collective bargaining in the public sector the effect of legal structure on dispute costs and wages this paper examines the impact of collective bargaining legislation on dispute costs and wages using a panel of canadian public sector contracts the authors results suggest that policymakers designing collective bargaining legislation face a trade off between reducing dispute costs and increasing wages dispute costs are lower under compulsory arbitration than under the right to strike or when no collective bargaining legislation exists hence a switch to compulsory arbitration could potentially make both the union and the employer better off by reducing dispute costs however the authors find that wages are higher under compulsory arbitration than under other legal structures copyright 1991 by american economic association

a test for subadditivity of the cost function with an application to the bell system stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0002 8282 28198409 2974 3a4 3c615 3aatfsot 3e2 0 co 3b2 rthe american economic review is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgmon jul 2 16 52 19 2007

a note on multiproduct economies of scale and economies of scope abstract two measures of local economies of scale for a firm producing more than two products are derived using measures of product specific economies of scale and economics of scope the latter is especially useful for econometric estimation and testing

alternative models of input allocation in multicrop systems irrigation water in the central plains united states abstract this paper compares three models of input allocation in multicrop systems in addition to the variable input and satisficing models analyzed in previous research an allocatable fixed input model of short run input use is derived the empirical application studies irrigation water use in the central plains region of the united states based on results from model specification tests and prediction accuracy measures the allocatable fixed input model dominates both other models in explaining multicrop water allocation in addition the paper presents an alternative approach to the study of deficient data on multicrop production by transferring econometric results from analysis of non deficient crop level data input allocations in deficient data sets can be predicted

structural causes of the global financial crisis a critical assessment of the new financial architecture we are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression this crisis is the latest phase of the evolution of financial markets under the radical financial deregulation process that began in the late 1970s this evolution has taken the form of cycles in which deregulation accompanied by rapid financial innovation stimulates powerful financial booms that end in crises governments respond to crises with bailouts that allow new expansions to begin as a result financial markets have become ever larger and financial crises have become more threatening to society which forces governments to enact ever larger bailouts this process culminated in the current global financial crisis which is so deeply rooted that even unprecedented interventions by affected governments have thus far failed to contain it in this paper we analyse the structural flaws in the financial system that helped bring on the current crisis and discuss prospects for financial reform

conditions for economies of scope in the presence of fixed costs this article establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for economies of scope to exist while taking into account the presence or absence of both local cost complementarity and product specific fixed costs in some circumstances the test developed here could show that economies of scope to not exist despite local cost complementarity or alternatively despite the existence of fixed costs conversely the test could show that fixed costs are sufficient to generate economies of scope despite local cost anticomplementarity

nontrade concerns reconciling domestic policy objectives with freer trade in agricultural products since the conclusion of the uruguay round of trade negotiations in 1994 there has been increasing debate about the implications of freer trade for domestic or nontrade objectives in agriculture these range from traditional concerns such as food security and rural development to more recent issues such as the relationship between agriculture and the environment and the effects of agricultural practices on human health and animal welfare for countries reluctant to reduce agricultural protection a key issue is the extent to which domestic policy objectives would need to be sacrificed under freer trade for countries espousing trade liberalization the issue is whether domestic policy objectives will be used as a guise to undermine freer trade in agricultural products in this paper we focus on two areas of concern that are stressed by rich developed countries the linkage between agriculture and the environment and animal welfare environmental issues are prominent in asia europe and increasingly in north america while animal welfare is a major issue in europe it is generally acknowledged that agricultural support provided through implicit consumer taxes and direct subsidies in developed countries generates much of the distortion in global agricultural trade the more than 300 billion of agricultural support that is provided annually by oecd countries disadvantages developing country exporters and causes distortions in importers ensuring that there are effective disciplines on trade distorting forms of support will be vital to the suc

the effect of common property on the optimal structure of the fishing industry abstract this paper extends previous fisheries models by generalizing the necessary and sufficient conditions under which coexistence of specialized and generalized vessels occurs in a multispecies fishery economies of scope and demand conditions are argued to dictate coexistence inefficiency in market structure is also shown to arise with an inappropriate property rights regime

allocable fixed inputs as a cause of joint production a cost function approach the multiproduct cost concepts of baumol panzar and willig are used to explore the contention of shumway pope and nash that allocable fixed inputs cause joint production allocable fixed inputs may create an interdependence in the short run cost function when none exists in the long run however this will not necessarily lead to joint production for joint production to occur in the short run either the short run cost function must exhibit economies of scope or stand alone production of one of the commodities must exhibit diseconomies of size the issue of whether allocable fixed inputs cause joint production is an empirical question

