the public choice of superior sanctions this paper analyzes the public choice of specific forms of sanctions current sanctions are essentially quantity constraints q sanctions which are like quotas in that they might bestow benefits on certain special interest groups in the target country revenue sanctions r sanctions may be able to recapture such benefits in the form of sender government revenue which could either compensate for the costs of sanctions to the sending country or finance other sanction enhancing activities aimed at the target country hence r sanctions may be superior to q sanctions in general or on the basis of target efficiency however public choice analysis suggests that q sanctions will generally be chosen over r sanctions by democratic countries

on the efficiency of law a public choice perspective economists have not yet developed a comprehensive theoretical framework incorporating transaction cost economics within a public choice perspective for predicting when there will be an efficiency problem with the law transaction cost reasoning and the rent seeking insight have not been applied systematically in a dynamic institutional context to evaluate when the law will be used to increase or not minimize problems of bounded rationality and opportunism this paper takes a first step at identifying and remedying this deficiency the paper first provides a critical review of relevant theoretical contributions made by becker 1983 1985 posner 1977 priest 1977 rubin 1977 1982 williamson 1975 1985 and others we then show how analysis of the efficiency of law can be synthesized into a broader whole by incorporating transaction cost economics more fully into existing understanding of rentseeking in the political realm thus within the public choice paradigm this paper develops a deeper transaction cost analysis of the efficiency of law building on prior research by the authors crew and rowley 1988a 1988b twight 1983 1988 the paper identifies variables that position legal rules on a spectrum that ranges from those that are predominantly transaction cost

voter preferences and state regulation of smoking i introduction tobacco taxation and smoking restrictions are two areas of regulation for which states have maintained a high level of control relative to the federal government 1 given this flexibility states have established a wide range of restrictions on smoking in areas such as government workplaces restaurants bars shopping malls indoor arenas and hospitals 2 although most states restrict smoking in hospitals there is considerable variation among states in restrictions in other areas in the 1998 99 period of this study about two thirds of states restricted smoking in restaurants whereas only four states restricted smoking in bars what has led to variation in smoking restrictions across states in a democratic society one would expect voter preferences to play an instrumental role in determining which policies are enacted and which are not this article provides the first empirical exploration of whether state level smoking restrictions are consistent with preferences of the citizenry taking into account both voting behavior and the role of smoking status in influencing whether an individual votes specifically we examine whether voters preferences for smoking restrictions in restaurants bars malls indoor sporting events and hospitals are consistent with state level restrictions on smoking in each of these public areas 3 our research draws on public choice models of policy making by state and local governments voters preferences typically play a central role because voting affects legislators incentives to support regulations 4 public choice research also finds that nonvoter factors may influence state and local policy making 5 in the case of smoking regulations public health advocates or tobacco industry lobbyists might influence regulatory policies the specific building block of our analysis of state restrictions on smoking is information on individuals voting behavior which we link to their smoking status and preferences over smoking restrictions our analysis uses measures of political pressure that account for individual preferences as well as their voting behavior to examine the possible role of interest group pressures we also control for nonvoter influences on smoking regulation including the proportion of the state population who smoke measures of state ideology and size of the tobacco industry with the exception of smoking in bars there is majority support for smoking restrictions unsurprisingly smokers are less supportive of restrictions than are nonsmokers nonetheless even smokers demonstrate a high level of support for many restrictions smokers are also less likely to vote than are nonsmokers even after controlling for other demographic factors the lower voting rate diminishes voter opposition to antismoking regulation but is usually not critical in view of the substantial support that most smoking restrictions have among smokers the political pressure indices for restrictions on smoking in each public area are generally significantly related to the probability that a state restricts smoking in that public area the nonvoter factors such as the smoking rate in the state and tobacco s role in the state economy are rarely influential policy debates over the desirability of smoking restrictions emphasize possible health risks due to exposure to environmental tobacco smoke ets and effects on business profitability the primary argument for expanding smoking restrictions is to protect workers and customers from exposure to ets 6 as our results show voters are generally supportive of smoking restrictions in public areas which would thereby protect workers as well as themselves and other customers however there is a substantial controversy over the extent of health risks associated with exposure to ets the basis for the push by the u s occupational and safety health administration osha for increased smoking restrictions to protect workers is the highly controversial u

a step toward understanding wind power development policy barriers in advanced economies abstract a widely accepted premise regarding wind power development policy is that implementation of economic policy instruments which are designed to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched fossil fuel power generation technologies will significantly catalyze enhanced levels of wind power development activity this paper contests this premise by arguing that non economic barriers to wind power development have the capacity to significantly inhibit wind power development in industrialized nations despite the implementation of economic policy instruments forces which deter wind power development in four economically advanced economies that exhibit phlegmatic progress in wind power development australia canada japan and taiwan are identified and amalgamated into a step framework describing social technical economic and political forces that inhibit wind power development the conclusions of this analysis are twofold first failure to mitigate these step forces may undermine the efficacy of any given economic policy instrument that aims to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched generation technologies second attempts to mitigate these impediments might represent a way to achieve better policy results with less government financial commitment

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

strategic extremism why republicans and democrats divide on religious values party platforms differ sharply from one another especially on issues with religious content such as abortion or gay marriage given the high return to attracting the median voter why do vote maximizing politicians take extreme positions in this paper we find that strategic extremism depends on an intensive margin where politicians want to induce their core constituents to vote or make donations and the ability to target political messages toward those core constituents our model predicts that the political relevance of religious issues is highest when around one half of the voting population attends church regularly using data from across the world and within the united states we indeed find a nonmonotonic relationship between religious extremism and religious attendance

clientelism and vote buying lessons from field experiments in african elections electoral clientelism and vote buying are widely perceived as major obstacles to economic development this is because they may limit the provision of public goods in this paper we review the literature on clientelism and vote buying and propose the use of field experiments to evaluate empirically the consequences of these phenomena we provide an overview discuss implementation and interpret the main results of recent field experiments conducted by the authors in west african countries clientelism and vote buying seem to be effective and to enjoy widespread electoral support the results suggest that increased access to information and political participation by women may limit clientelism in addition voter education campaigns may undermine the effects of vote buying on voting behaviour we argue that our findings may inform the design of development aid interventions as a way effectively to increase public good political accountability we also discuss directions for fruitful future research copyright 2009 oxford university press

