total factor carbon emission performance of the chinese transportation industry a bootstrapped non radial malmquist index analysis this paper proposes a non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index nmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time this index enables the consideration of non radial slacks in the conventional malmquist co2 emission index mcpi the nmcpi is calculated based on a non radial directional distance function derived by several data envelopment analysis dea models furthermore nmcpi could be decomposed into an efficiency change ec index and technological change tc index a bootstrapping approach is conducted to introduce statistical inferences into the nmcpi and its decompositions based on the proposed indices the dynamic co2 emission performance change and its decompositions of the chinese regional transportation industry from 2002 to 2010 are investigated the empirical results demonstrate that the total factor carbon emission performance of the transportation industry as a whole decreased by 32 8 over the period and this reduction was primarily caused by technological decline

energy efficiency and productivity change of china s iron and steel industry accounting for undesirable outputs abstract this paper used data from 50 enterprises in china s iron and steel industry to evaluate their energy efficiency and productivity change the study first used a conventional data envelopment analysis model and the malmquist productivity index mpi to measure the energy efficiency and productivity change over the period 2001 2008 the results indicated inefficiency in many of the plants the average energy efficiency was only 61 1 the annual growth rate of productivity was 7 96 over this period and technical change was the main contributor to this growth the research then took undesirable outputs into consideration by using the malmquist luenberger productivity index mlpi to explore the productivity change from 2006 to 2008 omitting undesirable outputs would result in biased efficiency change and technical change this paper also claimed that environmental regulation has a potentially positive impact on technical change

do renewable energy technology innovations promote china s green productivity growth fresh evidence from partially linear functional coefficient models abstract renewable energy technology innovation can benefit the environment by promoting green productivity as proposed by existing theoretical studies however recent uneven developments of both environmental performance and renewable energy technology among regions in china remind us to revisit the above theoretical link in this paper we relax the hypothesized homogeneity and linearity in traditional empirical models to investigate the effects of renewable energy technology innovation on china s green productivity the results of the partially linear functional coefficient models show that the effect of renewable energy technological innovation on green productivity is significant only when the relative income level of a province passes a critical turning point beyond the turning point such an effect increases with the growth of relative income levels finally we provide provincial specific policy implications based on the estimated nonparametric relationship between renewable energy technology innovation and green productivity

the ethiopian commodity exchange and spatial price dispersion abstract in this article we study the impact of an institutional intervention on market efficiency in ethiopia more specifically we analyze to what extent the ethiopian commodity exchange ecx in combination with regional warehouses have contributed to a reduction in price spreads between regional markets our hypothesis is that warehouses connected to the ecx reduce the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas as well as the dispersion between export prices and local retail prices in different coffee growing areas by doing so the ecx has the potential to improve the market efficiency to identify the causal effect we combine retail price data with information on the gradual rollout of warehouses connected to the ecx from 2007 to 2012 our results suggest that when two markets both have access to an operating warehouse the average price spread is 0 86 1 78 etb lower than it is for markets where at least one part lacks warehouse access this is a substantial reduction considering that the average price spread over the full period is 3 33 etb the main results are robust to various econometric specifications and our analysis thus suggests that local warehouses connected to the ecx have indeed improved market efficiency

the peter pan syndrome in emerging markets the productivity transparency trade off in it adoption firms invest in technology to increase productivity yet in emerging markets where a culture of informality is widespread information technology it investments leading to greater transparency can impose a cost through higher taxes and the need for regulatory compliance the tendency of firms to avoid productivity enhancing technologies and remain small to avoid transparency has been dubbed the peter pan syndrome we examine whether firms make the trade off between productivity and transparency by examining it adoption in the indian retail sector we find that computer technology adoption is lower when firms are motivated to avoid transparency specifically technology adoption is lower when there is greater corruption but higher when there is better enforcement and auditing so firms have a higher productivity gain threshold to adopt computers in corrupt business environments that suffer from patchy and variable enforcement of the tax laws not accounting for this motivation to hide from the formal sector underestimates productivity gains from computer adoption thus in addition to their direct effects on the economy enforcement auditing and corruption can have indirect effects through their negative impact on adoption of productivity enhancing technologies that also increase operational transparency

measuring energy efficiency in the context of an emerging economy the case of indian manufacturing in recent years the indian economy has achieved a rapid growth rate however one of the challenges facing the economy is the large energy supply that would be needed to sustain this growth path hence attaining energy efficiency is crucial for the economy this paper examines the indian manufacturing sector and utilizes a variant of the directional distance function to obtain comprehensive measures of performance of the major manufacturing states given the joint goals of achieving energy conservation and output growth the results of the empirical application reveal that given the prevailing technology the average manufacturing firm across the states could reduce energy input and increase output simultaneously by an annual average of 3 84 by improving technical efficiency to accommodate a larger simultaneous increase in output and reduction in energy use india should adopt superior technologies so as to shift the efficient frontier outward

