network based social capital and individual loan repayment performance abstract this study analyses the effects of social capital on the repayment behaviour of borrowers in thailand in the context of agricultural economics an innovative data collection approach is used that originates from the field of sociology a personal network survey is carried out to measure the individual social capital of borrowers social capital variables are defined according to tie strength bonding bridging and social distance linking between the respondent and his her network member bonding social capital has a significant and positive influence on repayment performance however we find no significant evidence for an effect of bridging and linking social capital

the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries abstract the introduction of the washington consensus involved not simply a swing from state led to market oriented policies but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment the main challenge to this approach is a latent southern consensus which is apparent in the convergence between east asian developmentalism and latin american neostructuralism the demise of the washington consensus is inevitable because its methodology and ideology are in contradiction

optimum management and environmental protection in the aquaculture industry abstract the sustainability of the aquaculture industry has recently been the object of social and scientific debate due to the contamination caused by the culture to the surrounding environment as a contribution to the debate this paper analyses the effect of adopting a pigovian tax to internalise the environmental costs on the optimal management of farms to do so we make use of dynamic stochastic models of fish growth and contamination diffusion farms can also implement some measures to abate pollution which are divided into two types those applied continuously managerial measures and those once in a culture cycle structural measures the results reveal that the tax imposition lowers the optimum size in the farm the type of abatement strategy plays a central role in the determination of the optimum harvest size a need for caution in internalisation policies is emphasized as negative consequences could arise in certain cases putting the farms survival at risk

dynamic nonpoint source pollution control policy ambient transfers and uncertainty when a regulator cannot observe or infer individual emissions corrective policy must rely on ambient pollution data assuming this kind of environment we study a class of dierential games of pollution control with prot functions that are polynomial in the global pollution stock given an open loop emissions strategy satisfying mild regularity conditions an ambient transfer scheme is exhibited that induces it in markov perfect equilibrium mpe proposed transfers are a polynomial function of the dierence between actual and desired pollution levels moreover they are designed so that in mpe no tax or subsidy is ever levied their applicability under stochastic pollution dynamics is studied for a symmetric game of polluting oligopolists with linear demand we discuss a quadratic scheme that induces agents to adopt markovian emissions strategies that are stationary and linearly decreasing in total pollution total expected ambient transfers are non positive and their magnitude is linearly increasing in physical volatility the size of the economy and the absolute value of the slope of the inverse demand function however if the regulator is interested in inducing a constant emissions strategy then in expectation transfers vanish the total expected ambient transfer is compared to its point source equivalent

an experimental investigation of the patterns of international trade this study is the first attempt to create and study a laboratory economy with some of the prominent features of an international economic system the concept of multiple countries in which each country has its own technology preferences and resource endowments is introduced and operationalized the questions posed in the study are related to the law of comparative advantage factor price equalization terms of trade efficiency in production and exchange as guided by multiple and interacting markets and the effects of tariffs on international transactions the study builds on previous work in the experimental study of general equilibrium phenomena

a theoretical analysis of altruism and decision error in public goods games abstract we formalize an equilibrium model in which altruism and decision error parameters determine the distribution of contributions for linear and quadratic public goods games the equilibrium density is exponential for linear games and normal for quadratic games our model implies i contributions increase with the marginal value of the public good ii total contributions increase with the number of participants iii mean contributions lie between the nash prediction and half the endowment these predictions which are not implied by a nash analysis are consistent with laboratory data maximum likelihood estimates of altruism and error parameters are significant and plausible

nonpoint pollution control inducing first best outcomes through the use of threats abstract this paper develops an economic model to analyze the use of a policy that combines a voluntary approach to controlling nonpoint source pollution with a background threat of an ambient tax if the voluntary approach is unsuccessful in meeting a pre specified environmental goal we show that such a policy can be designed to induce cost minimizing abatement without actually imposing the tax because the threat of imposition of the tax is sufficient to induce voluntary compliance thus the combined policy approach can not only be more effective in protecting environmental quality than a pure voluntary approach but can also be less costly than a pure ambient tax approach however whether the cost minimizing choices are a unique equilibrium or not depends on the design of the tax policy and whether or not it can be applied retroactively all results still hold if the background threat takes the form of a reducing in government subsidies

financial liberalization financial regulation and bank efficiency a multi country analysis this article investigates the impact of financial reforms on bank efficiency more specifically we distinguish between two different types of financial reforms i e financial liberalization measures and measures of the quality of bank regulation and supervision i e financial regulation and study their relationship to bank efficiency separately moreover we analyse whether the impact of financial liberalization on bank efficiency is conditional on the quality of regulation and supervision of the banking system we apply stochastic frontier analysis to calculate bank efficiency at the individual bank level and use a new and detailed database that measures different aspects of financial reforms the data set consists of 87 312 bank year observations covering 61 countries for the period 1996 2005 overall we show that the impact of financial liberalization policies on bank efficiency is conditional on the extent to which bank regulation and supervision has been adopted and developed

tradeoffs in balancing multiple objectives of an integrated agricultural economic and environmental system in the past environmental concerns were mostly addressed using piecemeal evaluation that redirected the crop production and management decisions in favor of achieving a single objective such as soil conservation or a water quality goal which may worsen the desirable levels of other objectives lakshminarayan s research develops and implements a conceptual framework for integrated agricultural economic and environmental modeling using a multicriteria decision making approach grounded in multiattribute utility and social welfare theory developing a theory for the integrated modeling method and a statistically consistent approach to integrate spatial variability is what distinguishes the present work from other studies on economic environmental modeling readers will find this to be an excellent summary of impacts of alternative crop production systems on soil and water quality and crop yields the monograph includes color maps 20 00

