transferring williamson s discriminating alignment to the analysis of environmental governance of social ecological interdependence institutional fit is operationalized by transferring transaction costs economics tce to the analysis of instances of social ecological interdependence we carefully spell out the differences with conventional tce and outline analytical steps based on discriminating alignment that enable a tce analysis of environmental governance of nature related transactions we illustrate the approach through the example of wildlife management in germany here we find hierarchical governance a prohibition of killing of wolves embedded into a polycentric hybrid monitoring arrangement in applying tce to nature related transactions we argue that characteristics of nature related transactions can be subsumed under the core categories of jointness uncertainty asset specificity frequency rivalry excludability and social relational distance benefits of this approach include its generating a narrow list of descriptors of instances of biophysically mediated interdependence related to one evaluation criterion cost effectiveness the tce of nature related transactions thus identifies sets of stylized contextual factors and aspects related to the governance of hazards of ex post opportunistic behavior that cut across scales they can be used as composite descriptors that facilitate analysis of complex multi scalar arrangements of natural resource governance we propose the concept of governance challenge derived from tce as being useful for building research on environmental governance

cost benefit reflective distribution charging methodology this paper describes the principle and implementation of a new mw mvar miles charging methodology which was developed to reflect three key cost drivers in distribution network development the distance used to support nodal real and reactive power injection withdrawal the degree of support offered by the network assets and the operating condition of the supporting assets in terms of their power factors the inclusion of the latter driver allows the developed charging methodology to reward network users who are contributing to better power factors and better network utilization while penalizing customers who worsen power factors and network utilization as a consequence the charging model is able to provide forward looking incentives for network customers to behave in a manner to better the network condition which will in turn help to reduce the cost of future network development in addition the separation of real and reactive power pricing would give network users clear indications of the cost of their reactive power draw from the network which in turn could help them to evaluate the economics in investing in reactive power compensation devices the proposed charging methodology is demonstrated on a practical eight busbar distribution system with a mixed demand and embedded generation eg this paper results from work undertaken in a project on distribution charging methodologies for western power distribution the views in this paper expressed are not those of western power distribution

the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money publisher summary this chapter discusses the rationale of the mean standard deviation analysis skewness preference and the demand for money in january 1969 issue of the review of economic studies karl borch and martin feldstein separately criticized the widely used mean variance analysis of portfolio selection borch contended that any system of upward sloping mean standard deviation e s indifference curves can be shown to be inconsistent with the basic axiom of choice under uncertainty he pointed out that one can always pick any two points on an upward sloping indifference curve to represent two bernoulli distributions with probability 1 p of gaining the same amount x in both the cases and probability p of gaining y1 in the case of one distribution and y2 in the case of the second distribution with y2 y1 if the second distribution represents the point to the northeast of the other point then by the dominance axiom the second distribution must be preferred to the first which contradicts the basic meaning of indifference curves feldstein by using a log utility function and a lognormal distribution for investment outcome showed that e s indifference curves for a risk averter need not be convex downwards though upward sloping they would change from convex to concave once the standard deviation of the outcome exceeds the mean multiplied by on the face of it this seems to suggest that risk aversion might decrease as risk is increased beyond a certain extent

transaction costs institutional arrangements and inequality outcomes potato marketing by small producers in rural peru summary we explore the distributional effects of lowering transaction costs to allow access to improved market opportunities for small farmers in the peruvian highlands we find that when new marketing opportunities arise those that have more land are better educated and are well organized are able to deal with the complexities that the new contractual arrangements entail although this on average implies an increase in net income for small farmers it also affects the distribution of earnings generating a more polarized small farmer economy to counteract this effect and reduce inequality in the opportunities of less endowed small farmers complementary policies need to be put in place

towards a competitive market for reactive power this paper presents the design of a competitive market for reactive power ancillary services generator reactive power capability characteristics are used to analyze the reactive power costs and subsequently to construct a bidding framework the reactive power market is settled on uniform price auction using a compromise programming approach based on a modified optimal power flow model the paper examines market power issues in these markets and identifies locations where strategic market power advantages are present that need to be removed through investments in reactive power devices

