Challenges for forest conservation in Gabon, Central Africa

In recent decades, large expanses of tropical rainforest in central and western Africa have been cleared, logged, fragmented, and overhunted. In contrast, extensive forest in Gabon has survived in a relatively intact condition because the country has a sparse population and substantial petroleum and mineral deposits that have reduced economic pressures on forests. Unfortunately, Gabon's petroleum reserves are dwindling. As a direct result, industrial logging is expanding rapidly; nearly half of the country's forest is currently in timber leases, and this could increase to over 75% of the remaining forest during the next decade. Mechanized logging has important ecological impacts on forests, but the most severe effects are indirect, because loggers create labyrinths of roads that greatly increase access to forests for hunters and slash-and-burn farmers. Declines of forest wildlife from overhunting have been severe in much of tropical Africa, and are likely to rise sharply in Gabon as physical accessibility to forests increases.The Gabonese government is eager to consider alternative strategies to augment economic development, including promotion of an ecotourism industry. This commitment is evidenced by the government's recent designation of 13 new national parks that comprise over a tenth of the country's land area. Efforts to develop ecotourism face substantial challenges, however, including the high profitability of exploitative land uses like logging, the illegal encroachment of loggers and hunters into nature reserves, political instability in the surrounding region, and limited infrastructure for tourism. Nevertheless, these and other efforts to promote more-sustainable development should be strongly supported, as Gabonese forests have among the highest levels of species diversity and endemism in tropical Africa and are likely to play a critical future role in biodiversity conservation.     

FINANCIAL MARKETS, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE EAST ASIAN MIRACLE

Many factors contributed to the rapid growth of the economiesof East Asia in the past quarter century. This article examinesone important aspect of that growth—commonly referredto as the "East Asian miracle"—public policies affectingthe financial markets. East Asian governments intervened extensivelyin financial markets at all stages of their development. Whatsets their actions apart from those of other developing countriesthat have not fared as well? We do not have the informationto answer conclusively what effect particular actions had (thatrequires a counterfactual test of what growth would have beenwithout the particular intervention). But we can identify themarket failures the East Asian governments addressed, assesssome of the theoretical reasons why each policy might be growthenhancing, and provide some data attesting to the impacts ofthe policy. Several characteristics of financial sector interventionsin East Asia stand out: they incorporated design features thatimproved the chances of success and reduced opportunities forabuse; interventions that did not work out were dropped unhesitatingly;and policies were adapted to reflect changing economic conditions.      

Economic Parameters of Deforestation

In theory, economic instruments should overcome the market failuresthat lead to excessive deforestation. Secure property rightscould be established and enforced to eliminate the open accessproblem. In practice, the size of the welfare loss that arisesfrom market failures in the forest sector in the absence ofsuch first-best policies is determined by the incentives, prices,and policies faced by those who make decisions about land use.In many cases, the effects of policies on deforestation arenot straightforward. For example, there are conflicting viewson whether an increase in the price of logs leads to an increaseor a decrease in deforestation. The effect of a change in theprice of logs has particular relevance for the controversialdebate about the effect on deforestation of a ban on log exportsor other trade restrictions that lower the domestic price oflogs. This article provides an analytical framework for determiningthe effects of changes in economic policies and parameters ondeforestation. It models dynamic, profitmaximizing land-usechoices and obtains unambiguous comparative static results bydistinguishing between unmanaged and managed forests. The resultssuggest that measures to reduce the producer price of logs couldbe a second-best policy to reduce the pressures on the frontiersof unmanaged forests and to protect biodiversity.     

THE ECONOMICS OF NATURAL RESOURCE EXTRACTION: A PRIMER FOR DEVELOPMENT ECONOMISTS

As developing countries become major consumers of the globalsupply of commercial energy, it is essential to understand thedeterminants of future energy prices. At the same time, manydeveloping countries are relying on exports of their own naturalresources—tropical hardwoods, oil, tin, gold, and otherminerals—to generate badly needed foreign exchange. Governmentpolicies influence how much of a resource is extracted todayand how much is saved for the future. Flawed policies needlesslywaste precious national wealth.      

Macroeconomic Stability in Developing Countries: How Much Is Enough?