multilateral productivity comparisons with undesirable outputs in a recent paper in this journal caves christensen and diewert i982 hereafter ccd derive what they term multilateral superlative indexes for use in the comparison of output input and productivity across economic entities the indexes derived are distinguished both by transitivity and by a high degree of characteristicity a term introduced by dreschler i 973 to refer to the degree to which the weights used in a comparison are specific to the observations being compared though the indexes are presented with the application to multicountry comparisons of output input and productivity foremost in mind the authors note that they may be useful in a number of other contexts as well i e firms and industries time series and pooled time series and cross section all of the applications mentioned or implied however have this in common they involve the comparison of productive entities all of whose outputs are sold for positive prices this is not surprising of course since most products with which economists are concerned possess this characteristic however it does render incomplete or potentially misleading the comparison of productive entities which produce significant amounts of undesirable outputs such as water and air pollution since the list of such entities is rather long and includes industries critical to many national and regional economies e g chemicals paper petroleum refining copper and steel the omission of this factor from consideration may be a matter of some importance 2 consider for example a comparison of the productivity of the steel industries

shadow pricing of undesirable outputs in nonparametric analysis abstract for three decades a growing interest in the modeling of desirable and undesirable outputs has led to a theoretical and methodological debate in the nonparametric literature on production technology and efficiency the first main discussion is about the way of modeling bad undesirables as inputs or outputs or by transformation functions the second debate concerns the implications of the weak disposability assumption in the modeling of bad outputs in particular the possibility of assigning unexpected signs to shadow prices of bad outputs in addition we point out a current error in the modeling of weak disposability under a variable returns to scale technology in this paper we introduce a hybrid model to ensure the economically meaningful jointness of good and bad outputs while constraining shadow prices of bad outputs to their expected sign we argue that it is a sound compromise to model undesirable outputs with a meaningful primal dual economic interpretation finally we propose an extension to define shadow prices for undesirable outputs following the law of one price loop rule

can mobile phones improve agricultural outcomes evidence from a randomized experiment in niger the widespread growth of mobile phone coverage worldwide has offered new potential for increasing rural households access to information and public and private transfers yet despite the proliferation of mobile phone based interventions in the agricultural sector there is mixed evidence on their impact we report the results of a randomized evaluation in niger in which rural households increased their access to information technology and their capacity to use it we find that households in treated villages planted a more diverse basket of crops particularly marginal cash crops grown by women this did not increase the likelihood of selling these crops or the farm gate price received suggesting that other market failures need to be addressed to improve farmers welfare

environmental regulations and productivity growth the case of fossil fueled electric power generation this paper measures and analyzes the effect of sulfur dioxide emission restrictions on the rate of productivity growth in the electric power industry over the 1973 79 business cycle a firm specific measure of regulatory intensity is developed which depends on the severity of the emission standard the extent of enforcement and the unconstrained emission rate relevant to each utility the results indicate that emission regulations result in significantly higher generating costs primarily from the increased use of low sulfur fuels the average rate of productivity growth was reduced by 0 59 percentage points per year for constrained utilities

editorial marketing science in emerging markets in this editorial accompanying the special section on marketing science in emerging markets msem we describe how research on emerging markets can contribute to richer theoretical and substantive understanding of markets and marketing such research can also aid in providing managerial guidance on how to operate in emerging markets we conclude with a description of the selection and review process for the special section and an overview of the four papers being published

correction to the political determinants of international trade efforts to replicate our study of the effects of politics on trade flows between the major powers have revealed that the computer program written to calculate the estimates produced errors in both the coefficients and the standard errors furthermore these errors have some consequences for the results in this brief corrigendum we present corrected tables for our research note and a slightly modified interpretation of the results our study examined evidence to assess three arguments about how politics may affect trade the first contends that positive political relations in a dyad result in higher levels of trade this argument leads to two hypotheses states in conflict will have a lower level of trade than those not in conflict and trade will increase with the degree of common interests between a pair of states the second argument concludes that democratic dyads will have a higher level of trade than other dyads the third argument focuses on the security concerns of states and leads to the hypotheses that alliances will increase trade in a bipolar system but will have no effect in a multipolar system we refer readers to the original article for a fuller statement of the logic of these arguments their respective hypotheses and a complete statement of our research design and operationalization of the variables morrow siverson and tabares 1998

the digital provide information technology market performance and welfare in the south indian fisheries sector when information is limited or costly agents are unable to engage in optimal arbitrage excess price dispersion across markets can arise and goods may not be allocated efficiently in this setting information technologies may improve market performance and increase welfare between 1997 and 2001 mobile phone service was introduced throughout kerala a state in india with a large fishing industry using microlevel survey data we show that the adoption of mobile phones by fishermen and wholesalers was associated with a dramatic reduction in price dispersion the complete elimination of waste and near perfect adherence to the law of one price both consumer and producer welfare increased

a metafrontier approach for measuring an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index this paper presents an alternative environmentally sensitive productivity growth index to incorporate group heterogeneities into a conventional malmquist luenberger productivity growth index the p

the contribution of environmental regulations to the slowdown in productivity growth abstract the radical slowdown in productivity growth since 1965 is often attributed to environmental regulations several studies varying widely in method have attempted to assess this contribution here these analyses are reviewed and critiqued and a summary appraisal of the likely contribution of environmental regulations to the observed decrease in productivity growth is offered

ict and transport infrastructure development an empirical analysis of complementarity abstractthis paper provides an empirical framework to assess the nonlinear complementary linkage effects that arise from the interaction between motorway capital and information and communications