who uses interest arbitration the case of british columbia s teachers 1947 1981 several researchers have attempted to identify the circumstances under which parties subject to compulsory interest arbitration will actually push a contract dispute to arbitration in this paper a simple model that incorporates elements of the leading hypotheses is tested using a unique data set spanning 35 years of compulsory conventional arbitration experience among teachers in british columbia the strongest empirical finding is that bargaining units that used arbitration in the previous round of negotiations were at least ten percent more likely than other units to use it in the current round on the other hand variables intended to capture attitudes toward risk changes in the degree of uncertainty associated with arbitral outcomes differing beliefs about likely arbitral outcomes and principal agent problems were found to have little impact on the estimated probability of using arbitration

agricultural product supplies and input demands regional comparisons governmental agencies at federal state and local levels in the united states are heavily involved in intervention in agricultural input and output markets to effect desired social goals the most pervasive intervention activities occur at the federal level they are available throughout the nation to most producers of specified commodities how

understanding the process of agricultural technology adoption mineral fertilizer in eastern dr congo summary we analyze the adoption of mineral fertilizer in south kivu we model technology adoption as a three step process including awareness tryout and adoption and empirically analyze these steps using cross sectional farm household data and bivariate and heckman selection probit models we find that awareness about fertilizer is high 57 and mainly determined by education and social capital tryout is low 13 of aware farmers but positively influenced by extension interventions continued adoption is high 70 of tryout farmers but capital constraints are important and not all extension interventions are effective for continued adoption our results entail implications for extension policies in poor areas

water conservation policy analysis an interregional multi output primal dual optimization approach an interregional multi output normalized restricted equilibrium model of field crop agriculture is estimated within the context of a multistage programming based system estimation procedure implicit total economic cost functions endogenize behavioral opportunity adjustment costs of fixed and allocatable land and water resources crop specific marshallian water demand elasticities are estimated for restricted and unrestricted groundwater substitution environments and decomposed by water source elasticities are inelastic but water price policy reform can be an effective water conservation policy tool when groundwater use is unrestricted when groundwater use is restricted effective conservation policy requires more dramatic water price policy reform

allocable fixed inputs as a cause of joint production an empirical investigation leathers 1991 shows that while the existence of allocable fixed inputs can cause joint production as in shumway pope and nash 1984 it will not necessarily lead to joint production the extent to which allocable fixed inputs cause joint production in agriculture is an empirical question this paper offers an empirical answer by estimating a short run joint cost function it is possible to identify levels of outputs for which joint production may be optimal in the short run but not in the long run only in these output regions will there be jointness caused by allocable fixed inputs for the data in this paper 160 wisconsin farms these output regions are very small thus allocable fixed inputs do not appear to be an important cause of jointness for these farms technical causes of jointness appear to be a significant cause of joint production

normal inputs and joint production with allocatable fixed factors when jointness is caused by allocatable fixed factors in the normal case the marginal cost of any output increases as any other output increases the supply of any output decreases as any other output price increases and an input price increase may cause the supply of some outputs to increase

human capital adjustments in subjective probabilities and the demand for pest controls in addition to risk aversion farmer behavior in an uncertain environment is governed by subjective probability estimates of random events the estimates given here lend support to the idea that human capital development can improve farmers ability to estimate pest damage probabilities more accurate assessment of subjective probabilities leads to lower pesticide use and increases the use of labor intensive pest controls the human capital variables with the largest effects are formal schooling and farmer experience with smaller impacts from field scouting and extension schools

optimal technology choice and investment timing a stochastic model of industrial cogeneration vs heat only production abstract in this paper we develop an economic model that explains the decision making problem under uncertainty of an industrial firm that wants to invest in a process technology more specifically the decision is between making an irreversible investment in a combined heat and power production cogeneration system or to invest in a conventional heat only generation system steam boiler and to purchase all electricity from the grid in our model we include the main economic and technical variables of the investment decision process we also account for the risk and uncertainty inherent in volatile energy prices that can greatly affect the valuation of the investment project the dynamic stochastic model presented allows us to simultaneously determine the optimal technology choice and investment timing we apply the theoretical model and illustrate our main findings with a numerical example that is based on realistic cost values for industrial oil or gas fired cogeneration and heat only generation in switzerland we also briefly discuss expected effects of a co 2 tax on the investment decision

is there an animal welfare kuznets curve abstract the concept of a kuznets curve has been applied to income inequality and to the environment the kuznets curve takes an inverted u shape with income or gdp on the x axis and environmental degradation or inequality on the y axis it is hypothesized here that an animal welfare kuznets curve may exist with harm to animals initially rising with economic growth followed by improvement in the treatment of animals after some peak value why an animal welfare kuznets curve might theoretically exist is explored empirical evidence supporting or refuting the existence of such a curve is also examined the evidence is both quantitative and qualitative in nature since some issues in welfare cannot be easily quantified the evidence and theoretical presentation explores multiple areas of concern to animals including animal agriculture the use of animals in laboratories companion animals pets and the fur industry the conclusion is that evidence is mixed with some measures indicating a turning point while other measures showing no sign of peaking improving animal welfare