Over the 1990s macroeconomic policies improved in most developingcountries, but the growth dividend from this improvement fellshort of expectations, and a policy agenda focused on stabilityturned out to be associated with a multiplicity of financialcrises. This article examines the contents and implementationof the macroeconomic reform agenda of the 1990s. It reviewsthe progress achieved through fiscal, monetary, and exchangerate policies across the developing world and the effectivenessof the changing policy framework in promoting stability andgrowth. The main lesson is that more often than not slow growthand frequent crises resulted from shortcomings in the reformagenda of the 1990s. These concern limitations in the depthand scope of the reform agenda, its lack of attention to macroeconomicvulnerabilities, and its inadequate attention to complementaryreforms outside the macroeconomic sphere.      

MACROECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A POLICY PERSPECTIVE

A comprehensive macroeconomic adjustment program is expectedto have the following objectives: a sustainable current accountposition, a stable and high rate of economic growth that wouldallow for a steady rise in per capita consumption, a reducedrate of inflation, and a manageable level of foreign debt. Thepackage designed to meet these objectives would typically includepolicy measures that simultatenously restrain aggregate demandand increase the availability of resources. These policies maybe grouped as follows: demand-management policies, structuralpolicies, exchange rate policies, and external financing policies.This article describes how these policies can be expected toachieve the goal of macroeconomic adjustment. The focus is primarilyon the theoretical and empirical links between policy instrumentsand ultimate objectives. An examination of these links is necessarybefore issues of the appropriate mix of demand-management, structural,exchange rate, and external policies, and the sequencing ofthese policies in a program, can be properly addressed.      

Oil price shocks and their transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting economy: A VAR analysis informed by a DSGE model

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks and the oil shock transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting country, Canada. We use a structural VAR with sign restrictions that comes from a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to jointly identify oil price, domestic supply and U.S. and domestic monetary policy shocks. This identification strategy not only controls for reverse causality from the Canadian and U.S. macroeconomic conditions to the real oil prices, but more importantly, it also allows for contemporaneous interactions between the Canadian and U.S. variables. We find that oil shocks have a stimulative effect on Canadian aggregate demand, appreciate the Canadian dollar, improve the terms of trade and reduce real wages. Foreign disturbances, including innovations in oil prices and the U.S. interest rate, have a significant influence on Canadian economic activities. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that the reaction of the U.S. interest rate as an indirect transmission channel for oil price shocks plays a moderate role in explaining the real exchange rate and inflation, but has negligible impacts on the Canadian output and interest rate.     

SOME LESSONS FROM THE EAST ASIAN MIRACLE

The rapid economic growth of eight East Asian economies, oftencalled the "East Asian miracle, " raises two questions: Whatpolicies and other factors contributed to that growth? And canother developing countries replicate those policies to stimulateequally rapid growth? This article, based on case studies, econometric data, and economictheory, offers a list of the ingredients that contributed tothat success. But it is the combination of these ingredients,many of which involve government interventions acting together,that accounts for East Asia's success.      

THE RELEVANCE FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN MACROECONOMIC THEORY

This article reviews recent developments in macroeconomic theoryand considers their relevance for developing countries. Particularemphasis is given to the rational expectations revolution. Thearticle asks whether government policies are systematic andsuggests the need to study the expectations on which governmentsbase their decisions. Also discussed are the neo-Ricardian theorem,the implications of real wage rigidity and of supply side modelswith sectoral income effects, and recent models involving largegroup interaction.      

Effects of Macroeconomic Policies on Sectoral Prices

The effect of macroeconomic policies on the relative pricesof internationally traded and domestic goods has been the subjectof extensive study. Analysis of the way in which these policiesthen affect prices at the sectoral level is complicated by theheterogeneity of sectoral production: even the prices of singleproducts usually are determined by both domestic and tradedcomponents. We present a framework which first traces the influenceof macropolicy on the relative prices of exports, imports, andhome goods. It then accounts for each sector's degree of "tradability,"which is based on the importance of trade in sectoral income,and the influence of macroeconomic policy on sectoral prices.To illustrate the use of this approach, it is applied to a simulationof trade liberalization in Argentina. Our results suggest thateconomywide policies had substantial negative effects on boththe real exchange rate and the incentives to agricultural exports.     

