Gains from configuration: The transboundary protected area as a conservation tool

Nearly two hundred transboundary protected areas comprise a portion of the global conservation landscape the size of India, with further expansion anticipated. Proponents claim that transboundary protected areas outperform isolated protected areas in achieving conservation objectives, while regional case studies have led critics to challenge this claim. Empirical investigation into the relative performance of transboundary protected areas is fundamentally limited since these areas cannot be directly compared to the isolated protected areas that might otherwise have emerged in the same location. This paper develops a game theory model of park formation to compare counterfactual transboundary and isolated protected areas. The model suggests that under certain conditions, transboundary protected areas can achieve greater conservation and production objectives, even in the absence of international cooperative park management. The paper establishes five sufficient conditions for transboundary protected areas to provide greater national welfare, domestic conservation value, or global conservation value than counterfactual isolated protected areas. These conditions are tested for three common conservation objectives. The results suggest that when the objective of conservation is species persistence or interior habitat, conservation groups should encourage transboundary protected areas. However, when the objective of conservation is to extend reserve coverage to the maximum number of species, conservation groups should encourage protected areas where species richness is greatest, whether or not these areas span international borders.     

The incentives of private companies to invest in protected area certificates: How coalitions can improve ecosystem sustainability

Since the early 80's, the global demand on nature has exceeded the earth's capacity. To reduce the overuse of the very resources on which human life depends, protected areas have been developed worldwide. Typically, national states, NGOs and charities have funded protected areas, with limited investment from private companies. This paper analyzes one option to increase private investment: an international market for protected area certificates. Following a cost–benefit analysis, a three-stage coalition game is developed. The corporate dependency on ecosystems is modeled through the ecological footprint. By implementing instruments such as side payments, membership restriction and non-compliance penalties, the model shows that corporate environmental agreements reduce the individual cost of ecological protection and enhance social welfare. The findings are supported by a sensitivity analysis conducted for the German tourism sector in Zanzibar.     

An interdisciplinary model of soybean yield in the Amazon Basin: The climatic, edaphic, and economic determinants

Soybean production is one of the main economic forces driving the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Brazilian Amazon. To assess the potential for expansion we estimate a model of soybean yield that integrates the major climatic, edaphic, and economic determinants in the Amazon Basin. Yield is modeled as a function of yield as simulated by a crop physiology model that captures the effects of climate and physical attributes on the development of soybean plant; fertilizer applications; and economic/spatial parameters such as credit, transports costs and latitude. Current values of these determinants indicate that roughly 20% of Amazon Region or ∼ 1,000,000 km² (excluding protected areas) can generate yields greater than 2000 kg/ha. Soybean production may be possible over a wider area of Amazon, but realizing this potential requires improvements in economic determinants such as the transportation infrastructure.     

Economic and conservation implications of a variable effort penalty system in effort-controlled fisheries

Bycatch of threatened, endangered or protected species by commercial fishers is a universal problem. Technical solutions are often applied that may impose inefficiencies across the fleet, even in periods or areas when the risk of bycatch is low. These may include gear specifically designed to avoid the bycatch which may also reduce the targeted catch, or designation of marine protected areas that exclude fishing from whole areas. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of a variable penalty system that can provide incentives for fishers to redirect their effort away from problem areas. The system is examined using a case study of fishery, which is currently subjected to gear and closure controls to limit bycatch of turtles and seabirds. An alternative incentive-based management policy using a series of differential hook penalties has been proposed as a flexible tool to discourage vessels operating in certain areas. The effects of various hook penalties and closures in key areas on fishing effort in those areas and elsewhere as well as vessel economic performance are assessed using a location choice model. The results suggest that incentive-based approaches may result in lower costs to industry than closures provided some level of residual bycatch is acceptable.     

The effect of distance on willingness to pay values: a case study of wetlands and salmon in California

Most contingent valuation studies in the literature utilized a pre-determined geographic market area for their sample frame. In other words, they did not include variables that would measure the extent of the geographic areas over which to aggregate willingness to pay. These studies implicitly assumed that the effects of geographic distance were moot; an assumption that could have led to an understatement of the aggregate benefit values computed in these studies. The overall goal of this study was to determine if distance affects willingness to pay for public goods with large non-use values. The data used came from a contingent valuation study regarding the San Joaquin Valley, CA. Respondents were asked about their willingness to pay (WTP) for three proposed programs designed to reduce various environmental problems in the Valley. A logit model was used to examine the effects of geographic distance on respondents' willingness to pay for each of the three programs. Results indicate that distance affected WTP for two of the three programs (wetlands habitat and wildlife, and the wildlife contamination control programs). We calculate the underestimate in benefits if the geographic extent of the public good market is arbitrarily limited to one political jurisdiction.     