the determinants of equilibrium unemployment in britain a lot of energy is currently being expended in trying to understand what has been happening to unemployment in britain and the rest of the developed world in this paper we look at this question in the british context by trying to confront some possible explanations with the data since the data we use are quarterly over rather a short period we are setting the explanations a very hard test most explanations tend to be rather casual and the theories underpinning them ill developed thus for example the so called real wage argument is based on the idea that real wages affect labour demand and that the equilibrium real wage bears some relatively stable relationship to output per head but how stable is not clear thus whether or not we can expect a well defined stable ceteris paribus dynamic relationship between real product wages as a proportion of output per head and unemployment is equally unclear so if such a relationship does not show up in a quarterly regression model this may not be that serious for the theory nevertheless we must look for the relationship for how else are we ever to discriminate between a plethora of conflicting views the primary emphasis in this paper is on the secular factors affecting unemployment rather than the cyclical variables consequently we shall not be concerned with developing a coherent theory of cyclical fluctuations and in the empirical work we shall control for the cycle simply by making use of those exogenous or predetermined variables which other work in this field suggests are important 2 the remainder of the paper is set out as follows the next section is concerned with specifying a model which generates a definition of equilibrium unemployment the outline of this model is a pair of equations determining the flows into and out of unemployment and these are specified in section ii which looks closely at the possible variables involved section iii then deals with the results and presents some general conclusions

the value of cooperatives in rural electrification the electricity sectors of many developing countries underwent substantial reforms during the 1980s and 1990s driven by global agendas of privatization and liberalization however rural electrification offered little by way of market incentives for profit seeking private companies and was often neglected as a consequence delivery models for rural electrification need to change this paper will review the experiences of various rural electrification delivery models that have been established in developing countries including concessionary models dealership approaches and the strengthening of small and medium sized energy businesses it will use examples from the usa bangladesh and nepal together with a detailed case study of a nepali rural electric cooperative to explore the role that local cooperatives can play in extending electricity access it is shown that although there is no magic bullet solution to deliver rural electrification if offered appropriate financial and institutional support socially orientated cooperative businesses can be a willing efficient and effective means of extending and managing rural electricity services it is expected that this paper will be of particular value to policy makers donors project planners and implementers currently working in the field of rural electrification

local acceptance of renewable energy a case study from southeast germany the european 20 20 20 goals as well as national targets for the next decade require a substantial increase in installed renewable capacity in germany while public support for such measures is high on an abstract level the situation in the local context is often very different here the impact of renewable energy might cause resistance empirical research shows that a community ownership model can have a positive effect on local acceptance our study explores whether such an effect can also be demonstrated in a community co ownership model the question is relevant since larger projects exceed the financial possibilities of most communities leaving them with only co ownership as an option the research design is based on a comparative case study utilizing a questionnaire based survey the results of the survey clearly show that a significant difference in local acceptance exists between the two cases the residents of zschadras where a community co ownership model exists are consistently more positive towards local renewable energy and also towards renewable energy in general the results provide evidence that the co ownership model is a means to reconcile local acceptance with an increased use of renewable energy in germany

promotion of the agricultural sector and political power in austria in most industrialized countries farmers as a small and well orgnized group are ableto influence government decisions to get rent creating proposals enacted two different viewsare presented to explain why the chicagoan view efficient redistribution hypothesis and the virginian view inefficient outcome of political bargaining a vertically structuredempirical model of the austrian farm sector is employed to test both hypotheses quantitativeresults of the welfare transfers from consumers taxpayers to farmers and agribusiness firmsare derived and the political weights of these groups are presented

renewable energy finance and project ownership the impact of alternative development structures on the cost of wind power abstract this paper uses traditional financial cash flow techniques to examine the impact of different ownership and financing structures on the cost of renewable energy specifically wind power most large non hydroelectric renewable energy projects are developed owned and financed by private non utility generators recently however us utilities have begun to consider owning and financing their own wind power facilities rather than purchasing power from independent renewable energy suppliers utilities in other countries have also expressed interest in direct renewable energy investments a primary justification for utility ownership of wind turbine power plants is that utility self financing and ownership is cheaper than purchasing wind energy from non utility renewable energy suppliers the results presented in this paper support that justification although some of the estimated cost savings associated with utility ownership are a result of suboptimal utility analysis procedures and implicit risk shifting financing terms and variables are shown to significantly impact wind power costs

predatory versus productive government the case of u s agricultural policies this essay will argue that agricultural policy in the united states has led to both the enhancement of efficiency through productive policies and the transfer of wealth and income to special interests through redistributive or predatory policies these two activities can be labeled as pests and perts pest policies or political economic seeking transfers are meant to redistribute wealth from one social group to another and are not explicitly concerned with efficiency in contrast perts or political economic resource transactions are intended to correct market failures or to provide public goods these policies have neutral distributional effects at least in design a review of the history of public policy in agriculture reveals not only tension between the pert and pest roles of the public sector but also some coordination between these two types of activities as different interest groups pressure the political process the government trades off pests and perts in its attempts to acquire balance and secure political power at times this has led to combinations of programs that appear incoherent in such a world the challenge for economists is to design and advocate policies that are both economically productive and politically sustainable

political economy of public policies insights from distortions to agricultural and food markets the agricultural and food sector is an ideal case for investigating the political economy of public policies many of the policy developments in this sector since the 1950s have been sudden and transformational while others have been gradual but persistent this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on trends and fluctuations in market distortions and the political economy explanations that have been advanced based on a rich global data set covering a half century of evidence on commodities countries and policy instruments the paper identifies hypotheses that have been explored in the literature on the extent of market distortions and the conditions under which reform may be feasible

the roles of ownership ecology and economics in public wetland conservation decisions abstract scholars have studied the problem of optimal reserve site selection however the actual conservation choices made by government decision makers may yield reserve networks that are far from optimal this paper uses data on patterns of wetland conservation in austria in order to identify patterns in government decisions regarding which wetlands to protect we find that conservation decisions are guided at least in part by variation in ecological value and economic cost however there is also a marked bias against conserving lands that happen to be privately owned this bias against protecting private land is likely to be cost ineffective driven by asymmetric information and political pressure