microfinance performance and social capital a cross country analysis in recent years the microfinance industry has received a substantial amount of cross border funding from both public and private sources this funding reflects the increasing interest in microfinance as part of a more general trend towards socially responsible investments in order to be able to secure sustained interest from these investors it is important that the microfinance industry can show evidence of its contribution to reducing poverty at the bottom of the pyramid for this it is crucial to understand under what conditions microfinance institutions mfis are able to reduce poverty this paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the relationship between the extent to which social capital formation is facilitated within different societies and the financial and social performance of mfis this focus on social capital formation is important because in many cases mfis use group loans with joint liability to incentivize asset poor borrowers to substitute the lack of physical collateral by their social capital hence the success of a large part of the loan relationship between mfis and their borrowers depends on the social capital those borrowers can bring into the contract we carry out a cross country analysis on a dataset containing 100 countries and identify different social dimensions as proxies for how easy social capital can be developed in different countries we hypothesize that microfinance is more successful both in terms of their financial and social aims in societies that are more conducive to the development of social capital our empirical results support our hypothesis

natural resource economics and conservation contributions of agricultural economics and agricultural economists research by agricultural economists on natural resources has been distinguished by an interdisciplinary emphasis and a dynamic perspective it has recognized technological and institutional constraints has been oriented toward solving concrete resource management and policy problems and has emphasized empirical and quantitative analysis agricultural economists have introduced methods for evaluating natural resource conservation efforts for predicting adoption of resource conservation technologies and for designing efficient and sustainable resource management policies they have identified ways of improving land management and preventing land degradation proposed reforms of institutions governing water allocation and water quality and introduced policies for balancing environmental and efficiency considerations in the management of pests biodiversity and livestock diseases their research has had substantial impacts on the formulation of resource conservation policies

the effect of social capital on group loan repayment evidence from field experiments an important question to microfinance is the relevance of existing social capital in target communities to the performance of group lending this research presents evidence from field experiments in south africa and armenia in which subjects participate in trust and microfinance games we present evidence that personal trust between group members and social homogeneity are more important to group loan repayment than general societal trust or acquaintanceship between members we also find some evidence of reciprocity those who have been helped by other group members in the past are more likely to contribute in the future during the past decade exploring the role that social capital plays in economic behaviour has emerged as one of the most fascinating and fertile areas of economic research although precise definitions of social capital are notoriously difficult to pin down one of the early pioneers of the concept coleman 1988 defines social capital as social structure that facilitates certain actions of actors within the structure in his definition coleman specifically highlights the roles of mutual obligation expectations and trustworthiness social norms social sanctions and the transmission of information important studies in both developed and developing countries have analysed the impact of social capital in economic relationships putnam s celebrated work making democracy work civic traditions in modern italy 1993 and bowling alone america s declining social capital 1995 brought attention to the role that social capital plays in the development of the modern state udry s ground breaking 1994 work in nigeria illustrated how the social capital existing in traditional societies may allow for more efficient credit contracts than in developed economies with weaker social

avoiding invasives trade related policies for controlling unintentional exotic species introductions abstract international commodity trade serves as the primary conduit for unintentional introductions of damaging exotic species we use a simple model of contaminated goods trade to analyze the optimal mix of tariffs and inspections as means of controlling damage from this negative externality among other policy relevant results we find that 1 while it is always optimal to employ tariffs there are non trivial cases in which inspections should optimally be set to zero 2 a higher infection rate requires a higher tariff but beyond a point optimal inspections decrease in the infection rate and finally 3 taking a dynamic view and considering future effects of current introductions leads unambiguously to more stringent inspections but may give rise to higher or lower tariffs

fiscal implications of effluent charges and input taxes abstract taxing inputs that cause pollution is an alternative to effluent fees the literature has identified an economic relationship between these two market approaches that results in equivalent emission reductions however the fiscal implications of each approach may differ considerably this investigation shows total revenues collected from polluters under each instrument are identical only if the production of residuals exhibits constant returns to scale empirical estimates of the difference in revenues collected are presented for the case of deep percolated nitrate losses in irrigated agriculture

self selecting agri environmental policieswith an application to the don watershed we consider a model of regulation for nonpoint source water pollution through non linear taxation subsidization of agricultural production farmers are heterogenous along two dimensions their ability to transform inputs into final production and the available area they possess asymmetric information and participation of farmers to the regulation scheme put constraints on the optimal policy that we characterize we show that a positive relationship between size of land and ability may exacerbate adverse selection effects we calibrate the model using data on a french watershed and we simulate the optimal second best policy and characterize the allocation of the abatement effort among the producers

when two wrongs make a right second best point nonpoint trading ratios most research on point nonpoint trading focuses on the choice of trading ratio the rate point source controls trade for nonpoint controls although the first best ratio is jointly determined with the optimal number of permits in practice program managers often do not have control over the number of permits only the trading ratio the trading ratio in this case can only be second best we derive the second best trading ratio and using a numerical example of trading in the susquehanna river basin we find the values are in line with current ratios but for different reasons than those that are normally provided

managing the endogenous risk of disease outbreaks with non constant background risk there is a growing concern that risks of disease outbreak and pandemics are increasing over time we consider optimal investments in prevention before an outbreak using an endogenous risk approach within an optimal control setting using the threat of pandemic influenza as an illustrative example we demonstrate that prevention expenditures are relatively small in comparison to the potential losses facing the usa and these expenditures need to be flexible and responsive to changes in background risk failure to adjust these expenditures to changes in background risk poses a significant threat to social welfare into the future