access to capital and its impact on agrarian structure and productivity in kenya access to capital and its distribution across agents can profoundly shape the structure and performance of an agrarian market economy it is conceptually useful to distinguish between ex ante and ex post capital access ex ante capital access denotes the ability of agents to finance production costs e g labor and purchased inputs costs which must be paid ex ante that is prior to the actual realization of production ex post capital access that is access to capital after the realization of the production process is of particular importance as an insurance substitute in low income agrarian economies where contingency markets are imperfect buoyant ex post capital access would permit an individual to stabilize consumption year to year even as production fluctuates annually a number of theoretical models have ex

profit maximizing land use revisited the testable implications of non joint crop production under land constraint this article derives new implications for the land allocation and production decisions of profit maximizing farm firms where production of different crops is non joint but subject to a constraint on the total land area these implications are observable and thus subject to empirical scrutiny an estimable model of crop production land allocation and input use decisions is derived that permits joint production and enables the implications of non joint but land constrained production to be tested this may improve econometric estimates of cross price elasticities of supply by linking models of land use and production decisions and allowing non jointness to be imposed where appropriate copyright 2013 oxford university press

seasonal harvest patterns in multispecies fisheries fishers face multidimensional decisions when to fish what species to target and how much gear to deploy most bioeconomic models assume single species fisheries with perfectly elastic demand and focus on inter seasonal dynamics in real world fisheries vessels hold quotas for multiple species with heterogeneous biological and or market conditions that vary intra seasonally we analyze within season behavior in multispecies fisheries with individual fishing quotas accounting for stock aggregations capacity constraints and downward sloping demand numerical results demonstrate variation in harvest patterns we specifically find 1 harvests for species with downward sloping demand tend to spread out 2 spreading harvest of a high value species can cause lower value species to be harvested earlier in the season and 3 harvest can be unresponsive or even respond negatively to biological aggregation when fishers balance incentives in multispecies settings we test these using panel data from the norwegian multispecies groundfish fishery and find evidence for all three we extend the numerical model to account for transitions to management with individual fishing quotas in multispecies fisheries we show that under some circumstances fishing seasons could contract or spread out

estimating crop specific production technologies in chinese agriculture a generalized maximum entropy approach a generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop specific production technologies in chinese agriculture despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops this method does not require price information which is usually distorted in a centrally planned economy such as china a multi output technology for chinese agriculture is estimated and input allocations for each province are recovered simultaneously the estimated multi output production technology and input allocations imply that china may have greater grain production potentials than previously thought copyright 2001 oxford university press

arbitrator behavior and the variances of arbitrated and negotiated wage settlements the variance of arbitrated wage settlements is significantly lower than the variance of negotiated wage settlements in a sample of teachers contracts even when possible selection of contracts into arbitration is accounted for this result is consistent with the hypothesis that arbitrated settlements do not incorporate all of the information that is reflected in negotiated settlements

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

geography matters international trade patterns and the indirect land use effects of biofuels this article investigates the relationship between international trade patterns and the global distribution of coarse grain production responses to market developments in the united states our null hypothesis is that world markets are fully integrated rendering the geographic persistence of bilateral trade flows irrelevant in the global production response to a change in us prices the alternative hypothesis allows price transmission to vary along with the intensity of competition among countries in specific markets using data from 1975 to 2002 we reject the null hypothesis our work has direct implications for the analysis of the global land use impacts of biofuel mandates

economies of diversification a generalization and decomposition of economies of scope abstract the paper investigates the benefits of diversification for a multi product firm it examines economies of diversification reflecting the cost reduction associated with producing outputs in an integrated firm compared to specialized firms the analysis applies under complete specialization as well as partial specialization when firms are not fully specialized and or when the specialization scheme does not cover all outputs it decomposes economies of diversification into four additive parts a part measuring complementarity among outputs a part reflecting economies of scale a part reflecting convexity and a part reflecting the role of fixed cost this new decomposition appears useful in investigating how scale effects complementarity effects and convexity effects can contribute to economies of scope in a multiproduct firm and helps generate valuable insights into the economics of specialization for multiproduct firms

the circular economy an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context there have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development the circular economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way this set of ideas has been adopted by china as the basis of their economic development included in both the 11th and the 12th five year plan escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and ngos this paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the circular economy tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology and discusses how the circular economy has been operationalized in business and policy the paper finds that while the circular economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials which may contribute to more sustainable business models it also encapsulates tensions and limitations these include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions and some unintended consequences this leads us to propose a revised definition of the circular economy as an economic model wherein planning resourcing procurement production and reprocessing are designed and managed as both process and output to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well being

land allocation in hyv adoption models an investigation of alternative explanations microeconomic theory provides four competing explanations for partial land allocation to new and traditional seed varieties in hyv adoption decisions input fixity portfolio selection safety first behavior and learning testing a general model that contains each as a special case suggests that they are jointly most likely to explain land allocation in the hyv adoption decisions of malawian smallholders yet when each explanation is tested to the exclusion of the others as is usually the case in the literature competing hypotheses are individually significant results suggest that employing approaches based on single explanations may lead to inappropriately narrow conclusions

