System of crop intensification for more productive,resource-conserving,climate-resilient,and sustainable agriculture: experience with diverse crops in varying agroecologies

With continually increasing demand for food accompanied by the constraints of climate change and the availability and quality of soil and water, the world’s farmers are challenged to produce more food per hectare with less water, and with fewer agrochemical inputs if possible. The ideas and methods of the system of rice intensification which is improving irrigated rice production are now being extended/adapted to many other crops: wheat, maize, finger millet, sugarcane, tef, mustard, legumes, vegetables, and even spices. Promoting better root growth and enhancing the soil’s fertility with organic materials are being found effective means for raising the yields of many crop plants with less water, less fertilizer, reduced seeds, fewer agrochemicals, and greater climate resilience. In this article, we review what is becoming known about various farmer-centred innovations for agroecological crop management that can contribute to agricultural sustainability. These changes represent the emerging system of crop intensification, which is being increasingly applied in Asian, African, and Latin American countries. More research will be needed to verify the efficacy and impact of these innovations and to clarify their conditions and limits. But as no negative effects for human or environmental health have been identified, making these agronomic options more widely known should prompt more investigation and, to the extent justified by results, utilization of these methodologies.     

Has Globalisation Affected Collective Bargaining? An Empirical Test, 1980–2009

We investigate whether globalisation has affected the nature of collective bargaining in OECD and emerging countries. The main innovations over the existing empirical literature are (i) the consideration of three distinct aspects of collective bargaining (union density, decentralised bargaining and the extent of government intervention), (ii) the reliance on a sample with a larger cross‐sectional and time dimension (44 countries from 1980 to 2009), and (iii) the application of a more appropriate empirical methodology (dynamic panel data models). We find that globalisation, on average, depresses unionisation but neither affects the degree of decentralisation nor government intervention in collective bargaining. We also uncover significant heterogeneity effects, both across countries and over time.     

Direct Democracy and Local Public Finances under Cooperative Federalism

In this paper, we exploit the introduction of the right of local initiatives in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 in order to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. Our identification strategy combines difference‐in‐differences and regression discontinuity methods: we compare municipal expenditure and revenue between pre‐ and post‐reform periods at population thresholds where the signatures needed to launch initiatives and minimum quorum requirements decrease discontinuously (difference‐in‐discontinuities design). The results suggest that stronger direct democratic institutions lead to an expansion of local government size.     

The Heckscher–Ohlin model and the network structure of international trade

This paper estimates for 28 product groups a characteristic parameter that reflects the topological structure of its trading network. Using these estimates, it describes how the structure of international trade has evolved during the 1980–2000 period. Thereafter, it demonstrates the importance of networks in international trade by explicitly accounting for their scaling properties when testing the prediction of the “Heckscher–Ohlin” model that factor endowment differentials determine bilateral trade flows. The results suggest that factor endowment differentials increase bilateral trade in goods that are traded in “dispersed” networks. For goods traded in “concentrated” networks, factor endowment differentials are less important.     

Indian textile suppliers' sustainability evaluation using the grey approach

Textile supply chains consist of multinational garment retailers (customers), garment manufacturers (suppliers), and ancillary suppliers (suppliers to manufacturers). This paper evaluates suppliers' within the Indian textile and clothing industry (both garment manufacturers and ancillary suppliers) using sustainability criteria. Examining a sample of sixty-three suppliers and six sustainability criteria (i.e. discrimination, abuse of human right, child labor, long working hours, unfair competition, and pollution), we categorize suppliers into the three categories of ‘good performer’, moderate performer’, and ‘performance not up to expectation’. Since all the criteria are potentially subjective, we have employed the grey approach for analysis. The results indicate that the criterion of long working hours is a critical one for both categories of suppliers; in the case of garment manufacturers, we found that pollution and unfair competition were the most important criteria. In addition, employing child labor was found to be a critical criterion in the case of ancillary suppliers.     

Local fiscal policy after a bailout: austerity or soft budget constraints?