CREDIT POLICIES: LESSONS FROM JAPAN AND KOREA

The success of policy-based credit programs in Japan and theRepublic of Korea suggests that credit policy can be an effectiveinstrument for economic development. Why, then, have creditpolicies failed in so many countries, and what factors explaintheir relative success in Japan and Korea? Both economic and institutional factors appear to be importantin the success or failure of credit policies. Essential economicfactors include a reliance on the private sector, a bias towardindustrialization, an orientation toward export production,the encouragement of domestic competition, and a commitmentto price stability. Crucial institutional factors include extensiveand frequent consultation between government and the privatesector, effective monitoring systems, and, most important, aclear and credible plan for economic development. Although severalcountries have included one or more of these factors in theirprograms, the experience of Japan and Korea suggests that acomprehensive network combining all or most of these factorsmay be necessary for the successful implementation of creditpolicies.      

Ecology, History, and Development: A Perspective from Rural Southeast Asia

The process by which different ecological conditions and historicaltrajectories interacted to create different social and culturalsystems resulted in major differences in economic developmentperformance within Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century,Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand commonly experiencedvent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unusedlands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were created.Indonesia's development was mainly based on the exploitationof tropical rain forest under Dutch colonialism. It resultedin the bifurcation of the rural sector between rice-farmingpeasant proprietors and large plantations for tropical exportcrops based on hired labor. In the Philippines, exploitationof the same resource base under Spanish rule resulted in pervasivelandlessness among the rural population. Relatively homogeneouslandowning peasants continued to dominate in Thailand, wheredelta plains that were suitable only for rice production formedthe resource base for development. These different agrarianstructures associated with different social value systems haveaccounted for differential development performance across thethree economies in the recent three decades.      

Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, and International Technology Transfer: A Survey

What role does trade play in international technology transfer?Do technologies introduced by multinational firms diffuse tolocal firms? What kinds of policies have proved successful inencouraging technology absorption from abroad and why? Usingthese questions as motivation, this article surveys the recenttrade literature on international technology transfer, payingparticular attention to the role of foreign direct investment.The literature argues that trade necessarily encourages growthonly if knowledge spillovers are international in scope. Empiricalevidence on the scope of knowledge spillovers (national versusinternational) is ambiguous. Several recent empirical plant-levelstudies have questioned earlier studies that argued that foreigndirect investment has a positive impact on the productivityof local firms. Yet at the aggregate level, evidence supportsthe view that foreign direct investment has a positive effecton economic growth in the host country.      

Managing the world's forests

Forests play a vital role in balancing natural systems: the stabilization of global climate and the management of water and land. 30% of the earth's total land area is forested. 66% of the tropical moist forests are in Latin America and the remainder in Africa and Asia. 75% of tropical dry forests are in Africa. Temperate forests are primarily in developed countries. Deforestation and misuse of forests occurs primarily in developing countries at significant social, economic, and environmental costs. Losses have occurred in fuelwood, fodder, timber, forest products, biological diversity, habitats, genetic materials for food and medicine. The World Bank's evolving role in forestry is briefly described. Agreement has not been reached among people or nations about the most appropriate means to balance conservation and development goals. The challenge is to stabilize existing forests and increase forest planting. The causes of forest degradation must be understood. Direct causes include agricultural encroachment, cattle ranching, fuelwood gathering, commercial logging, and infrastructure development. These direct causes are driven by economic, social, and political forces: market and policy failures, population growth, and poverty. The market failures include: 1) the lack of clearly defined property rights on forest resources for now and the future, 2) the conflict between individual and societal needs, 3) the difficulty in placing a value on nonmarket environmental services and joint products, and 4) the separation between private and social costs. The solution is action at the local, national, and global levels. Countries must establish forest policy. The existing government incentives which promote deforestation must be changed. For example, concession policy and royalty systems must be corrected; explicit and implicit export subsidies on timber and forest products must be stopped. Private incentives must be established to promote planting of trees, practicing preservation, and setting up sustainable management systems. Property rights must be clearly defined and land use policies must spell out forest use patterns. A global strategy for forest management is needed for conservation, protection, reforestation, agricultural and rural development, sustainable use, and research with funding.     

THE DESIGN AND DIFFUSION OF IMPROVED COOKING STOVES

The poorer half of the world's people have long relied for theirenergy needs on woodfuels. Since the oil shocks of the 1970s,pressure on forest resources has increased and the costs oftraditional use of woodfuels have been growing—to thehouseholder, in cash or collection time, and to society in inefficientenergy use, deforestation, and local and global harm to healthand the environment. Modern, efficient stoves can alleviatesome of these problems; programs to design and disseminate themwould seem a worthwhile pursuit for development activity. But do such programs in fact warrant the investment? Why haveso many failed to catch on as expected? The authors find thatprograms have been most successful when targeted to specificareas where woodfuel prices or collection times are high. Fieldtesting, consumer surveys, and involvement of local artisansfrom the outset have been critical to the ultimate adoptionof the stoves. With these elements in place, external supportfrom governments and donors can be useful; lacking them, subsidiesmay succeed only in distributing stoves that ultimately molderaway unused. This article's review of what makes for successand failure is instructive for the design of stove programsin particular, and of development projects that propagate improvedmethods and technologies in general.      

