understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

profitability and productivity changes in the korean electricity industry abstract the korean electricity industry saw significant changes following the reform in april 2001 until the last decade the industry was monopolized by the korea electric power corporation kepco a state owned vertically integrated company the 2001 reform divided kepco s power generation division into six power generation companies gencos with the aim of improving efficiency and introducing competition in the electricity industry in this study we used capital total factor productivity ktfp to analyze profit changes from fixed input capital and an index number profit decomposition inpd to examine the sources of the profit changes we investigate the industry thoroughly from three points of view the overall industry over time the power generation sector by company and the transmission and distribution sectors of the korea electric power corporation kepco next we measured how the profits from productivity growth were distributed to consumers fuel suppliers employees and company owners the results suggest that a more reasonable price system for both wholesale and consumer prices needs to be implemented prior to the privatization and deregulation of the korean electricity industry

a nonparametric cost approach to scale efficiency starting with farrell fieldhouse 1962 a host of notiparametric models have been developed for calculation of scale efficiency a common property of these models is that they are specified in terms of input output data duality theory has taught us that technological characteristics may be analyzed from either the primal or the dual cost side the purpose of this paper is to introduce a nonparametric dual method of calculating scale efficiency

primal and dual capacity utilization an application to productivity measurement in the u s automobile industry capacity utilization measures have traditionally been constructed as indexes of actual as compared to potential output this potential or capacity output y can be represented within an economic model of the firm as the tangency between the short and long run average cost curves economic theoretical measures of capacity utilization cu can then be characterized as y y where y is the realized level of output these quantity or primal cu measures allow for economic interpretation they provide explicit inference as to how changes in exogenous variables affect cu additional information for analyzing deviations from capacity production can be obtained by assessing the dual cost of the gap in this article the definitions and representations of primal output and dual cost cu measures are formalized within a dynamic model of a monopolistic firm as an illustration of this approach to characterizing cu measures a model is estimated for the u s automobile industry 1959 1980 and primal and dual cu

direct versus implicit superlative index number formulae economists and statisticians who construct estimates of total factor productivity or who estimate production functions or systems of consumer demand functions are often forced to aggregate subsets of their data in order to perform this aggregation an index number formula is generally used a price index p po pl x xi is defined to be a function p of the prices of the n commodities to be aggregated in periods 0 and 1 p pll pno and pl pl pn respectively and of the corresponding quantities utilized during periods 0 and 1 x xi xno andx1 xi xn1 respectively a quantity index q p0 pl x xl is defined to be another function q of the price and quantity vectors for the two periods generally we assume that p and q satisfy fisher s 1922 weak factor reversal test

evaluation of the importance of fisheries management objectives using choice experiments abstract fisheries management is characterised by multiple objectives decision making is often impeded by different stakeholders placing different importance on these objectives while compromise solutions are often achieved more efficient solutions might be possible if the preference structure of stakeholders was known in this paper the potential of choice modelling for evaluating the importance of potentially conflicting fisheries management objectives is examined the fisheries of the english channel are used as an example results from a survey of the key stakeholders in these fisheries are presented showing that regional employment and sustainable yields are of key concern overall the importance between objectives can be measured appropriately and the methodology can offer useful information to the management process

the norwegian winter herring fishery a story of technological progress and stock collapse in the 1970s herring stocks in the northeast atlantic were nearly fished to extinction this collapse is usually attributed to technological advances we investigate the empirical impact of technological shocks on herring stocks we show evidence that the power block was the principal factor in the demise of the stock we also look at the sensitivity of catch to stock size and technological shocks we measure a significant stock effect in the 1950s contrary to what we expect a simulation model indicates that this could have been caused by an increasing range of the fishing fleet due to ongoing technological progress

disentangling effects of policy reform and environmental changes in the norwegian coastal fishery for cod we construct a detailed bioeconomic model of the norwegian coastal cod fishery this fishery has been open access up to the policy change during the cod crisis of 1989 1990 to answer to what extent the subsequent increase in biomass and profits was due to improved management we isolate the effect of environmental variability projecting stock and harvest forward in the counterfactual scenario of no intervention we show that the policy had a small positive impact on biomass but a pronounced positive effect on profit the main drivers of profit gains are increases in productivity and savings in fuel and labor costs jel d23 q22

production economics and optimal stock size in a north atlantic fishery this paper contains an analysis of a fishery production function and an empirical analysis of the north sea herring fishery an intertemporal profit function is defined by introducing stock dynamics and the concept of a sole resource manager some new results with respect to the relationship between the optimal stock level and production technology are derived estimates of the optimal stock level for herring are also presented

low income fishermen s willingness to pay for fisheries and watershed management an application of choice experiment to lake tana ethiopia abstract in this paper choice experiment was applied for valuation of lake tana s fishery and watershed two attributes fishing control and lake side plantation were identified as relevant attributes for the choice experiment a monetary attribute payment for fishing permit was also included multinomial and random parameter logit models were used for estimation all the attributes included were significant factors in affecting the probability of choosing an alternative scenario the results suggest that fishermen were more concerned about fishing control as reflected by the higher value they give to fishing control than lake side plantation household income years of education and family size were found to be significant the economic welfare measures we calculated for two scenarios show that fishermen were willing to pay 57 birr us 5 3 per month for a moderate improvement scenario and 93 birr us 8 6 per month for an aggressive scenario for the two attributes

note performance evaluation of state owned enterprises a process perspective state owned enterprises soes have become important instruments of social and economic policy in industrialized mixed economies and in developing countries the use of soes as instruments of public policy and the resulting clashes between these enterprises and private firms on the one hand and government and other controllers on the other are causing concern public committees in different countries as well as international organizations have been searching for positive theory for guidance in handling the multitude of problems related to these enterprises theoretical models have made important contributions to the formalization of certain problems and the classification of the information needed to solve them unfortunately these theoretical models have had little relevance for the solution of important real problems much of the research on soes is concerned with how these enterprises should behave and what should be the product of their operations almost no research has been done on why soes function as they do the paucity of knowledge about the operation of soes stems both from insufficient research effort and from the concern of researchers with formal structures and products of these organizations and not with management behavior or with decision processes the purpose of this paper is to call for research beyond the confines of traditional economics using the tools of management science to obtain insights into the difficult but salient problems of soes