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

international financial crises causes prevention and cures dale jorgenson has bestowed a great honor and no small challenge by inviting me to give this lecture a great honor because of the distinguished list of economists who have preceded me a challenge because of the standard they have set and because there is no greater challenge for any economist than providing a coherent account of significant events to his scientific peers i am sometimes asked by friends about the differences between academic life and life as a public official there are many two stand out first as an academic the gravest sin one can commit is to sign one s name to something one did not write as a public official it is a mark of effectiveness to do so as often as possible second as an academic if a problem is too hard and does not admit of a satisfactory solution there is an obvious response work on a different problem that is not a luxury that one has in government i have been reminded of this often in recent years as we have grappled with financial crises in a number of what had previously been considered emerging markets with unrestrained futures anyone who doubts the social importance of what economists do should consider the debates surrounding these crises hundreds of millions of people who expected rapidly rising standards of living have seen their living standards fall hundreds of thousands if not millions of children have been forced to drop out of school and go to work hundreds of billions of dollars of apparent wealth has been lost the stability of large nations as nations has been called into question and the united states has made its largest nonmilitary foreign policyrelated financial commitments since the marshall plan almost all the issues involved in understanding preventing and mitigating these crises are the stuff of economics courses and research fixed versus flexible exchange rates moral hazard and multiple equilibria speculation and liquidity fiscal and monetary policies regulation and competition what economists think say and do has profound implications for the lives of literally billions of their fellow citizens whether it is discussing the role of derivatives in signaling exchange rate commitments with chinese premier zhu rongji or discussing an nber working paper on inflation targeting with the brazilian central bank governor arminio fraga or discussing alternative approaches to bankruptcy law with indonesia s economic team or optimal debt durations with the mexican authorities i am consistently struck by the impact of the kind of research discussed at the aea meetings the future well being of the world s people in large part will depend on how the ongoing process of global integration works out this is a strong statement but one that is supported by the global economy s post world war i failure and its post world war ii success central to global integration is financial integration the flow of funds and of capital across international borders and as the events of the late 1920 s and early 1930 s remind us central to global disintegration can be international financial breakdowns today i want to reflect on the issue of global financial integration in light of the dramatic and largely unpredicted events of recent years it is perhaps a good time for reflection there has been enough repair that priority can shift from u s department of the treasury 1500 pennsylvania avenue washington dc 20005 this lecture reflects many things i have learned from experiences i have shared with colleagues in the united states government and governments around the world i thank brad delong marty feldstein stephanie flanders ken rogoff andrei shleifer and ted truman for useful comments and suggestions i am especially grateful to nouriel roubini and stephanie flanders for valuable discussions and assistance in the preparation of this lecture the usual disclaimer applies

administrative costs and instrument choice for stochastic non point source pollutants this paper extends the empiricalanalysis of non point source pollution to thecase where the pollutant is stochastic andalternative regulatory instruments havedifferent administrative costs it also appliesa method of stochastic programming whereemissions are log normally distributed forthe kennet catchment in south west england werank a range of policies in terms of abatementcosts alone and total costs abatement andadministrative costs on the basis ofabatement costs alone a uniform emission taxis the cost minimising policy but on the basisof total cost a nitrogen input tax is theleast cost policy furthermore the policyranking based on total costs changes as thereliability standard increases

animal health inputs endogenous risk general infrastructure technology adoption and industrialized animal agriculture abstract this paper develops a microeconomic model of concentrated animal feeding operations that admits roles for all of animal health inputs genetic profile choices and the pertaining economic infrastructure the basic model emphasizes how time on feed feed density and biosecurity choices interact as well as how these choices respond to i input prices and ii attributes regarding animal productivity parameters that might be influenced by policy choices such as animal welfare strictures and restraints on use of medication we show that ostensibly substituting inputs in protecting against animal health risks may in fact be complements and that the model s production choices come as a complementary package we then extend the model to endogenize the choice of animal genetics a finding is that innovations in general infrastructure encourage herd owners to choose more feed efficient but less hardy animals higher feed conversion efficiency then induces the use of denser feed rations accelerated finishing and greater levels of biosecurity actions at farm perimeters our theory provides a coherent framework for explaining associations among inputs and outcomes that are linked with confined animal agriculture it also explains how animal protein supply chain technology adoption and performance can differ according to a region s state of infrastructure why responses to a change in infrastructure may be large and why public sector efforts to reduce production risk may beget private sector effort to do so

economic incentives to improve water quality in agricultural landscapes some new variations on old ideas agricultural nutrients and other emissions remain a primary source of water quality degradation in much of the nation many such sources are classified as nonpoint sources under the clean water act and are therefore exempt from most federal regulations and enforceable standards in addition many agricultural nonpoint source emissions are difficult to measure and the damages that result from them depend on the amount that is transported to the waterways nutrient runoff particularly nitrogen and phosphorous from intensive row crop agriculture in much of the cornbelt exemplifies these issues both the lack of enforceable standards and the physical characteristics of nutrient fate and transport make the design of efficient policy challenging as witnessed by the lack of significant progress over the last several decades this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item thi this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

agricultural runoff as a nonpoint externality a theoretical development the purpose of this paper is to develop and explore a theory dealing with an important facet of agricultural runoff problems agricultural runoff is a nonpoint externality with notable implications for both research and policy a nonpoint externality exists whenever the externality contributions of individual economic agents cannot be practically measured by direct monitoring without monitoring regulations on emissions cannot be enforced and charges or subsidies cannot be assessed thus policies which are usually suggested for pollution abatement are not available there is great need for a theoretical base that can adequately capture these facts such a theory yields some important implications even before specific empirical applications the economic problem of agricultural runoff can be separated into three distinct categories first the sediment nutrients and chemicals removed by runoff represent a loss of resources to the individual farmer these costs are borne privately by farmers second if the discount rate of the individual farmer is greater than the social discount rate or if the farmer has a planning horizon which is shorter than society s the farmer will mine the soil resource at a rate which is more depletive than is socially optimal this is a temporal externality a third category involves the conservation of mass physical resources lost by the individual farm must appear elsewhere in the environment in sufficient quantities these resources are pollutants since water is the primary transport media for these resources it is water that is polluted by soil nutrients and agricultural chemicals this spatial externality has been the focus of much research here we intend to develop a theory for these issues to employ it to suggest a revised research methodology and to provide some important conclusions about alternative runoff policies only two of the three categories of agricultural runoff problems involve externalities and only the spatial externality is considered here

