Context matters to explain field experiments: Results from Colombian and Thai fishing villages

During the last decade, field experiments regarding the study of common pool resource governance have been performed that replicated earlier findings of laboratory experiments. One of the questions is how the decisions made by participants in rural communities are influenced by their experience. This paper presents the results of field experiments in Colombia and Thailand on fishery resources. Context information is derived from the communities via in-depth interviews, surveys and role playing exercises. The use of different methodological tools allowed to link decisions in field experiments with contextual variables for two fishery villages. Explanation of core variables in social dilemmas is given, the degree of cooperation levels, preferred rules, rule compliance and enforcement. Main findings include: i) fishermen made decisions in the field experiments that reflected their own experience and context, ii) agreements for rule crafting are possible only under specific conditions that guarantees livelihoods and sustainability, iii) the broader context determines cooperation levels at a local level, iv) inequalities in the sanctioning of rule breakers decrease the possibilities of reaching cooperation agreements, and v) high levels of trust among local fishermen is not a sufficient condition for resource sustainability, when trust in external rule makers and enforcers is low.     

Co-managing common-pool resources: Do formal rules have to be adapted to traditional ecological norms?

We examine the effectiveness of three democratically chosen rules that alleviate the coordination and cooperation problems inherent in collectively managed common-pool resources. In particular we investigate how rule effectiveness and rule compliance depend on the prevailing local norms and ecological values held by resource users. For this purpose, we employ a framed field experiment that is based on a rangeland model for semi-arid regions and carried out with communal farmers in Namibia and South Africa. Participants could vote for three ‘best practice’ management rules found in many places around the world that are discussed for implementation in the study area: (temporary) private property rights, rotational grazing or limitation of livestock numbers. All rules were designed in a way that facilitated cooperation or coordination of actions. The focus of this study lies on the interactions between these rules and prevalent ecological norms exhibited in the rounds prior to rule implementation. In contrast to previous lab experimental studies, we find that democratic voting of rules is not sufficient for high rule compliance and an overall enhancement in cooperation. Rules turned out to be inefficient if they were in conflict with the prevalent ecological norm.     

Complexities of Decentralization in a Globalizing World

In many developing countries, decentralization programmes for natural resource management aim to induce incentives for sustainable resource management at the local level. The effectiveness of such programmes has, however, suffered from weak property rights to the resource and by the presence of externalities. Growing economic integration among countries has exacerbated these problems by increasing the exposure of local user groups to commercial actors interested in resource extraction. In this paper, the interplay of decentralization and globalization in affecting environmental outcomes and community welfare is analysed through a game-theoretic model of community-firm interactions. The results highlight the complexities of policy design. First, by raising the extractive value of the resource, globalization may lead to communities negotiating resource extraction agreements with firms. Second, with a lack of effective state enforcement of community resource rights, communities may be unable to assume de facto ownership over the resource, while commercial actors succeed in exploiting resources without community consent. No single policy option provides a panacea to counteracting these negative effects. Instead, a mix of policies, combining incentive payments along with the provision of more secure property rights and poverty alleviation is shown to have the potential to improve both environmental outcomes and community welfare.     

从经济学及博弈角度分析环境污染

环境资源是一种公共资源,是典型的公共财产,其特点表现为产权规定不明晰、外部性及资源配置的市场失灵,这些特性导致环境资源的过渡使用、环境污染、生态破坏。从博弈角度分析:环境污染事实上是囚徒困境;污染治理的方法是大型企业采取内部治理,小型企业通过税收政府集中治理。     

Breaking the elected rules in a field experiment on forestry resources

Harvesting from common resources has been studied through experimental work in the laboratory and in the field. In this paper we report on a dynamic commons experiment, representing a forest, performed with different types of communities of resource users in Thailand and Colombia, as well as student participants. We find that all groups overharvest the resource in the first part of the experiment and that there is no statistical difference between the various types of groups. In the second part of the experiment, participants appropriate the common resource after one of three possible regulations is elected and implemented. There is less overharvesting after the rules are implemented, but there is a significant amount of rule breaking. The surprising finding is that Colombian villagers break the rules of the games more often than other groups, and even more so when they have more trust in members of the community. This observation can be explained by the distrust in externally proposed regulations due to the institutional and cultural context.     

Eco-certification of non-timber forest products in China： addressing income generation and biodiversity conservation needs

Non-timber forest products（NTFPs） can play a key role in sustainable rural development due to their ability to support rural livelihoods while of their role and potential in conservation and development remains weak. Studies have pointed to important knowlidge gaps that may lead to serious exploitation and unsustainable use of the nanral resource ＂NTFP＂ in China. such as（I） lack of basic lknowledge on germplasm and non-existing or incomplete inventory.（2）no in-depth and long-term monitoring and institutional arrangements to ascertain sustainable extraction levels,（3）insufficient market transparency for communities.（4）incomplete knowledge of NTFP domestication and ist effects on product quality and price and the conservation of wild sources, and （5）no existing research on the full length of the commodity chain for major non-timber forest prochucts and the various actors in the chain. remote mountain regions through the sustainable management of NTFPs. The potential and challenges of oraanic,ecological and Fairtrade certification schemes in the context of smallholder farmers are discussed in more detall.     

Protecting Forests Through Farming. A Dynamic Model of Nontimber Forest Extraction

Forest resource extraction by local communities has been cited as a major impediment to the efficient management of protected forests. This paper develops a two sector dynamic model for farming and forest resource extraction by communities living in the forest periphery. The model assumes that land under forestry is constant and households allocate their time to farming and forestry. Comparative dynamic results suggest that higher prices for agriculture output, lower input prices, better knowledge of farming techniques and a lower discount rate may result in a higher equilibrium stock of forest resources. Tobit analysis with primary data collected from the Sinharaja forest in Sri Lanka provides supportive empirical evidence.     

