institutional determinants of labor reallocation in transition the transition process differed in the countries of the former soviet union fsu and those of central and eastern europe cee in terms of reallocation of labor real wage employment and output adjustment we sift through the theoretical and empirical literature to find an explanation for these diverging adjustment trajectories and conclude that they can be explained by the fact that the cee countries adopted social policies that upheld wages at the bottom of the distribution forcing the old sector to restructure or collapse while the fsu countries allowed wages to free fall not forcing the hand of the old sector

what can we learn about financial access from u s immigrants the role of country of origin institutions and immigrant beliefs immigrants from countries with more effective institutions are more likely than other immigrants to have a relationship with a bank and to use formal financial markets more extensively the evidence that a country s institutional environment shapes beliefs and by extension the use of financial services provides support for policies that focus on institutional reforms in promoting financial access after holding wealth education and other factors constant the impact of institutional quality in the country of origin affects the financial market participation of all immigrant groups except those who have lived in the united states for more than 28 years these findings are robust to alternative measures of institutional effectiveness to controlling for additional country of origin characteristics and to various methods for addressing potential biases caused by immigrant self selection

spatial evolution of social norms in a common pool resource game we study the conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common pool resource cpr game we consider three types of agents cooperators defectors and enforcers the role of enforcers is to punish defectors for overharvesting the resource agents are located on a circle and they only observe the actions of their two nearest neighbors their payoffs are determined by both local and global interactions and they modify their actions by imitating the strategy in their neighborhood with the highest average payoffs on average using theoretical and numerical analysis we find a large diversity of equilibria to be the outcome of the game in particular we find conditions for the occurrence of equilibria in which the three strategies coexist we also derive the stability of these equilibria finally we show that introducing resource dynamics in the system favors the occurrence of cooperative equilibria

how late to pay understanding wage arrears in russia we organize an empirical analysis of russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data show that arrears are positively related to firm age size state ownership and declining performance constrained multinomial logit estimates reveal intrafirm variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm wage arrears unlike wage cuts have a theoretically ambiguous effect on workers quit behavior and we show empirically that the effect varies negatively with the extent of the practice in the local labor market

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

local common property exploitation with rewards this paper analyzes coalition formation in a livestock pasture system where livestock are privately owned and the pasture is a common property while standard models predict rather low prospects of cooperation this paper introduces a cost advantage of cooperation based on saami reindeer herding that may explain higher coalition participation in contrast to the existing fishery literature on coalition formation all players are assumed ex ante homogenous but may differ ex post due to the cost advantage a stable equilibrium with cooperation can be reached and a moderate exploitation level can be sustained compared to the tragedy of the commons outcome

functional unpleasantness the evolutionary logic of righteous resentment economics experiments and everyday experience cast doubt on the assumption that people are self interested in divide the dollar ultimatum games participants turn down offers that would make them objectively better off similarly drivers stuck in a traffic jam fume at cars cruising by on the shoulder many stuck drivers would punish the moving ones if they could even at some cost to themselves such strategies appear irrational because they make the punisher worse off than accepting the situation or offer we examine explanations for costly punishment and relax the presumption that punishers themselves prefer cooperation using evolutionary game theory to show how uncooperative punishers can support cooperation

can socioeconomic heritage produce a lost generation with regard to entrepreneurship a considerable amount of literature deals with the influence of institutions on entrepreneurship but for all that little is known about the interplay between institutions and personal determinants of entrepreneurship in this paper the empirical evidence that older people in transition economies have low engagement in entrepreneurial activity is the starting point for analyzing how institutions moderate the relationship between individual characteristics and entrepreneurial choice the results show that the socioeconomic heritage of being exposed to socialism deters entrepreneurship an effect that is more pronounced for high impact entrepreneurship detailed analyses reveal that the effect is driven by devaluation of socialist work experience and the influence of socialism on mindset

a note on defensive expenditures harmonised law diverse results in the context of many environmental hazards there is scope for self defence by victims multiple equilibria arise in a model of bilateral precaution under a regime of strict but incompletely enforced environmental liability this means that the same system of environmental law instigated in two economies may lead to very different outcomes it impacts upon policy analysis in a variety of ways and provides a channel for cultural factors to matter we explore the positive and normative effects of subsidising self defence

tightening up declining class mobility during russia s market transition this study analyzes intergenerational occupational mobility in late soviet and post soviet russia using data from six surveys belying claims that class differences did not matter in the soviet union the authors find that social origin did affect occupational opportunity during russia s soviet period but the transition from state socialism to a market economy tightened the link between origins and destinations men and women were equally constrained by their social origin even though they faced significantly different opportunity structures in both periods as the economic transformation took hold fewer russians experienced upward mobility and more were downwardly mobile political and economic transition not the demographic replacement of retiring cohorts by younger ones strengthened the association between origins and destinations career mobility during the 1990s took the form of a regression toward origins as workers who had the most upward mobility during the soviet era lost the most in the tr