kenyan dairy policy change influence pathways and economic impacts summary marketing transporting processing and consuming dairy products contribute significantly to the livelihoods of many poor kenyan households this study analyzes the impact of recent research supporting policy changes to liberalize informal milk markets the study found that behavioral changes in dairy sector participants arising from the research evidence supported policy and regulatory changes led to an average 9 reduction in milk marketing margins and a significant increase in the number of licensed small scale milk vendors high welfare benefits arising from the policy change with a net present value of us 230 million are captured by consumers producers and milk vendors

optimal active reactive power dispatch under competition via bilevel programming this paper proposes an active reactive power dispatch procedure that is expressed via a bilevel optimization problem whose upper and lower level criteria are respectively the minimum opportunity cost and minimum offered price of active power it analyzes the impact of minimizing such criteria on system operation and it investigates the behavior of marginal prices and opportunity costs and their use in mechanisms to compensate generators for power provision the bilevel problem is solved using a version of interior point methods derived for mathematical programs with complementarity constraints results obtained with three test systems are analyzed

marketing cooperative vs commission agent the turkish dilemma on the modern fresh fruit and vegetable market in turkey the wholesale markets law was enacted in 1995 to facilitate small scale growers access to the fresh produce market cooperatives and commission agents have thus become the main marketing structures available to small scale fresh produce growers to supply supermarkets and comply with their new requirements in this paper we question the advantages and disadvantages that confront small farmers with respect to those marketing structures to allow for market matching or quality upgrading drawing on ownership and transaction cost arguments we use an analytical framework to identify and compare the costs of these marketing organizations based on data collected through a large number of interviews with stakeholders we show that commission agents and credit cooperatives tend to be more efficient than traditional cooperatives as regards sales performance and decision costs however the lack of apparent competition between commission agents does not allow for sufficient provision of incentives for producers to invest in high quality production consequently credit cooperatives are the only structure progressively turning to strategies of quality upgrading and supermarket supply the flipside of such strategies is that they may lead to the marginalization of small scale farmers

a two step econometric estimation of covariates of side selling the case of coffee cooperatives in southwest ethiopia despite their apparent economic benefit to smallholder farmers cooperatives are vulnerable to the problem of side selling using cross sectional household data and cragg s regression model we ide

reactive market power analysis using must run indices this paper investigates the issues of reactive power must run capacity in power system operations hence in electricity markets a must run index based method is proposed in the paper to measure the market power held by reactive power suppliers the nordic 32 bus system and the ieee 118 bus system are used to test the proposed method the market power holders of reactive power found using the proposed method are in accord with that found in the realistic nordic system operation and in the existing analysis of ieee 118 bus system the paper identifies through must run indices possible conditions that could lead to market power in the case of applying a bid structure within a market framework furthermore market structure drawbacks can cause the appearance of market power even in a topologically ideal system

firms adoption of international standards evidence from the ethiopian floriculture sector global trade in agriculture and food products is increasingly governed by an array of standards a survey conducted in 2010 covering all operational firms in the nascent floriculture industry in ethiopia revealed that only 36 per cent have managed to acquire certification for international private standards this study uses a census based panel dataset from ethiopian floriculture to empirically examine the determinants of firms adoption of international private standards it also analyses overall industry level efforts and public private partnership to launch and implement a national scheme for good agricultural practice and build firms capacity to comply with the standards key words standards certification floriculture exports estate farms ethiopia africa

measuring the importance of transaction costs in cattle marketing transaction cost economics recognizes that transactions do not occur in a frictionless economic environment information negotiation and monitoring costs arise in any transaction and can influence the vertical coordination outcome this paper demonstrates a method for measuring the influence of transaction costs on slaughter cattle marketing the paper focuses on the factors affecting the choice between liveweight live ring auction and deadweight direct to packer sales using tobit limited dependent variable analysis data from a survey of uk farmers are used to estimate the relative importance of various transaction costs and farm characteristic variables for the choice of marketing channel