government policy and the firm s capital structure abstract the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of commonly observed forms of government intervention on the firm s capital structure we show that since market claims against the firm are always properly priced the firm is forced to take market claimants interests into account on the other hand since government claims are usually not adjusted for risk the firm can take advantage of the government it does so by choosing strategies that extract maximum value minimum cost from these policies in particular the firm uses its capital capital structure to maximize the value of the policy thus leading to a determinate capital strucure

capital budgets borrowing rules and state capital spending abstract this paper compares the level and composition of government spending in u s states that maintain separate budgets for capital and operating expenditures with that in states that employ unified budgets it also investigates the effects of pay as you go financing rules for capital projects the empirical findings suggest that states with separate capital budgets spend more on public capital projects than comparable states with unified budgets there is no evidence that the presence or absence of a capital budget affects the level of non capital spending pay as you go requirements for financing capital projects are associated with lower levels of both capital and non capital spending

economic development institutional change and the political economy of agricultural protection an econometric study of belgium since the 19th century this empirical study uses 100 years of annual data on 11 agricultural commodities from belgium to measure the impact of structural changes coinciding with economic development and changes in political institutions on agricultural protection the analysis shows that changes in agricultural protection are caused by a combination of factors governments have increased protection and support to farmers when world market prices for their commodities fell and vice versa offsetting market effects on producer incomes other economic determinants were the share of the commodities in total consumer expenditures negative effect and in total output of the economy positive effect with belgium a small economy there was no impact of the trade position changes in political institutions have affected agricultural protection democratic reforms which induced a significant shift in the political balance towards agricultural interests such as the introduction of the one man one vote system led to an increase in agricultural protection the integration of belgian agricultural policies in the common agricultural policy in 1968 coincided with an increase in protection ceteris paribus both institutional factors related to changes in access to and information about the decision making at the eu level and structural changes in the agricultural and food economy may explain this effect

government growth in the twenty first century public choice explanations of government growth fall into three main categories budget maximization theories rational choice models and path dependent models like the ratchet hypothesis the strengths and weaknesses of these theories as explanations for government growth are considered along with some facts about the actual growth of government to conjecture about its trajectory in the twenty first century government size seems to have been constrained in the past primarily by its ability to raise revenue growth rates in the new century thus appear to depend on factors constraining government s ability to continue to expand the tax base

regulating technological change the strategic reactions of utility companies towards subsidy policies in the german spanish and uk electricity markets abstract this paper focuses on how incumbent electric utilities strategically react to subsidy schemes supporting renewable energy technologies in the uk germany and spain firms coordinate the development of their technological capabilities and their political activities to shape their regulatory environment analysing the diffusion of wind power in these countries we show that the different ways in which firms coordinate their technological and political strategies lead to very different market outcomes both for the firms market share and the size of the overall market although incumbents are usually seen as being resistant to change in energy systems we show that spanish utilities proactively drive the diffusion of wind power we speculate about the relation between the ownership structure of the energy system and its inertia with respect to the integration of new technologies we derive novel policy implications that explicitly take into account the strategic actions of incumbent firms shaping the technological and regulatory system

issues in controllability and the theory of economic policy abstract the paper demonstrates that the concepts of dynamic controllability are useful for the theory of economic policy by establishing four propositions first dynamic controllability is a central concept in stabilization policy second the ability to achieve a target state even if it cannot be maintained may be of economic interest third dynamic controllability is of special interest for historical models fourth the conditions for any notion of dynamic controllability are distinct from and weaker than those for tinbergen static controllability

relative price variability and nonuniform inflationary expectations using a generalization of a rational partial information framework presented fully in cukierman and wachtel 1979 it is shown that there is a positive relationship between the variance of relative price change and the variance of inflationary expectations across markets in the economy this implication is then tested empirically using data on the variance of relative price change and on the variance of directly measured expectations the empirical evidence supports the view that there is a positive relationship between the two variances and that more than one third of this relationship is explainable in terms of the model presented

a comparative analysis of the costs of onshore wind energy is there a case for community specific policy support abstract there is growing policy interest in increasing the share of community owned renewable energy generation this study explores why and how the costs of community owned projects differ from commercially owned projects by examining the case of onshore wind in the uk based on cross sectoral literature on the challenges of community ownership cost differences are attributed to six facets of an organisation or project internal processes internal knowledge and skills perceived local legitimacy of the project perceived external legitimacy of the organisation investor motivation and expectations and finally project scale these facets impact not only development costs but also project development times and the probability that projects pass certain critical stages in the development process using survey based and secondary cost data on community and commercial projects in the uk a model is developed to show the overall impact of cost time and risk differences on the value of a hypothetical 500 kw onshore wind project the results show that the main factors accounting for differences are higher pre planning costs and additional risks born by community projects and suggest that policy interventions may be required to place community owned projects on a level playing field with commercial projects

politics and the rescue of insolvent savings and loans before 1989 the results presented in this paper are consistent with those predicted by public choice economists who believe that regulatory agencies represent the interests of their controlling congressional committees membership on committees is not random congressmen seek committee assignments where they can represent the interests of their constituency congressmen from states where financial institutions are significant will seek membership on their respective banking committees once on those committees congressmen will seek to protect and promote their own constituency in the case of the savings and loan industry insolvent savings and loans received benefits from staying in operation these savings and loans gained another chance to gamble for resurrection being shut down or placed in a management consignment program did not give this option the results presented in our paper indicate that participation in one of the rescue programs is not random savings and loans in states with political power representation on the senate banking committee are less likely to be resolved

economic principles and incentives structure management and funding of agricultural research in the united states the problems faced by public agricultural research and land grant system in the us is discussed in the context of its response to public pressure and criticism several proposals are put forward to address these problems which are related to the following issues grant funding versus formula funding breakdown of organized science in agriculture privatization of the land grant system harnessing the efficiencies of competition in public agricultural research and long term social productivity modelling

on the political economy of guest worker programs in agriculture guest workers have provided a source of agricultural labor supply in many countries recent legislative proposals on immigration reform in the united states have renewed discussions about the role of guest worker programs and highlighted the arguments for and against such programs even within the agricultural sector there has not been strong broad based support for an expansion in the number of guest workers a model is developed that considers competing interests between commodity groups horticulture crops and grain crops to explain this lack of support and then a series of simulations are conducted to highlight the possible economic effects of an expanded guest worker program results suggest that an increase in the labor supply would have much larger economic impacts for horticultural producers and firms in the supporting input markets furthermore under some conditions simulation outcomes show how an increase in the labor supply may lead to small revenue losses for both producers and input suppliers in grain markets