efficiency of nonpoint source pollution instruments an experimental study in nonpoint source pollution problems the regulator does not observe each polluter s individual emission which prevents him from using the conventional policy instruments therefore new instruments have been designed to regulate this type of pollution in an experiment we compare the efficiency of some of these instruments an input based tax an ambient tax subsidy an ambient tax and a group fine we assume that polluters themselves are affected by environmental damages a control session without any regulation is also carried out in order to study the status quo situation our experimental data show that the input tax and the ambient tax are very efficient and reliable and the group fine is fairly efficient and reliable these instruments improve social welfare with respect to the status quo on the contrary the ambient tax subsidy decreases social welfare with respect to the status quo and its effect is very unreliable

observability and choice of instrument mix in the control of externalities abstract in controlling environmental externalities pigouvian taxes are an appropriate instrument when individual emissions can be monitored while ambient taxes are deemed appropriate to control non point source pollution when the ambient pollution but not individual emissions can be monitored this paper shows that under uncertainty the efficient regulatory scheme for non point source pollution is a mix of pigouvian and ambient taxes the pigouvian fees are imposed on emissions revealed by the polluting firms in exchange for a lower ambient tax thus a non point source case can be gradually transformed into a point source case

random walk to innovation why productivity follows a power law abstract this paper examines a search model in which knowledge is created as rational but poorly informed innovators obtain new ideas from combinations of existing ideas we assume that the productivity of an idea is stochastic and depends on the productivity of the parental ideas importantly we assume that the contribution of these parents to the productivity of the final idea is enhanced by prior use of these in knowledge creation we identify conditions on the search costs leading to two properties 1 the tail of the distribution of the productivity of innovations is a power law and 2 the number of citations i e times an idea is used in the process of innovation follows a displaced power law both these properties are consistent with the available empirical evidence on the productivity of innovations and on patent citations

mean gini analysis of stochastic externalities the case of groundwater contamination the mean gini approach is used to analyze stochastic externalities generated by agricultural production the model addresses the problem of groundwater pollution caused by excessive fertilizer application inherent in the mean gini approach to expected utility maximization is a two fold value the simplicity of the two parameter mean variance model and satisfaction of necessary and sufficient conditions for stochastic dominance price and quantity policy recommendations to control externalities are formulated based upon the relative assessment of uncertainty by the regulatory authority and the farmers using the gini as a measure of risk allows for the quantification of control policy measures under differentiated risk aversion and multiple sources of pollution the model shows that when producers underestimate uncertainty quota policies restricting fertilizer are more efficient than tax policies in reducing groundwater contamination

sustained positive consumption in a model of stochastic growth the role of risk aversion abstract in a stochastic economy long run consumption and output may not be bounded away from zero even when productivity is arbitrarily high near zero and uncertainty is arbitrarily small in the one sector stochastic optimal growth model with i i d production shocks we characterize the nature of preferences that lead to this phenomenon for a stochastic cobb douglas technology for the general version of the model we outline sufficient conditions under which the economy expands its capital stock near zero and long run consumption is bounded away from zero with certainty our conditions highlight the important role played by risk aversion for small consumption levels

good bye financial repression hello financial crash some unintended consequences of financial liberalization in latin america are analyzed in this paper intrinsic imperfectious in financial markets and the policy dilemmas they pose are reviewed first the stylized facts of southern cone experiments in financial liberization are then presented alternative ways of organlzing domestic capital markets under latin american conditions are discussed and an eclectic reform mongering program is proposed

social connections and group banking lending to the poor is expensive due to high screening monitoring and enforcement costs group lending advocates believe lenders overcome this by harnessing social connections using data from finca peru i exploit a quasi random group formation process to find evidence of peers successfully monitoring and enforcing joint liability loans individuals with stronger social connections to their fellow group members i e either living closer or being of a similar culture have higher repayment and higher savings furthermore i observe direct evidence that relationships deteriorate after default and that through successful monitoring individuals know who to punish and who not to punish after default

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

the economics of non convex ecosystems introduction the word convexity is ubiquitous in economics but absent from economics in this paper we explain why and show what difference it makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non convexities are taken seriously a simple proof is provided of the connection between self similarity and power laws we also provide an introduction to each of the papers in the symposium and draw out the way in which they form a linked set of contributions

a damage based tax mechanism for regulation of non point emissions in a recent paper segerson 1988 proposed a novel incentive mechanism for stochastic non point emissions based on ambient pollution concentrations in nature for specification of the mechanism when the damage function is nonlinear the regulator must know polluters cost and emission functions the mechanism also gives incentives to form coalitions among polluters which if they are formed render the mechanism inefficient in this paper we propose a revised mechanism which eliminates the need for knowledge of polluters cost and emission functions and reduces the probability of coalition forming a standards and pricing version of the revised mechanism with both properties mentioned is also developed

the regulation of non point source pollution under imperfect and asymmetric information abstract this paper develops a bayesian framework for discussing the role of information in the design of non point source pollution control mechanisms an ambient concentration tax is examined allowing for spatial transport among multiple zones imposition of the tax requires costly measurement of concentrations in selected zones and the selection of zones for measurement must be undertaken without perfect information regarding several parameters of the problem potentially crucial information issues discussed include a the impact of asymmetric priors regarding fate and transport b the cost of measuring ambient concentration and c the optimal acquisition of information regarding fate and transport

cost effectiveness of alternative green payment policies for conservation technology adoption with heterogeneous land quality this paper quantitatively analyses the cost effectiveness of alternative green payment policies designed to achieve a targeted level of pollution control by heterogeneous microunits these green payment policies include cost share subsidies that share the fixed costs of adoption of a conservation technology and or input reduction subsidies to reduce the use of a polluting input the paper shows that unlike a pollution tax that achieves abatement through three mechanisms a negative extensive margin effect a negative intensive margin effect and a technology switching effect a cost share subsidy and an input reduction subsidy are much more restricted in the types of incentives they provide for conservation of polluting inputs and adoption of a conservation technology to control pollution moreover they may lead to varying levels of expansion of land under production costs of abatement with alternative policies and implications for production and government payments are compared using a simulation model for controlling drainage from irrigated cotton production in california with drip irrigation as a conservation technology