the case for institutional economics this paper begins with a personal comment which admittedly is unprofessional but there is no escape i declare myself to be an institutional economist though with occasional backward glances and some residue of earlier mainstream indoctrination the conversion from mainstream to institutional economics was not sudden like st paul s conversion to christianity or george bush s conversion to voodoo economics it occurred slowly over several decades it was the result of two influences

a reactive power capacity market using annual auctions this paper presents a new approach to design reactive power capacity markets under this approach annual auctions to procure reactive power capacity are conducted by the system operator two products are defined reactive power generation and absorption capacity which can be supplied by different independent var sources such as generators svcs capacitor banks and shunt reactors reactive power capacity is allocated using an optimization algorithm that matches capacity bids and system reactive power needs for peak and low demand hours the reactive power requirements are calculated taking into account system contingencies and the dynamic performance of the var sources under these situations another key proposal of the paper is the distribution of costs of the reactive power capacity market to the agents responsible for contingencies according to the use of the service by each market participant this remuneration approach provides fair and efficient economic signals to all market participants the applicability of the approach is illustrated with two case studies

oligopolistic competition of gencos in reactive power ancillary service provisions the need for a market based approach for reactive power procurement has been recognized by ferc due to the localized characteristic of reactive power regulatory mechanisms are necessary to mitigate the possibility of holding market power by generators the regulator is responsible for devising the regulatory mechanisms that provide incentives to generators to supply reactive power while preventing the abuse of market power this paper proposes a mathematical model to simulate the strategic behavior of generators supplying reactive power while considering the system operator s schedule the proposed method can be used by the regulator to simulate the market behavior in the reactive power supply we further study how regulatory policies affect the strategic behavior an alternative price cap method has been proposed and tested in the numerical example to mitigate the effect of strategic behavior of generators in reactive power procurement by the system operator the numerical examples are tested on the nordic 32 bus system

reactive power as an ancillary service this paper addresses the problem of reactive power procurement by an independent system operator iso in deregulated electricity markets a reactive bid structure is proposed in the context of a reactive power market based on the reactive power price offers and technical constraints involved in reactive power planning a two tier approach is developed to determine the most beneficial reactive power contracts for the iso the reactive capability of a generator and therefore the opportunity costs in providing reactive power is also included in the model uncertainty in reactive demand and in reactive bids of participating parties is incorporated through monte carlo simulations and the expected reactive power procurement plan for the iso is hence determined the cigre 32 bus network approximately representing the swedish system is used for the studies

meso economic filters along the policy chain understanding the links between policy reforms and rural poverty in latin america abstract the paper clarifies the meso economy concept by defining it as comprising both the market mechanisms and administrative procedures through which policy decisions and market signals trickle down to the household level three main bodies of literature are reviewed the policy oriented literature in which the meso economy was initially considered the transaction cost approach analyzing market and policy failures and the micro economy level of agricultural household models the paper develops a synthesis of macro meso and micro economic perspectives which focuses on the roles played by three levels of filters intervening along the policy chain implications for policy and research are drawn

measuring producers risk preferences a global risk attitude construct in applied agricultural economic research various risk attitude elicitation techniques are used here we investigate whether risk attitude measures rooted in the expected utility framework are related to measures rooted in the multi item scale framework using a second order factor analytical model and data obtained from personal computer guided interviews with 373 farmers we investigate whether the common variance among the latent risk attitude measures can be accounted for by a global risk attitude construct we find that the different risk attitude measures are related and that the global risk attitude construct is significantly related to farmers intention to use futures contracts our research suggests that farmers risk attitude is a higher order characteristic that cannot be effectively extracted by a single measure in empiricalstudies deal ing with risk risk attitudes and producers market behavior various risk attitude measures are used two major approaches to quantify directly farmers risk attitudes can be distinguished measures derived from the expected utility framework and measures derived from responses to multi item scales e g antle chavas and holt goodwin and schroeder saha shumway and talpaz smidts the purpose of this research is to test whether risk attitude measures rooted in the expected utility framework are related to the risk attitude scales rooted in the multiitem scale approach and if so whether these risk attitude measures share a common