how is the liberalization of food markets progressing market integration and transaction costs in subsistence economies we propose a modification of baulch s parity bounds model to measure the market integration of food markets in developing countries instead of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs we estimate transaction costs predicted transaction costs compare well with survey data of traders probabilities of market regimes computed on the basis of predicted transaction costs fluctuate significantly and do not support fixed regime probabilities over time the probability of market integration with trade decreases consistently during food shortages increasing either the probability of no trade or loss making trade or the probability of profitable but unexploited trade opportunities the data further support a negative trend in market integration with trade

integration and productivity satellite tracked evidence this paper introduces satellite tracked real time data from a large fishing firm managing its vertically horizontally and geographically linked ships to study the causal impact of integration on total factor productivity tfp after the firm acquired its vertically unintegrated contractual fish suppliers tfp increased 16 among newly integrated ships whereas it did not vary for already owned ships some classic mechanisms such as increased effort due to monitoring do not systematically explain tfp gains under integration whereas evidence on hold up threat alleviation is mixed importantly enhanced knowledge transfer and hierarchical authority enacting productivity improving operational practices among newly integrated ships are more likely explanations of the results this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

internal borders ethnic based market segmentation in malawi summary ethnic diversity is associated with poorer economic development but why i argue that market segmentation is one mechanism linking diversity to economic underdevelopment when ethnic groups are geographically segregated and trust is concentrated within groups markets will be tend to be segmented along ethnic lines i evaluate this argument using maize price data from seventy malawian markets over 14 years and combine it with census data on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups i find that maize price differences a key indicator of market segmentation are indeed larger for ethnically dissimilar markets even after taking sub national administrative borders geographic barriers and climatic differences into account these statistical findings are complemented by interview data from farmers and traders in three markets across malawi which highlight the centrality of trust in small scale maize trading as well as a preference for coethnic trading partners together these findings suggest that ethnic diversity and ethnoregional segregation in particular can have a negative impact on market integration an important driver of food security and long term economic development

learning about new technologies through social networks experimental evidence on nontraditional stoves in bangladesh there are few marketing studies of social learning about new technologies in low income countries this paper examines how learning through opinion leaders and social networks influences demand for nontraditional cookstoves a technology with important health and environmental consequences for developing country populations we conduct marketing interventions in rural bangladesh to assess how stove adoption decisions respond to a learning the adoption choices of locally identified opinion leaders and b learning about stove attributes and performance through social networks we find that households generally draw negative inferences about stoves through social learning and that social learning is more important for stoves with less evident benefits in an institutional environment where consumers are distrustful of new products and brands consumers appear to rely on their networks more to learn about negative product attributes overall our findings imply that external information and marketing campaigns can induce initial adoption and experiential learning about unfamiliar technologies but sustained use ultimately requires that new technologies match local preferences

impacts of entry by counterfeiters this paper uses a natural experiment to test the impact of counterfeiting under weak intellectual property rights i collect new panel data from chinese shoe companies from 1993 2004 by exploiting the discontinuity of government enforcement efforts for the footwear sector in 1995 and the differences in authentic companies relationships with the government i identify and measure the effects of counterfeit entry on authentic prices qualities and other market outcomes the results show that brands with less government protection differentiate their products through innovation self enforcement vertical integration of downstream retailers and subtle high price signals these strategies push up authentic prices and are effective in reducing counterfeit sales

the political determinants of international trade the major powers 1907 1990 we test three arguments about the effect of international politics on trade flows the first argument states that trade flows are greater between states with similar interests than those with dissimilar interests the second that trade flows are greater in democratic dyads than nondemocratic dyads and the third that trade flows are greater between allies we examine trade flows between the major powers from 1907 to 1990 this period provides variation on all three independent variables of interest and allows us to separate the three arguments empirically we estimate a gravity model of trade with the above political variables added our results demonstrate that joint democracy and common interests increase trade in a dyad but alliances generally do not even when controlling for polarity of the system

mobile money in tanzania in developing countries mobile telecom networks have emerged as major providers of financial services bypassing the sparse retail networks of traditional banks we analyze a large individual level data set of mobile money transactions in tanzania to provide evidence of the impact of mobile money on alleviating financial exclusion in developing countries we identify three types of transactions i money transfers to others ii short distance money self transportation and iii money storage for short to medium periods of time we utilize a natural experiment of an unanticipated increase in transaction fees to identify the demand for these transactions using the demand estimates we find that the willingness to pay to avoid walking with cash an extra kilometer short distance self transportation and to avoid storing money at home money storage for an extra day are 1 25 and 0 8 of an average transaction respectively which demonstrates that mobile money ameliorates significant amounts of crime

on the inconsistency of the malmquist luenberger index abstract apart from the well known weaknesses of the standard malmquist productivity index related to infeasibility and not accounting for slacks already addressed in the literature we identify a new and significant drawback of the malmquist luenberger index decomposition that questions its validity as an empirical tool for environmental productivity measurement associated with the production of bad outputs in particular we show that the usual interpretation of the technical change component in terms of production frontier shifts can be inconsistent with its numerical value thereby resulting in an erroneous interpretation of this component that passes on to the index itself we illustrate this issue with a simple numerical example finally we propose a solution for this inconsistency issue based on incorporating a new postulate for the technology related to the production of bad outputs