export pricing in state owned and private mnes evidence from the international petroleum market abstract this paper undertakes a comparison of firm conduct examining prices charged for crude oil by state owned and private petroleum companies the literature that compares public and private enterprise has tended to focus on local monopolies and their profitability and technical efficiency the behavior of public and private firms in competition with each other however has received little theoretical and virtually no empirical attention in contrast to the literature this paper presents an industry case study we conduct tests on the differences between prices for crude oil a heterogeneous commodity with no centralized market taking advantage of an unusual micro database of individual import transactions there is little evidence of difference between prices obtained by private and state owned multinational enterprises

itqs firm dynamics and wealth distribution does full tradability increase inequality concerns over the re distributive effects of individual transferable quotas itq s have led to restrictions on their tradability we consider a general equilibrium model with firm dynamics to evaluate the redistributive impact of changing the tradability of itqs a change in tradability would happen for example if permits are allowed to be traded as a separate asset from ownership of an active firm if the property right is associated with ownership of an active firm the permit can be leased in each period but it is not possible to exit the industry and keep the right however allowing the permits to be traded as a separate asset has two effects first it leads to a greater concentration of production in the industry second it directly converts a non tradable asset into a tradable one and this is equivalent to giving a lump sum transfer to all firms the first effect implies a concentration in revenues while the second implies a redistribution of wealth we calibrate our model to match the observed increase in revenue inequality in the northeast multispecies groundfish u s fishery we show that although observed revenue inequality measured by the gini coefficient increases by 12 wealth inequality is reduced by 40

optimal feedback controls comparative evaluation of the cod fisheries in denmark iceland and norway the economic efficiencies of the danish icelandic and norwegian cod fisheries are examined for this purpose nonlinear aggregate models of these fisheries are constructed comparing the calculated optimal harvest and biomass quantities with the actual fisheries provides a measure of the degree of efficiency in these fisheries the comparisons confirm that the cod harvesting policies of these countries have been hugely inefficient in the past it appears that inefficiency has been increasing over the last three to four decades even after tac regulations replaced open access indicating that the management policies adopted by all three countries have failed to cure overfishing the primary purpose of this article is to compare the relative efficiency of past fish harvesting strategies in iceland norway and denmark by the term harvesting policy we mean the harvesting volume each year so efficiency here merely refers to appropriateness of the annual harvesting volumes it does not in particular refer to the relative efficiency of the fishing industries in the three countries we know that maximizing net revenue has not been an objective in any of these fisheries experience shows that the management regimes that were in place for most of the period were highly inefficient and should be expected to produce poor economic results the mere fact that these stocks feature biomass levels far below the maximum sustainable yield level strongly suggests inefficient policies iceland norway and denmark are all major fishing nations harvesting a number of fish species we have chosen to concentrate on cod fishing as this is the single most important fishragnar arnason is professor faculty of economics and business

productivity development in icelandic norwegian and swedish fisheries this article analyses the total factor productivity tfp performance of fisheries in iceland norway and sweden during the period 1973 to 2003 we measure tfp growth using real gross value added as output and capital input labour input and a stock input index based on the major fish stocks in developed neighbouring countries we expect rapid diffusion of fishing technology innovations contributing to productivity convergence in addition innovations in the public regulation and the industrial organization may also have influenced productivity growth during the period we find that iceland had the highest annual tfp growth accounting for stock changes it amounts to 3 while the corresponding figures for sweden and norway are 2 8 and 0 8 respectively despite best practice fishing technologies being widely available we find no evidence of productivity convergence among the three countries

property rights in a fishery regulatory change and firm performance a new method is introduced and applied to the british columbia halibut fishery to analyze changes in productivity of firms harvesting a natural capital stock the index number technique decomposes the contributions of output prices variable input prices fixed inputs and productivity to firm profits adjusted for changes in the natural capital stock an application of the method is given using micro level data from a common pool resource the indexes provide a ready made comparison of all firms to the most profitable firm per unit of resource stock benchmarking with the decompositions also allows firms and regulators to improve overall industry performance by allowing them to analyze what components are contributing most to relative economic profits

hurdle and latent class approaches to serial non participation in choice models in repeated choice modelling studies it is often the case that individuals always select the status quo option although this pattern may reflect considered choices they may also be the result of alternative decisions about whether to participate in the choice process at all alternative methods of dealing with this behaviour each with associated implications for estimates of economic values are presented in particular we consider the alternative strategies of excluding such individuals from the data using hurdle models to explicitly model this group and propose the use of latent class models to endogenously allow for different preference structures an advantage of the latent class approach is that the form of the non participation need not be defined in advance these approaches are considered using uk choice experiment data on food choices where the attributes include genetic modification of food the latent class approach reveals the presence of two forms of non participation in the data

private property and economic efficiency a study of a common pool resource abstract the british columbia halibut fishery provides a natural experiment of the effects of privatizing the commons using firm level data from the fishery 2 years before private harvesting rights were introduced the year they were implemented and 3 years afterward a stochastic frontier is estimated to test for changes in technical allocative and economic efficiency the study indicates that 1 the short run efficiency gains from privatization may take several years to materialize and can be compromised by restrictions on transferability duration and divisibility of the property right 2 substantial long run gains in efficiency can be jeopardized by preexisting regulations and the bundling of the property right to the capital stock and 3 the gains from privatization are not just in terms of cost efficiency but include important benefits in revenue and product form

productivity across industries and countries time series theory and evidence the authors examine whether convergence in aggregate productivity is also occurring at the industry level in fourteen oecd countries from 1970 to 1987 using both cross section and time series methods they find convergence in some sectors such as services however surprisingly the authors find that convergence does not hold for the manufacturing sector decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output they find the service sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross country convergence to the united states the authors develop a new result on the asymptotic normality of panel unit root estimators to formally test within sector convergence copyright 1996 by mit press

