SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Quillerou, Emmanuelle; Fraser, Rob W..

The Environmental Stewardship Scheme provides payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services based on agricultural foregone income. This creates a potential incentive compatibility problem which, combined with an information asymmetry on farm land heterogeneity, could lead to adverse selection of farmers into the scheme. However, the Higher Level Scheme (HLS) design includes some features that potentially reduce adverse selection. This paper studies the adverse selection problem of the HLS using a principal agent framework at the regional level. It is found that, at the regional level, the enrolment of more land from lower payment regions for a given budget constraint has led to a greater overall contracted area (and thus potential...

Adverse Selection in the Environmental Stewardship Scheme: Evidence in the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme?

Palavras-chave: Adverse selection; Agri-environment; Environmental Stewardship; Principal-agent; Contract; Environmental Economics and Policy; D78; D82; H44; Q18; Q58.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51068

Quillerou, Emmanuelle; Fraser, Rob W.; Fraser, Iain.

The Environmental Stewardship Scheme provides payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services based on foregone agricultural income. This creates a potential incentive compatibility problem which, combined with an information asymmetry on farm land heterogeneity, could lead to adverse selection of farmers into the Scheme and therefore reduced cost-effectiveness of the Scheme. This reduced cost-effectiveness would be represented by a systematic overpayment of farmers for the land enrolled into the Scheme, compared to the opportunity cost of production. This paper examines the potential adverse selection problem affecting the higher tier of the Environmental Stewardship, the Higher Level Stewardship, using a principal agent framework combined...

Agricultural Price Distortion and Stabilization: Stylized facts and Hypothesis Tests

Palavras-chave: Adverse selection; Agri-environment; Environmental Stewardship; Principal-agent; Contract; Environmental Economics and Policy; D78; D82; H44; Q18; Q58.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/91676

Masters, William A.; Garcia, Andres F..

This paper describes agricultural policy choices and tests some predictions of political economy theories. It begins with three broad stylized facts: governments tend to tax agriculture in poorer countries, and subsidize it in richer ones, tax both imports and exports more than nontradables, and tax more and subsidize less where there is more land per capita. We test a variety of political-economy explanations, finding results consistent with hypothesized effects of rural and urban constituents’ rational ignorance about small per-person effects, governance institutions’ control of rent-seeking by political leaders, governments’ revenue motive for taxation, and the role of time consistency in policy-making. We also find that larger groups obtain more...

ASYMMETRY IN RAW MILK SAFETY PERCEPTIONS AND INFORMATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR RISK IN FRESH PRODUCE MARKETING AND POLICY

Palavras-chave: Distorted incentives; Agricultural and trade policy reforms; National agricultural development; Agricultural price distortions; Political economy; Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade; F13; F14; Q17; Q18; D72; D78; F11; H23.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50301

Knutson, Ronald D.; Currier, Russell W.; Ribera, Luis A.; Goeringer, L. Paul.

Scientific evidence clearly indicates that consumption of raw milk carries substantial disease-inducing health risks. While federal U.S. policy mandates that milk moving in interstate commerce be pasteurized; within 41 of 50 states, raw milk can be obtained for consumption. Warning labels notwithstanding, a segment of U.S. consumers pays higher prices for higher-risk raw milk than for either organic or conventional milk. The behavioral factors leading to raw milk consumption are explored. The paternalistic regulatory options for reducing the risk associated with drinking raw milk are identified. Implications for fresh produce sold directly from farms to consumers or through farmers markets are drawn.

Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study

Palavras-chave: Raw milk; Pasteurization; Health risks; Behavioral economics; Bounded rationality; Paternalistic regulations; Public health; HACCP; GLOBALG.A.P.; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; A12; A13; A14; D11; D18; D46; D71; D78; D82; I18; K23; K32; Q11; Q18.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116440

Calsamiglia, Caterina; Haeringer, Guillaume; Klijn, Flip.