peasants against private property rights a review of the literature land is the main if not the only asset for a majority of people in developing countries the definition and allocation of rights over land are thus naturally essential aspects of individuals daily lives as well as critical determinants of social and economic development the privatization of land rights has long been seen as a necessary process enhancing both efficiency and equity however privatized land rights have not always emerged endogenously while exogenously driven programs of land privatization have not always been successful nor popular this has raised questions about the expected benefits of land rights privatization this paper aims at summarizing the main arguments and studies both theoretical and empirical on this issue with a specific focus on the factors that can make privatization inefficient or detrimental for the most concerned individuals

environmental policy under imperfect information incentives and moral hazard abstract when net emissions of individual polluters cannot be efficiently monitored then emissions charges controls on emissions levels or subsidies for emissions reduction are not effective as environmental policy instruments this paper proposes instruments that can be applied in such limited information situations these instruments take the form of contracts between a pollution control agency and individual polluters the contracts include a combination of fines and subsidies that induces dischargers to follow optimal environmental policies in the absence of individual monitoring

spatial heterogeneity and the choice of instruments to control nonpoint pollution because it is difficult to monitor emissions and to implement differentialtaxes and standards uniform taxes and standards on agricultural chemicaluse are often proposed and used to control nonpoint source pollution thisarticle analyzes the relative efficiency of these uniform instruments in thepresence of spatial heterogeneity we show that the relative slopes of themarginal pollution cost and marginal profit of chemical use are only one ofthe factors that affect the relative efficiency other factors includecorrelation between marginal pollution costs and marginal profits and theslope and variability of marginal profits in addition a uniform tax mayresult in some farmers not using the chemical and a uniform standard mayhave no effect on low input land we show empirically that the presence ofcorner solutions can reverse a conventional finding of tax or standardsuperiority based on the relative slop rule

bubbles and capital flows abstract this paper presents a stylized model of international trade and asset price bubbles its central insight is that bubbles tend to appear and expand in countries where productivity is low relative to the rest of the world these bubbles absorb local savings eliminating inefficient investments and liberating resources that are in part used to invest in high productivity countries through this channel bubbles act as a substitute for international capital flows improving the international allocation of investment and reducing rate of return differentials across countries this view of asset price bubbles could eventually provide a simple account of some real world phenomena that have been difficult to model before such as the recurrence and depth of financial crises or their puzzling tendency to propagate across countries

lessons from the asian crisis abstract this paper provides an asymmetric information analysis of the recent east asian crisis it then outlines several lessons from this crisis first there is a strong rationale for an international lender of last resort second without appropriate conditionality for this lending the moral hazard created by operation of an international lender of last resort can promote financial instability third although capital flows did contribute to the crisis they are a symptom rather than an underlying cause of the crisis suggesting exchange controls are unlikely to be a useful strategy to avoid future crises fourth pegged exchange rate regimes are a dangerous strategy for emerging market countries and make financial crises more likely

biosecurity incentives network effects and entry of a rapidly spreading pest abstract protection against pest invasion is a public good yet the nature of private incentives to avoid entry is poorly understood this work shows that due to increasing returns or network effects private actions to avoid entry are strategic complements this means that compulsory action at least by a subset of parties can be an effective policy both heterogeneity in biosecurity costs and the effect of private actions on the extent of the invasion threat are shown to have ambiguous effects on the magnitude of welfare loss due to strategic behavior communicated leadership by some party is preferred to simultaneous moves and it may be best if the party with highest biosecurity costs assumes a leadership role

the voluntary provision of a pure public good with diminishing marginal returns in experiments investigating the voluntary provision of a pure public good participants consistently allocate resources to this good when the nash prediction is to allocate nothing this paper explores the robustness of this result when the nash prediction calls for a division of resources between the private and public goods we consider how a change in individual resource endowments and supplemental earnings information affect allocations to the public good results indicate that under both the high and low endowment conditions groups continue to allocate more resources than the nash prediction however providing participants with detailed instructions that describe the declining marginal benefit to the public good leads to a significant decrease in allocations to the public good

the financial repression liberalization debate taking stock looking for a synthesis financial repression and liberalization became the object of fierce debates between academics and policy makers since the early 1970s as of the late 1980s financial liberalization became also part of the structural adjustment programs sponsored by the international monetary fund and the world bank however the literature on financial repression and liberalization remains controversial on its theoretical conclusions and policy implications given its importance for both the theory and policy of economic development and growth this paper looks for a possible synthesis after reviewing the theoretical contributions and empirical studies under the headings of the mckinnon shaw and new structuralists models the survey concludes that a new synthesis might be found in the post keynesian attempt to take an institutional perspective within a globalised financial and economic environment

capital market liberalization economic growth and instability summary this paper reviews briefly the arguments for capital market liberalization and identifies their theoretical and empirical weaknesses this provides the foundations for the argument for intervention in short term capital flows the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the various ways in which such interventions may be implemented 2000 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

payments or persuasion common pool resource management with price and non price measures we use lab experiments to study policies that address common pool resource overuse we look at a price mechanism specifically a pigouvian subsidy and four non price interventions the non price policies are information alone information with a normative message communication alone and normative messages with communication allowed in all experiment sessions no intervention occurs in the first seven and last seven rounds allowing us to examine the effects of introducing and taking away a policy the subsidy leads to near efficient extraction but surprisingly leads groups that were not over extracting to also reduce extraction this over compliance decreases efficiency although on net the subsidy is the most efficiency enhancing intervention information provision communication normative appeals and normative appeals combined with communication all reduce over extraction though by less than the subsidy without exacerbating over compliance however the effects of information alone and communication alone are small and not robust the non price policies cause a decline in over extraction of from 0 549 information to 11 441 normative appeals with communication these effects are of the same order of magnitude as the effects seen in major field studies of conservation messaging the subsidy has the worst persistence properties after the intervention ceases while normative messages with communication have the best