pension transfers and farm household technical efficiency evidence from south africa this article analyzes the effect of entitlements from the old age pension program of south africa on household technical efficiency using a sample of farm households in south africa s kwazulu natal province the analysis is at the household level and off farm activities are considered as additional outputs in a nonparametric estimation of technical efficiency this approach captures the jointness between farm and off farm activities the pension s effect is identified by exploiting the age eligibility criteria in the pension program results show a positive effect of the pension and suggest that this large cash transfer can improve households ability to make use of the best available technologies

allocatable fixed inputs and jointness in agricultural production implications for economic modeling allocatable fixed inputs such as land are a potentially important source of jointness in agriculture as with other causes of jointness they necessitate multiple product systems for modeling product supply and input demand in other important ways however their analytical implications are very different from other causes of jointness model specification differs demand functions for the quantities of each input used in the production of individual commodities can be derived if a primal approach is used but such allocation equations cannot in general be identified from a dual specification available allocation data are not even useful in such dual estimations

understanding sustainability innovations through positive ethical networks in this paper a positive organizational ethics poe based framework is informed by the microfinance and socially responsible investing movements to capture the process of sustainable financial innovations both of these movements are uniquely characterized by the formation of positive ethical networks pens to develop sustainability innovations in response to external crises the crisis pen innovation framework proposed makes four contributions to the poe literature 1 positions corporate sustainability through a poe lens 2 formalizes the pen construction through poe theory 3 proposes pens are mobilized to respond to external crises and 4 demonstrates how pens facilitate sustainability innovations the theoretical framework is tested using theory guided process tracing in the sustainable banking sector to understand how sustainability innovations were realized the findings are consistent with the crisis pen innovation framework proposed

linkages between the farm and nonfarm sectors at the household level in rural ghana a consistent stochastic distance function approach this article explores the effects within households of an expanding rural nonfarm rnf sector in ghana we ask whether the growing rnf sector allows for economies of diversification within farms how it affects household input demands and whether it has measurable effects in overall household production efficiency we explore the intrahousehold linkages between agricultural and rnf activities first assuming perfectly competitive input and output markets and then with market failures in particular missing labor and credit markets we then measure these linkages using a household level input distance function finding high levels of inefficiency in ghanaian farms also there are cost complementarities between the rnf sector and the agricultural sector particularly with food crops in which the poorest tend to specialize the expansion of the rnf sector increases demand for most inputs including agricultural land finally we show that smaller farms tend to be more efficient and that rnf output is helping the farm household to become more efficient but the latter result is not robust

agrobiodiversity conservation under an imperfect seed system the role of community seed banking schemes the study is an empirical investigation of agrobiodiversity conservation decisions of small farmers in the central highlands of ethiopia the primary objective is to measure the effectiveness of community seed banking csb in enhancing diversity while providing productivity incentives our results indicate a significant impact of participation in csb on farm level agrobiodiversity however the level of biodiversity conservation was not found to have the expected reinforcing impact on participation indicating no support for simultaneity csb participation also led to an increase in productivity consistent with a need for such incentives in order to enhance diversity at a farm level our assessment of the performance of the gls estimator yielded a significant discrepancy between the gls and bootstrap estimates this led to the conclusion that bootstrapping asymptotic estimations might be required for appropriate inference

the impact of improved maize varieties on poverty in mexico a propensity score matching approach summary this study examines the adoption of improved maize germplasm in oaxaca and chiapas in mexico it employs a propensity score matching approach to analyze the impact of the adoption of improved maize varieties on household income and poverty reduction using cross sectional data of 325 farmers from the two regions the findings reveal a robust positive and significant impact of improved maize variety adoption on farm household welfare measured by per capita expenditure and poverty reduction specifically the empirical results suggest that adoption of improved maize varieties helped raise household per capita expenditure by an average of 136 173 mexican pesos thereby reducing their probability of falling below the poverty line by roughly 19 31

allocatable fixed inputs and jointness in agricultural production implications for economic modeling comment some of the most challenging production economic concepts are those of technical interdependence and jointness as pertaining to the products in a multiproduct firm thus shumway pope and nash should be applauded for their attempt to clarify these notions however their contention that allocatable fixed inputs can lead to jointness has mainly added to the confusion it is demonstrated here that jointness as traditionally represented exists only with nonallocatable inputs in direct contrast to what is suggested by shumway pope and nash this paper favors the jointness concepts from carlson and lau and suggests another kind of jointness based on shumway pope and nash carlson s classic book still represents one of the most concise statements about the reasons for and the character of multiproduct firms and jointness carlson saw jointness as the primary reason for the existence of the multiproduct firm as shown below carlson made the key points a technical product complementarity may induce jointness b all joint production which arises from jointness has the feature of being technically interdependent whether of the complementary or competitive variety and c over some ranges of multiproduct production there could actually be technical independence seemingly because of this last feature we could find multiproduct firms without jointness in their technologies however carlson would likely have argued that this situation does not occur bcause multiproduct firms are due to the lower costs under technically complementary products or simply because the products can not be separated for the technically competitive case the raison d etre of the multiproduct firm rests in the jointness