risk sharing and transactions costs evidence from kenya s mobile money revolution we explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption in our panel sample adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent we find that while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers the consumption of user households is unaffected the mechanisms underlying these consumption effects are increases in remittances received and the diversity of senders we report robustness checks supporting these results and use the four fold expansion of the mobile money agent network as a source of exogenous variation in access to the innovation jel e42 g22 o16 o17 z13 in developing countries informal networks provide an important means by which individuals and households share risk though the insurance they provide is often incomplete economists have proposed a number of reasons for this incompleteness including information asymmetries which manifest in problems of moral hazard and limited commitment both of which induce positive correlations between realized income and consumption in this article we emphasize a complementary source of incompleteness transaction costs literally the costs of transferring resources between individuals we test the impact of transaction costs on risk sharing by analyzing data from a large panel household survey that we designed and administered in kenya over a three year period to capture the expansion of mobile money this financial innovation has allowed individuals to transfer purchasing power by simple short messaging service sms technology and has dramatically reduced the cost of sending money across large distances mobile money is a recent innovation in developing economies one of the first and most successful examples to date is kenya s m pesa 1 in just four years after its

information efficiency and welfare in agricultural markets information and communications technologies icts have spread rapidly in the developing world there has been considerable interest in the potential role icts particularly mobile phones have begun to play in the marketing of agricultural outputs in these countries in this article we discuss the potential impacts icts may have on welfare both in terms of potential efficiency gains via improved arbitrage and welfare transfers among agents in the supply chain via reduced informational asymmetries and market power we also review the recent empirical evidence for such effects

how did wars dampen trade in the mena region abstractthe article investigates the impact of wars on trade in the middle east and north african region using an augmented gravity model that controls for the endogeneity problem in our estimation we introduce a war variable and distinguish between different types of conflicts the results show that wars have a significantly negative impact on exports imports and trade civil conflicts hinder exports imports and trade significantly the disaggregated version of the gravity model shows that non state conflicts have a detrimental effect on bilateral trade flows in manufacturing and that none of the conflicts do affect trade in services we also find that on average a conflict is equivalent to a tariff of 5 of the value of trade

the unintended consequences of internet diffusion evidence from malaysia abstract can the introduction of the internet undermine incumbent power in a semi authoritarian regime i examine this question using evidence from malaysia where the incumbent coalition lost its 40 year monopoly on power in 2008 i develop a novel methodology for measuring internet penetration matching ip addresses with physical locations and apply it to the 2004 to 2008 period in malaysia using distance to the backbone to instrument for endogenous internet penetration i find that internet exposure accounts for 6 6 points nearly half the swing against the incumbent party in 2008 i find limited evidence of increased turnover and no evidence of an effect on turnout

dynamic environmental performance analysis a malmquist index approach abstract this article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by kuosmanen and kortelainen kuosmanen t kortelainen m 2005 measuring eco efficiency of production with data envelopment analysis journal of industrial ecology 9 4 59 72 from a static to a dynamic setting for this purpose we construct an environmental performance index epi by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a malmquist index approach compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods our approach builds on the standard definition of eco efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco efficiency and shifts in environmental technology respectively we apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the european union in 1990 2003 according to the results environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance while relative eco efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period

measurement of environmentally sensitive productivity growth in korean industries this study measures productivity growth using the metafrontier malmquist luenberger productivity growth index mml index method and decomposes the index the results are compared with those obtained from the conventional malmquist luenberger ml productivity growth index mml has two advantages compared with the ml index the former is able to consider undesirable output as a by product of production which accounts for producer group heterogeneities as a result it enables separation and estimation of changes in the technological gap between regional and global frontier technologies the proposed index is employed to measure productivity growth and decompose its components in 14 korean industrial sectors during the period between 1981 and 2007 for the purpose of detailed analysis of policy effects the study period was divided into three decades the results show that technology innovation can be regarded as a more important factor of productivity growth rather than efficiency change the chemical and petrochemical machinery and transport equipment industries are treated as global innovators in the whole period however the result differs according to decades it is found that the groups with higher energy efficient technology and profitability obtain a higher productivity growth rate in comparison with their low energy efficient technology industry counterparts policy implications of the empirical results are discussed

payment mechanisms and antipoverty programs evidence from a mobile money cash transfer experiment in niger abstractcash transfers have become an increasingly important component of social protection policies in both developed and developing countries while such programs are often implemented electronically in developed countries in many developing countries with weak financial infrastructure such transfers are distributed manually resulting in significant costs to program recipients and the public sector alike the introduction of mobile money systems in many developing countries offers new opportunities for distributing cash transfers using data from a randomized experiment of a mobile money cash transfer program in niger we find evidence of benefits of this new system household diet diversity was 9 16 higher among households who received mobile transfers and children ate an additional one third of a meal per day these results can be partially attributed to time savings associated with mobile transfers as program recipients spent less time traveling to and waiting for their transfer they are also

long run price elasticities of demand for credit evidence from a countrywide field experiment in mexico we use randomized interest rates offered across eighty geographically distinct regions for twenty nine months by mexico s largest microlender to sketch the adjustment from a price change to a new equilibrium demand is elastic and more so over the longer run e g the dollars borrowed elasticity increases from 1 1 in year one to 2 9 in year three credit bureau data do not show evidence of crowd out although this and other null results are imprecisely estimated the lender s profits increase albeit noisily starting in year two but competitors do not respond by reducing rates these findings together with other results suggest that informational frictions are important and that cutting rates furthered compartamos banco s double bottom line of improving social welfare subject to a profitability constraint