research on state owned enterprises introduction the editorial policy of the department on organization analysis performance and design encompasses research on the subject of state owned enterprises the paper managerial strategic behavior in state owned enterprises business and political orientations by dr zif of tel aviv university follows and in the research note performance evaluation of state owned enterprises a process perspective which follows professor aharoni presents the case for conducting research on stage owned enterprises illustrating the complexity of the various problems and their importance it is hoped that other research will follow

productivity change under an individual transferable quota management system this is a scanned version of a published article the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the agricultural and applied economics association the original can be found at http www aaea org publications ajae to the best of our knowledge one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work

technological change and managerial ability evidence from a malaysian artisanal fishery technological progress can improve economic development but its role in the harvest of common resources has received little attention we study the relationship between skill and the use of electronic and mechanical innovations in the productivity of malaysian artisanal fishers surprisingly electronics users do not define the frontier and mechanical winch adopters produced well inside it we show that if technology is a skill substitute rather than a complement then it helps less efficient users catch up to the production frontier policy makers must balance the implications for participation rates and resource depletion against gains for the least skilled participants

growth accounting in a fishery abstract since 1950 the real value of fish catches in norway has about doubled while the number of fishermen has declined by about 85 percent this has made it possible to maintain fishermen s incomes roughly on par with other occupational groups in norway it is investigated to what extent this increase in labor productivity is due to accumulation of capital increasingly abundant fish stocks or technological progress since the capital stock in recent years is not much greater in real terms than in the early 1960s it is tempting to ascribe most of the increase in labor productivity to technical progress this however would leave out the role of fish stocks if stocks have increased over this period this would explain some of what otherwise appears as a technical progress using data on labor capital fish catches and fish stock abundance 1961 2004 the development of total factor productivity is examined ignoring changes in fish stocks total factor productivity is estimated to have increased by 0 8 percent per year accounting for changes in fish stocks raises this to 1 7 4 3 percent per year depending on the importance assigned to stocks as factors of production

linear programming models for firm and industry performance programming models of technology are enjoying a revival in several strands of literature one such strand is the growing literature devoted to the assessment of firm performance based on the work of farrell 1957 and the later popularized by charnes cooper and rhodes 1978 under the name of data envelopment analysis dea for an early programming model see boles 1966 a second strand of literature seeks to model the industry production function and is associated with johansen 1972 fbrsund and hjalmarsson 1987 and aigner and chu 1968 a third strand of literature uses programming techniques such as nonparametric tests of regularity conditions in production see afriat 1972 hanoch and rothschild 1972 diewert and parkan 1983 and varian 1984 one of the purposes of this paper is to examine the relationship between the first two areas i e analysis of firm and industry programming models of technology and performance in order to compare the industry and firm models we restate them in a general programming form and ignore issues of functional form examination of these models in primal and dual form reveals that the industry approach constructs technology from firm data but allows hypothetical reallocation of aggregate resources across firms to yield an industry function the firm models also construct technology from the data on all firms in the sample industry but do not allow for reallocation of inputs across firms this suggests a natural hybrid an industry model which allows for both firm specific inputs and inputs which can be reallocated across firms the paper unfolds as follows we begin by presenting a stylized version of the aigner and chu and johansen models of industry production we

building on poor people s capacities the case of common property resources in india and west africa revised version of a paper commissioned by the international development research centre idrc of canada for a world bank conference on poverty environment growth linkages held in washington dc march 1999

impacts of random noise and specification on estimates of capacity derived from data envelopment analysis abstract data envelopment analysis dea is widely used to estimate the efficiency of firms and has also been proposed as a tool to measure technical capacity and capacity utilization cu random variation in output data can lead to downward bias in dea estimates of efficiency and consequently upward bias in estimates of technical capacity this can be particularly problematic for industries such as agriculture aquaculture and fisheries where the production process is inherently stochastic due to environmental influences this research uses monte carlo simulations to investigate possible biases in dea estimates of technically efficient output and capacity output attributable to noisy data and investigates the impact of using a model specification that allows for variable returns to scale vrs we demonstrate a simple method of reducing noise induced bias when panel data is available we find that dea capacity estimates are highly sensitive to noise and model specification analogous conclusions can be drawn regarding dea estimates of average efficiency

welfare measurement in the household production framework the household production approach to consumer behavior developed from the work of gary becker william gorman and kelvin lancaster has considerable descriptive appeal in modelling the decisions of households the approach derives from the observation that households frequently purchase market goods that do not yield utility directly but are combined to produce commodity service flows which the household values thus observed behavior is determined by household production technology as well as by tastes the advantage of this distinction is that we can pose reasonable hypotheses about characteristics of technology though we rarely possess useful a priori information regarding tastes the putative advantages of the household production approach are questioned on empirical and conceptual grounds by robert pollak and michael wachter 1975 they show that jointness in production or nonconstant returns to scale cause implicit commodity prices to depend on both tastes and technology raising serious econometric difficulties in the estimation of commodity demand functions in addition since commodity prices become functions of the commodity bundle consumed the analogy to traditional demand theory breaks down joint production occurs when a good enters several production processes simultaneously or equivalently when a good in one production process also enters directly into the individual s utility function the most common example is time which provides the context for all production processes and is often associated with the production of several commodities simultaneously since joint production in the household is likely to be pervasive the critique by pollak and wachter cannot be ignored in response to the comment by william barnett pollak and wachter 1977 suggest dispensing with the notion of commodity prices and treating the demand for commodities as a function of goods prices this approach confounds tastes and technology but it eliminates the troublesome concept of commodity prices as parameters when in fact they are likely to be endogenous in this paper we show that results from positive analysis such as the critique by pollak and wachter have implications for the use of the household production framework for welfare analysis the household production function approach has had considerable appeal for measuring welfare effects of public actions in the environmental and natural resource areas gardner brown john charbonneau and michael hay elizabeth wilman yet traditional approaches to welfare measurement are frequently inapplicable we argue that welfare measurement in this framework is complicated by the difficulties of unravelling tastes and technology we extend pollak and wachter s results by demonstrating that marshallian demand functions for commodities cannot be uniquely defined thus marshallian functions cannot be used to derive exact compensated functions in the manner of jerry hausman and of george mckenzie and i f pearce nor can compensating and equivalent variation measures be bounded by marshallian consumer s surplus estimates following robert willig in fact duality results that normally allow us to move between marshallian and hicksian functions are not assistant and associate professors respectively department of agricultural and resource economics university of maryland college park md 20742 this paper is scientific article no a3404 contribution no 6476 of the maryland agricultural experiment station we wish to thank darrell hueth james opaluch v kerry smith and elizabeth wilman for comments on an earlier draft