the evolution of social norms in common property resource use the problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary game theoretic framework it is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well defined sense against invasion by narrowly self interested behavior the resource stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary game dynamics effects of changes in prices technology and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long run stock are analyzed when threshold values of the parameters are crossed social norms can break down leading generally to the lowering of the long run stock and possibly to its extinction copyright 1996 by american economic association

winners and losers in russia s economic transition the transition to a market economy has produced a substantial and rapid change in the wage structure in russia household surveys taken before and after the transition indicate that overall wage inequality nearly doubled from 1991 to 1994 and has reached a level higher than that in the united states returns to both measured skills education occupation and unmeasured skills within groups have increased considerably skill premiums across experience groups however have become more compressed and relative wages of older workers have declined in addition female wages have declined relative to male wages across all percentiles of the wage distribution copyright 1998 by american economic association

compensating differentials in emerging labor and housing markets estimates of quality of life in russian cities abstract the purpose of this paper is to see if an equilibrium model of compensating differences for amenities can be applied to a major transition economy russia we analyze russian labor and housing markets using data from the russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms augmented by city and regional specific characteristics from other sources our estimated wage and housing value equations suggest that workers are compensated for differences in climate environmental conditions ethnic conflicts crime rates and health conditions after controlling for worker characteristics occupation industry and economic conditions and various housing characteristics we find evidence that these compensating differentials exist even after controlling for the regional pay differences regional coefficients used by the russian government to compensate public sector workers for living in regions that are designated as less desirable quality of life as measured by a group of eleven amenities varies substantially the highest ranked cities tend to be in relatively warm areas and areas in the western european part of the country our quality of life index is positively correlated with net migration into a region suggesting workers are attracted to amenity rich locations overall we find that a model of compensating differentials with controls for disequilibrium yields useful information about compensation for location specific amenities and quality of life in this large transition economy

on the enforcement of territorial use rights regulations a game theoretic approach territorial use rights commonly known as turfs in the literature consists in the allocation of fishing rights to individuals and or groups to fish in certain geographical locations a requisite for these communities to be granted fishing rights is the formulation of a management and exploitation plan mep while thus far the literature on turfs has been centred on the biological and technical aspects of it to our knowledge there is no work squarely dealing with the issue of enforcement of the mep that the community once granted the fishing use rights have to comply with we formally explore this issue from an economic perspective by formulating a static game of norm compliance in a regime of common property resource exploitation the key characteristic of this game is a monitoring and sanctioning mechanism where fishermen monitor and sanction one another we found that in the absence of any endogenous regulation from the part of the fishing community turfs can not avoid the economic overexploitation of the fishery we discuss the importance of economic incentives and disincentives in the formulation of endogenous regulations aimed at ensuring compliance of the mep our results on the

inherited trust and growth this paper develops a new method to uncover the causal effect of trust on economic growth by focusing on the inherited component of trust and its time variation we show that inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants is sig nificantly influenced by the country of origin and the timing of arrival of their forebears we thus use the inherited trust of descendants of us immigrants as a time varying measure of inherited trust in their country of origin this strategy allows to identify the sizeable causal impact of inherited trust on worldwide growth during the twentieth century by controlling for country fixed effects jel n11 n12 n31 n32 o47 z13

monitoring the economic transition in the russian federation and its implications for the demographic crisis the russian longitudinal monitoring survey abstract using data from the russia longitudinal monitoring survey we provide information regarding changes in individual and household economic indicators as well as alcohol consumption and nutritional status in russia during 1992 1996 during this period there have been declines in income and expenditure and substantial increases in the prevalence of poverty at the same time per capita alcohol consumption has risen significantly as has the prevalence of obesity we discuss the significance of these findings within the context of the current mortality crisis in russia

trends in the gender earnings differential in urban china 1988 2004 this paper analyzes changes in the gender earnings gap in urban china over the period 1988 2004 using urban household survey data the mean female male earnings ratio declined from 86 3 to 76 2

did soviet elderly employment respond to financial incentives evidence from pension reforms abstract this study answers the open question of whether workers respond to financial incentives in a command economy to do this i evaluate pension reforms in soviet russia in 1964 and 1969 that allowed pensioners to receive a greater share of their pensions if they worked resulting in a progressive elimination of benefit reduction rates variation in group eligibility and variation in benefit reduction rates in eastern and western regions allow for the use of several difference in differences frameworks i collect and digitize novel data from the soviet archives on pensioner employment constructing the first database of the soviet old age labor market i find that soviet pensioners are responsive to financial incentives by 1969 after the benefit reduction rate fell from an average of 47 8 to 24 1 pensioner employment rates rose by 5 7 percentage points representing a 47 increase finally i provide illustrative estimates of the employment elasticity with respect to the average net of tax rate that range from 0 6 to 1 4