a deterministic parametric metafrontier luenberger indicator for measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth a korean fossil fuel power case abstract this paper contributes to the current literature by proposing an alternative parametric metafrontier productivity approach called the deterministic parametric metafrontier luenberger productivity indicator dpmlpi for measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth incorporating technological heterogeneities the luenberger productivity indicator is constructed based on a quadratic output directional distance function with undesirable outputs and then combined with the deterministic metafrontier to develop dpmlpi the dpmlpi can be decomposed into efficiency change technological change and productivity growth gap the productivity growth gap can be further divided into efficiency change gap and technological change gap the parametric linear programming technique is used to estimate parameters and construct the metafrontier an empirical study for the korean fossil fuel power industry at the plant level is conducted for the 2003 2011 period the results show a 0 15 increase in environmentally sensitive productivity growth which is mainly driven by environmental technological change the oil fired power plants show higher levels than the coal fired ones of environmentally sensitive productivity growth and technological change performance some related policy implications are also proposed for the korean fossil fuel power sector

breaking free of a stereotype should a domestic brand pretend to be a foreign one consumers in many emerging markets exhibit a pronounced preference for western and global brands while domestic brands are often associated with a cheap but low quality image frustrated with the negative country of origin coo stereotype imposed on them many domestic brands from emerging markets follow a variety of approaches to disguise their coo and pretend to be foreign this paper studies the strategic aspects of this phenomenon we consider an experience good market where consumers learn about each brand s quality using its coo as a prior each firm can invest in product quality or coo dissociation the former generates better quality signals while the latter simply masks the firm s coo identity the analysis reveals a few main insights sharing a reputation leads to a common good problem where firms free ride on each other s quality investments as a high quality firm dissociates itself from the stereotype it ceases to contribute to the coo image but also prevents its low quality peers from free riding on it this incurs a negative direct effect but a positive strategic effect on the group image consequently a country s coo image may actually improve when more high quality brands shun their identities and pretend to be foreign in equilibrium coo image improves monotonically as firms become more efficient in providing quality however the prevalence of coo dissociation may first increase then decrease we discuss the implications of these results for emerging market brands as well as policy makers

productivity growth and pollution in state manufacturing the directional output distance function chambers chung fare 1996 is used to construct a malmquist luenberger index of total factor productivity growth for manufacturing when both good and bad outputs are jointly produced the index is constructed using information on good and bad output quantities and input quantities circumventing the problem of recovering shadow price information for the bad output needed for the fisher or tornqvist type of productivity indices accounting for toxic releases in manufacturing productivity growth averages 1 4 an nually during 1988 1994 the findings also suggest that the failure to account for toxic releases in manufacturing results in a significant under statement of total factor productivity growth

congestion measurement in nonparametric analysis under the weakly disposable technology abstract congestion is a widely observed economic phenomenon where outputs are reduced due to excessive amount of inputs the previous approaches to identify congestion in nonparametric analysis only consider desirable outputs in the production process undesirable outputs are usually jointly produced with desirable outputs in this paper we propose an approach for measuring congestion in the presence of desirable and undesirable outputs simultaneously the proposed approach can discriminate between the congested dmus and the truly efficient dmus which are all efficient according to the scores calculated by the directional distance function finally an empirical example is used to illustrate the approach

general equilibrium tragedy of the commons many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods households in resource based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities as a result factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change this has two important implications first it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non resource sectors second it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors we construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons this model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock we use the model to illustrate medium run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in honduras simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy wide impacts on prices and wages managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks

bilateral trading in networks in many markets goods flow from initial producers to final customers travelling through many layers of intermediaries and information is asymmetric we study a dynamic model of bargaining in networks that captures these features we show that the equilibrium price demanded over time is non monotonic but the sequence of transaction prices declines over time with the possible exception of the last period the price dynamic is therefore reminiscent of fire sales and hot potato trading traders who intermediate the object arise endogenously and make a positive profit the profit earning intermediaries are not necessarily traders with many connections for the case of multilayer networks they belong to the path that reaches the maximum number of potential buyers using the minimal number of intermediaries this is not necessarily the path of the network that maximizes the probability of consumption by traders who value the most the object i e welfare

impact of sms based agricultural information on indian farmers this study estimates the benefits that indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called reuters market light rml we conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of maharashtra treated farmers associate rml information with a number of decisions they have made and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading but the magnitude of these effects is small we find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers crop value added crop losses resulting from rainstorms or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices although disappointing these results are in line with the market take up rate of the rml service in the study districts which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take up over the study period jel codes o13 q11 q13 the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether agricultural information distributed through mobile phones generates economic benefits to farmers we implement a randomized controlled trial of a commercial service entitled reuters market light rml offered by the largest and best established private provider of agricultural price information in india at the time of the experiment operating in maharashtra and other indian states rml distributes price weather and crop advisory information through sms messages we offered a one year free subscription to rml to a random sample of farmers to test whether they obtain higher prices for their agricultural output