ambient based pollution mechanisms a comparison of homogeneous and heterogeneous groups of emitters abstract over the last two decades ambient based tax mechanisms have been offered as a potential solution to the problem of nonpoint source water pollution previous theoretical analyses suggest that the performance of ambient based tax mechanisms does not depend on firm characteristics such as size whilst policy discussions advocate that such mechanisms are best suited for regulating relatively homogeneous firms using controlled laboratory experiments we provide empirical evidence that the distribution of firm sizes does have a significant impact on observed group decision making and further that heterogeneity has the potential to generate both some relatively desirable outcomes as well as some outcomes that are not attractive these results suggest that richer theoretical models that capture important strategic interactions and social preferences are needed to better describe laboratory behavior and by extension behavior in potential policy settings

the relative efficiency of voluntary vs mandatory environmental regulations abstract increased use of voluntary programs for environmental protection as an alternative to mandatory approaches raises the issue of the relative efficiency of the two approaches this paper analyzes the efficiency of voluntary programs relative to mandatory programs in agriculture under the voluntary program producers adopt a land conservation practice and in turn the government provides technical and financial assistance the voluntary program is more efficient than a program that mandates adoption if and only if the deadweight losses of government expenditures under the voluntary program are less than the difference between private and public costs of government services plus the additional implementation costs of the mandatory program this necessary and sufficient condition is more likely to be satisfied when a the deadweight loss from raising government revenue is zero or small b government services are less rival c the costs of government services are lower than what farmers would have to pay for equivalent private services d the number of farms in the program is large and e the saving in implementation costs under the voluntary program is large and increases rapidly with program acreage

take a risk preferring prevention over control of biological invaders abstract scientists have argued that invasive species can be managed most cost effectively with greater investments in prevention further under ideas like the precautionary principle it is reasonable to expect that a cautious manager would use more prevention relative to control because it keeps more invaders out yet this is not typically done in many cases private and public resources are invested primarily to control existing invaders rather than to prevent new invasions managers frequently wait until after invaders have arrived and then scramble to limit the damages we believe these paradoxical decisions can be understood by recognizing the link between typical human preferences for risk bearing and the technology of risk reduction we demonstrate quantitatively how managers perceived to be cautious or averse to risk tend to shy away from prevention relative to control this counterintuitive result arises because control is a safer choice than prevention because its productivity is relatively less risky it works to remove existing invaders from the system in contrast the productivity of prevention is more uncertain because prevention only reduces the chance of invasion it does not eliminate it and invasion may not occur even in the absence of prevention managers averse to risk will inherently avoid as much uncertainty as possible whether the source of uncertainty regards ecological outcomes or economic productivity implications for environmental decision making are clear in invasive species management if managers act as though they are risk averse their caution can backfire when it leads to more control rather than prevention the social consequences of this choice are a greater probability of future invasions and lower social welfare our results suggest that social welfare is highest when managers were willing to take a risk with prevention

occupational choice and development abstract the rise in world trade since 1970 has been accompanied by a rise in the geographic span of control of management and hence also a rise in the effective international mobility of labor services we study the effect of such a globalization of the world s labor markets the world s welfare gains depend positively on the skill heterogeneity of the world s labor force we find that when people can choose between wage work and managerial work the worldwide labor market raises output by more in the rich and the poor countries and by less in the middle income countries this is because the middle income countries experience the smallest change in the factor price ratio and where the option to choose between wage work and managerial work has the least value in the integrated economy our theory also establishes that after economic integration the high skill countries see a disproportionate increase in managerial occupations using aggregate data on gdp openness and occupations from 115 countries we find evidence for these patterns of occupational choice

financial development financial liberalization and social capital abstractthe relationship between financial liberalization policies and financial development is controversial the impact of these policies differs greatly across countries in the literature the quality of formal institutions has been identified as an important source of this heterogeneity as countries with a weak institutional environment generally fail to benefit from financial liberalization using panel data covering 82 countries for the period 1973 2008 we find evidence that social capital may substitute for formal institutions as a prerequisite for effective financial liberalization policies in particular we find that during the post washington consensus period countries with a high prevailing level of social capital can ensure that financial liberalization positively influences financial development despite the poor quality of their formal institutions

ambient taxes when polluters have multiple choices economic research on environmental policy design has largely been concerned with the merits of emissions based economic incentives e g emissions charges emissions reduction subsidies transferable discharge permits ambient based tax subsidy schemes have drawn considerable interest in nonpoint pollution literature as alternatives to emissions based instruments expanding especially on segerson s seminal article this article examines the optimal design and budget balancing properties of ambient tax subsidy schemes under more realistic assumptions about the dimensions of firms choice sets than prior research

environmental cleanliness as a public good welfare and policy implications of nonconvex preferences abstract this paper explores the implications of a form of nonconvexity in individual preferences over the public good cleanliness the implications of this nonconvexity on equilibrium outcomes welfare analysis the process of development and optimal government policy are examined the nonconvexity can imply a role for government in providing a commitment to a clean environment even if the government has a cost disadvantage in cleaning compared with individuals by providing a credible commitment to a clean environment the government can induce private individuals to undertake optimal levels of cleaning on their own