technological learning and renewable energy costs implications for us renewable energy policy abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between current renewable energy technology costs and cumulative production research development and demonstration expenditures and other institutional influences combining the theoretical framework of learning by doing and developments in learning by searching with the fields of organizational learning and institutional economics offers a complete methodological framework to examine the underlying capital cost trajectory when developing electricity cost estimates used in energy policy planning models sensitivities of the learning rates for global wind and solar photovoltaic technologies to changes in the model parameters are tested the implications of the results indicate that institutional policy instruments play an important role for these technologies to achieve cost reductions and further market adoption

governing community energy feed in tariffs and the development of community wind energy schemes in the united kingdom and germany this paper analyses the development of community energy in the uk by comparing it to germany in relation to decentralisation scales and ownership structures particularly of wind energy varying approaches to energy generation at the community scale provide interesting insights into the impact of policy innovation as well as the capacity of national energy frameworks to foster socially innovative engagement practices beyond the purely technological diffusion of innovations by examining interactions between technological and social innovations with the help of a qualitative analysis opportunities for potential generators not traditionally engaged in energy generation to tap into these innovation systems are analysed this paper suggests that greater commitment to diversification beyond the implementation of policy measures such as the feed in tariff is required to provide communities with the capacity to develop new generation practices in terms of scale and ownership the uk in particular is struggling to protect these new generation practices which allow communities to derive benefits facilitated by specific energy policy measures according to their potential it concludes by indicating areas where niche protection might need to be expanded if community energy is to play a greater role in the uk s ambitious transition to a low carbon economy

the political economy of resale price maintenance although many economists argue that resale price maintenance rpm enhances the efficiency of distribution systems rpm has proven politically unpalatable opposition to rpm arises primarily from concern that it raises prices an empirical judgment based on comparisons of prices in rpm states with prices in free trade non rpm jurisdictions we develop a model of rpm pricing that shows that prices chosen by manufacturers under universal rpm are close to those chosen without rpm manufacturers pay for dealer services through lowered wholesale prices when jurisdictions are mixed manufacturers select compromise wholesale prices and retail prices in rpm jurisdictions exceed those in free trade states we use the theoretical results as a basis for the analysis of the evolution of political attitudes toward rpm

budgetary policy with unified and decentralized appropriations authority the divestiture of the house appropriations committee in the1880 s has received considerable attention of an empiricalnature this paper presents a formal model of legislativedecisionmaking using a common agency formulation to representinterest group lobbying of legislators this framework is usedto analyze the effects of decentralizing appropriationsauthority the conditions under which decentralization leadsto higher spending are characterized it is argued that theconventional view that divestiture caused higher levels ofspending only holds if decentralization created barriers tolobbying and political bargaining across different committees in addition the role of specialized committee knowledge isexamined

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

ideological conviction and persuasion in the rent seeking society abstract the paper develops a model of rent seeking in a democratic political context where voting as well as rent seeking matters in this context the paper demonstrates that voter ideology is a constraint on the rent seeking game as well as a possible avenue of rent seeking in a setting where there are both rent seeking and ideological interest groups rent seekers can free ride on the efforts of ideologues which tends to reduce rent seeking effort in a setting where complementary economic and ideological interest groups coordinate their efforts both rent seeking and ideological conflict tend to increase

pricing and regulating affect environmental ethics effluent charges and tradeable permits are economically efficient but rarely used a new explanation for this discrepancy is offered pricing may crowd out environmental ethics in the pricing and via spillovers also in non pricing sectors pricing may therefore increase pollution providing a reason why decision makers tend to reject environmental pricing five propositions showing the conditions for counterproductive effects are advanced they are consistent with available empirical evidence regulation by setting standards and subsidies damage environmental ethics less than pricing because pollution is condoned damaging environmental ethics may prevent political action in favor of the environment

voting and paying for public goods an application of the theory of the core abstract let any coalition with a majority of all voters have the power to choose the quantities of public goods under rule i a majority coalition bears a cost of its decision that is proportional to its size under rule ii it must bear the whole cost of its decision thus rule i imposes costs on minorities although they have no power to choose the quantities of public goods while rule ii allows goods to have some attributes of semiprivate goods it is shown that a nonempty core under rule i implies a nonempty core under rule ii but not conversely necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of the properties of the von neumann morgenstern characteristic function are given

the theory of economic regulation and public choice and the determinants of public sector bargaining legislation in this study we used the theory of economic regulation and public choice to derive a model to explain the pattern of public sector bargaining laws among the states we find this type of legislation is influenced by the following demand factors 1 the extent of public sector union membership which represents the interest group hypothesis has a positive influence on pro union legislation 2 the extent of employer opposition to unions as measured by unfair labor practice charges against employers in representation elections has a negative effect on bargaining laws 3 two taste variables the salaries of public employees and the percent of nonwhite employment in the state have a positive influence on these laws a result which will be surprising to many people is that the extent of private sector union membership has no significant influence on the passage of public sector bargaining legislation

can resale price maintenance and franchise fees correct sub optimal levels of retail service abstract this paper examines resale price maintenance by a monopoly manufacturer who sells its product through monopolistically competitive retailers the retailers also provide service but there is an externality in its provision if the manufacturer sets only a wholesale price the externality results in too little service and the addition of rpm will not correct this maximum rpm is used only to correct the successive monopoly problem with no effect on service however if the manufacturer can also set a franchise fee too little service arises when the externality is large minimum rpm will correct this increasing both profits and consumer surplus this partially confirms the telser 1960 argument for rpm when the externality is small retailers provide too much service and the vertical externality argument is invalid these results suggest that the insights from simple vertical models may not generalize to models which allow other dimensions of non price competition among retailers

demographic structure and the political economy of education subsidies this paper investigates the politico economic impact of a society s age structure on the extent of public funding of education education subsidies serve to internalize positive spillovers of human capital investment but redistribute resources from the working old to the non working young thus creating a conflict of interest between the two generations the political process is characterized by a representative democracy