dissecting the tragedy a spatial model of behavior in the commons abstract much of the discussion of the tragedy of the commons focuses on aggregate impacts often in data poor developing country settings few non experimental empirical studies shed light on contextual circumstances driving the extent of rent dissipation and overexploitation we utilize a high resolution data set to estimate a behavioral model of fishermen s spatial choices a unique policy setting allows us to measure the degree to which individual fishermen s choices appear aimed at mitigating the tragedy of the commons in a small numbers setting we find evidence of partial mitigation in excess of what we would expect under pure self interest but short of what would occur under group maximizing behavior we also examine how contextual factors in the fishery shape the degree of cooperation within the fishing season and find evidence that competition for the common pool resource distorts fishermen s implicit cost of distance creating a form of common property inertia

common pool resource appropriation under costly cooperation abstract in addition to the usual fixed costs we introduce variable costs in a community s effort to cooperate in extracting from a common pool resource using a standard supervision mechanism these variable costs are shown to be an increasing function of individual members incentives to default the model explains why we frequently observe communities that all cooperate and have relatively similar resource endowments and yet achieve very different levels of extraction

linking common property resource management to human capital outcomes in regions where common pool resources provide significant support to their surrounding communities any climate change related shock could produce multiple livelihood repercussions in this paper a model explores how the health of common pool resources could impact upon human capital outcomes for communities that struggle to find alternate livelihood options when traditional means such as agriculture become unsustainable the management of common pool resources is modeled as a strategic interaction process between two heterogeneous communities that are directly or indirectly dependent upon it an unconstrained harvesting of common resources such as forestry not only depletes its stocks but it also indirectly affects crop output through soil degradation a number of situations are constructed where communities are able to successfully finance human capital accumulation through proper management of their common pool resources however results also warn that communities that are faced with limited opportunities towards accumulating human capital must plan ahead to prevent the depletion of their common resources below critical levels when non linear feedbacks to soil degradation emanate from low levels of common pool stocks human capital outcomes as well as future livelihoods of such communities are threatened

is there a cultural component in tax morale evidence from immigrants in europe abstract in this paper we examine the existence of a cultural component in individual tax morale to identify the effect of culture we use immigrant data drawn from the european social survey we find that culture is a significant determinant of tax morale the level of tax morale in the country of immigrant origin influences individual tax morale in the destination country the result is robust to the inclusion of a wide set of individual and aggregate controls and persists across different population segments

wage arrears and economic voting in russia this paper revisits the issue of economic voting in the context of the 1996 presidential election in russia the election was branded as a fundamental choice between capitalism and communism yet voters were also grappling with a large crisis of personal finances about one in two workers experienced nonpayments of wages at the time of the elections the analysis exploits a rich nationally representative household panel dataset to identify the impact of wage arrears on the second round election outcome wage arrears reduced the vote for the incumbent president yeltsin among workers from around 65 to 49 which amounts to a drop of 4 in the yeltsin vote in the second round support for yeltsin vote declined with the amount of wage arrears at the time of the vote and with wage arrears in 1995 wage arrears led more voters to believe the government to be noncaring and to favor income restrictions for the rich political attitudes of working men changed more than those of working women

getting paid wage arrears and stratification in russia1 wage arrears have played an important yet unappreciated role in the stratification of contemporary russian society delays in wage payments became rampant and persistent during the 1990s because of the particular structural institutional and policy context that accompanied russia s market reforms recent improvements in russia s economy have reduced but not eliminated wage arrears an innovative practice that has become institutionalized in some but not all postsocialist societies analyses of survey data collected in early 1998 confirm the independent stratifying role of arrears inequality in getting paid is socially structured in a different manner than inequality in contracted wages and the former proves equally or more decisive in shaping inequality in actual wages arrears occur with some regularity in other national and historical contexts this study of russia shows that where arrears are rampant researchers should incorporate them into conceptual and empirical models of earnings inequalit

evolutionary stability of pure strategy equilibria in finite games abstract sufficient conditions for pure strategy nash equilibria of finite games to be lyapunov stable under a large class of evolutionary dynamics the regular monotonic selection dynamics are discussed in particular it is shown that in almost all finite extensive form games all the pure strategy equilibria are stable in such games all mixed strategy equilibria close to pure strategy equilibria are also stable journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72