国家公园体制下风景名胜区的价值与发展路径

改革开放40余年,中国的自然保护地体系发展迅速,除风景名胜区外,还先后设立了自然保护区等14类保护地,实际上形成了中国的自然保护地体系。但由于各类保护地在空间和权责上的重叠,国家决定建立国家公园体制并对各类保护地进行重组。在此背景下,比照世界遗产、国家公园等国际上的保护地体系建设经验,梳理了中国风景名胜价值演进和利用发展的3个阶段,解说了世界遗产与中国风景名胜资源的对应关系。并在目前风景名胜区体系整体保留的情况下,尝试借鉴世界遗产价值评估对中国国家公园体系的分类分级进行完善,识别风景名胜区强调自然和文化相结合的价值和特色,指明国家公园体制下的风景名胜区保护资源并带动地区发展的潜力与路径。     

Do Protected Areas Reduce Forest Fragmentation? A Microlandscapes Approach

Conservation policies influence both the amount of habitat loss and patterns of habitat fragmentation. This paper develops a “microlandscapes” approach that combines fragmentation measures with quasi-experimental evaluation methods in order to assess the effects of policy on habitat fragmentation. As an application, the paper estimates whether and to what extent wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Thailand prevented forest loss and fragmentation. I find that both types of protected areas significantly increased forest cover, average forest patch size and maximum forest patch size. Comparisons between the two types indicate that wildlife sanctuaries were more effective than national parks in terms of protecting forest in the interior versus exterior areas of parks and preventing fragmentation conditional on the level of forest cover. The differences are consistent with predicted differences resulting from spatial patterns of enforcement that are uniform or core-focused in the wildlife sanctuaries versus boundary-focused or include agglomeration penalties in the national parks. Given the greater effectiveness of wildlife sanctuaries in preventing fragmentation and the suggestive link to enforcement types, these results reinforce existing theoretical work urging conservation managers to consider how the spatial distribution of enforcement may affect patterns of resource use.     

我国自然保护区的问题分析与对策

建立自然保护区是保护自然资源和自然环境最重要、最有效的措施之一.随着我国人口数量的持续增长和社会经济的快速发展,野生动植物的生存和生态系统的完整性不断受到威胁,严重影响到自然保护区生物多样性的保护.本文主要分析了我国自然保护区存在的主要问题,有针对性地提出了严格审批、加大投入、完善法制、强化监督检查力度,开展全国自然保护区调查、完善自然保护区生态补偿制度等对策.     

Does Economic Development Lead to Mangrove Loss? A Cross‐Country Analysis

Mangroves line one quarter of the world's tropical coastlines, and approximately 117 countries and territories have mangrove resources within their borders. Although over recent years mangrove deforestation has occurred at a phenomenal rate worldwide, there have been few economic studies of the underlying causes. The article attempts such an analysis and particularly examines the role of economic development, with specific reference to those activities that may result in mangrove deforestation, in determining the area of mangrove left within a country. The article develops a model of economic activity and mangrove conversion. From this model, a relationship is established between remaining mangrove area, economic activity, and other important causative factors. The mangrove area relationship is estimated empirically for a cross-section of 89 countries. Results show that shrimp aquaculture and agriculture are significantly associated with mangrove loss across all countries, whereas the higher the level of GDP per capita the more mangrove area remains. The number of protected areas, length of coastline and political stability were also important in determining the remaining mangrove area of a country. (JEL O13 , Q22 , Q23 , Q24 )     

Extending working hours: why not work 42 h rather than 38?—a CGE analysis for Germany

Faced with a record level of unemployment, the present debate in Germany is to extend the weekly hours of work. In this paper the employment effects of an economy-wide increase in weekly hours are quantified on the basis of a computable general equilibrium model for different specifications of the wage setting rule and the use of additional policy-induced public income. The simulation results back the argument of the opponents of longer working time that not more jobs will be created. However, when the higher tax revenues from GDP growth are used to reduce social security contributions, then the claim of the proponents that more jobs will be created can be supported.     