the bias in favor of pro tariff lobbies abstract we show that the probability of success of the pro tariff lobby defined as a decreasing function of the ratio of consumer loss to producer gain rent generated by the tariff rises with the tariff under very general conditions this appears as an exception to becker s view that less distortionary measures tend to be adopted over their more distortionary counterparts we then provide a micro foundation for our probability definition using the imperfectly discriminating lobbying framework

the nature of occupational unemployment rates in the united states hysteresis or structural this article provides new evidence on the nature of occupational differences in unemployment dynamics which is relevant for the debate between the structural or hysteresis hypotheses we develop a procedure that permits us to test for the presence of a structural break at unknown date our approach allows the investigation of a broader range of persistence than the 0 1 paradigm about the order of integration usually implemented for testing the hypothesis of hysteresis in occupational unemployment in almost all occupations we find support for both the structuralist and the hysteresis hypotheses but stress the importance of estimating the degree of persistence of seasonal shocks along with the degree of long run persistence on raw data without applying seasonal filters indeed hysteresis appears to be underestimated when data are initially adjusted using traditional seasonal filters

a tale of two cities the political economy of local investment climates in indonesia abstract there is little doubt that protecting property rights reducing corruption and improving public services are desirable long term objectives for all countries but are such institutional prescriptions sufficient or even necessary to achieve investment and growth by exploring the political economy of the cities of solo and manado in indonesia this article shows that relationship based rather than rule based cooperation between government leaders and local firms can provide an effective mechanism to boost investment and improve local investment climates our findings challenge the conventional wisdom that impartial rule based economic governance is a precondition for investment although it suggests that the creation of such institutions may make growth more sustainable and equitable in the medium and long term

instrument choice political reform and economic welfare the purpose of this paper is to formally examine the effect of placing constraints such as the line item veto or a balanced budget amendment on legislative behavior there are two basic findings that emerge from the analysis first constraints on one type of instrument such as spending will in general result in more widespread use of other kinds of instruments such as regulation second it is naive to conclude that constraints on legislative behavior will promote economic efficiency and or reduce the growth of government the primary contribution of the paper is to suggest how changes in the political environment can affect instrument choice economic welfare and the size of government

random errors dirty information and politics rational voters assessments of candidates and policy proposals are unbiased but affected by random errors clean information decreases these errors while dirty information increases them in politics most voting procedures weigh random individual errors asymmetrically thus such errors do not counterbalance one another in the aggregate they systematically affect politics this illuminates the roles of political propaganda and interest groups it helps to explain various puzzles in public choice e g the frequent use of inefficient policy instruments institutional conditions are identified that shape the aggregate impact of individual errors and the politicians incentives to produce dirty information

rent seeking market structure and growth we study the role of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship in economic growth in a setting where firms compete in both economic and political markets specifically firms compete for market share through cost reducing technological innovation and they vie for influence over government transfer policy through rent seeking activities we find that rent seeking affects growth in two ways it allows firms to ignore economic competition leading to less innovation and it alters the number of firms that are supported in equilibrium the former effect is negative while the latter is ambiguous we show how these effects depend on various characteristics of economic and political markets

appropriation violent enforcement and transaction costs a critical survey this paper focuses on the extension of transaction costs to appropriative activity and coercive power in the property rights approach it has been argued that including the costs of appropriation and violent enforcement in transaction costs is based on the assumption that coaseian bargaining can be extended to any institutional scenario i e voluntary as well as coercive exchange however voluntary transactions cannot capture the logic of coercive power this means that the assumption of an efficient political market is not valid and that the political coase theorem lacks the logical consistency to provide a cornerstone for political theory

social impacts of community renewable energy projects findings from a woodfuel case study there is much current interest in the potential of community based renewable energy projects to contribute to transition towards low carbon energy systems as well as displacing fossil fuel consumption by increasing renewable energy generation projects are expected to have a range of social impacts which may result in additional positive sustainability outcomes these include potential to increase acceptance of renewable energy developments awareness of renewable and sustainable energy technologies and issues uptake of low carbon technologies and sustainable pro environmental behaviours to date however there has been little investigation of whether and how these impacts occur this paper presents results from qualitative research investigating the social impacts of a community woodfuel project as experienced by project participants and other local stakeholders findings show projects can raise awareness of renewable energy technologies and increase uptake of renewables overall the case study project successfully changed the local social context for development of woodfuel heating reducing risk for all involved in the future development of this sector particularly in the immediate locality there was some evidence of increased engagement with wider sustainability issues but this was limited to direct participants suggesting local projects need to be supported by wider systemic change to maximise impacts

inflation bankruptcy default premia and the stock market in this paper we explore some of the possibilities and argue that in the absence of index linked loans higher inflation implies higher liquidation rates and default premia this would also be one possible reason why higher inflation would depress share values our evidence also suggests that the modigliani and cohn 1979 valuation errors hypothesis is extremely important in order to see why higher inflation might lead to more bankruptcies consider the following example suppose that the real interest rate p is i and that a firm has borrowed iooo if there is no inflation the firm s interest payments are io now suppose that inflation p rises to io and that the nominal interest rate r is given by the formula i r i p i fi then r rises to i i i and total interest payments to i i i hence at a time when revenue has risen by only io interest payments rise elevenfold and this creates cashflow problems for the firm index linked debt would avoid this problem because the principal could be indexed and would rise to i ioo leaving the firm to only pay li i in interest

are government transfers efficient an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis the efficient redistribution hypothesis says that no available government policies are pareto superior to observed government policies efficient redistribution from government policy is a central tenet of much recent theoretical and applied political economy literature in this paper limitations of previous attempts to test the efficient redistribution hypothesis are discussed and an alternative test of the efficient redistribution hypothesis that uses vector optimization theory and bootstrap methodology is presented

transaction costs institutional design and the separation of powers abstract the internal organization of the government can be used as a constraint on the capture of political decision makers in a setting where multiple interest groups try to influence policy outcomes centralization i e the choice of a single agency dealing with all interest groups is costly because it induces a better coordination of their influences the choice of specialized agencies is better because it increases the overall transaction costs of capture making agencies more immune to capture by interest groups more generally we discuss how an institutional design relying on separation of powers among specialized agencies may improve policy outcomes