sequencing and valuing public goods abstract this paper establishes several propositions concerning the importance of context in valuing public goods it first provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the value of a public good to be independent of context utility constant valuation sequences are considered where public goods are systematically made available or taken away for the case of strict hicksian substitutes willingness to pay for an increase in one of the public goods is strictly decreasing the farther out in a sequence it is valued for the destruction of public goods the reverse is true for willingness to accept compensation sequencing has opposite implications for the assessment of the benefits of providing public goods than for the assessment of the damage from destroying them

measuring and decomposing economies of diversification an application to biogas fuelled cogeneration plants in austria abstract this paper investigates the existence and the degree of economies of diversification for small scaled renewable fuelled cogeneration systems using 2014 cross sectional data from 67 austrian biogas plants it is the first study applying the recently introduced concept of economies of diversification proposed by chavas and kim 2010 which is a generalization and decomposition of economies of scope economies of diversification are decomposed into three additive parts a part measuring complementarity among outputs a part reflecting economies of scale a part reflecting convexity in addition this paper extends the decomposition introduced by chavas and kim 2010 in such a way that the contribution of each input to economies of diversification and its components can be investigated the results indicate substantial cost savings from diversification for very small scaled plants 100 kwel most of the cost savings come from scale economies for larger plants 250 kwel positive complementarity and convexity effects are the main source of economies of diversification and outweigh the negative effect from scale diseconomies in addition to substantial fuel feedstock cost reductions significant costs saving effects from the jointness in labour and other inputs positively contribute to the complementarity effect while on average capital and labour costs positively contribute to economies of scale feedstock costs work in the direction of diseconomies of scale

education and innovation adoption in agriculture evidence from hybrid rice in china this paper uses the diffusion of f1 hybrid rice as a case for examining the effects of education on the adoption of new technology in china a simple behavioral model that treats the adoption of hybrid rice as a portfolio selection problem is presented the implications of the model are tested with farm level data collected from a sample of 500 households in hunan province the results from a dichotomous probit model and a two limit tobit model are consistent with the hypothesis that education has a positive impact on the adoption of new technology

domestic policies national sovereignty and international economic institutions to what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efe ciency is to be achieved in an interdependent world this question is at the center of the debate over the future role of the wto formerly gatt in the realm of labor and environmental standards in this paper we establish that the market access focus of current wto rules is well equipped to handle the problems associated with choices over labor and environmental standards in principle with relatively modest changes that grant governments more sovereignty not less these rules can deliver globally efe cient outcomes i introduction to what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efe ciency is to be achieved in an interdependent world at a broad level this question probes the limits of any international economic institution whether geared toward real or e nancial concerns that is designed to promote global efe ciency while respecting national sovereignty naturally the answer depends upon the particular problem that the institution is meant to solve in other words the answer depends upon the inefe ciency that would arise under unilateral policy choices at a more specie c level this question is at the center of the debate concerning the appropriate scope of the world trade organization wto formerly gatt recently member countries have considered ways to broaden the wto s orientation beyond conventional trade policy measures to include labor and environmental standards there are now initiatives to introduce the issue of labor standards directly onto the negotiating agenda of the wto with the purpose of creating a wto social clause the social clause would specify a set of minimum international labor standards and then permit restrictions to be placed against imports from countries not complying with these minimum standards with regard to environmental policies a wto committee on trade and environment has been established to identify the relationships between trade and environmental measures and to

estimation of multicrop production functions this paper considers whether separability or nonjointness is the better approach for attaining tractability for multicrop production function estimation characteristics of agricultural production associated with allocated inputs physical constraints and output determination imply sufficient nonjointness for estimation whereas separability is less plausible the paper also addresses estimation of production functions with allocated inputs where allocations are not observed and demonstrates a proposed approach by way of example

rent dissipation and efficient rationalization in for hire recreational fishing abstract recreational fisheries are increasingly important in fisheries management for some species recreational take rivals or exceeds the amount harvested by commercial fishermen most recreational fisheries are regulated with gear restrictions bag limits and time area closures but there is increasing interest in the market based solutions employed in commercial fisheries this despite the lack of an adequate bioeconomic theory of the joint commercial recreational aspects of many recreational fisheries this paper integrates a detailed production specification with traditional bioeconomic tools in order to better understand the implications of rationalization schemes targeted at the charter sector while confirming some of the qualitative conclusions of the commercial fisheries literature on open access and regulated open access our model also generates rich and novel predictions with respect to input choices the number of vessels and congestion externalities we devise a system of instruments that generate efficient outcomes and extensively discuss issues associated with their real world implementation