Schumpeter,Schumacher and the Greening of Technology

We propose a semantic patent claim analysis that can examine patents for possible infringements and identify which needs to be manually perused. So far, numerous approaches have been devised to systemise this burden, but have not been useful in practice because of a lack of consideration of semi-structure of patent claim data and claim element-based procedure of adjudicating patent infringement. At the heart of our method is a hierarchical keyword vector for representing the dependency relationships among claim elements (as well as unstructured textual information) and a tree matching algorithm for comparing claim elements of patents. A case study of the patents about DNA chip technology shows our method has considerable advantages in terms of accuracy and significance. We believe the suggested method could be employed in various research areas and serve as a starting point for developing more general models.     

FISCAL CONSTRAINTS, COLLECTION COSTS, AND TRADE POLICIES

The last two decades witnessed trade liberalization in many developing countries. What caused this trend, and why have trade barriers been so ubiquitous when economic theory overwhelmingly supports free trade? This paper proposes that governments' revenue needs are the driving force. Governments may rely disproportionately on trade taxes because they are inexpensive to collect. Trade liberalization is an integral part of a tax reform: a tax base expansion is necessary to allow governments to reduce tariff rates. This hypothesis is supported by a panel data analysis of 27 developing countries.     

Researching Preferences,Valuation and Hypothetical Bias

A number of recent papers in environmental economics have focused on the process of researching preferences – agents are uncertain about preferences but with effort may narrow their uncertainty. This issue has arisen in formulating bids in contingent valuation (CV) as well as the debate over the divergence between WTP and WTA. In the context of CV, it has been suggested that the hypothetical nature of the preference elicitation process biases responses. This paper provides both a theoretical model and experimental evidence to contribute to this debate. The model is a model of competitive bidding for a private good with two components that are particularly relevant to the debate. The first component is that bidders are unsure of their own value for the private good but may purchase information about their own value (researching preferences). The second component is that there is a probability that the auction is hypothetical – that the winning bidder will not get the private good and will not pay the winning bid. The experiment tests this theoretical model of bidding equilibrium and analyzes the effects of variations in the parameters (hypotheticalness, information costs and number of agents) on the endogenous variables (such as the proportion of bidders who become informed and the winning bid). Experimental results suggest that an increase in the hypotheticalness of an auction tends to decrease the likelihood that bidders pay for information on their valuation with an ambiguous effect on the winning bid.      

Enforcement,payments, and development projects near protected areas: how the market setting determines what works where

This paper examines a model of the decisions made by developing country protected area managers that recognizes that rural people react to policies differently in various market settings. For each of three market settings, the paper identifies the make-up of an optimal management plan that consists of three possible policies: enforcement, agricultural development projects, and conservation payments. The results ground a discussion of the likelihood of success of conservation policies, the failure of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects, and the use of some policies as mechanisms to compensate rural people for lost access to resources within protected areas.     

Economics,Sociology, History: Notes on Their Loss of Unity,Their Need for Re-integration and the Current Relevance of the Controversy between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller

We are experiencing a situation of increasing criticism of the state in which economics is being represented nowadays. One of the remarks is that economics has become too formalized and too abstract and that the state of discipline has become increasingly unable to express many phenomena of “real life” with its concrete socioeconomic specifica. Criticism has found a way to get cumulated in different terms of economic pluralism. The claim for fostering interdisciplinary research which we also find nowadays reflects the diagnosis that our islands of shared knowledge have become too fragmented. When reflecting what is going on in recent times a view back to the end of the nineteenth century may help to contextualize recent debate. Looking at the debate between Carl Menger and Gustav Schmoller which was later classified as the first battles in social sciences helps to sort up arguments which are still on the agenda, inductive versus deductive methods or empirism versus abstract theorizing.     