shrouded costs of government the political economy of state and local public pensions abstract why do public sector workers receive so much of their compensation in the form of pensions and other benefits this paper presents a political economy model in which politicians compete for taxpayers and government employees votes by promising compensation packages but some voters cannot evaluate every aspect of promised compensation if pension packages are shrouded so that public sector workers better understand their value than ordinary taxpayers then compensation will be highly back loaded in equilibrium the welfare of public sector workers could be improved holding total public sector costs constant if they received higher wages and lower pensions centralizing pension determination has two offsetting effects on generosity more state level media attention helps taxpayers better understand pension costs and that reduces pension generosity but a larger share of public sector workers will vote within the jurisdiction which increases pension generosity a short discussion of pensions in two decentralized states california and pennsylvania and two centralized states massachusetts and ohio suggests that centralization appears to have modestly reduced pensions but as the model suggests this is unlikely to be universal

a policy preference function for government intervention in the u s wheat market this paper estimates a policy preference function that explains the government s choices of target prices government held wheat stocks and public wheat research funding the policy preference function depends on producers surplus consumers surplus and budget expenditures an important innovation in this paper is the inclusion of interactions between public research expenditures and other public policy variables results indicate that the government places a premium of 25 to 45 on the welfare of wheat producers of relative to budget expenditures while wheat consumers welfare is discounted as much as 50 relative to budget expenditures the purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation of government commodity programs stock accumulations and research expenditures in the u s wheat sector the explanation is based on a policy preference function ppf that depends on producers surplus consumers surplus and budget expenditures it is assumed that target prices reductions in or additions to government stocks and public research expenditures are chosen to maximize the policy preference function the central contribution of the paper is the estimation of a function that is consistent with the observed government interventions in the u s wheat market that is the paper explains the observed target prices government sales and public research expenditures as rational behavior by a government which seeks to maximize the estimated policy preference function the approach in this paper is based on the political interest group theories of peltzman and becker applications of these ideas to agriculture include rausser and freebairn s description of the beef industry gardner s 1985 analysis

the economics of special interest politics the case of the tariff this paper investigates the interaction of politicians and special interest lobbies the goal is to model the equilibrium levels of redistributive policies such as taxes subsidies tariffs and regulatory decisions the model is applied throughout to the setting of tariffs by contributing to political campaigns special interest lobbies generate economic returns higher tariffs generate revenue for import competing industries through higher product prices higher milk support prices raise dairy farm income and so forth the lobby invests to maximize these net economic returns in evaluating their chances of election politicians weigh the favorable effects of special interest money against the unfavorable association with the lobby and the social cost of the redistributive policy section i explores the lobby s problem it describes a formalization of mancur olson s discussion of the voluntary provision of public goods and optimal contributions by lobbies to political campaigns section ii describes determination of the equilibrium tariff positions of each politician in a political campaign

is there a case for community based equity participation in scottish on shore wind energy production gaps in evidence and research needs abstract this paper considers the potential rural development benefits of community ownership or co ownership or equity participation of on shore wind energy developments and argues for further research to assess the case for enhanced policy support for such ownership structures previous authors have argued that if communities are given a stake in renewables enterprises this will support the scottish government s community empowerment agenda increase economic activity in rural scotland and provide substantial benefits to rural communities others have argued that community ownership schemes may decrease community resistance to on shore wind developments and set beneficiary communities on a low carbon development pathway through stimulating energy citizenship however empirical evidence to support all of these claims remains limited focussing on scotland where the growth of on shore wind has been strong in recent years the paper reviews the current policy environment and governance context before reviewing evidence in relation to the various arguments for community ownership or shared equity in the case of on shore wind energy it identifies several areas where further research is urgently required to guide policy makers so as to ensure that both rural development objectives and renewable energy targets are met

trends in aggregate concentration in the united states i assemble two rarely used data sets to measure aggregate concentration in the u s in the 1980s and 1990s despite the merger waves of those decades aggregate concentration declined in the 1980s and the early 1990s but rose modestly in the late 1990s the levels at the end of the decade were at or below the levels of the late 1980s or early 1990s the average size of firm and the relative importance of larger size classes of firms increased however gini coefficients for employment and payroll shares of companies showed moderate but steady increases from 1988 through 1999

self regulation taxation and public voluntary environmental agreements an increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the public voluntary agreement va in which government offers technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals prior papers treat such agreements as a superior low cost instrument that can be used to preempt a threat of traditional inefficient regulation we present a more general model in which public vas may instead be weak tools used when political opposition makes environmental taxes infeasible we explore the conditions under which taxes public vas and unilateral industry actions are to be expected and the welfare implications of the various instruments notably we also show that welfare may be reduced by the introduction of public vas 2002 elsevier b v all rights reserved

hysteresis and instability in the natural rate of unemployment in this paper it is pointed out that the long run phillips curve genus contains upward and downward sloping species as well as the vertical species two models are used in one the rate of inflation helps determine the natural rate of unemployment as proposed by friedman in the other the process of moving from one inflation rate to another helps shape the natural rate according to the hysteresis effect proposed by phelps in both cases the resulting models are unstable implying that a vertical long run phillips curve will not be regained if disturbed

regulation competition and liberalization in many countries throughout the world regulators are struggling to determine whether and how to introduce competition into regulated industries this essay examines the complexities involved in the liberalization process while stressing the importance of case specific analyses this essay distinguishes liberalization policies that generally are procompetitive from corresponding anticompetitive liberalization policies

explaining price policy bias in agriculture the calculus of support maximizing politicians a model is developed to explain observed patterns of policy intervention in agriculture we analyze the interaction between political support seeking politicians and supportsupplying citizens society consists of a rural and urban group we determine the effects on transfers of relative group size disparities in income endowments between groups and the deadweight loss of redistribution the framework advanced is an alternative to that of the interest group model and is used to explain for example why the export sectors in developing countries are taxed more and why the united kingdom is less adamant for higher price supports than germany