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF BEING A SMALL, REMOTE, ISLAND, LANDLOCKED, OR MINISTATE ECONOMY

Any index of smallness is somewhat arbitrary, but common practicehas been to use population and income criteria. Experience suggeststhat smallness is neither a necessary nor sufficient conditionfor poor development performance. This paper considers the problemsthat small economies are most often alleged to face, includingabsence of economies of scale, vulnerability, remoteness, reducedaccess to capital markets, problems of macroeconomic policydependence, and overstatement of real income. The paper concludesthat many of the alleged problems of small economies are eithernot peculiar to small economies or can be addressed throughsuitable policy measures.      

WHAT MAKES RURAL FINANCE INSTITUTIONS SUCCESSFUL?

Providing affordable credit to the rural population has longbeen a prime component of development strategy. Governmentsand donors have sponsored and supported supply-led rural financeinstitutions both to improve growth and equity and to neutralizeor mitigate urban-biased macroeconomic policies. But becauseof high risks, heavy transaction costs, and mounting loan losses,many of the programs have drained state resources to littlepurpose, reaching only a small part of the rural populationand making little progress toward self-sustainability. There are, however, a few success stories. This article reviewsthe policies, modes of operation, incentives, and financialperformance of four publicly sponsored programs in Asia thatare widely perceived to be successful, to find out what economic,social, and institutional factors contributed to their success.      

REFORM OF TRADE POLICY: Recent Evidence from Theory and Practice

In the 1980s many developing countries began to recognize thatrestrictive trade policies can constrain growth. To facilitatetrade and integration into the world economy, many countrieshave embarked on reform programs. This survey synthesizes theconclusions of the literature on trade policy reform with thoseof a recent study by the World Bank analyzing reforms in developingcountries, particularly those supported by adjustment lendingprograms. Its objective is to shed light on some of the questionsabout these programs to guide policymakers in the future. Thearticle reviews conditions in these countries before trade policyreforms were implemented and examines how much reform actuallytook place. It also examines the effects of the reforms on economicperformance and reviews the factors that constrained the reformprocess. The survey considers the most important issues in designingand implementing trade policy reforms and concludes that althoughpast reforms have had a positive impact, future programs shouldemphasize three elements: reducing the level of protection,maintaining macroeconomic stability, and accounting for theconflicts and complementarities with other policies.      

货币政策波动、银行信贷与会计稳健性

宏观经济政策(如货币政策)如何通过改变微观企业行为来影响经济发展是学术界探讨得比较少的领域。本文在此方向上进行研究尝试,并以货币政策波动对企业会计政策稳健性与银行贷款之间的关系为切人点。具体来说,当货币政策进入紧缩期时,我们预期企业会计政策变得更加稳健,以更容易取得银行贷款。运用1998～2008年的年度数据,并根据央行要求的金融机构存款准备金率、对金融机构的再贷款利率和再贴现利率的变化,我们定义2004、2006、2007年为我国的货币政策紧缩阶段。实证结果基本上支持我们的预期。我们进一步发现依赖于外部融资和拥有更高债务水平的企业会计稳健性更高,持有大量现金的企业会计稳健性更低,国有企业的会计稳健性更低。在会计稳健性的经济后果上,本文发现在货币政策紧缩阶段,会计稳健性的提高有助于企业获得更多的信贷资源。     

Timing and Duration of Exposure in Evaluations of Social Programs

Impact evaluations aim to measure the outcomes that can be attributedto a specific policy or intervention. While there have beenexcellent reviews of the different methods for estimating impact,insufficient attention has been paid to questions related totiming: How long after a program has begun should it be evaluated?For how long should treatment groups be exposed to a programbefore they benefit from it? Are there time patterns in a program'simpact? This paper examines the evaluation issues related totiming, and discusses the sources of variation in the durationof exposure within programs and their implications for impactestimates. It reviews the evidence from careful evaluationsof programs (with a focus on developing countries) on the waysthat duration affects impacts.