face value information and signaling in an illegal market author affiliation trevon d logan the ohio state university and nber 410 arps hall 1945 north high street columbus oh 43210 usa e mail logan 155 osu edu corresponding author manisha shah dagger university of california los angeles and nber 3250 public affairs building los angeles ca 91195 e mail manishashah ucla edu acknowledgment we would like to thank george akerlof rodney j andrews raj arunachalam andrea a cann lisa d cook brahima coulibaly scott cunningham angus deaton avinash dixit claudia d goldin karla hoff joseph kaboski simon loertscher joseph m newhard christina paxson john pepper ruth peterson patricia reagan seth sanders ebonya washington nathan woodfork three anonymous referees and numerous seminar participants who provided helpful suggestions the usual disclaimer applies 1 introductionformal enforcement is often seen as the cornerstone of contract design while information can overcome the problems of asymmetric information akerlof 1970 spence 1973 principals are unlikely to engage agents unless the information conveyed is credible and verifiable while the use of formal institutions such as courts is rare relative to the volume of transactions the standard argument is that the presence of formal institutions gives contracts their authority in schelling s 1960 classic terminology the power to sue and be sued gives parties the ability to make credible enforceable commitments a prerequisite to most transactions without means of redress the information that principals and agents share would a priori have little value numerous studies have documented how informal networks long term relationships and reputations overcome problems of asymmetric information indeed researchers have developed large literatures that look at limited contractibility hart 1995 tirole 1999 and situations in which formal enforcement is costly greif 1993 to consider the additional mechanisms that must be in place if existing institutions are lacking or unable to mediate disputes however the literature has not developed an empirical answer to whether the value of information without formal enforcement approaches its value when formal enforcement is present in this article we ask two questions i are formal enforcement mechanisms necessary for the information that principals and agents share to have value ii if not then what is the value of information in an environment without formal enforcement ideally we would like to analyze an illegal market to answer these questions illegal markets rule out the possibility that market function or variation in the information environment is due to the presence of formal enforcement similarly in an illegal market the information that principals and agents convey to one another may not be credible or verifiable and misrepresentation is not likely to be punished the problem is that most illegal markets have coarse information environments it is therefore challenging to obtain information on prices quantities and consumer and producer behavior making empirical answers to these questions especially difficult we overcome these problems by analyzing an illegal market with a rich information structure the online market for male sex work we begin with a general description of this seldom studied market we then document the ways in which the clients of male sex workers informally police the market by informing other clients of deceptive sex workers and by reviewing sex workers on independent client owned web sites the informal policing in the market raises the cost of misrepresentation for would be fraudulent escorts and rewards the truthful self disclosure of honest escorts encouraging truthful self disclosure we further exploit this institutional knowledge to identify the specific information clients treat as signals of escort quality

a note on efficiency and productivity growth in the korean banking industry 1992 2002 abstract in this paper we present estimates of korean bank inefficiency and productivity change for the period 1992 2002 that are derived from the directional technology distance function our method controls for loan losses that are an undesirable by product arising from the production of loans and allows the aggregation of individual bank inefficiency and productivity growth to the industry level our findings indicate that technical progress during the period was more than enough to offset efficiency declines so that the banking industry experienced productivity growth

is it enough evidence from a natural experiment in india s agriculture markets access to information and communication technologies icts such as mobile phone networks is widely known to improve market efficiency in this paper we examine whether access to timely and accurate information provided through ict applications has any additional impact using a detailed data set from reuters market light rml a text message service in india that provides daily price information to market participants we find that this information reduces the geographic price dispersion of crops in rural communities by an average of 12 over and above access to mobile phone technology and other means of communication to identify the effect of information on price dispersion we exploit a natural experiment where bulk text messages were banned unexpectedly across india for 12 days in 2010 we find that besides reducing geographic price dispersion rml also increases the rate at which prices converge across india over time we discuss the implications of this for development organizations and informat

collateral damage trade disruption and the economic impact of war abstract conventional wisdom in economic history suggests that conflict between countries can be enormously disruptive of economic activity especially international trade we study the effects of war on bilateral trade with available data extending back to 1870 using the gravity model we estimate the contemporaneous and lagged effects of wars on the trade of belligerent nations and neutrals controlling for other determinants of trade as well as the possible effects of reverse causality we find large and persistent impacts of wars on trade national income and global economic welfare we also conduct a general equilibrium comparative statics exercise that indicates costs associated with lost trade might be at least as large as the conventionally measured direct costs of war such as lost human capital as illustrated by case studies of world wars i and ii

a sequential malmquist luenberger productivity index environmentally sensitive productivity growth considering the progressive nature of technology this study proposes an index for measuring environmentally sensitive productivity growth which appropriately considers the nature of technical change the rationale of this methodology is to exclud

economic liberalization and indian economic growth what s the evidence india s growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity unlike the east asian countries india s growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufacturing exports so what triggered the change in the growth trajectory did the market liberalization policies of the 1990s help how have the initial conditions shaped the process and how has the indian model impinged on india s central problem of mass poverty this paper surveys the literature and offers its own assessment of the drivers of change jel i32 o13 o14 o15 o21 o47

look who s talking the impacts of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones on agricultural prices abstract using data from the philippines we study the impact of mobile phones on the prices agricultural producers receive for their cash crop we first look at the impact on price of mobile phone ownership at the household level because this masks a considerable amount of heterogeneity we then look at the impact on price of the intrahousehold allocation of mobile phones we find that whether the household owns a mobile phone has no impact on price but whether a farmer or spouse owns a mobile phone is associated with a 5 to 8 per cent increase in price