allocation of goods by lottery i introduction many goods such as hunting permits oil drilling leases cellular telephone licenses and rights to fishing berths as well as some buds such as the military draft jury duty and who is to be thrown overboard on a sinking life raft are or have been allocated by lotteries in neo classical welfare economics the random distribution of property rights does not affect allocative efficiency as long as transferability is allowed and the transactions costs are non prohibitive lottery allocations however are generally not transferable thus lottery allocations are inefficient since the goods are not ultimately allocated to the users who value them the most a number of authors such as aubert 1959 fienberg 1971 eckhoff 1989 and elster 1989 36 122 have argued that lotteries are chosen as the allocative instrument because it represents a fair or just means of allocating the goods rawls 1971 374 and eckhoff 1989 have noted that where it is impractical to divide the goods equally among those who desire them a lottery serves to satisfy both the requirement that the process be fair and that the allocation problem be resolved relatively costlessly elster 1989 113 however notes that lotteries are not the only fair allocation mechanism for example he points out that in jewish ethics the problem of allocating an indivisible good such as life saving resources is resolved by denying it to everyone even economists would probably prefer a lottery to this resolution the fairness hypothesis has a rich history in the old testament lotteries are deemed a fair way of allocating goods such as the inheritance of land numbers 33 54 lotteries are also used to allocate bads in perhaps the most famous biblical example of use of lots jonah was chosen by lot to be sacrificed to appease god who had brought a storm that threatened to wreck the ship the story goes that the lot selected jonah because he was shirking his duties elsewhere and should not have even been on the vessel jonah 1 6 1 notice that fair here is taken to mean just given this theological foundation it is not surprising that the lottery has seen frequent use in legal history as well one of the most interesting cases occurred in swedish and finnish trials in the 17th and 18th centuries in cases where a man was murdered by a mob lotteries were used to allocate punishment since the law required an eye for an eye no more and no less eckhoff says that if it was impossible to ascertain which of them had dealt the mortal blow the courts determined that one of the responsible parties be sentenced to death and that the person be selected by lottery 1989 19 a similar use of lotteries occurs in military history to deal with cases of mass desertion in roman armies every tenth man was executed decimated and the remainder pardoned in more modern times the lottery has been used in u s law 2 first of course is the use of a lottery to decide who shall sit on a jury a connection between fairness and lotteries however has also appeared in the common law in an 1842 case u s v holmes which has been discussed by fienberg 1971 eckhoff 1989 and elster 1989 a ship sank in a heavy storm and the lone surviving life raft was in grave danger of sinking the crew threw overboard fourteen male passengers in an effort to save the rest when back in port after being rescued a crewman named holmes the only crew member who had not disappeared upon arrival to port was brought to trial for the deaths of the passengers the court ruled that the non essential members of the crew should have been thrown overboard before any passengers and if that was not sufficient then passengers should have been selected by lot which is the fairest mode elster 1989 65 the fact that a human life presumably a large cost was at stake ex post did not affect the decision 3 the environmental economics literature contains a number of references to the social preferences for and benefits of lottery allocations

competition policy in the united states an overview this paper provides a summary of the basic policies in the united states that affect the state of competition in u s markets much of the paper focuses on antitrust policy but a substantial fraction of the paper is devoted to regulatory policies for both types of policies the paper explains the basic structures of the policies and also provides discussions of recent developments copyright 1993 by oxford university press

the influence on congress by the thrift industry abstract the investigation of the influential role of the thrift industry on congress as demonstrated by voting behavior on regulatory policy changes in the eighties is the focus of this study specifically we search for the degree to which the inadequately capitalized component of the thrift industry has captured the house of representatives we examine the influence on congress by the thrift industry using the votes by the house of representatives associated with three different legislative acts the garn st germain act the competitive equality banking act and the financial institutions reform recovery and enforcement act addressing the thrift crisis using a multi chotomous voting model we identify traditional public choice variables that could influence the probability of voting for legislation to capture the variation of the thrifts interests we consider a series of financial variables motivated by the thrift literature of failure prediction models these variables allow us to investigate the influences from the health of the congressional district s thrifts their asset composition characteristics and their reliance on regulatory forbearance

balancing environmental protection and energy production in the federal hydropower licensing process the u s federal energy regulatory commission ferc must balance environmental protection of riverine resources with the nation s growing demand for power production every time it issues a hydroelectric license this paper models the bureaucratic agency s decision making process in issuing these licenses data on nearly 500 hydro power licenses issued from 1983 to 2005 are utilized it is discovered that legislative and institutional constraints are by far the largest influences on ferc s regulatory decisions implying that if the current allocation of surface water in the united states is considered inefficient the most effective way to alter this allocation is by passing new legislation or by implementing institutional reform at ferc

an economic theory of vertical restraints vertical restraints imposed by manufacturers on the prices locations and sales of retail firms represent a puzzling departure from the simple price mediated exchange of conventional markets in this article we analyze the theoretical basis for these restraints in a setting where retailers inform consumers and are imperfectly competitive and where a manufacturer has some monopoly power we identify three potential externalities affecting retailers decisions these externalities lead to the failure of simple uniform price contracts to coordinate the incentives of retailers with the objective of maximizing combined manufacturer and retailer profits we identify the packages of vertical restraints that are minimally sufficient under various conditions to neutralize the externalities and to achieve the joint profit maximum

interest group politics under majority rule abstract we develop a model of interest group politics in which the groups and coalitions that arise and the form of redistributive policies sought are jointly determined the model generates three key results first programs intended to reduce income inequality are more likely to involve direct payments than are programs that redistribute wealth across groups with similar incomes second nonequalizing redistribution is unlikely unless the various participants in the political process face significantly different political and economic costs of obtaining transfers third many policies that induce asymmetries among interest groups also impose significant deadweight costs stable nonequalizing redistribution will therefore tend to involve indirect and economically inefficient methods of transferring income

the public finance potential of community forestry in nepal abstract this paper explores the public finance potential of community forestry in nepal on the basis of a comprehensive dataset on forest revenue and expenditures of 41 randomly selected community forest user groups cfug from gorkha district the results show that cfug income distribution is highly skewed the high and low income one third of cfugs in the sample account for 74 3 and 4 1 of the total income respectively cfug income depends on age of the cfug institution cfug membership size and in particular on whether the community forest features the valuable timber species sal shorea robusta c f gaertn and or chir pine pinus roxburghii sarg cfug expenditure pattern is also highly skewed with 85 2 of all public services and infrastructure financed by the one third high income cfugs cfug financing of public services and infrastructure is shaped by income management costs and socio political and contextual factors such as whether the cfug jurisdiction covers several wards and the presence of existing public infrastructure in the community finally results show that the amounts of revenue generated through community forestry are negligible when compared to households private gains from extraction of products from community forests indicating a limited potential for redistribution of benefits under the current taxation system