The literature on school choice assumes that families can submit a preference list over all the schools they want to be assigned to. However, in many real-life instances families are only allowed to submit a list containing a limited number of schools. Subjects' incentives are drastically affected, as more individuals manipulate their preferentes. Including a safety school in the constrained list explains most manipulations. Competitiveness across schools plays an important role. Constraining choices increases segregation and affects the stability and efficiency of the final allocation. Remarkably, the constraint reduces significantly the proportion of subjects playing a dominated strategy.

Cross-Border Intellectual Property Rights: Contract Enforcement and Absorptive Capacity

Palavras-chave: School Choice; Matching; Experiment; Gale-Shapley; Top Trading Cycles; Boston Mechanism; Efficiency; Stability; Truncation; Truthtelling; Safety School; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; C72; C78; D78; I20.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50480

Naghavi, Alireza; Tsai, Yingyi.

Current version uploaded April 2013.

Tipo: Working Paper

Palavras-chave: Intellectual Property Rights; TRIPS; Nash Bargaining; Contract Enforcement; Development; Absorptive Capacity; Monitoring; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; O34; F13; F53; D78; L10; O33; C70.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/122864

Dynamics, Stability, and Foresight in the Shapley-Scarf Housing Market

Kamijo, Yoshio; Kawasaki, Ryo.

While most of the literature starting with Shapley and Scarf (1974) have considered a static exchange economy with indivisibilities, this paper studies the dynamics of such an economy. We find that both the dynamics generated by competitive equilibrium and the one generated by weakly dominance relation, converge to a set of allocations we define as strictly stable, which we can show to exist. Moreover, we show that even when only pairwise exchanges between two traders are allowed, the strictly stable allocations are attained eventually if traders are sufficiently farsighted.

Economics of Pollution Trading for SO2 and NOx

Palavras-chave: Indivisible Goods Market; Dynamics; Competitive Allocation; Strict Core; Foresight; Stable Set; Productivity Analysis; D78; C71.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/52526

Burtraw, Dallas; Evans, David A.; Krupnick, Alan J.; Palmer, Karen L.; Toth, Russell.

For years economists have urged policymakers to use market-based approaches such as cap-and-trade programs or emission taxes to control pollution. The SO2 allowance market created by Title IV of the 1990 U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments represents the first real test of the wisdom of economists' advice. Subsequent urban and regional applications of NOx emission allowance trading took shape in the 1990s in the United States, culminating in a second large experiment in emission trading in the eastern United States that began in 2003. This paper provides an overview of the economic rationale for emission trading and a description of the major U.S. programs for sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). We evaluate these programs along measures of...

Ex-ante Policy Assessment from an Institutional Perspective. A Procedure for Institutional Compatibility Assessment (PICA)

Palavras-chave: Sulfur dioxide; Nitrogen oxides; Emission trading; Power plants; Air pollution; Environmental Economics and Policy; H23; Q25; Q28; D78.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10488

Theesfeld, Insa; Schleyer, Christian; Callois, Jean-Marc; Aznar, Olivier.

Ex-ante impact assessment of agricultural, environmental, and rural policies has become an integral part of political decision making processes in the EU. While there is a large variety of agri-environmental modelling tools available to analyse likely social, economic, and environmental impacts of these policies, scientifically well-founded ex-ante policy assessment tools capturing institutional dimensions are still missing. In this paper, we introduce a formalised procedure for modelling – ex-ante – institutional aspects for policy implementation: the ‘Procedure for Institutional Compatibility Assessment’ (PICA). It has recently been developed within the SEAMLESS project as a component of an integrative modelling framework for ex-ante assessment of policy...

Explaining Agricultural Distortion Patterns : The Roles of Ideology, Inequality, Lobbying and Public Finance

Palavras-chave: Ex-ante Policy Assessment; Institutional Policy Assessment; Agricultural and Food Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; B49; D78; Q18.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6112

Dutt, Pushan; Mitra, Devashish.

In this paper, we examine the political economy drivers of the variation in agricultural protection, both across countries and within countries over time. The paper starts by listing the key insights provided by both the theoretical and empirical literature on the political economy of trade policy formulation. We then set out a basic framework that allows us to put forth various testable hypotheses on the variation and evolution of agricultural protection. We find that both the political ideology of the government and the degree of income inequality are important determinants of agricultural protection. Thus, both the political-support-function approach as well as the median-voter approach can be used in explaining the variation in agricultural protection...