the effect of household wealth on the adoption of improved maize varieties in zambia abstract production and price risks that could render input use unprofitable sometimes prevent rural households from benefiting from input technological change the household s ability to cope with such risks and hence benefit from input technological change is often positively related to its wealth or stock of productive assets empirical evidence however suggests a non linear relationship between wealth and adoption of new agricultural technologies so that within a rural community households on the lower wealth continuum behave differently from those on the higher level using farm level data collected from 300 randomly selected households in three districts of zambia in 2004 2005 crop season this paper first stratifies households into poorly and well endowed households based on their access to productive assets and estimates separate double hurdle models for the adoption of improved high yielding maize ihym varieties for each group the results show that factors influencing the adoption and use intensity of ihym varieties differ between the two groups this draws attention to the need for recommending wealth group specific interventions to increase the adoption and use intensity of such varieties and their subsequent impacts on food security and general livelihoods of the households the explicit testing for the possibility that differences in household wealth affect the way in which other variables influence adoption decisions is the paper s unique contribution to the adoption literature

arbitrator compromise in final offer arbitration evidence from major league baseball i introduction the purpose of interest arbitration is to encourage two bargainers to reach a mutually agreeable settlement in the event of impasse an independent arbitrator determines the settlement in conventional arbitration ca each of the bargainers submits an offer the arbitrator may select one of the two offers or one of his or her own choosing as the settlement critics have argued that arbitrators split the difference between the offers to enhance their chances of being rehired in future cases this gives each bargainer an incentive to submit an extreme offer to increase its expected gains from arbitration as a result ca chills rather than encourages productive negotiation final offer arbitration foa was created by stevens 1966 to remedy the chilling effect he proposed that arbitrators select one of the two submitted offers as the award unable to compromise between the offers the arbitrator will presumably choose the most reasonable offer as the award ironically arbitrator compromise may exist even in foa according to theory foa arbitrators maximize their chances of being rehired by formulating a notion of the ideal settlement the preferred award and selecting the nearest offer importantly bazerman and farber 1985 farber and bazerman 1986 and gibbons 1988 noted that the preferred award is not exogenous but reflects the perspectives of the bargainers consequently although foa arbitrators may not compromise by splitting the difference between the offers they may formulate preferred awards that compromise between the bargainers perspectives because farber 1980 and gibbons 1988 showed that submitted offers should be strategically aligned around the arbitrator s preferred award an empirical analysis of final offers should reveal any compromises implicit in the preferred award to test the compromised preferred award hypothesis this study examines foa offers in major league baseball unique characteristics in baseball foa allow for a test of the compromised preferred award baseball players become eligible for foa after completing roughly three years of major league service during these first three years the players bargain in a purely monopsonistic environment the players may not freely negotiate with other clubs until they have completed six years of service the coexisting monopsonistic and oligopsonistic free agency markets have led to extraordinary differentials in player salaries that have been well documented in economic literature as in kahn 1993 although players with three to six years of experience continue to be bound to one club they may unilaterally opt for foa consequently the arbitrator must determine the appropriate payscale for an eligible player because the clubs prefer to extend monopsony salaries into the arbitration eligibility years they are likely to stress the importance of the player s prior salary i e the size of the raise a player is entitled to receive whereas the players would rather have the arbitrators rely on free agent salaries to determine the proper wage although the arbitrators could side with one of the positions theory predicts the preferred award will reflect a compromise between the two perspectives the results strongly support the existence of compromised preferred award the submitted final offers are a weighted average between the mean free agent salary and the player s salary in the previous season the notion that the preferred award represents a compromise between the two perspectives is strengthened when one examines the weights of losing offers specifically for both hitters and pitchers the losing player offer does not differ significantly from the mean free agent salary for a comparable player winning player offers on the other hand are less than the comparable free agent salary perhaps the most intriguing finding is that by compromising between the perspectives of players and clubs baseball foa has generated its own unique labor market through which player salaries lie between the monopsony and free agent levels

production economics worthwhile investment abstract agricultural production economics research is examined within a broad framework of scientific development and utilization recent findings in selected areas of the subdiscipline are examined and opportunities for further fruitful inquiry are identified a few stylized facts emerge from recent work and suggest the need for much careful hypothesis testing model exploration and empirical sensitivity analysis in the future

vertical integration in west africa s cotton industry are parastatals a second best solution this article provides a framework to compare market outcomes among vertically integrated monopsonies in the cotton sector of west africa and alternative more competitive market structures based on a principal agent framework in the presence of factor market constraints as well as capital market failure efficiently operated cotton parastatals increase sector welfare and efficiency by providing input credits in equilibrium outcomes with the principal agent model suggest growers receive the reservation income to participate in cotton production while the principal cotton company extracts the surplus above the reservation income competitive markets entail more equitable distribution of benefits than with parastatal vertical integration but credit and factor market constraints can still persist promotion of a competitive market system will not support cotton productivity growth unless stakeholders pursue complementary programs to develop credit markets and research and extension institutions in the presence of current market failures parastatals may be a second best solution