a dynamic approach to forest regimes in developing economies abstract in the developing economies optimal forest regimes should incorporate the socio economic characteristics of the user groups and since socio economic factors will change with time optimal forest regimes will also follow a dynamic path the two most important socio economic factors are the heterogeneity of the user group with respect to forest management and the direct dependence of the user group on forest normally the heterogeneity will increase and dependence will decrease with economic growth of user group an optimal control model is used to integrate the dynamics of natural system such as joint product of forests and its growth function and the dynamics of the two socio economic factors heterogeneity and dependence the model demonstrates that the dynamics of optimal forest regimes will depend upon the change in natural factors socio economic factors and on the interactions between natural and socio economic factors hence optimal forest management strategies would require a continuous refinement in forest management regimes instead of static state regimes as local communities in developing economies pass through different phases of economic growth

when information dominates comparison abstract we propose a micro econometric evaluation of the relation between life satisfaction and income distribution using a balanced panel survey of the russian population russian longitudinal monitoring survey rlms running from 1994 to 2000 covering 4685 individuals we show that in the context of the very volatile russian environment hirschman s q j econ 87 1973 544 tunnel effect conjecture seems to be confirmed variables reflecting income distribution do not influence satisfaction through social comparisons individuals rather seem to use their informational content in order to form their expectations the reference group s income thereby exerts a positive influence on individual satisfaction which contrasts with other studies on the subject inequality indices do not affect individual welfare

community enforcement of fisheries effort restrictions abstract this paper models the use of community sanctions to restrict effort in a simple gordon schaefer style model of the fishery with heterogeneous fishing costs the withdrawal of cooperation in other areas of life is used to both restrict effort and to sanction those who continue to cooperate with those who have not restricted effort coalition proof nash equilibria are generated by a combination of sanctions discouraging the defection of small groups and stock reductions discouraging noncooperation by large groups both entry restrictions and individual quotas can be supported by community sanctions under some parameter combinations however there are cases where each can generate lower total rents than would be available under open access relatively low cost fishers are more likely to support entry restrictions and ignore community attempts to restrict individual effort while high cost fishers are more likely to support quotas

changes in the structure of earnings during the polish transition abstract we document changes in the structure of earnings during the economic transition in poland we find that inequality in labor earnings increased substantially from 1988 to 1996 a common view is that the reallocation of workers from a public sector with a compressed wage distribution to a private sector with much higher wage inequality accounts for the bulk of increased earnings inequality during transition see e g the models of aghion and commander 1999 aghion philippe commander simon 1999 on the dynamics of inequality in the transition economics of transition 7 275 2898 and commander and tolstopiatenko 1998 commander simon tolstopiatenko andrei 1998 the role of unemployment and restructuring in the transition in commander simon ed enterprise restructuring and unemployment in models of transition the world bank washington pp 169 192 however our decomposition of the sources of the increase in inequality suggests that this compositional effect accounts for only 39 of the increase fully 52 of the increase is due to the increase in the variance of wages within sectors that is earnings inequality within both the private and public sectors grew substantially and by similar amounts this is consistent with prior work suggesting that even state owned enterprises in poland moved towards competitive wage setting as they restructured see e g pinto et al 1993 pinto brian belka marek krajewski stefan 1993 transforming state enterprises in poland evidence on adjustment by manufacturing firms brookings papers on economic activity 213 70 commander and dhar 1998 commander simon dhar sumana 1998 enterprises in the polish transition in simon commander ed enterprise restructuring and unemployment in models of transition the world bank washington pp 109 142 a substantial part of the increase in earnings inequality was between group due largely to increased education premiums however changes in inequality within education experience gender groups account for about 60 percent of the increase in overall earnings inequality the increases in within group inequality were very different across skill groups with much larger increases for highly educated workers these patterns hold in both the private and public sectors although increases in education premiums were somewhat greater in the private sector

inequality and conservation on the local commons a theoretical exercise to analyse the effect of asset inequality on co operation within a group we consider a twoplayer nonco operative model of conservation of a common pool resource overexploitation by one user affects another s payoff by reducing the next period catch we give necessary and sufficient conditions such that conservation is a nash equilibrium and show that increasing inequality does not in general favour full conservation however once inequality is sufficiently great further inequality can raise efficiency thus the relationship between inequality and economic efficiency is u shaped finally we analyse the implications for conservation if players have earning opportunities outside the commons the daily livelihood of vast masses of the rural poor in many countries depends on the success with which common pool resources cprs such as forest resources grazing lands in shore fisheries and irrigation water are managed and on the environmental consequences of their management understanding the factors that lead to success or failure of community management of these resources is thus critical to rural development cpr management is a collective action dilemma a situation in which mutual cooperation is collectively rational for the group as a whole but individual cooperation is not necessarily individually rational for each member one factor that has not always been recognised as critical to the outcome of collective action dilemmas is heterogeneity among the resource users in this paper our attention will be largely restricted to a single but potent kind of heterogeneity inequality in asset ownership olson 1965 hypothesised that inequality might favour the provision of a public good