Feasibility Constraints and Protective Behavior in Efficient Kidney Exchange

Palavras-chave: Distorted incentives; Agricultural and trade policy reforms; National agricultural development; Agricultural protection; Political economy; Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade; F13; F14; Q17; Q18; D72; D78; F11.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50299

Nicolo, Antonio; Rodriguez Alvarez, Carmelo.

We propose a model of Kidney-Exchange that incorporates the main European institutional features. We assume that patients do not consider all compatible kidneys homogeneous and patients are endowed with reservation values over the minimal quality of the kidney they may receive. Under feasibility constraints, patients' truthful revelation of reservation values is incompatible with constrained efficiency. In the light of this result, we introduce an alternative behavioral assumption on patients' incentives. Patients choose their revelation strategies as to “protect” themselves from bad outcomes and use a lexicographic refinement of maximin strategies. In this environment, if exchanges are pairwise, then priority rules or rules that maximize a fixed ordering...

Getting on the Map: The Political Economy of State-Level Electricity Restructuring

Palavras-chave: Kidney; Matching; Protective Behavior; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; C78; D78.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/50671

Ando, Amy Whritenour; Palmer, Karen L..

Retail competition in electricity markets is expected to lead to more efficient electricity supply, lower electricity prices, more innovation by suppliers and a greater variety of electric power service packages. However, only a handful of states have currently gone so far as to pass legislation and/or make regulatory decisions to establish retail wheeling. This paper analyzes a variety of factors that may influence the rate at which legislators and regulators move towards establishing retail competition. In general, we find that where one interest group dominates others in the struggle for influence over the decision makers, the net effect seems to push a state forward more quickly when retail wheeling is expected to yield large efficiency gains.

Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility

Palavras-chave: Electricity restructuring; Deregulation; Political economy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; D78; L51; L94.

Ano: 1998

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10643

Benabou, Roland; Tirole, Jean.

Society’s demands for individual and corporate social responsibility as an alternative response to market and distributive failures are becoming increasingly prominent. We first draw on recent developments in the “psychology and economics” of prosocial behavior to shed light on this trend, which reflects a complex interplay of genuine altruism, social or self image concerns, and material incentives. We then link individual concerns to corporate social responsibility, contrasting three possible understandings of the term: the adoption of a more long-term perspective by firms, the delegated exercise of prosocial behavior on behalf of stakeholders, and insider-initiated corporate philanthropy. For both individuals and firms we discuss the benefits, costs and...

Institutional Impediments to Groundwater Trading: the case of the Gnangara groundwater system of Western Australia

Palavras-chave: Corporate Social Responsibility; Socially Responsible Investment; Image Concerns; Shareholder Value; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; D64; D78; H41; L31.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/59753

Skurray, James H.; Pandit, Ram; Pannell, David J..

The development of a market in groundwater usage rights can be inhibited by constraints arising from the institutional context. Such impediments may reduce the potential gains from trade and may generate high transaction costs for prospective traders. We analyse the regulations and policies influencing groundwater transfers in a case-study area -- the Gnangara groundwater system around Perth, Western Australia -- and identify significant impediments to a groundwater market. Property rights are found to be conditional, temporary, and vulnerable to amendment. Regulatory approval is required for all transfers. Facilitating infrastructure is lacking, and price information is unavailable. Management area boundaries reflect land ownership and use rather than...

Looking at the LEADER Programme from the Angle of Political Accountability: Evidence from Poland

Palavras-chave: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Land Economics/Use; Political Economy; Public Economics; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy; Q15; Q25; Q28; Q38; Q56; Q57; Q58; D02; R52; H41; H23; H11; D23; D47; D78; H44.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/117825

Falkowski, Jan.

The ‘LEADER community initiatives’ and the ‘LEADER approach’ have been commonly accepted as an innovative way for development of rural areas in the EU. It is widely assumed that promoting growth in rural areas can be achieved through partnerships between representatives of three classes of local actors: civil society, public administration and private/economic sector. While these partnerships certainly have the potential to improve coordination mechanisms that manage local resources, their existence is likely to have an impact on the distribution of political advantages and future economic rents of current incumbents. What follows, it is reasonable to assume that local political elites may either block or impede the adoption of this institutional...