land tenure and property rights theory and implications for development policy this article explores the nature of property rights systems their evolution and their effect on resource allocation it is argued that certain institutional arrangements for land rights have evolved in order to reduce uncertainty and increase efficiency in credit as well as in land markets of particular relevance to developing countries the article emphasizes the contribution of public sector infrastructure to effective land rights systems an appendix to the article presents a formal model analyzing the effects of security of land rights on land prices the intensity of cultivation and the use of credit empirical evidence from thailand supports several of the propositions derived from the model

using cheap talk as a test of validity in choice experiments abstract in two experiments on the choice of consumer goods the estimated marginal willingness to pay for food is found to be lower in the survey version with cheap talk our test can be seen as a test of hypothetical bias this implies that we cannot reject the hypothesis of a hypothetical bias for marginal wtp in choice experiments

managerial autonomy of state owned enterprises determining factors the present paper reports on managerial autonomy of state owned enterprises soes or its reverse the control which is exerted by government and supervising public authorities on soes first it examines the types of control applied using evidence from a sample of 110 greek soes the paper identifies certain distinct dimensions of control related to strategic business boundary issues pricing decisions resource acquisition and mobilisation issues second environmental and organisational determinants of the control intensity are identified results broadly suggest that the intensity of control as perceived by enterprise managers is i positively related to dependence on the state for resources to enterprise size and to political visibility i e social orientation of product market strategy and ii negatively related to market competition and demand unpredictability an interpretation of the results is attempted drawing on wider organisational social and economic theories policy implications are discussed

search and active learning with correlated information empirical evidence from mid atlantic clam fishermen this paper examines search with active learning and correlated information we first develop a simple model to show how correlation affects the decision to acquire information a unique data set on fishing site choice by mid atlantic clam fishermen is used to test the model predictions results find that clam fishermen search new sites when the catch at familiar sites declines i e when the opportunity cost of gathering information is low and also when catch at familiar sites is on the rise search following a catch decline occurs at spatially distant sites whereas search following a catch increase occurs at nearby sites correlated learning is crucial for explaining the site choice patterns in our data these results provide new insights that may extend to a variety of economic search problems where correlated learning is important

banks responses to deregulation profits technology and efficiency the deregulation of interest rates in the early 1980s raised bank funding costs and lowered profits in response banks raised fees for deposit services reduced branch operating costs and shifted to higher earning assets rates of return did not regain their prederegulation levels until the early 1990s our goal is to decompose the change in bank profits following deregulation into i intemal bank initiated adjustments to the new regulatory structure and ii external contemporaneous changes in banks business environment this decomposition will depend in part on the assumed competitive structure of the banking industry with perfect competition output and input prices are part of the external environment and banks responses are limited to changes in output and input quantities an alternative approach assumes imperfect competition where banks have some control over output prices deposit fees minimum balance requirements and interest rates on certain loans and output quantities and input prices comprise the external environment the altemative model is supported by the data using this model large banks but not smaller banks are found to have relied primarily on changing output prices and input use to mitigate and reverse the negative effects of deregulation on profits the adjustment to deregulation was essentially complete after four years following this additional changes in bank profitability during the late 1980s were primarily due to changes in banks business environment

specification of functional form and the estimation of technical progress the use of the translog functional form to estimate technical progress may result in misleading conclusions alternative analytic functional forms in the demand system approach to measuring technical progress are compared empirically specifically translog normalized quadratic and leontief functional forms are used in combination with linear representations of the time trend variable in the respective demand systems comparisons are made with the fisher quantity index approach to measuring technical progress there is some indication that curvature violations by the translog model can lead to misleading results suggesting a preference for even the inflexible leontief model data for new zealand was used as there is much interest in the relative decline in per capita income since the 1950s and the effects on productivity of the economic reforms of the 1980s using data for the period 1960 1989 it was found that productivity growth has been low over the sample

economic benefits of management reform in the gulf of mexico grouper fishery a semi parametric analysis this paper uses a semi parametric empirical model to estimate the economic benefits of adopting a property rights based management program in the gulf of mexico grouper fishery the analysis predicts that a rights based fleet will be comprised of fewer more cost efficient boats than under the current controlled access management program results indicate that in the year of our data 1993 the smaller more productive fleet could harvest the allowable reef fish catch at a cost saving of 2 92 7 07 million 12 30 less than under controlled access management recent tightening of controlled access regulations suggest that the benefits from management reform could be even larger in the current day fishery

property rights regimes in complex fishery management systems a choice experiment application the tonle sap wetland fishery was previously divided into 3 different management zones for conservation open access fishing and private fishing rights to the private fishing zone involved auctions for exclusive rights to temporarily designated plots this paper aims to explore the auction based system by investigating how this fishery management system affects different groups of small scale fishermen and how different characteristics of the fishing lots affect the bidding a choice experiment approach was used to model fishermen s choices in a hypothetical auction market by offering fishermen the choice between purchasing different potential fishing lots and a no purchase option implying fishing only in the communal fishing grounds the preferred latent class model with two segments of fishermen showed that the bidding behavior of the more privileged group out competes the other group irrespective of the lot characteristics this result suggests that it is unlikely that the redesign of the auction system itself would be an effective way of securing access to fishing resources for the two observed groups of fishermen this implies that open access fishing grounds and or other regulations may also be needed in future management as they serve an important role for the poorer segments