transaction costs information technologies and the choice of marketplace among farmers in northern ghana using a transactions costs framework we examine the impact of information and communication technologies mobile phones and radios use on market participation in developing country agricultural markets using a novel transaction level data set of ghanaian farmers our analysis of the choice of markets by farmers suggests that market information from a broader range of markets may not always induce farmers to sell in more distant markets instead farmers may use broader market information to enhance their bargaining power in closer markets finally we find weak evidence on the impact of using mobile phones in attracting farm gate buyers

shadow prices and pollution costs in u s agriculture abstract we use the directional output distance function to derive estimates of production inefficiency shadow prices for polluting outputs and the associated pollution costs using a quadratic functional form for the directional output distance function and data for the u s agricultural sector during 1960 1996 we find that the pollution costs the shadow values from the runoff and leaching of pesticides are 6 of crop and animal revenues and are highest in the midwest and lowest in the western states if states were to reduce technical inefficiency and operate on the production frontier pollution costs could be reduced by 7

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage the role of habit attention and electronic trading despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities how often arbitrage occurs and how profitable it is we address these gaps via a transaction level analysis of spatial arbitrage in the wholesale automotive market we investigate why arbitrage opportunities are created by analyzing how sellers choose where to sell vehicles we find that the attention sellers pay to the distribution of a vehicle is negatively related to the probability that it is arbitraged arbitrage occurs in approximately 1 of transactions although electronic trading is making arbitrage less prevalent by improving buyer seller matching across locations arbitrage yields a 5 6 return on average although arbitrageurs take a loss 14 of the time our results contribute to the literature on arbitrage the effect of attention allocation on market outcomes and the effect of information technology on market efficiency this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

do environmental regulations hamper productivity growth how accounting for improvements of plants environmental performance can change the conclusion abstract many economists maintain that environmental regulations hamper productivity growth a view supported by several empirical studies on industry or state level data however there is little research of the relationship between the stringency of environmental regulation and productivity growth at the plant level and the results of the few existing studies are ambiguous moreover the measures of productivity growth applied in previous studies do not credit plants for emission reductions and this may result in understatement of productivity growth we perform regression analyses of productivity growth on regulatory stringency using plant level data to credit a plant for emission reductions we include emissions as inputs when calculating an environmental malmquist productivity index emi and do not include emissions when calculation the traditional malmquist productivity index mi the regression analyses show that the overall effect of the regulatory stringency faced by plants on plants productivity growth is statistically insignificant when mi is applied to measure productivity growth however when we apply emi the effect is positive and statistically significant this indicates that not accounting for emission reductions when measuring productivity growth can result in too pessimistic conclusions regarding the effect of regulatory stringency on productivity growth

ict adoption and income diversification among rural households in china although the determinants of income diversification have been widely examined in the literature little is known about whether and how information and communication technology ict adoption affect

contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food security and poverty reduction assessing the current evidence following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014 this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition food security and economic growth in developing and emergent countries in doing so we evaluate the quality and scientific rigor of that evidence identify the key conclusions that emerge from the literature and assess whether these conclusions are consistent across the sources the results of the assessment show that while some specific topics are consistently and rigorously documented thus substantiating some of the claims found in the literature other areas of research still lack the level of disaggregated data or an appropriate methodology to reach consistency and robust conclusions more specifically the analysis reveals that while fish contributes undeniably to nutrition and food security the links between fisheries aquaculture and poverty alleviation are complex and still unclear in particular national and household level studies on fisheries contributions to poverty alleviation lack good conceptual models and produce inconsistent results for aquaculture national and household studies tend to focus on export value chains and use diverse approaches they suggest some degree of poverty alleviation and possibly other positive outcomes for adopters but these outcomes also depend on the small scale farming contexts and on whether adoption was emergent or due to development assistance interventions impacts of fish trade on food security and poverty alleviation are ambiguous and confounded by a focus on international trade and a lack of consistent methods the influences of major drivers decentralization climate change demographic transition are still insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood finally the evaluation reveals that evidence based research and policy narratives are often disconnected with some of the strongest and long lasting policy narratives lacking any strong and rigorous evidence based validation building on these different results this paper identifies six key gaps facing policy makers development practitioners and researchers

increasing agricultural productivity while reducing greenhouse gas emissions in sub saharan africa myth or reality the motivation for this study stems from two major concerns that are interlinked the first is the decades long food insecurity crisis faced by sub saharan african ssa countries which is still prevalent the second is the negative impact greenhouse gas ghg emissions from agriculture may have on future food production and which is likely to worsen the food insecurity problem the conundrum ssa farmers face is how to increase food output through productivity growth while minimizing ghg emissions to measure changes in productivity growth and ghg emissions this study evaluates the agricultural performance of 18 ssa countries by utilizing the malmquist luenberger index to incorporate good and bad outputs for the years 1980 2012 the empirical evidence demonstrates that productivity is overestimated when bad outputs are not considered in the production model the analysis provides a better understanding of the effectiveness of previous mitigation methods and which informs an appropriate course of action needed to achieve the twin objectives of increasing agriculture productivity while reducing ghg emissions

