacturers covering 159 u s sales districts are used to estimate a logistic model of the probability of going direct in a given district results are shown to be stable across specification and estimation methods and to fit the data well the transaction cost model is generally supported the principal finding is that the greater the difficulty of evaluating a salesperson s performance the more likely the firm to substitute surveillance for commission as a control mechanism i e to use a direct sales force among other findings direct sales forces are also associated with complex hard to learn product lines and with districts that demand considerable nonselling activities several factors prove unrelated including company size the amount of travel a district requires and the importance of key accounts this article was originally published in marketing science volume 4 issue 3 pages 234 254 in 1985

why do diplomas pay an expanded mincerian framework applied to mexico we compare four explanations for the value of diplomas each of which has implications for unemployment and wage variation amongst graduates most of which have not previously been tested for when seeking to explain the effects of diplomas we test for these implications using a refined econometric framework exploiting idiosyncrasies in mexican labour market and educational institutions premiums in mexico appear to result from diplomas tied to jobs with downwards rigid wages an uncommon but simple explanation the standard explanations including screening are not suggested by mexican data our results illuminate how labour markets segmented by diplomas clear this depends upon the nature of the labour market rigidities exactly as predicted by neoclassical theory

the dynamics of teacher quality abstract an extensive literature finds that while teachers vary considerably in initial quality there are limited teacher quality dynamics except for the first few years of teaching teacher quality does not improve over the course of a teacher s career this study evaluates the importance of various modeling restrictions to the key findings of this literature using data covering all 5th grade public school teachers from the state of north carolina i replicate the findings of the previous literature using their restrictive experience assumptions however using an unrestricted experience model i find that for mathematics achievement there are high returns to later career teaching experience about twice as much dispersion in initial teacher quality as previously estimated and a pattern of negative selection where high quality teachers are more likely to exit

recruiting and retaining teachers in the uk an analysis of graduate occupation choice from the 1960s to the 1990s this paper examines the market for teachers in the uk from 1960 to 2002 using six graduate cohort data sets we find that while there is no strong evidence that teachers are underpaid the relative wages in teaching compared with alternative professions have a significant impact on the likelihood of graduates choosing to teach this wage effect is strongest at times of low relative teachers wages or following a period of decline in those wages it is also strongest for those individuals who have more recently graduated and for men

does raising the principal s wage improve the school s outcomes quasi experimental evidence from an unusual policy experiment in israel this paper reports estimates of the causal effects of a 50 percent increase in the salary of headmasters of high schools in israel the results suggest that the program led to significant improvements in twelfth grade students academic achievements however the effect was relatively modest comprising increases of about 5 10 percent in the school mean matriculation rate average score and number of subjects and credit units taken in matriculation programs based on these results and the lack of evidence regarding the effect of increasing teachers salary it seems that priority should be given to paying higher wages to school principals

do public schools hire the best applicants despite a surplus of candidates for most teaching jobs a strong academic record does little for an applicants job prospects this does not appear to result from lukewarm interest on the part of such applicants or choosiness about the positions they accept administrators lack of interest in these candidates may reflect the weakness of competitive pressures in public education policies intended to improve teacher quality need to consider incentives on both the demand and supply sides of the market