addressing global environmental externalities transaction costs considerations is there a way to understand why some global environmental externalities are addressed effectively whereas others are not the transaction costs of defining the property rights to mitigation benefits and costs is a useful framework for such analysis this approach views international cooperation as a contractual process among country leaders to assign those property rights leaders cooperate when it serves domestic interests to do so the demand for property rights comes from those who value and stand to gain from multilateral action property rights are supplied by international agreements that specify resource access and use assign costs and benefits including outlining the size and duration of compensating transfer payments and determining who will pay and who will receive them four factors raise the transaction costs of assigning property rights i scientific uncertainty regarding mitigation benefits and costs ii varying preferences and perceptions across heterogeneous populations iii asymmetric information and iv the extent of compliance and new entry these factors are used to examine the role of transaction costs in the establishment and allocation of property rights to provide globally valued national parks implement the convention on the international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora execute the montreal protocol to manage emissions that damage the stratospheric ozone layer set limits on harvest of highly migratory ocean fish stocks and control greenhouse gas emissions jel d23 p14 q22 q51 q54 q58

choice modelling approaches a superior alternative for environmental valuation in this paper we examine some popular choice modelling approaches to environmental valuation which can be considered as alternatives to more familiar valuation techniques based on stated preferences such as the contingent valuation method a number of choice modelling methods are consistent with consumer theory and its focus on an attribute based theory of value permits a superior representation of many environmental management contexts however choice modelling surveys can place a severe cognitive burden upon respondents and induce satisficing rather than maximising behavioural patterns in this framework we seek to identify the best available choice modelling alternative and investigate its potential to solve some of the major biases associated with standard contingent valuation we then discuss its use in the light of policy appraisal needs within the eu an application to the demand for rock climbing in scotland is provided as an illustration

managerial strategic behavior in state owned enterprises business and political orientations two different functions managing the business in the product or service markets and managing public support in the political markets must be performed by managers of state owned enterprises soes each organization has to strike a strategic balance between these two functions the way this is done is indicative of the organizational orientation and behavior the greater the relative emphasis on managing public support the stronger is the political orientation in our terminology the greater the relative emphasis on managing the business the stronger is the business orientation this paper proposes that explanation of behavior of soes can be improved by taking into account the orientation of management toward the mix of business and politics although the combination of business and political goals of soe has long been recognized the mix of business and political activities as a strategic variable was rarely distinguished this strategic variable is operationally defined measured and explained an insight into the purposes of business and political activities is gained through an analysis of the external and internal orientation of management the organization may concentrate internally on its own needs and goals or externally on the needs and goals of the outside publics this distinction can be useful in descriptive as well as normative research management orientation whether business or political is associated with a specific set of behavioral tendencies or implications these implications are expressed in propositions which state that an increase in the political and external orientation of management are related to an increased likelihood that 1 sales rather than profit goals would be emphasized 2 low prices relative to costs would be charged 3 goals would be relatively unstable 4 goals would be stated in unclear or vague terms 5 performance evaluation would be carried out on an irregular basis 6 public support would be sought prior to action 7 top management would be recruited from the public sector an exploratory survey of 50 executives of soes in fourteen latin american asian and african countries was used to test the propositions with few exceptions the empirical results support the above propositions further research which will include additional variables and a larger sample can increase the reliability of the findings and improve our understanding of the factors which influence management orientation

vessel entry exit behavior in the gulf of mexico shrimp fishery given the heterogeneous nature of the fishing fleet and complex vessel behavior traditional marginalist supply models are not well suited for modeling vessel mobility a discrete choice model is utilized here to predict the probability that a vessel will enter exit or remain in the gulf of mexico shrimp fishery based on a myopic profit maximization criterion the multinomial logit model indicates that fisherman behavior is not influenced by stock variability the crowding externality as represented by size of fishing fleet exhibits a strong negative impact on the probability of entry independent of changes in abundance exvessel prices or harvest costs the gulf of mexico shrimp fishery was not an autonomous system of fishing vessels as initially believed

economic growth lessons from two centuries of american agriculture this paper reviews the growth experience of u s agriculture over the past two centuries in consonance with the view that growth is determined by the economic environment which consists of the available technology incentives constraints and institutions within this framework the implemented technology is determined jointly with the resource allocation the review covers the role played by resource endowment resource flow technical change and its factor bias and product demand it highlights the importance of the income elasticity of demand and the labor augmentation of the technical change the total factor productivity tfp was almost nil at the beginning of the nineteenth century increasing gradually to the point where it exhausted output growth in the latter part of the twentieth century this pattern is consistent with the postulate emerging from this framework where the tfp is endogenous and determined jointly with growth rather than determining it the more recent performance of u s agriculture is placed within a global perspective in order to generalize the discussion

assessing technical efficiency in commercial fisheries the mid atlantic sea scallop fishery despite the extensive effort to research issues of allocative efficiency in fisheries little empirical analysis of technical efficiency te in fisheries exists this study examines vessel efficiency using a stochastic production frontier based on a sample of sea scallop vessels operating in the mid atlantic between 1987 and 1990 estimates of te are computed and compared with input usage resource conditions economic performance and recently imposed regulations the analysis suggests that owners and captains only partially compensate for changes in resource conditions through the use of labor and fishing effort and recent regulations may improve overall te in the short run