implementation issues the political economy of efficient fishing responses to over fishing are very similar efforts begin with gear restrictions area closures and seasonal closures entry restrictions including a license moratorium and a license buyback program often follow the results are similar too over fishing and effort increases continue common property not open access regimes community development quotas cdqs private property regimes individual transferable quotas itqs and pigouvian taxes can produce the optimal amount at the minimum cost of course the details of each are critical political feasibility issues and local conditions are factored into the cdq itq tax decision and the resolution of the key details of each fisher heterogeneity and possible ways to reduce it are especially important issues since over fishing problems initial government responses and results are so common the policy formulation process and recommended outcome have potential global relevance 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

evolutionary stability and media of exchange abstract the kiyotaki and wright model 1989 of money as a medium of exchange is analyzed within an evolutionary framework it is shown that fundamental speculative and polymorphic states can all be stable and that there may exist a multiplicity of stable states stringent assumptions regarding information and rationality are therefore unnecessary in order to explain the use of money as a medium of exchange even when the existence of a stable medium requires some individuals to trade their production good for one with a higher storage cost or when otherwise identical individuals must adopt different exchange strategies

uniqueness of nash equilibrium in private provision of public goods an improved proof our 1986 paper private provision of public goods presents a theorem on the uniqueness of nash equilibrium in the private provision of public goods richard hirth of the university of pennsylvania and clive fraser of warwick have independently suggested that although our theorem is correct our proof is incorrect each writer proposes an alternative method of proof for the theorem with characteristic charity to our own deficiencies we prefer to view our earlier proof as unduly opaque rather than wrong whichever view one takes a more transparent proof is called for the proof presented here follows the same outline as our 1986 proof but explains a step of the argument that was far from obvious in the original proof this proof uses the notation of the 1986 paper and refers to facts that are proved there

market and institutional determinants of wage differentiation in russia using a range of official and survey data the author evaluates the relative success of two approaches competitive labor market theory and industrial relations theory institutional economics in explaining wage determination in russia following a review of the analysis of wage determination by an influential team of world bank economists the author shows that increased wage inequality in russia is dominated by inequality within occupational categories within local labor markets such inequality he suggests is primarily associated with inter firm differences in wage levels rather than barriers to labor mobility or differences in human capital such a pattern of differentiation entirely accords with the analyses of those institutional economists and industrial relations theorists who stress the role of the wage in regulating and motivating the labor force above its role in securing labor market equilibrium the paper concludes by outlining the institutional framework of wage determination that underli

collective action for local commons management in rural yunnan china empirical evidence and hypotheses using evolutionary game theory this paper presents hypotheses regarding collective actions for irrigation management with the help of evolutionary game theory data for the analysis were collected by the author from the irrigation system of rural yunnan china an econometric analysis reveals that collective action will be forthcoming in rural communities where few nonfarm job opportunities are provided the degree of income disparity is quite small and resource restrictions are moderately problematic the finding that communities without local government intervention outperform those with intervention supports the proverbial view that external agencies should delegate significant parts of the control rights of common pool resources to immediate stakeholders

contagious cooperation temptation and ecosystem collapse real world observations suggest that social norms o f cooperation can be effective in overcoming social dilemmas such as the joint management of a c ommon pool resource but also that they can be subject to slow erosion and sudden collapse we show that these patterns of erosion and 15 collapse emerge endogenously in a model of a closed community harvesting a renewable natural resource in which individual agents face the tempta tion to overexploit the resource while a cooperative harvesting norm spreads through the community via interpersonal relations we analyze under what circumstances small changes in key parameters including the size of the community and the rate of technological progress trigger catastrophic transitions from 20 relatively high levels of cooperation to widespread norm violation causing the social ecological system to collapse

can maternity benefits have long term effects on childbearing evidence from soviet russia this paper quantifies the effects of russia s 1981 expansion in maternity benefits on completed childbearing the program provided one year of partially paid parental leave and a small cash transfe

cheating ourselves the economics of tax evasion no government can announce a tax system and then rely on taxpayers sense of duty to remit what is owed some dutiful people will undoubtedly pay what they owe but many others will not over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others thus paying taxes must be made a legal responsibility of citizens with penalties attendant on noncompliance but even in the face of those penalties substantial tax evasion exists and always has the history of taxation is replete with episodes of evasion often notable for their inventiveness during the third century many wealthy romans buried their jewelry or stocks of gold coin to evade the luxury tax and homeowners in eighteenth century england temporarily bricked up their fireplaces to escape notice of the hearth tax collector webber and wildavsky 1986 p 141 this essay reviews what is known about the magnitude nature and determinants of tax evasion with an emphasis on the u s income tax alm 1999 andreoni erard and feinstein 1998 and slemrod and yitzhaki 2002 offer more comprehensive recent reviews of the literature it then places this information into a conceptual and policy context