endogenous risk and point nonpoint uncertainty trading ratios point nonpoint trading enables highly uncertain nonpoint pollution abatement to be substituted for relatively certain point source pollution abatement market designers use uncertainty trade ratios to address imperfect substitution between these commodities guidance from government agencies and other entities recommends large ratios that penalize trades for nonpoint abatement and extant programs universally implement this guidance previous research has shown that the standard guidance is based on an inappropriate framing of the risk effects of substituting nonpoint for point source pollution abatement and has demonstrated that the trade ratios should be set to encourage or discourage substitution depending on whether the substitution is risk reducing or risk increasing however the pigouvian pricing approach used to develop this result obscures the underlying economic calculus because it does not recognize or characterize the tradeoffs between abatement costs savings and environmental risk that must be considered in an economic evaluation of alternative ratios and that would be key to explaining why ratios recommended by economic analysis would be preferred to received wisdom we develop a new approach that explicitly identifies and characterizes the tradeoffs associated with the choice of ratio the approach is examined both in first best settings where trade ratios and initial permit allocations are jointly determined and in second best settings where permit allocations are taken as given we provide a numerical analysis of trading in the susquehanna river basin in pennsylvania to illustrate theory we find theoretical and numerical support suggesting that smaller ratios may be optimal

import restrictions in the presence of a health risk an illustration using fmd we present a simple model linking infection risk from imports to a tariff the risk causes the exporter of the infected product to face a higher tariff than would otherwise be the case a numerical example is developed for u s beef imports from nations with foot and mouth disease fmd the additional tariffs are sensitive to the specification of risk and the expected magnitude of loss due to an fmd outbreak for a low risk of importing fmd the tariffs levied against the exporter of fmd infected beef are not prohibitive but become so as the risk or expected output loss rises

cooperative and noncooperative protection against transferable and filterable externalities given self protection from an undesirable environmental externality we examine under several conditions the efficiency properties of cooperative and noncooperative behavior we demonstrate that if self protection can transfer the externality to another agent then noncooperative behavior will lead to overprotection if self protection filters or dilutes the externality then noncooperation leads to underprotection in addition overprotection will worsen if an agent with more relative power is allowed a first mover advantage or if the damage function is elastic and transferability is uncertain finally a reduction in uncertainty about transferability will accentuate overprotection if the damage function is inelastic our results suggest that coordination of protection activities among agents will enhance the overall gains from environmental policy in the european single internal market of 1992 coordination minimizes the costs of environmental protection thereby reducing the public credibility of its foes

joint quantity quality management of groundwater economic literature on groundwater managementhas traditionally been split into two areas there are papers that evaluate different schemes of dynamicaquifer management considering that pumping costs vary with stock but ignoring water quality on the other hand there are papers that considercontamination problems caused by specificpollutants this paper presents two alternative models for joint quantity quality management and it shows that existing models are in fact special cases of these the framework isdynamic and considers both the stock of waterquantity and a stock measure of water quality optimal taxes are derived and shown to be different from those in existing quantity only or quality only models implementationproblems are briefly discussed

strategic interactions among private and public efforts when preventing and stamping out a highly infectious animal disease upon the outbreak of a contagious animal disease a primary motive for restoring disease free status is often to regain access to international product markets efforts applied toward continuing or regaining such access generate a public good all growers benefit regardless of the extent of private effort taken while exclusion is impractical private incentives to take preventive measures and stamp out effort interact in complex ways there are intra farm temporal interactions and also inter farm contemporaneous interactions public effort also takes place and interacts with private effort this paper provides a succinct multi agent model to explore these interactions in social optimum and in nash equilibrium and also to explore how socially optimal and nash behavior differ comparative statics under social optimality are more straightforward than under nash equilibrium whether it is in social optimum or nash equilibrium public prevention effort complements both private prevention and private stamp out efforts however public stamp out effort substitutes for both private stamp out and private prevention efforts reasonable conditions are identified under which nash levels of private prevention and stamp out efforts are both below socially optimal levels concerning policy prescriptions secure property rights and low property transfer costs should promote prevention and eradication efforts other things being equal public prevention effort should be more effective at improving welfare than comparable public stamp out effort subsidies on private effort should favor prevention because subsidies on eradication effort may discourage prevention effort even if products from diseased animals are safe to consume and acceptable to consumers it may be optimal to destroy them

differences in social and public risk perceptions and conflicting impacts on point nonpoint trading ratios if stochastic nonpoint pollution loads create socially costly risk then an economically optimal point nonpoint trading ratio the rate point source controls trade for nonpoint controls is adjusted downward a risk reward for nonpoint controls encouraging more nonpoint controls however in actual trading programs ratios are adjusted upward in response to nonpoint uncertainties a risk premium for nonpoint controls this contradiction is explained using a public choice model in which regulators focus on encouraging abatement instead of reducing damages the result is a divergence of public and social risk perceptions and a trading market that encourages economically suboptimal nonpoint controls copyright 2001 oxford university press

research issues in nonpoint pollution control research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution or to ambient pollution concentrations both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution however input based incentives will generally have to be second best to make implementation practical design issues include which inputs to monitor and the rates to apply to them the limited research indicates that second best input based incentives can be effective in adjusting input use in environmentally desirable ways alternatively ambient based incentives have theoretical appeal because efficient policy design appears to be less complex than for input based incentives these incentives have no track record nor close analogues that demonstrate potential effectiveness however research on how households and firms might react in response to ambient based incentives is needed before these instruments can be seriously considered

self protection strategic interactions and the relative endogeneity of disease risks self protection is a key behavior that influences infectious disease risks spillovers in disease protection create different types of strategic interactions under certain conditions multiple nash equilibria may arise with the possibility of coordination failure involving excessively low self protection in which case individuals expectations of others efforts determine which outcome arises in prior studies assumed technical relations between self protection and infection probabilities drove the strategic interactions we demonstrate that strategic relations can be endogenously determined and depend on the relative endogeneity of risk rer defined here as the degree to which individuals can take control of their own risks in a strategic setting the potential for coordination failure may arise when rer is sufficiently small whereas larger levels of rer may eliminate this possibility to ensure larger levels of self protection we find that imposing a behaviorally dependent indemnity may increase rer to eliminate the possibility of coordination failure we apply our analysis to the problem of livestock disease and illustrate the theory using a numerical example of the 2001 united kingdom foot and mouth disease epidemic