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

unraveling the multiple margins of rent generation from individual transferable quotas individual transferable quotas itqs induce changes along both the extensive margin via consolidation of quota among fewer vessels and the intensive margin as harvesters adjust their behavior to itq incentives we use itq introduction in the bering sea crab fishery to decompose the sources of rent generation across both margins we embed an empirically calibrated structural model of the harvesting process into a sector level model allowing us to experimentally unravel the itq treatment we show that the magnitude and source of rent generation under itqs critically depends on the manner and degree of rent dissipation before itqs are implemented

a marginal measure of energy efficiency the shadow value abstract economists are well aware of the importance of marginal versus average measures of energy efficiency yet in the energy literature there is no consensus on the appropriate method for defining and measuring energy efficiency this paper sets out the shadow value of energy as a proper and meaningful marginal energy efficiency index a restricted profit function is used to model the shadow value we explore four scenarios to characterize and evaluate the shadow value of energy a within country comparison of different production processes with different energy requirements a comparison of different countries with different resource endowment a government policy to impose a tax to alter the shadow value to address environmental issues and a within country comparison of externalities arising from two sources of energy a comparative static analysis is carried out to sign the functional arguments defined for the shadow value

a model of regulated open access resource use abstract this paper develops a model of regulated open access resource exploitation the regulatory model assumes that regulators are goal oriented choosing target harvest levels according to a safe stock concept these harvest quotas are implemented by setting season lengths conditioned on the industry fishing capacity the industry enters until rents are dissipated conditioned on season length regulations harvest levels fishing capacity season length and biomass are determined jointly using parameter estimates from the long regulated north pacific halibut fishery predictions of these variables from the regulated open access model are compared to predictions that arise from the gordon model

the theory of state owned enterprises in market economies abstract four topics are covered the circumstances under which state owned enterprises soes are more effective than private firms the different approaches to modelling public and private firms the performance of soes and strategies including privatization to limit their more damaging effects it is argued that ideological or development motives are important in their genesis but that if efficiency and innovation are key considerations the normative case for their existence is more doubtful various types of soe model are identified deriving from the variety of circumstances in which they operate and the theoretical perspective of the modeller these include the property rights school the public choice tradition neoclassical behavioural and budget maximizing approaches all models assume the existence of monitoring problems created by informational asymmetry the consequences can include high non pecuniary benefits for managers a concentration on monitored activities and lower innovation levels and efficiency than private firms curiously this is not necessarily reflected in higher prices or costs possible remedial strategies include a change of ownership a change of objectives the introduction of incentive compatible payment schemes improved performance indicators and privatization

technological change and the tragedy of the commons the lofoten fishery over 130 years we analyze the effect of technological change on labor and total factor productivity in the lofoten fishery using detailed data for 130 years our findings support the important role of natural resources in productivity and improvements in welfare in natural resource based industries the total factor productivity has risen faster than labor productivity in the fishery indicating that the considerable technological progress in this industry has to some extent been neutralized by the decline in the fish stock open access to the fish resource most probably led to this situation

total factor productivity change in the new england groundfish fishery 1964 1993 abstract we develop estimates of total factor productivity tfp change in the new england groundfish fishery from 1964 to 1993 using a procedure similar to squires 1992 rand j econom 23 2 221 236 method which extends standard tfp measurement by including the effect of fluctuations in stock abundance the results indicate that tfp increased on average by 4 4 per year from 1964 to 1993 a higher average rate of increase occurred between 1964 and 1982 possibly due to new technologies e g fishfinders tfp declined at 0 33 annually from 1983 to 1993 due to stringent output and effort control measures

testing for input substitution in a regulated fishery input restrictions are commonly used to prevent rent dissipation in fisheries this paper examines whether these schemes are successful by calculating the degree of input substitution between restricted and unrestricted inputs conventional elasticities of substitution cannot be used when the firm faces controls on the use of some inputs in this case the appropriate measure of substitution the elasticity of intensity must be used data from the british columbia salmon fishery provide evidence of input substitution possibilities for two vessel types these results call into question the usefulness of input control schemes

dea based predictors for estimating fleet size changes when modelling the introduction of rights based management the introduction of individual transferable quotas itqs into a fishery is going to change not only the amount of catch a fleet can take but often also changes the fleet structure particularly if total allowable catches are decreased this can have an impact on the economic social and environmental outcomes of fisheries management management strategy evaluation mse modelling approaches are recognised as the most appropriate method for assessing impacts of management but these require information as to how fleets may change under different management systems in this study we test the applicability of data envelopment analysis dea based performance measures as predictors of how a fishing fleet might change under the introduction of itqs and also at different levels of quota in particular we test the assumption that technical efficiency and capacity utilisation are suitable predictors of which boats are likely to exit the fishery we also consider scale efficiency as an alternative predictor we apply the analysis to the torres strait tropical rock lobster fishery that is transitioning to an itq based management system for one sector of the fishery the results indicate that capacity utilisation technical efficiency and scale efficiency are reasonable indicators of who may remain in the fishery post itqs we find that the use of these measures to estimate the impacts of lower quota levels provides consistent fleet size estimates at the aggregate level but which individual vessels are predicted to exit is dependent on the measure used

assessing efficiency gains from individual transferable quotas an application to the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery delayed fishing fleet restructuring complicates the assessment of efficiency gains from individual transferable quota itq fisheries management programs this article presents a methodology to estimate harvest sector efficiency gains in lieu of incomplete fleet restructuring the methodology is applied to assess the efficiency gains in the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery itq program while roughly 128 vessels harvested clams under the previous management regime the analysis suggests that 21 25 vessels will remain under ltqs the efficiency gains are estimated to be between 11 1 million and 12 8 million annually 1990 dollars

markets and rent dissipation in regulated open access fisheries abstract using a model of regulated open access resource use with markets we illustrate the potential complexity of interactions between markets product quality excess effort and regulatory behavior in fisheries our model assumes two product types one of which is processed and storable the model describes the equilibrium that results when effort responds to open access incentives and when regulators respond to effort growth by mitigating its potential harmful effects on biomass safety we use numerical simulations to demonstrate a mechanism by which market growth leads to the diversion of raw inputs into the inherently inferior market the result is a scenario in which rents are dissipated not only because excessive inputs raise costs but also because inferior product types reduce revenues we conclude with an illustrative decomposition of rent gains into revenue and cost savings gains from rationalizing a hypothetical fishery demonstrating the potential significance of market side rents

evaluating tradable property rights for natural resources the role of strategic entry and exit this paper presents an econometric approach to the evaluation of environmental regulation using tradable property rights existing empirical research on this issue which compares overall industry efficiency before and after the introduction of new regulations conflates two distinct phenomena efficiency changes due to exit of excess capital and changes in the efficiency of individual firms because the regulatory process induces firms of different types to enter and exit the industry at different rates the true efficiency and equity effects of tradable property rights cannot be assessed without correcting for these changes in sample composition this paper examines the impact of regulatory change in the mid atlantic surf clam fishery using an econometric model that separates its effects on industry structure and vessel efficiency the analysis finds that contrary to widely held belief tradable property rights did not disproportionately benefit either large fishing firms or highly integrated firms