long run profit functions for multiproduct firms a long run specification of the multiproduct profit function is developed from the restricted profit function the multiproduct restricted profit function and the envelope condition are used to estimate the optimal long run levels of the quasi fixed factor formulas for long run marshallian elasticities of substitution and transformation economies of scope product specific and overall economies of scale and economic measures of capacity utilization are developed for the translog functional form the methodology is illustrated by a case study of the new england otter trawl industry

measuring economies of scope for cogeneration systems in korea a nonparametric approach this study empirically identifies the existence and the degree of economies of scope for cogeneration systems in korea we derive the index of economies of scope and estimate it by using a nonparametric approach of linear programming method based on the empirical results we explicitly present that there exist economies of scope for cogeneration in korea with total cost reduction of 13 1 in addition we show that the cost saving effects from the jointness in capital and labor are also significant in addition to that in fuel

efficiency of the multiplant multiproduct firm a general framework is provided for assessing the technology cost and efficient scale of a multiplant multiproduct firm we show sufficient conditions for the existence of a plant cost function and necessary and sufficient conditions for using plant level data to draw exact firm level cost inferences we also distinguish between plant and input nonjointness and show the optimal relation between plant level and firm level cost elasticity in a multiproduct setting the framework is applied to a vegetable processing cooperative which is found to operate below its efficient scale

arbitration and conflict resolution in labor management bargaining compulsory arbitration is frequently employed to resolve labor management bargaining disputes when the union is legally prohibited as are for example many public employees unions from striking in this form of arbitration an arbitrator is empowered to impose a settlement on the bargaining parties if their negotiations break down various compulsory arbitration schemes are now in use in many states including alaska connecticut iowa maine massachusetts michigan minnesota nebraska nevada new jersey new york oregon pennsylvania rhode island south dakota washington wisconsin and wyoming but there has been little formal analysis of the various schemes that are employed in these states and as a result the basis available for choice among them remains incomplete this paper classifies the theoretical problems that must be resolved before a more careful comparison of these compulsory arbitration schemes is possible provides a brief overview of the work that has been done on each of these problems and indicates what appear to be the most promising directions for future research along these lines four kinds of compulsory arbitration are considered here conventional ccmpulsory arbitration cca in which the arbitrator imposes a settlement of his unrestricted choice if negotiations break down finaloffer arbitration foa in which the arbitrator must choose without compromise between bargainers final offers if negotiations break down multiple foa a variant of foa originally suggested by donn and on occasion issue by issue foa which is like simple foa except that the arbitrator is permitted to fashion his settlement from the components of bargainers final offers cca simple foa and issue by issue foa are already in widespread use while multiple foa which is similar but not identical to a scheme used in eugene oregon has been suggested by donn and my 1979a article as an improvement on simple foa in the literature of industrial labor relations compulsory arbitration schemes have been judged primarily by three criteria the quality of the arbitral settlements they generate when negotiations break down their freedom from bias which is usually defined as the distortion of negotiated settlements away from what they would have been in ordinary bargaining with both strikes and lockouts permitted and the extent to which they create environments conducive to negotiated settlements an integrated analysis in which bargainers choosing their stategies consider the effects of their actions on negotiated and arbitral settlements as well as on the probabilities of these possibilities would be ideal but in beginning the study of the effects of arbitration schemes it is convenient and probably not misleading to simplify the problem by dividing it thus i shall propose separate analyses of the quality of arbitral settlements under noncooperative behavioral assumptions the bias of negotiated settlements under cooperative assumptions and the probability of a negotiated settlement under a blend of both noncooperative and cooperative assumptions each section of this paper in turn discusses existing work that is relevant to judging arbitration schemes by one of the above three criteria university of california san diego this research was supported by the national science foundation many of the observations made here evolved in discussions and correspondence with clifford donn who by no means agrees with all or even most of them i am grateful to him and to joel sobel and participants in a workshop presentation at the university of chicago who also made helpful comments

multi product bargaining bundling and buyer power abstract we re consider the bilateral bargaining problem of a multi product manufacturer retailer trading relationship o brien and shaffer 2005 have shown that the unbundling of contracts leads to downward distorted production levels if seller power is strong while otherwise the joint profit maximizing quantities are contracted which is also always the case when bundling contracts are feasible we show that the unbundling of contracts also leads to downward distorted output levels when the buyer firm has sufficient nash bargaining power i e buyer power our result is driven by cost substitutability diseconomies of scope

production technology costs and multiproduct industry structure an application of the long run profit function to the new england fishing industry the long run multiproduct profit function is developed to provide a more general procedure than the static minimum cost function to examine the technological and cost determinants of multiproduct industry structure and the likely form of any market equilibrium in this approach outputs are endogenous and the long run equilibrium levels of quasi fixed factors are endogenously determined the multiproduct structure of the multispecies new england fishing industry and the likely multi