productivity growth environmental regulation and win win opportunities the case of chemical industry in italy and germany abstract this paper analyzes the environmental and economic efficiency of a sample of firms located in italy and germany operating in the chemical sector and included in the european pollution release and transfer register e prtr the directional distance function ddf approach in a conditional setting has been applied to obtain efficiency score and total factor productivity tfp growth indexes considering pollution in computations emissions increase in absolute term between 2004 and 2007 with a worse performance of italian firms but efficiency indicators show a reduction of inefficiency over time with similar performance of firms from the two countries the formal test for the porter s hypothesis suggests that chemical firms suffering higher compliance costs in the first period react with investment increasing productivity in the following years the empirical evidence robust to different specifications and estimation methods supports the presence of win win opportunities

expected product market reforms and technology adoption by senegalese onion producers author s bernard t de janvry a mbaye s sadoulet e abstract the authors 2017 we assess the responsiveness of senegalese onion producers to their knowledge of expected changes in product market conditions whereby onions would no longer be sold based on volume but rather on weight and with labeling certifying quality a village level randomized information campaign on the upcoming introduction of these reforms induced significant investments by farmers into quality enhancing inputs delays in the actual introduction of scales enabled us to rigorously identify positive price effects from these investments our results point to the importance of farmers expectations regarding the improved functioning of product markets in triggering technology adoption

measurement of consumer gains from market stabilization for most cases of practical significance in which partial equilibrium analysis is appropriate there is little difference between exact measures of consumer gains from market stabilization and approximations such as expected change in marshallian or hicksian consumer surplus careful specification of the nature of stabilization is more crucial than the choice of welfare measure it is important to represent correctly the demand curvature and supply response and to determine whether general equilibrium responses can be ignored in any event an improved analytical approximation and a simple numerical method for calculating the exact measures make it unnecessary to rely on suspect measures

total factor carbon emission performance of fossil fuel power plants in china a metafrontier non radial malmquist index analysis article i nfo this paper proposes the metafrontier non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index mnmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time the mnmcpi method allows for the incorporation of group heterogeneity and non radial slack into the previously introduced malmquist co2 emission performance index mcpi we derive the mnmcpi by solving several non radial data envelop ment analysis dea models we decompose the mnmcpi into an efficiency change ec index a best practice gap change bpc index and a technology gap change tgc index and based on the proposed indices we examine the dynamic changes in co2 emission performance and its decomposition of fossil fuel power plants in china for the 2005 2010 period the empirical results show a 0 38 increase in total factor co2 emission performance as a whole and a u shaped mnmcpi curve for the sample period because companies owned by the central government lack innovation and technological leadership the results suggest a missing link in the role of the central government in promoting co2 emission performance

environmental cost benefit analysis of alternative timing strategies in greenhouse gas abatement a data envelopment analysis approach assessing the benefits of climate policies is complicated due to ancillary benefits abatement of greenhouse gases also reduces local air pollution the timing of the abatement measures influences both the economic costs and ancillary benefits this paper conducts efficiency analysis of ten alternative timing strategies taking into account the ancillary benefits we apply the approach by kuosmanen and kortelainen valuing environmental factors in cost benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis ecological economics 62 2007 56 65 which does not require prior valuation of the environmental impacts the assessment is based on synthetic data from a dynamic applied general equilibrium model calibrated to the netherlands our assessment shows that if one is only interested in ghg abatement at the lowest economic cost then equal reduction of ghgs over time is preferred if society is willing to pay a premium for higher ancillary benefits an early mid intensive reduction strategy is optimal

valuing environmental factors in cost benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis abstract environmental cost benefit analysis ecba is used for the social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts economic valuation of environmental impacts forms one of the critical steps of ecba we develop a new method for this purpose which does not require price estimation for environmental impacts using stated or revealed preference methods our approach is based on data envelopment analysis dea which is modified to ecba by using absolute shadow prices instead of relative prices we also discuss how the method can be used for sensitive analysis in ecba we illustrate the method by means of a hypothetical numerical example

getting prices right the impact of the market information service in uganda the market information service project in uganda collected data on prices for the main agricultural commodities in major market centers and disseminated the information through local fmradio stations in various districts exploiting the variation across space between households with and without access to a radio we find evidence suggesting that better informed farmers managed to bargain for higher farm gate prices on their surplus production

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

an activity analysis model of the environmental performance of firms application to fossil fuel fired electric utilities the productivity of firms when some outputs pollution are undesirable has been studied in the literature for some time in this paper we introduce an environmental performance indicator based on the decomposition of overall factor productivity into a pollution index and an input output efficiency index this indicator is compared to the more conventional jaggi and freedman 1992 model results are given for illustrative purposes using data from u s fossil fuel fired electric utilities the rankings of the utilities obtained with the two models show significant divergence which is due to the different ways in which the undesirable outputs are dealt with as well as due to the different possible tradeoffs between the pollutants released into the atmosphere and the resources used as inputs

the impact of environmental regulations on industry productivity direct and indirect effects abstract the paper develops an approach to measuring the impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth which is less restrictive than a simple growth accounting approach environmental regulations have a direct impact on productivity growth due to the diversion of resources toward required abatement capital there can be a further indirect effect however as conventional inputs and production processes are changed in response to requirements to purchase abatement capital we estimate this indirect effect using a flexible functional form cost function total factor productivity and the direct and indirect productivity effects of environmental regulations are presented for five polluting industries we find that the indirect effect can be either positive or negative and in all industries is energy using the net impact of environmental regulations on total factor productivity growth is fairly small given that these are the most polluting industries they account for about 10 30 of the productivity decline of the 1970s in these industries