the boundary between planning and incremental budgeting empirical examination in a publicly owned corporation this paper is a study within the field of public budgeting it focuses on the capital budget and it attempts to model and analyze the capital budgeting process using a framework previously developed in the literature of incremental budgeting within this framework the paper seeks to determine empirically whether the movement of capital expenditure budgets can be represented as the routine application of incremental adjustments over an existing base of allocations and whether further forward looking adjustments can be found its setting is a british publicly owned corporation the paper proposes an extended model of incremental budgeting which explains absolute change in budget allocations by introducing variables expressing current expenditure outturn over or under spend of previous allocations previous budgetary cuts and wider financial pressures in the corporation s environment planning variables are then included in an attempt to uncover purposive behavior the analysis reveals different patterns of allocation for peripheral and for mainstream investments the former appear to grow in an incremental fashion with no response to leading planning variables the latter exhibit responsiveness to planning variables and allocations do not take the form of routine incremental adjustments to the existing base an interpretation of the results is undertaken the analysis points to revisions of existing theory and suggests fresh ways of looking at and systematically modeling the organizational system of resource allocation

using a choice experiment to account for preference heterogeneity in wetland attributes the case of cheimaditida wetland in greece abstract this paper aims to assist policy makers in formulating efficient and sustainable wetland management policies in accordance with the ramsar convention and the european union water framework directive 2000 60 ec by providing results of a valuation study on the cheimaditida wetland in greece a choice experiment is employed to estimate the values of changes in several ecological social and economic functions that cheimaditida wetland provides to the greek public in addition to the conditional logit model a random parameter logit model a random parameter logit model with interactions and a latent class model are estimated to account for heterogeneity in the preferences of the public for the various functions of the wetland the results reveal that there is considerable preference heterogeneity across the public and on average they derive positive and significant values from sustainable management of this wetland the estimated economic benefits of sustainable wetland management are weighed against the costs of alternative wetland management scenarios results of this cost benefit analysis can aid in the design of socially optimal policies for sustainable management of the cheimaditida wetland with possible implications for other similar wetlands in greece and the rest of europe

public regulation and the structure of production in multiproduct industries an application to the new england otter trawl industry this article considers the problem of managing multispecies fishing industries as one of regulating the production of individual multiproduct firms the multispecies new england otter trawl industry is examined within this framework empirical results derived from estimating a multiproduct profitfunction indicate that management consistent with the structures ofmultiproduct production and costs would directly regulate inputs little support is provided for applying the traditional bioeconomic model to the fishery studied

an analysis of the efficient production frontier in the fishery implications for enhanced fisheries management the transformation relationship between factor inputs and outputs the efficient production frontier epf contains important information for fisheries managers a directional technology distance function model of the harvesting technology is used to measure changes in the epf over time frontier shifts are summarized with input and output based frontier indicators that are interpreted as measures of bioeconomic productivity change the model is applied to the mid atlantic surf clam and ocean quahog fishery

contribution of productivity and firm size to value added evidence from vietnam abstract a new indexing method is developed to decompose the contributions of productivity prices and firm size to a firm s value added the method introduces an error term into the decomposition equation to capture measurement biases which are caused by using the deflator instead of the observed price and all other sorts of measurement error an application of the method is given using private small and medium manufacturing firm level data in vietnam from 1996 and 2001 the error index decomposition method provides a comparison of performance of all firms to the hypothetical representative firm the analysis allows firms and policy makers to realize the key factors contributing to the success or failure of a firm and suggest strategies to improve firm economic performance

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

cost structure and capacity in the norwegian pelagic fisheries the parameters of the short run cost function are estimated for three vessel types taking part in the norwegian pelagic fisheries purse seine vessels trawlers and coastal vessels the generalized translog functional form is used estimates of returns to scale are calculated and the results indicate that there are substantial economies of scale in all vessel classes it is further investigated whether excess capacity varies with vessel size and age the analysis suggests increased quotas per vessel to avoid rent dissipation with the total allowable catch given the number of participating vessels must be reduced

the lay system in commercial fisheries origin and implications abstract in most commercial fisheries the crew is remunerated via some form of the lay system under the lay system the crew is paid with a share of revenues or a share of revenues less costs naturally the presence and the functioning of the lay system are well known and accepted as one of fishery s important institutions compared with share contracts in agriculture however the lay in fisheries has garnered relatively little research this article has two goals first we provide an explanation for the existence of the lay system as an incentive mechanism to alleviate a potential team agency problem this explanation of the lay system explains anomalies such as the presence of wages in some fisheries that are odds with the theory of pure risk sharing second we show the implications of the lay system for econometric modeling of fisheries and for understanding firm behavior in general we conclude that models that fail to account explicitly for the incentive properties of shares are likely to provide poor representations of fishing firm behavior the thrust of the paper is that the formation and working of the lay system are a fundamental force in fisheries influencing firm behavior and research results in a way that has been largely ignored

technical efficiency effects of input controls evidence from australia s banana prawn fishery this paper provides the first ex post estimates of the effects of input controls on technical efficiency in a fishery using individual vessel data from the northern prawn fishery of australia for the years 1990 1996 and 1994 2000 stochastic production frontiers are estimated to analyse the efficiency impacts of input controls on engine and vessel size the results indicate that technical efficiency is increasing in a measure of vessel size and engine capacity that was controlled by the regulator from 1985 to 2001 and decreasing in an unregulated input gear headrope length the study shows that fishers have substituted from regulated to unregulated inputs over the period 1990 2000 and technical efficiency has declined coincident with increasing restrictions on vessel size and engine capacity the decline in technical efficiency indicates that the goal of the regulator to increase economic efficiency has not been realized