Do higher-level governments enforce austerity after bailing out indebted subnational governments or are bailouts a free lunch for the recipients? Analyzing this question empirically is difficult because bailouts are not granted randomly. This paper suggests a method to evaluate the fiscal consequences of subnational bailouts that does not rely on institutional details to obtain quasi-exogenous variation. The main idea is to combine matching and difference-in-differences designs. In a second step, I apply this method to study how bailouts affect the fiscal policy of recipient municipalities in the German federal state of Hesse. Combining disaggregated budget data with data on bailout payments over more than a decade, I find that municipalities consolidate their budgets after they receive a bailout from the state government. While this finding is specific to the German federal context, the proposed methodology can be used, due to its flexibility, to study the fiscal consequences of bailouts in various other settings.     

Soft budget constraints and strategic interactions in subnational borrowing: Evidence from the German States, 1975-2005

Cooperative federations are usually characterized by the existence of bailout guarantees and intergovernmental transfer schemes. This paper explores whether such features of cooperative federations lead to subnational soft budget constraints using panel data from the German States covering the 1975-2005 period. The methodology is based on the premise that subnational governments’ borrowing will exhibit vertical and horizontal strategic interactions if they operate under soft budget constraints. Therefore, a test for strategic interactions in subnational borrowing can be used to infer whether a cooperative federation like Germany is susceptible to soft budget constraints. The results suggest that state borrowing in Germany exhibited horizontal but not vertical interactions during the time-frame of the analysis. This indicates (i) that German States faced soft budget constraints and (ii) that they were more concerned about the likelihood of a bailout than about its volume.     

Monetary integration,soft budget constraints,and the EMU sovereign debt crises

One possible explanation for the European sovereign debt crises is that the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) gave rise to consolidation fatigue or even deliberate over‐borrowing. This paper explores the validity of this explanation by studying how three decisive stages in the history of the EMU affected public borrowing in EU member states: the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the introduction of the Euro, and the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The methodology relies on difference‐in‐difference regressions for 26 OECD countries over the 1975–2009 period. The findings indicate that the Maastricht treaty reduced deficits especially in traditionally high‐deficit countries. In contrast, the introduction of the Euro and the watering down of the original SGP led on average to higher borrowing. These results indicate that the introduction of the Euro and the suspension of the SGP led to soft budget constraints in the EMU.     

Creative destruction and fiscal institutions: a long-run case study of three regions

We analyze the rise and decline of the steel and mining industries in the regions of Saarland, Lorraine and Luxembourg. Our main focus is on the period of structural decline in these industries after the second world war. Differences in the institutional framework of these regions are exploited to analyze the way in which the broader fiscal constitution sets incentives for governments either to obstruct or to encourage structural change in the private sector. Our main result is that fiscal autonomy of a region subjected to structural change in its private sector is associated with a relatively faster decline of employment in the sectors affected. Contrary to the political lore, fiscal transfers appear not to be used to speed up the destruction of old sectors, but rather to stabilize them.     

Bioregional planning in central Georgia, USA

Human influences in the five-county region around Fort Benning, Georgia, USA, have been long and intense. Only 4% of the native longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forest remains intact. Besides the loss of species, habitats, and ecosystem services associated with longleaf pine forests, the environmental concerns of the region include air, water, and noise pollution. The mix of federal and private ownership in this region leads to complicated land-management issues that will likely become even more difficult as the city of Columbus continues its projected growth along the northern border of Fort Benning. To understand how anthropogenic developments affect the environment, we are developing a Regional Simulator (RSim) to project future developments and their impacts on environmental conditions. Using RSim, we can identify the potential effects of growth on noise and air pollution, water-borne nutrients, and habitats for focal species. Noise impacts are already large in the areas of current and projected urban growth for the region. This knowledge of potential futures allows options for environmental protection to be considered. A key lesson from this analysis is that regional simulation models are a cost-effective way to assess the long-term environmental implications of anthropogenic growth and development.