on the uniqueness of equilibrium in cournot oligopoly and other games abstract in an average surplus sharing game such as a cournot oligopoly a group of agents share a production process each contributes an amount of input to the process and output is divided in proportion to the amount of input contributed uniqueness of the equilibrium is needed for any type of comparative static analysis however general uniqueness results for concave games have restrictive assumptions on preferences and technology specifically the conditions needed for uniqueness become more difficult to meet as the number of players increases a new theorem for uniqueness with easily interpretable conditions is given which is independent of the number of players journal of economic literature classification numbers c70 c72 d43

effects on poverty and equity of the decline in collective tank irrigation management in tamil nadu india this paper investigates the factors influencing the decline in collective management of local commons and the impact of this decline on agricultural production and household consumption the analysis is based on a village and household data set collected in 1999 in tamil nadu india where tank irrigation systems are managed collectively for rice cultivation by informal water users organizations our statistical analyses find that one major reason for the decline in collective tank irrigation management is the dissemination of private well irrigation systems once the decline has occurred our analyses predict that the gap in rice yields between farmers who have access to private wells and those who must rely solely on tanks will widen with only the latter group suffering lower yields our analyses also find that the same pattern holds for levels of income and consumption because the affected farmers cannot sufficiently compensate for the loss of their rice income by diversifying their income sources to agricultural labor or non agricultural work in this way the decline in collective management results in greater inequality and poverty

property rights regimes and natural resources a conceptual analysis the term common property resource is an example of a term repeatedly used to refer to property owned by a government or by no one it is also used for property owned by a community of resource users such usage leads to confusion in scientific study and policy analysis in this paper we develop a conceptual schema for arraying property rights regimes that distinguishes among diverse bundles of rights ranging from authorized user to claimant to proprietor and to owner we apply this conceptual schema to analyze findings from a variety of empirical settings including the maine lobster industry

do the vietnamese support the economic doi moi abstract each reform implies social and economic changes after experiencing war and reunification today vietnam is implementing a comprehensive and deep process of renovation doi moi but a revolution needs the support of the population to be successful this article investigates whether the vietnamese are supportive of some of the main features of a market economy in particular the preferences for competition ownership of firms either private or public and income inequality as an incentive to productivity are studied here the data allow us to conclude that the doi moi is not at risk but the population tend to contrast income inequality

women in transition changes in gender wage differentials in eastern europe and the former soviet union under state socialism women fared relatively well in the labor market female male wage differentials were similar to those in the west and female labor force participation rates were among the h

immigration from the former soviet union to israel who is coming when abstract average education of new immigrants from the former soviet union in israel declined during the 1990s we suggest that this is because the returns to investment in israeli human capital increase in the amount of imported human capital thus the more educated invest more and therefore have an incentive to spend a longer share of their working life in israel this translates into early migration using data from the 1995 israeli census and the 1995 1998 samples of the israeli labor force survey we test our hypothesis and find that being high skilled initiates early migration only for migrants participating in the labor market

context dependent cheating experimental evidence from 16 countries policy makers use several international indices that characterize countries according to the quality of their institutions however no effort has been made to study how the honesty of citizens varies across countries this paper explores the honesty among citizens across 16 countries with 1440 participants we employ a very simple task where participants face a trade off between the joy of eating a fine chocolate and the disutility of having a threatened self concept because of lying despite the incentives to cheat we find that individuals are mostly honest further international indices that are indicative of institutional honesty are completely uncorrelated with citizens honesty for our sample countries

inequality transfers and growth new evidence from the economic transition in poland this paper analyzes the evolution of inequality in poland during the economic transition that began in 1989 1990 using microdata from the household budget surveys we find that after a brief spik

harvesting dynamics in protected and unprotected areas we propose a dynamic model for studying the time evolution of fish stocks in an environment divided into two adjacent zones with different fishing policies we analyze two particular harvesting methods constant fishing effort and profit maximization in this case some agents engage in competition based on maximization of individual profit whereas others cooperate the asymptotic behavior of the system pinpoints that even if the presence of a reserve area leads to higher levels of sustainability in exploiting fish stocks attention should be paid in properly regulating the harvesting activity in order to avoid severe depletion of the resource

growth in transition what we know what we don t and what we should abstract this essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from planned to market economy in central and eastern european and former soviet union countries we first establish stylized facts of the transition so far we then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition discussing explanations for the initial output fall and mediumterm issues such as optimal speed of transition disorganization institutions and sectoral reallocation as source of output dynamics we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts we conclude with suggestions for future research