return on capital and management reforms in norway s fisheries individual transferrable quotas itqs are used in norway s fisheries but only partly and with restrictions on transferability this paper examines how this has affected return on capital the return on boat capital in three of four fisheries examined has increased since itqs were introduced a part of this increase is due to an increase in value of fish landings but accounting for that still leaves room for increases due to itqs return on total capital including quota value has either stagnated or fallen this is consistent with the rate of return in itq fisheries being comparable with other industries in the long run jel q22 q28

investment planning and arm s length control in a nationalised industry applying a relatively decentralised system of control which would keep state owned enterprises soe at arm s length from ministerial departments has been a stated policy for many governments around the world however the specific controls typically used for implementing this policy have seldom been successful the purpose of this paper is to review and evaluate certain of these controls drawing upon the british system of arm s length control of nationalised industries in order to delimit the problem the paper cuts across the government soe relationship from the perspective of investment planning using primary information from the capital investment process in a particular nationalised industry the paper searches for evidence on whether and in what ways existing controls have not been successful three types of controls are investigated 1 the economic and financial groundrules which are supposed to simulate a competitive business style efficiency these rules are often assumed to act as an invisible hand limiting direct government control 2 the direct investment review in the framework of the wider public sector expenditure survey in discussing the nature of this review the paper examines whether government approval of investment conforms to an incrementalist or muddling through model it further considers the role for incremental methods in controlling soe investment 3 the attempt to use corporate planning as a control instrument evidence from internal control processes within the enterprise and in particular the review of investment by a central executive is used in order to evaluate the above controls this serves to show the diffuse character of the planning process and the possibilities and limitations of using similar controls at the government level suggestions are put forward for strengthening these forms of control by modifying or reinforcing certain elements within the existing arm s length framework the paper would be useful for evaulating the difficulties involved in establishing some form of orderlines and formalisation in government soe relationships it shows some of the weaknesses associated with certain technocratic rules and solutions to public policy problems in this environment

quota induced discarding in heterogeneous fisheries abstract individual quota iq programs are a promising and increasingly common means of regulating fisheries this paper examines how profit maximizing fishers respond to different types of iq programs in fisheries where many types of fish are harvested simultaneously this analysis shows that the most common types of individual quota programs can induce discarding and that individual quota programs that regulate the value of harvests never induce discarding since discarded fish have a high mortality rate value based individual quota programs are superior to their more conventional counterparts in that they waste fewer fish the disadvantages of value based quotas are also examined results are driven by the fact that the harvest technology examined here does not satisfy a free disposal assumption since this free disposal assumption is ubiquitous in production theory and not obviously true the framework developed herein may be useful for analyzing a broad class of problems involving joint production

productivity measurement in common property resource industries an application to the pacific coast trawl fishery this article measures total factor productivity in industries that exploit resources held in common particular attention is paid to the valuation and specification of in situ commonproperty resources in a neoclassical production technology catchability of the resource and variations in economic capacity utilization an empirical analysis of the open access pacific coast trawl fishing industry demonstrates that disentangling the productivity residual from changes in resource abundance its catchability and variations in capacity utilization hones the productivity residual to finer precision lowering mean productivity growth by about hak removing biological noise from highly variable resources is also important the results are related to aprogram limiting the number of vessels and can contribute to sustainable resource management whenever resources are held in common

land ownership security and farm productivity evidence from thailand the article discusses the impact of land ownership security on farmers input use and output value economic theory suggests that farmers with secure legal ownership will have more incentives and better ability to invest due to a lower perceived risk and a favourable access to institutional credit this leads to higher variable inputs use and higher output per unit of land the article uses farm level data from three provinces in thailand to test the above propositions the data pertain to samples of squatters who lack secure legal ownership as contrasted with legally titled farmers the results confirm that the provision of secure ownership in ldcs can increase productivity significantly

why are developing countries privatization this article tests alternative hypotheses about why developing countries are pursuing privatization a policy that gained considerable popularity in the 1980s univariate and multivariate analysis indicate that privatization was more likely to be pursued by countries with high budget deficits high foreign debt and high dependence on international agencies like the world bank and the imf in regions such as latin america and asia the trend was also more likely in countries a that seemed to have overused state enterprises in the past and b those in which the private sector had grown faster than average and was thus more ready to assume tasks once assigned to state enterprises in africa however the policy may have been imposed by external agencies on countries that were not necessarily ripe for privatization for multinational firms the international opportunities created by privatization are likely to be greater in the 1990s than in the 1980s

performance evaluation of state owned enterprises in theory and practice this study explores the goal orientation of state owned enterprises soes with a view to develop a behavioral theory of soes it is set in india where as in many other countries the government expects soes to promote the public interest rather than maximize profits the research design consisted in searching for patterns in the subjective evaluations of a set of indian soes by critical environmental actors senior bureaucrats and influential journalists the study attempted to get at each respondent s espoused theory for performance evaluation as well as his or her theory in use and compared both with official goals as well as the prescriptions of welfare economists five models of performance evaluation varying in criteria and weighting schemes were considered the results showed with surprising consistency that commercial profitability was the most important criterion that explained bureaucrats subjective evaluations lack of comprehensive information seemed to accentuate their reliance on profitability but not by very much for a minority of bureaucrats type 1 the more important explanation seemed to be their incorrect belief that soes could be judged like private firms official policy notwithstanding for the majority type 2 who espoused views consistent with official policy the explanation seemed to be conceptual confusion or double standards both types also behaved as if they would like soes to maximize profitability rather than just break even or earn a reasonable return some of these findings were true for responding journalists as well given these results managers of indian soes can be expected to seek profits not only to reduce financial dependence on government but also to gain a measure of external legitimacy recognizing the importance of profitability as a criterion in use they can be expected to propose strategies that would increase their firm s profitability and resist those that would reduce it regardless of official goals where managers are free to act independently profitability may prevail as the dominant decision criterion but where they are not the outcome may depend on more complex factors more generally the profit motive in soes may be as strong or stronger than it appeared to be in india in countries with a less sophisticated administrative systems or personnel b an official ideology more to the right than in socialist india and c a higher proportion of mixed enterprises the paper concludes with the implications of these findings for the design of performance evaluation systems at the government soe interface