buybacks with costly participation abstract posted price offers and first price auctions along with the multi unit discriminatory auction extension are two widely used mechanisms for allocating conservation contracts the choice between the two typically hinges on the trade off between the posted price s simplicity and the potential revenue gains of the auction in this paper we introduce a novel mechanism that attempts to bridge the gap between the performance of posted price offers and auctions a two price and lottery schedule combines the simplicity of the former with some of the flexibility of the latter using a model that incorporates agents cognitive and information costs of bidding we analyze how the ranking of allocative efficiency and cost effectiveness between the mechanisms varies as the wedge of participation costs increases when the number of bidders is endogenously determined by participation costs bid shading associated with a lack of competition in the auction compromises its cost effectiveness vis a vis the posted price and the lottery schedule we use data from three recent buybacks for fishing licenses conducted in maryland to calibrate our model and identify conditions under which the two price schedule outperforms the other mechanisms

how much do farmers value their independence a farmer s decision to contract or produce independently depends on the distribution of income and the nonpecuniary attributes associated with both business arrangements the benefits to growers from contracting such as risk reduction may be overestimated if the nonpecuniary benefits enjoyed by independent producers such as the right to make management decisions and own the commodity produced are not accounted for this study uses data from a u s national survey of hog producers to estimate 1 the difference in expected net returns between contracting and independent production 2 the premium a representative farmer would pay for the risk reduction provided by a contract and 3 the premium a farmer would pay for the nonpecuniary benefits associated with independent production results indicate that growers have a strong preference for autonomy with moderately risk averse growers being willing to pay more for the attributes of independent production than they would for the risk reducing benefits of a contract

the role of risk and risk aversion in adoption of alternative marketing arrangements by the u s farmers the objective of this article is to analyse the relationship between farmers risk aversions and the riskiness of various agricultural enterprises to see which marketing arrangements would typically emerge relying on the basic agency theory model we hypothesize the prevalence of alternative marketing arrangements amas in situations with high risk averse farmers and high risk enterprises and the prevalence of spot cash markets for low risk averse participants and less risky enterprises our empirical tests are carried out using the 2004 agricultural resource management survey arms the empirical results are largely supportive of the agency theory of contract choice

raising offtake from cattle grazed on natural rangelands in sub saharan africa a transaction cost economics approach farmers in sub saharan africa are constrained by large transaction costs associated with marketing of their livestock however transaction costs are often not taken into account in the analysis of factors hampering the development of livestock marketing in this region this article empirically measures the influence of transaction costs on the offtake from cattle grazed on natural rangelands in uganda the study is based on the monitoring of 696 cattle transactions in three districts of uganda from august 2004 to august 2005 the estimated models suggest that proportional transaction costs represented by the state of roads distance to markets and time taken to reach the market are important variables constraining market participation in order to raise offtake from the national herd it is essential to explicitly address these costs one potential solution is collective action in marketing of livestock in which proportional and fixed transaction costs are reduced and shared among the group members

localized reactive power markets using the concept of voltage control areas in this paper we present the design of a localized competitive market for reactive power ancillary services at the level of individual voltage control areas the concept of electrical distance has been used to identify the different voltage control areas within a power system the proposed reactive power market is settled on uniform price auction using a modified optimal power flow model uniform prices for various components of reactive power service are obtained for each voltage control area in the study cases described in the paper we examine whether such a localized reactive power market is more desirable than a common system wide reactive power market

transaction costs in milk marketing a comparison between canada and great britain this study measures the magnitude of transaction costs incurred by milk producers in their contractual relations with dairy processors in two different coordination mechanisms centralized contracting through a marketing board and decentralized bilateral contracting interviews and surveys were conducted to estimate transaction costs faced by producers marketing through the quebec milk marketing board in canada and bilateral contracts in england and wales in the united kingdom using the measurement methodology of the cost of exchange our results show that the relative magnitude of transaction costs incurred by producers across both settings is quite low which indicates that both hybrid coordination mechanisms minimize transaction costs in the dairy sector however results from the bilateral contracting setting indicate a strong heterogeneity of transaction costs levels among farmers in that respect the milk marketing board and its institutional setting would act as a collective insurance pooling transaction costs and sharing them among producers our analysis leads to recommendations on bilateral contracting