what determines corruption international evidence from microdata this paper uses a microlevel data set from 49 countries to create a direct measure of corruption which portrays the extent of bribery as revealed by individuals who live in those countries in addition it investigates the determinants of being asked for a bribe at the individual level the results show that both personal and country characteristics determine the risk of exposure to bribery examples are gender income education marital status the city size the country s unemployment rate average education and the strength of the institutions in the country jel k4 d73 p16

economic reform and mortality in the former soviet union a study of the suicide epidemic in the 1990s abstract male suicide rates in russia belarus ukraine and the baltic countries increased substantially in the early 1990s and are now the highest in the world to what extent is this suicide epidemic explained by the macroeconomic instability experienced by these countries in that period fixed effects regressions across 22 transition economies indicate that male suicide rates are highly sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy suggesting that the steep and prolonged declines in gdp in the western countries of the former soviet union may have been partly to blame for the suicide epidemic evidence also indicates that the general adult male mortality crisis in the region had a feedback effect on suicide rates with the loss of a spouse or friend or declining life expectancy itself contributing to rising suicide rates female suicide rates in contrast are insensitive to the state of the macroeconomy and are more strongly related to alcohol consumption

general education versus vocational training evidence from an economy in transition abstract this paper examines the relative benefits of general education and vocational training during romania s transition to a market economy we examine a 1973 educational reform that shifted a large proportion of students from vocational training to general education using census and household survey data we analyze the effect of this policy with a regression discontinuity design we find that men affected by the policy are significantly less likely to work in manual or craft related occupations but have similar levels of labor market participation and earnings compared to their counterparts unaffected by the policy we conclude that differences in labor market returns between graduates of vocational and general schools are largely driven by selection

the dynamic efficiency costs of common pool resource exploitation we conduct the first empirical investigation of common pool resource users dynamic and strategic behavior at the micro level using real world data fishermen s strategies in a fully dynamic game account for latent resource dynamics and other players actions revealing the profit structure of the fishery we compare the fishermen s actual and socially optimal exploitation paths under a time specific vessel allocation policy and find a sizable dynamic externality individual fishermen respond to other users by exerting effort above the optimal level early in the season congestion is costly instantaneously but is beneficial in the long run because it partially offsets dynamic inefficiencies jel d24 q21 q22

data watch research data from transition economies ten years into the transition from communism in the countries of the former soviet union and central and eastern europe a cursory search of the econlit database turns up hundreds of empirical studies published in refereed journals that deal with various issues in transition economies even so we suspect that many economists are prevented from making full use of the possibilities offered by the transition by the difficulties of obtaining and interpreting data from the region the purpose of this brief essay is to indicate some possible sources for data that can be used for economic analysis as well as some cautions regarding the use of these data

structural change and post socialist stratification labor market transitions in contemporary russia in russia market transition has led to sweeping structural changes a long recession growth of the private sector expansion of certain branches of the economy and contraction of others a decrease in average firm size and regional differentiation in economic performance these structural changes had important consequences for stratification through their effects on individual labor market outcomes analyses of nine types of individual labor market transitions in russia using 1991 1997 work history data show that structural location has strong effects human capital and membership in the communist party of the soviet union also influence labor market prospects but not in ways consistent with general theories about how market transition affects stratification processes structural change plays a key role in determining the impact of market reforms on stratification but market transition produces variable patterns of structural change in different countries and in different regions within a single country the structural perspective demonstrates why market transition has variable consequences for stratification different prior conditions and reform policies produce different patterns of structural change