a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence this paper presents a theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence political equilibrium depends on the efficiency of each group in producing pressure the effect of additional pressure on their influence the number of persons in different groups and the deadweight cost of taxes and subsidies an increase in deadweight costs discourages pressure by subsidized groups and encourages pressure by taxpayers this analysis unifies the view that governments correct market failures with the view that they favor the politically powerful both are produced by the competition for political favors

can hysteresis explain different labour market operations between europe and the united states this paper offers an analysis of the labour market operation in europe and the united states during 1970 1985 it appears that the labour market developments in europe are more characterized by hysteresis than in the united states simulation results indicate that the unemployment rate in europe would have reached the level of that in the united states in 1985 when wage formation had been more similar

studying the role of political competition in the evolution of government size over long horizons here we argue for the use of cointegration and error correction analysis to combine economic factors that are nonstationary with political factors that are stationary into an empirical model of the evolution of public policy over long periods the approach is applied to disentangle the contributions of economics and politics to the evolution of public expenditure by the government of canada over 130 years political competition emerges as the primary political factor affecting government size

donors and domestic policy makers two worlds in agricultural policy making in recent decades many developing countries have moved from taxing their agricultural sector to subsidizing it a phenomenon referred to as overshooting using ghana and uganda as case study countries this study aims to contribute to explaining this phenomenon by examining the role of policy beliefs the study is based on the advocacy coalition framework and relies on discourse analysis as analytical method in depth interviews with policy actors in both countries served as empirical basis a quantitative analysis of the transcripts was used to identify different discourse coalitions and a qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the discourses and identify their underlying policy beliefs the paper identified far reaching differences in the agricultural policy beliefs between domestic policy makers and donors regarding the question what does it actually take to develop small holder agriculture the evidence from this analysis highlights the role that divergent policy beliefs can play in influencing agricultural policy choices

politics and the effectiveness of foreign aid abstract critics of foreign aid programs have long argued that poverty reflects government failure in this paper i test predictions for aid effectiveness based on an analytical framework that relates aid effectiveness to political regimes i find that aid does not significantly increase investment nor benefit the poor as measured by improvements in human development indicators but it does increase the size of government the impact of aid does not vary according to whether recipient governments are liberal democratic or highly repressive but liberal political regimes and democracies ceteris paribus have on average 30 lower infant mortality than the least free regimes this may be due to greater empowerment of the poor under liberal regimes even though the political elite continues to receive the benefits of aid programs an implication is that short term aid targeted to support new liberal regimes may be a more successful means of reducing poverty than current programs

estimates of the variance of u s inflation based upon the arch model it is generally agreed that the unpredictability of future inflation is a major component of the welfare loss associated with inflation perfectly predicted inflation might induce some costs through institutional rigidities governmental interference and transaction costs but in the long run these should be rather minimal as these institutions adopt various forms of indexing when inflation is unpredictable risk averse economic agents will incur a loss even if prices and quantities are perfectly flexible in all markets inflation is a measure of the relative price of goods today and goods tomorrow thus uncertainty in tomorrow s price impairs the efficiency of today s allocation decisions friedman in his nobel lecture 8 argues convincingly that higher variability of inflation would lead to decreased output ceteris paribus he then conjectures that higher rates of inflation are generally associated with higher variability of inflation and presumably greater uncertainty about future rates if this is true then higher rates of inflation would also be associated with low levels of output which implies a positively sloped phillips curve this paper uses a new statistical technique arch to estimate the conditional mean and variance of inflation from u s time series data the main finding is that the variance of inflation in the seventies was only slightly greater than in the sixties

separating economic from political influences on government decisions abstract the public interest theory is a poor predictor of government decisions relative to interest group theories but a sophisticated public interest theory is a more serious alternative to the former testing the sophisticated theory s predictions is problematic however when public interest is coincident with an interest group s interests a four step method is developed that disentangles public interest and interest group interests by separating economic from political incentives applying the method to the national forest service decisions about wilderness designations indicates whether interest groups were successful in influencing allocation decisions and whether allocation decisions were in the public interest

transition pathways for a uk low carbon electricity future abstract achieving long term targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions such as the uk s legally binding target of reducing its emissions by 80 by 2050 will require a transition in systems for meeting and shaping energy service demands involving radical substitution to low carbon supply technologies and improvements in end use energy efficiency this paper describes the development and high level analysis of a set of transition pathways to a uk low carbon electricity system explaining key features of the core pathways developed and the distinctiveness and value of the approach the pathways use an action space concept to explore the dynamic interactions between choices made by actors which are influenced by the competing governance framings or logics that different actors pursue the paper sets out three core transition pathways market rules central co ordination and thousand flowers in which market government and civil society logics respectively dominate it summarises the key technological and institutional changes in these pathways and the roles of actors in bringing these about this leads to an identification of the key risks to the realisation of each of the pathways and of the challenges for individuals businesses social movements and policy makers in taking action to bring them about and sustain them

money and price dispersion in the united states this paper reports an empirical test of a price dispersion equation using data on the u s after world war ii the equation derived elsewhere from a version of the partial informationlocalized market models relates price dispersion to the magnitude of the aggregate shocks in order to test the model a price dispersion series is computed using annual wholesale price indexes and weights for the period 1948 76 the data on money shocks are the unanticipated money growth series estimated by barro the tests also include a measure of aggregate real disturbances from the theoretical point of view the results are negative they do not detect an effect of money shocks on price dispersion but support the predicted effect of real shocks

the political economy of farmland ownership regulations and land prices one of the most ubiquitous forms of agricultural regulation is a restriction on farmland ownership one canadian example of a farmland ownership restriction is the saskatchewan farm security act fsa passed in 1974 the purpose of this article is to explain using a political economy framework why the fsa was implemented and to estimate the effect of the fsa on saskatchewan farmland values a present value pv model is used to estimate the relationship between land values rents and the regulation the hausman endogeneity test reveals that the regulation variable is endogenous with the land price the sign of the regulation variable is negative which fits with the theory i e the more stringent the regulation the lower the land value we estimate that the regulation lowered saskatchewan farmland prices by an average of 4 to 34 us acre depending on whether ordinary least squares ols or two stage least squares tsls is employed in the estimation over the period of 1974 2001