subsistence first farm allocation decisions in senegal abstract this paper examines a problem suggested by the senegalese experience but common to many countries of joint production of a subsistence crop millet which is subject to stringent marketing constraints and a cash crop groundnuts sold through established channels empirical implications for the intertemporal pattern of land allocation are drawn and evidence is provided to support the proposed approach

human capital entrepreneurship and farm household earnings abstract the allocation of resources between agriculture and non agriculture is a central decision of the farm household in this paper we formulate a profit maximization model in which human capital enhances efficiency through both within sector effects and across sector allocation of quasi fixed inputs the model is estimated using chinese household data that contain detailed information on production activities we find that schooling and experience improve the sectoral uses of household supplied inputs accounting for 27 of their total contribution to earnings the evidence suggests that conventional estimates of human capital returns obtained within sectors would undervalue the role of human capital in development

socially responsible investing in the united states socially responsible investing sri has emerged in recent years as a dynamic and quickly growing segment of the u s financial services industry involving over 2 trillion in professionally managed assets its conceptual origins can be found in the early history of civilization with it s modern roots in the 1960s this paper provides an overview of the breadth and depth of the concept and practice of socially and environmentally responsible investing describes the investment strategies that together define sri as currently practiced in the u s offers several observations about some of the factors fueling its dramatic growth and presents data showing that investors who choose to invest in a socially and environmentally responsible manner can do so without giving up investment returns sri has matured to a point where virtually any investment need can be met through portfolio design that integrates an investor s personal values institutional mission and or social priorities the socially responsible investment industry in the unitedstates is a young phenomenon even referring to it as an industry ten years ago may have been a bit of a stretch while it has grown dramatically in recent years it is an area of work of study and of practical application that continues to evolve in many significant ways one intriguing example of the ongoing development of the field can be found in the analysis of the language used to describe it the terms social investing socially responsible investing ethical investing socially aware investing socially conscious investing green investing values based investing and mission based or mission related investing all refer to the same general process and are often used interchangeably

multiproduct cost relationships for retail fertilizer plants volume cost relationships developed from the statistical analysis of accounting data have long provided useful information for evaluating firm efficiency french previous descriptive and statistical analyses of accounting data as well as economic engineering cost studies of retail fertilizer firms have focused on a single product line anderson and miller raikes and heubrock williams foster and simpson service o rourke or have simply summarized industry accounting data akridge and downey problems associated with using accounting data to estimate statistical cost functions include a the failure to handle satisfactorily multiproduct firm cost relationships

multicrop production decisions in western irrigated agriculture the role of water price applying a model of the multioutput firm econometric results are reported for irrigated production in four multistate regions of the american west cross sectional microdata from the farm and ranch irrigation survey and limited dependent variable methods are used to estimate crop choice supply land allocation and water demand functions for field crops farm level water demand is decomposed into the sum of crop level water demands and crop level demands are further separated into an extensive margin land allocations and intensive margin short run water use response to water price measured as groundwater pumping cost occurs primarily at the extensive margin

sustainable development the ethics support the economics within their value chains of suppliers through customers many businesses are becoming more aware of the environmental aspects and impacts of their organizations viewed as a continuum of behavior business environmentalism can range from simply complying with the law to accepting and pursuing a goal of sustainable development the point on the continuum at which an organization chooses to operate is reflected in its environmental mission policies and actions attributes of the various levels of behavior and classification of some organizational mission statements are examined in this paper

allocatable fixed inputs and two stage aggregation models of multioutput production decisions allocation decisions for a fixed input such as land are incorporated into a two stage aggregation model of multioutput production decisions the resulting two stage model is more realistic and is as tractable for empirical research as the standard model

market value for thermal energy of cogeneration using shadow price estimation applied to cogeneration systems in korea abstract this study empirically analyzes the appropriateness of the current tariffs for district heating in korea for this purpose we adopt the duality concept applied to the output distance function and estimate the shadow price of heat produced from cogeneration in addition the analytical model takes account for the inputs of labor and capital as well as fuel as input outlays of cogeneration the empirical results show that the current heat tariff determined by the public energy policy might be undervalued by about 15 53 this implies that the retail price of district heating in korea might be distorted at least in the sense of economics

learning in equilibrium models of arbitration this paper analyzes strategic communication in equilibrium models of conventional and final offer interest arbitration both models emphasize the role of learning by the arbitrator from the parties offers about the state of the employment relationship which is known to the parties but not to the arbitrator in both models the arbitrators equilibrium behavior is identical to the reduced form decision rule typically assumed in the empirical literature the paper thereby provides a structural interpretation for the existing empirical work the paper also represents progress towards a complete theory of arbitration because it satisfies three conditions that will be required of any such theory first the models predictions match the existing empirical evidence second the models describe equilibrium behavior and third the models are built on a common set of assumptions about preferences information and commitment the paper therefore not only provides an equilibrium foundation for the intuition that the arbitrator might learn from the parties offers but also uses the idea of learning to develop a unified analytical treatment of the two major forms of interest arbitration this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item