collective versus random fining an experimental study on controlling ambient pollution this paper presents an experimental study oftwo different pollution compliance games collective vis a vis random fining as ameans to regulate non pointpollution using samples from both costa ricancoffee mill managers and costa rican students we find that the two games perform equivalentlybut although they lead to efficient outcomesthrough nash play in the majority of cases theobserved frequency of nash play is lower thantheoretically predicted moreover we rejectthe hypothesis that managers and studentsbehave equally off the equilibrium managerstend to over abate whereas students tend tounder abate this result suggests theimportance of considering subject pooldifferences in the evaluation of environmentalpolicies by means of experiments particularlyif those policies involve certain forms ofmanagement decisions

rationalizability learning and equilibrium in games with strategic complementarities we study a rich class of noncooperative games that includes models of oligopoly competition macroeconomic coordination failures arms races bank runs technology adoption and diffusion r d competition pretrial bargaining coordination in teams and many others for all these games the sets of pure strategy nash equilibria correlated equilibria and rationalizable strategies have identical bounds also for a class of models of dynamic adaptive choice behavior that encompasses both best response dynamics and bayesian learning the players choices lie eventually within the same bounds these bounds are shown to vary monotonically with certain exogenous parameters we study the class of noncooperative supermodular games introduced by topkis 1979 and further analyzed by vives 1985 1989 who also pointed out the importance of these games in industrial economics supermodular games are games in which each player s strategy set is partially ordered the marginal returns to increasing one s strategy rise with increases in the competitors strategies so that the game exhibits strategic complementarity 2 and if a player s strategies are multidimensional marginal returns to any one com ponent of the player s strategy rise with increases in the other components this class turns out to encompass many of the most important economic applications of noncooperative game theory in macroeconomics diamond s 1982 search model and bryant s 1983 1984 rational expectations models can be represented as supermodular games in each of these models more activity by some members of the economy raises the returns to increased levels of activity by others in oligopoly theory some models of bertrand oligopoly with differentiated products qualify as supermodu lar games in these games when a firm s competitors raise their prices the marginal profitability of the firm s own price increase rises a similar structure is present in games of new technology adoption such as those of dybvig and spatt 1983 farrell and saloner 1986 and katz and shapiro 1986 when more users hook into a communication system or more manufacturers adopt an interface standard the marginal return to others of doing the same often rises similarly in some specifications of the bank runs model introduced by diamond and dybvig 1983 when more depositors withdraw their funds from a bank it is more worthwhile for other depositors to do the same in the warrant exercise

economic incentives for managing filterable biological pollution risks from trade infectious livestock disease problems are biological pollution problems prior work on biological pollution problems generally examines the efficient allocation of prevention and control efforts but does not identify the specific externalities underpinning the design of efficiency enhancing policy instruments prior analyses also focus on problems where those being damaged do not contribute to externalities we examine a problem where the initial biological introduction harms the importer and then others are harmed by spread from this importer here the externality is the spread of infection beyond the initial importer this externality is influenced by the importer s private risk management choices which provide impure public goods that reduce disease spillovers to others making disease spread a filterable externality we derive efficient policy incentives to internalize filterable disease externalities given uncertainties about introduction and spread we find efficiency requires incentivizing an importer s trade choices along with self protection and abatement efforts in contrast to prior work that targets trade alone perhaps surprisingly we find these incentives increase with importers private risk management incentives and with their ability to directly protect others in cases where importers can spread infection to each other we find filterable externalities may lead to multiple nash equilibria

finance and the sources of growth the authors evaluate whether the level of development in the banking sector exerts a causal impact on economic growth and its sources total factor productivity growth physical capital accumulation and private saving they use 1 a pure cross country instrumental variable estimator to extract the exogenous component of banking development and 2 a new panel technique that controls for country specific effects and endogeneity they find that banks do exert a large causal impact on total factor productivity growth which feeds through to overall gdp gross domestic product growth the long run links between banking development and both capital growth and private savings are more tenuous

reversing property rights practice based approaches for controlling agricultural nonpoint source water pollution when emissions aggregate nonlinearly nonpoint source water pollution remains a major issue despite decades of research and sizable conservation programs we suggest that by taking advantage of contemporary modeling and optimization approaches good approximations to physical relationships can be constructed so that even in the presence of unobservable field emissions and nonlinear fate and transport relationships standard economic tools of command and control requirements performance standards and trading can be implemented the boone river watershed in the u s state of iowa is used for empirical demonstration although the approach can be used to construct voluntary conservation policies the described policies involve imposing requirements on agricultural polluters rather than relying on voluntary actions alone

capital account liberalization financial depth and economic growth abstract we show a statistically significant and economically relevant effect of open capital accounts on financial depth and economic growth in a cross section of countries over the periods 1986 1995 and 1976 1995 countries having open capital accounts had a significantly greater increase in financial depth and over the 20 year period greater economic growth these results however are largely driven by the developed countries included in the sample the observed failure of capital account liberalization to promote financial deepening among developing countries suggests potentially important policy implications concerning the desirability of opening up the capital account

optimal trading ratios for pollution permit markets abstract we demonstrate a novel method for improving the efficiency of pollution permit markets by optimizing the exchange of emissions through trade under full information it is optimal for emissions to exchange according to the ratio of marginal damages under asymmetric information we derive necessary conditions for the marginal damage trading ratios to be optimal illustrate that the marginal damage trading ratios are generally not optimal and show how to improve efficiency using optimal trading ratios we calculate the optimal trading ratios for a global carbon market the gains from using optimal trading ratios rather than marginal damage trading ratios range from substantial to trivial which suggests the need for careful consideration of asymmetric information when designing permit markets

externalities and corrective policies in experimental markets this paper reports on the behaviour of simple laboratory markets which have an externality experiences with these markets provide some help in answering two broad questions 1 do markets with externalities behave in accordance with the law of supply and demand 2 how do the pollution tax pollution standard and pollution licenses compare as methods for correcting the externality