On and Off the Liability Bandwagon: Explaining State Adoptions of Strict Liability in Hazardous Waste Programs

Palavras-chave: Political accountability; Local government; Rural development; Leader; Community/Rural/Urban Development; D72; D78; H77; O18.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/114365

Alberini, Anna; Austin, David H..

We analyze factors in states' decisions to switch their approaches to hazardous waste liability policy from negligence standards to policies based on strict liability. Many, but not all, states have switched in recent years. We explain differences in the timing of states' adoption of strict liability into their "mini-superfund" programs using data on states' industrial activities, environmental programs, wealth and education, and political orientation. We test implications of a theoretical model in which states adopt the liability regime (strict versus negligence-based liability) that they see as having greater net benefits. We test this model by estimating a profit equation of the presence or absence of strict liability in a state hazardous waste cleanup...

Policy Design as an Irreversible Investment Under Uncertainty: Norwegian Agriculture and the WTO

Palavras-chave: Strict liability; Toxic spills; Liability policy; Hazardous materials; Environmental Economics and Policy; D78; H73; I18.

Ano: 1997

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10680

Mittenzwei, Klaus.

This paper is concerned with the timing of an agricultural policy reform under uncertainty. The focus is on the opportunity cost of giving up the option to wait when implementing a policy reform. Including the option value in applied policy analysis can help explain why conventional analyses may find observed policies to be Pareto-inferior. Furthermore, it explains why otherwise profitable policy reforms may be delayed. The theoretical model is applied to Norwegian agricultural policy anticipating a prospective WTO agreement. It is argued that the option value should be incorporated into applied policy analysis when high uncertainty prevails.

Russlands Ratifikation des Kyoto-Protokolls - ein kritisches Pladoyer

Palavras-chave: Option value; Policy reform; WTO; Norway; Uncertainty; International Relations/Trade; C61; D78.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24875

Schwerd, Joachim.

At the beginning of December 2003 the ninth conference of the parties (COP) of the UN framework convention on climate change (Rio declaration 1992) will take place. This meeting is crucial as it depends only on Russia's ratification to get the Kyoto protocol started soon. This paper reflects the current state of the protocol and highlights the particular features of COP 9, e.g. the double ratification hurdle, which - as a technical speciality of the protocol - was suitable to strengthen Russia's position in these negotiations up to now. It will be discussed, why Russia shall comply with the protocol for its own sake, too. Only one of the flexible Kyoto instruments is considered hereby: emissions trading. Two arguments are used for making the point, that it...

Should We Expect Government Policy to Be Pareto Efficient?: The Consequences of an Arrow-Debreu Economy with Violable Property Rights

Palavras-chave: Kyoto protocol; Emissions trading; Dynamic efficiency; Russia; Environmental Economics and Policy; B52; D78; D90; F18.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/26184

Bullock, David S..

To address the question, "Should we expect government policy to be efficient?" at its roots, I modify the well-known Arrow-Debreu private ownership economy, allowing property rights to be violable. The result is that equilibria tend to be Pareto inefficient.

Structure and bargaining power in multilateral negotiations: Application to water management policies in France

Palavras-chave: Pareto efficiency; Property rights; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; D72; D78.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/19444

Simon, Leo K.; Thoyer, Sophie; Morardet, Sylvie; Goodhue, Rachael E.; Rio, Patrick; Rausser, Gordon C..

Environmental policies are characterized by a growing emphasis on participation, devolution and negotiated decision making. Increasingly, centralized top down decision making systems are being replaced by new forms of local governance. In their strongest versions, these involve delegation of formal authority to local stakeholders who are expected to decide collectively upon the management rules of local common-pool resources. Devolution is particularly important in relation to the allocation and management of scarce water resources. Indeed the French water law of 1992 institutionalised the notion of devolution by requiring that water management rules be negotiated at the river basin level between all stakeholders. Although stakeholder negotiation is...