野生动物旅游:概念、类型与研究框架

野生动物旅游源于欧美地区的野生动物猎杀和观赏活动,已经历了上百年的发展历史。近年来,野生动物旅游发展迅速,受到国外学界和业界的广泛关注。文章分析和总结了野生动物旅游的概念,依据不同的标准划分了野生动物旅游的类型;构建了野生动物旅游研究的内容框架,认为其由野生动物旅游内涵研究、野生动物旅游供给研究、野生动物旅游者研究、野生动物旅游影响研究、野生动物旅游地可持续发展研究等五个既相互独立、又相互关联的子系统构成。     

Are foreign investors attracted to weak environmental regulations? Evaluating the evidence from China

At the center of the pollution haven debate is the claim that foreign investors from industrial countries are attracted to weak environment regulations in developing countries. Some recent location choice studies have found evidence of this attraction, but only for inward FDI in industrial countries. The few studies of inward FDI in developing countries have been hampered by weak measures of environmental stringency and by insufficient data to estimate variation in firm response by pollution intensity. This paper tests for pollution haven behavior by estimating the determinants of location choice for equity joint ventures (EJVs) in China. Beginning with a theoretical framework of firm production and abatement decisions, we derive and estimate a location choice model using data on a sample of EJV projects, Chinese effective levies on water pollution, and Chinese industrial pollution intensity. Results show EJVs in highly-polluting industries funded through Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are attracted by weak environmental standards. In contrast, EJVs funded from non-ethnically Chinese sources are not significantly attracted by weak standards, regardless of the pollution intensity of the industry. These findings are consistent with pollution haven behavior, but not by investors from high income countries and only in industries that are highly polluting. Further investigation into differences in technology between industrial and developing country investors might shed new light on this debate.     

International restructuring,health and the advanced industrial state

For the better part of the last century, the debate between ‘liberalisers’ and ‘interventionists’ marked thinking about the relationship between finance and development. It has by now been superseded by the emergence of the discourse of financial system development, which links economic growth to the development of the financial sector. As the risks entailed by wholesale financial reform came to the fore in the financial crises of the 1990s and early 2000s, emphasis shifted from liberalising financial markets to building institutional frameworks to accommodate investment. Arguably, the emergence of the financial-system-development discourse occurred within a wider shift in the neoliberal paradigm towards institution building. These changes are particularly pronounced in East and Southeast Asia. This paper argues that a convergence of opinions has occurred between Asian financial policy elites, previously strong supporters of the bank-based developmental state model, and the liberalisers, represented through international financial institutions such as the IMF. This consensus is geared towards the expansion of capital markets and a generally more neoliberal, market-oriented mode of economic governance. To illustrate this claim, this paper traces institutional changes in Asian financial systems since the 1997-98 financial crisis. Although local characteristics remain, a common feature is the more salient role of bond markets in the financial system. This is the result of the conscious and deliberate development of local currency debt markets by policymakers. However, the new consensus narrows down the space in which economic policymaking takes place. Yet, by re-politicising financial system development, this space could be broadened again.     

Fiscal policy rules,budget deficits,and forecasting biases

In this paper, we analyze the impact fiscal policy rules have on budget deficits and forecasting biases in official budget outlooks. Persistent budget deficits and over-optimistic budget forecasts have been observed in many countries in the past, especially in the euro area. To prevent such developments from happening in the future, fiscal rules have been revised or implemented with the aim to strengthen both preventive (ex-ante) and corrective (ex-post) elements of fiscal rules frameworks. Do such ex-ante and ex-post rules differ in their effects? In an attempt to answer this question, we build a two-period model and distinguish between ex-ante rules that apply to budget forecasts and ex-post rules that apply to realized budget deficits. Our model indicates that effectively enforced ex-post rules are more effective than ex-ante rules at reducing budget deficits. Interestingly, ex-ante rules differ from ex-post rules in their effects on forecasting biases. Only ex-post sanctions reduce forecasting biases, while ex-ante rules have no impact on such biases. In addition, we show that political stability and the size of government increase the effectiveness of fiscal rules. If, however, financial markets have a disciplining effect on governments, the effectiveness of fiscal rules is reduced. Our results imply that if fiscal policy rules cannot be effectively enforced, reforming other areas such as electoral rules or financial market regulations might be a more promising approach to ensuring sound public finances than fiscal policy rules.     

TOURISM AND REGIONAL IMMISERIZATION

Abstract.  This paper analyzes the consequences of tourism in rural and urban areas on regional incomes, welfare and urban unemployment using a generalized Harris Todaro model. In this model two urban and two rural goods are produced. A distinguishing characteristic of this model is that the urban non-traded good is not consumed in the rural region and, similarly, the rural non-traded good is not consumed in the urban region. The most important result we obtain is that a tourist boom in the urban region may immiserize the rural area. Hence the welfare interests of rural and urban consumers may be in conflict as a result of tourist expansion in the urban region.