The amenity value of woodland in Great Britain: A comparison of economic estimates

Forests produce benefits over and above the revenue yielded from timber and other wood based products. Most important among these may be the recreational benefits for visitors, which have been examined in several studies. Total benefits for residents are perhaps more accurately captured in property values since, ceteris paribus, the price of a house reflects willingness to pay to live near an environmental amenity such as a forest to gain access to it, and also the amenity (non-use) value of the forest in so far as it creates a pleasant landscape. However, the total non-priced value of forestry is not the sum of HPM and ITCM benefit estimates. Recreational benefits will typically be less, and will be subsumed in the HPM estimates, since the hedonic price is partly induced by the value of recreational access.     

The product elimination function

Historically, major consideration given to product management has focused on research and development or the introductory stage of the product life cycle. The authors present an empirical study delineating the variables to be considered in the product elimination process. More specifically, the elimination process is evaluated under a situation of poor product performance despite a generally viable market. The basic objectives of the study were: to determine the significant variables in the product elimination process of the Small Appliance Industry; to determine the relative importance of the variables; to examine the interaction among variables. The data obtained through personal structured questionnaire interviews were analyzed and provided a ranking of twenty-six variables relevant to the elimination process. Moreover, the Johnson's Hierarchical Clustering Schemes was applied to determine the interaction among variables. The results indicate that profitability and financial variables are most significant in the elimination decision-process. Second, the primary clusters of importance are concerned with market share, market growth rate, consumer awareness, and competitive action.     

Moral hazard and Marshallian inefficiency: Evidence from Tunisia

We formalize the link between optimal cost-sharing contracts and the production technology in the presence of moral hazard by appealing to several well-known results from duality theory. Building on intuitions from the interlinkage literature, we show that optimal contractual structure is determined by the (i) substitution possibilities that exist between different observable factor inputs, as well as (ii) between these inputs and unobservable effort. We endogenize contractual choice using landlord characteristics as instruments, exploiting the fact that, in our dataset, landlords interact with several tenants and vice versa. The approach is applied to an unbalanced plot-level panel of cost-sharing contracts in a Tunisian village, using a translog representation of the restricted profit function. Contractual terms are found to be a significant determinant of input use and therefore lead to Marshallian inefficiency, while the optimality of the underlying contractual structure is rejected.     

Money in the pure consumption loan model

The purpose of this paper is to show how modern techniques of Temporary competitive equilibrium analysis can be applied to models of the “pure consumption loan model” type. One considers Samuelson's simplest model where traders live two periods and where money is the only store of value. It is proved that a temporary equilibrium exists if price expectations are sufficiently independent of current prices. A stationary market equilibrium is shown to exist if there is a set of traders (i) whose total resources are greater when they are young than when they are old, (ii) who are indifferent between present and future consumption. It is proved that this existence theorem still holds if the economy is sufficiently “close” to an economy which has this property. A stationary market equilibrium is shown to be Pareto optimal if all traders hold positive cash balances. It may be inefficient if this condition is not satisfied, for some traders may then be willing to borrow, which they cannot do in this model.     

The Efficiency Impact of the Chinese Industrial Reforms in the 1980’s

A stochastic frontier production function is used to estimate the effect of partial and gradual reforms in the 1980’s in each of seven state-owned manufacturing industries. Reform-induced gains in technical efficiency were significant in all sample industries although not always substantial enough to motivate industry-wide productivity growth. The bonus system had speedy and impressive efficiency effects, but there is no consistent evidence on the effectiveness of other reform measures, including greater output autonomy, partial exposure to market influences, and the possibility of dismissals for malfeasance. Equalization of marginal factor returns across firms was observed in some industries, which may be considered as evidence of improved allocative efficiency in response to the reforms.     

The potential benefits of herbicide-resistant transgenic rice in Uruguay: Lessons for small developing countries

In many developing countries, the potential benefits from adopting a transgenic variety developed by a multinational corporation are limited by the crop’s small production base. This paper presents an ex-ante evaluation of the economic impact of herbicide resistant transgenic rice in a small developing country, Uruguay. To fully account for the multinational’s market power, the firm’s seed markup is assumed to affect the adoption rate for the variety. Stochastic simulation techniques are employed to understand how potential benefits may vary with changes in technology, yield, costs, and adoption parameters. The results indicate a $1.82 million mean net present value for producers from the development and utilization of transgenic rice in Uruguay and $0.55 million for the multinational. These relatively small multinational firm benefits suggest that a firm will not undertake significant efforts to develop transgenic varieties adapted to local conditions without either strategic partnerships with local institutions or access to wider regional markets.     

Ecotourism as a conservation tool and its adoption by private protected areas in Brazil

Ecotourism in private reserves combines the establishment of protected areas with an incentive mechanism to conserve biodiversity. Brazil's private reserve system is well-established but little is known about its links to tourism. This study puts the global private protected area into context and quantifies the extent to which ecotourism has been adopted as a sustainable land-use practice on private reserves in Brazil. Our findings demonstrate that small reserves do contribute to conservation and are used for ecotourism. The belief that large reserves are necessary for ecotourism and conservation is challenged. Only 4% (n = 45) of the 1182 reserves are engaged in ecotourism, mainly those within the Atlantic Forest biome and these are generally small in size (<50 ha). Reserves provide modest to basic accommodation as well as education and economic opportunities that include adjacent communities. Hiking and bird watching are the most popular activities but many reserves are threatened by poaching and invasive species. The low adoption of ecotourism appears due to a combination of factors, including lack of landowner interest, constraints imposed by regulations, logistics and anthropogenic threats. Nonetheless, there is potential to expand ecotourism within private reserves as 143 further private reserves are located near those already engaged in ecotourism.