contracting problems and regulation the case of the fishery the inefficiencies of common property fisheries are of continuing concern to economists the early work by scott gordon 1954 and anthony scott 1955 outlined the problem and later studies by james crutchfield and giulio pontecorvo 1969 and frederick bell 1972 provided empirical estimates of the losses that result those studies were followed by the dynamic models of colin clark 1976 and james quirk and vernon smith 1970 of optimal harvest rates and the use of corrective taxes or quotas to achieve them but in spite of a large and growing literature and the persuasiveness of the outlined efficiency criteria most fisheries retain common property aspects with overcapitalization and excessive labor input why those conditions persist and the failure of the regulatory response to them are the issues addressed in this paper we examine a number of fisheries but focus on the texas shrimp industry which is one of the nation s most valuable fisheries for a single species and which shares the common property characteristics observed elsewhere it is considered overcapitalized and catch per unit of effort is falling 2 examination of the fishery reveals the many margins along which rent dissipation occurs and the nature of the regulations necessary for controlling fishing effort to avoid those losses the regulatory environment in texas is complicated by conflict within the fishery between inshore and offshore fishermen the latter assert that bay shrimping reduces the number of shrimp that successfully migrate to the gulf the inshore fishery is highlighted by another issue the recent resettlement of some 30 45 000 vietnamese refugees including many fishermen along the texas coast marine advisory service paul starr their entry has been met by hostility and violence from existing shrimpers who recognize that they are in an environment characterized by the absence of property rights bay shrimpers have lobbied the texas legislature for broad limits on new entrants yet ironically the sale of additional boats by individual shrimpers to the vietnamese has facilitated entry of the refugees into the fishery regulations in the texas shrimp and other fisheries are incomplete leaving many options for rent dissipation uncontrolled because of high contracting costs among fishermen and political factors that mold government actions contracting costs are high among heterogeneous fishermen who vary principally with regard to fishing skill 3 montana state university and texas a m university respectively we benefitted from comments by terry anderson raymond c battalio gardner brown oscar burt micha gisser wade griffin john r moroney anthony d scott peter temin and participants in workshops at texas a m university and the university of washington research assistance was provided by scott barnhart and phil mizzi funding was provided by sea grant texas a m university throughout this paper we use the terms common property and open access interchangeably here the terms describe a situation where no property rights group or individual exist s for the resource 2catch per unit of effort in the inshore texas gulf and federal gulf waters is presented for 1963 77 by w l griffin c g tydlacka and w e grant they show catch per unit of effort generally falling in inshore and offshore waters while catch per unit of effort fluctuates from year to year it falls from approximately 360 kg shrimp per unit of effort to 220 kg from 1963 to 1977 the common property nature of the fishery is reflected in the following statistics since 1975 the number of vessels has grown by 23 percent nelson swartz for fish houses the record of entry is similar between 1970 a d 1977 the number of firms grew from 259 to 287 though during that period many left the industry as others entered the number of fish houses was calculated from license data supplied by the texas parks and wildlife department the record of entry by fish houses suggests that monopsony as discussed by colin clark and gordon munro is absent in the fishery 3there may be minor differences in labor leisure choices and capital but our statistical evidence and discussions with fishermen indicate that catch variations are largely due to skill government regulations in the texas bays restrict capital and our empirical evidence shows boats to be relatively homogeneous

gender segmentation at work in china s privatized rural industry some evidence from shandong and jiangsu abstract in this paper we argue that labor segmentation exists along gender lines in the newly privatized township and village enterprises in rural china the results based upon surveys of workers enterprise managers and local officials indicate that women are segregated into production type jobs in certain industries have less control over their work do not receive a return to experience and are adversely affected by wage discrimination there is a clear gender bias in favor of men in share holding a new and important form of workplace benefit that confers wealth and affects control within the workplace and thus privatization has contributed to gender segmentation the results support the general argument that the process of economic transition is not gender neutral

who wants to revise privatization the complementarity of market skills and institutions using survey data from 28 transition countries we test for the complementarity and substitutability of market relevant skills and institutions we show that democracy and good governance complement market skills in transition economies under autocracy and weak governance institutions there is no significant difference in support for revising privatization between high and low skilled respondents as the level of democracy and the quality of governance increases the difference in the level of support for revising privatization between the high and low skilled grows dramatically this finding contributes to our understanding of microfoundations of the politics of economic reform

tax morale affects tax compliance evidence from surveys and an artefactual field experiment our working hypothesis is that cross cultural differences in tax compliance behavior have foundations in the institutions of tax administration and citizen assessment of the quality of governance tax compliance being a complex behavioral issue its investigation requires use of a variety of methods and data sources results from artefactual field experiments conducted in countries with substantially different political histories and records of governance quality demonstrate that observed differences in tax compliance levels persist over alternative levels of enforcement the experimental results are shown to be robust by replicating them for the same countries using survey response measures of tax compliance

coalition proof nash equilibria ii applications abstract in bernheim peleg and whinston coalition proof equilibria i concepts j econ theory 42 1987 1 12 we proposed the notion of coalition proof nash equilibrium and perfectly coalition proof nash equilibrium as solution concepts for strategic environments in which players can freely discuss their strategies but cannot make binding commitments this paper undertakes applications to several economic problems including the behavior of cournot oligopolists oligopolistic entry deterrence cooperation in finite horizon games and social choice rule implementation

how responsive is investment in schooling to changes in redistributive policies and in returns this paper uses an unusual pay reform to test the responsiveness of investment in schooling to changes in redistribution schemes that increase the rate of return to education we exploit an episode where different israeli kibbutzim shifted from equal sharing to productivity based wages in different years and find that students in kibbutzim that reformed earlier invested more in high school education and in the long run also in post secondary schooling we further show that the effect is mainly driven by students in kibbutzim that reformed to a larger degree our findings support the prediction that education is highly responsive to changes in the redistribution policy