中国机构知识库资源建设策略研究

实现中国机构知识库可持续发展的主要障碍是其资源建设,对中国台湾、香港和大陆三地机构知识库资源建设现状的调查分析表明,目前中国机构知识库资源建设存在的主要问题是:机构知识库发展"冷热不均",资源建设规模参差不齐,全文获取存在障碍,内容比较单一,资源建设可持续性差等。发展中国机构知识库资源建设的应对之策是:提高机构知识库的认知度;出台强制性自存储制度;建立协议性代存储制;扩大资源收集范围;制定资源存储的激励机制;建立质量控制机制,构建共建共享的机构知识库联盟。     

Exploring the role of gender in common-pool resource extraction: evidence from laboratory and field experiments in fisheries

There is active debate on gender issues in natural resource management. For example, it is proposed that women are more cooperative than men when dealing with natural resources decisions; however, few scientific studies have directly addressed this hypothesis. We provide evidence for a greater cooperative attitude in women compared to men in both college students and coastal fishing communities of Baja California, Mexico, by means of game theory experiments. In both laboratory and field experiments, women changed their behaviour towards lower extraction compared to men, when regulations, sanctions or social scolding were introduced in the games. These results suggest that raising the role of women in decision-making, along with an adequate institutional framework, may lead to a more sustainable use of natural resources.     

Regulating Exclusion from Financial Markets

We study optimal enforcement in credit markets in which the only threat facing a defaulting borrower is restricted access to financial markets. We solve for the optimal level of exclusion, and link it to observed institutional arrangements. Regulation in this environment must accomplish two objectives. First, it must prevent borrowers from defaulting on one bank and transferring their resources to another bank. Second, and less obviously, it must give banks the incentive to make sizeable loans, and to honour their promises of future credit. We establish that the optimal regulation resembles observed laws governing default on debt. Moreover, if debtors have the right to a "fresh start" after bankruptcy then this must be balanced by enforceable provisions against fraudulent conveyance. Our optimal regulation is robust, in that it can be implemented in a way that does not require the regulator to have information about either the borrower or lender. Our results isolate the way in which specific institutions surrounding bankruptcy–namely rules governing asset garnishment and fraudulent conveyances–support loan markets in which borrowers have no collateral.     

Instabilities and robust control in natural resource management

Most renewable natural resources exhibit marked demographic and environmental stochasticities, which are exarcebated in management decisions by the uncertainty regarding the choice of an appropriate model to describe system dynamics. Moreover, demand and supply analysis often indicates the presence of instabilities and multiple equilibria, which may lead to management problems that are intensified by uncertainty on the evolution of the resource stock. In this paper the fishery management problem is used as an example to explore the potential of robust optimal control, where the objective is to choose a harvesting rule that will work under a range of admissible specifications for the stock-recruitment equation. The paper derives robust harvesting rules leading to a unique equilibrium, which could be helpful in the design of policy instruments such as robust quota systems.

     

Self-Regulation and Government Oversight

Self-regulation is a feature of a number of professions. For example, in the U.S. the government delegates aspects of financial market regulation to self-regulatory organizations (SROs) like the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers. We analyse one regulatory task of an SRO, enforcing antifraud rules so agents will not cheat customers. Specifically, we model contracting/enforcement as a two-tier problem. An SRO chooses its enforcement policy: the likelihood that an agent is investigated for fraud and a penalty schedule. Given an enforcement policy, agents compete by offering contracts that maximize customers' expected utility. We assume that the SRO's objective is to maximize the welfare of its members, the agents. We show that the SRO chooses a more lax enforcement policy—meaning less frequent investigations—than what customers would choose. A general conclusion is that control of the enforcement policy governing contracts confers substantial market power to a group of otherwise competitive agents. We also investigate government oversight of the self-regulatory process. The threat of government enforcement leads to more enforcement by the SRO, just enough to pre-empt any government enforcement.     

土地双垄断情况下的收益博弈

本文通过重复信号博弈模型和双垄断模型,运用制度分析法来考察现有土地制度安排下地方政府和中央政府对土地利用的最优反应,结果显示:(1)中央政府对地方政府的监管成本过高,导致土地垄断利润分配过程中地方政府获利更大,进而催生了《土地管理法》;(2)现有地方土地资源利用完全不受限制,导致地方经济发展失去了中央宏观调控的约束。因此,本文提出相关对策建议。     

Sustainability in Closed and Open Economies

This paper discusses unilateral sustainability policies for tradable resources in closed and open economies. The effects of sustainability policies are modeled in an intertemporal, competitive framework by applying different sustainability rules which are introduced unilaterally in the domestic country. The paper shows that no sustainability rule will lead to a slower rate of extraction of the resource. Unilateral policies will lead to an "import of sustainability." It is also shown that the foreign country may well gain in terms of consumption and real income from such unilateral sustainability policies but not in terms of sustainability.     

Institutions and environmental governance: A reconceptualization

This article presents the conceptual revisions needed to extend the new institutional approach to environmental governance from its current local and international domains of application to all governance solutions, including national environmental and natural resource use policies and multi-level governance solutions that are increasingly used to address global environmental change. The article suggests that environmental governance is best understood as the establishment, reaffirmation or change of institutions to resolve conflicts over environmental resources. It also explains why the choice of these institutions is a matter of social justice rather than of efficiency. The article suggests a way to understand formal and state-centered governance solutions as forms of collective ownership not unlike common property. The article demonstrates how institutional analysis can gain resolution by looking at the functional and structural tiers, organization of governance functions, and formulation of key institutional rules as key aspects of the design of governance institutions.     

Law enforcement and transition

We present a simple model to analyze law enforcement problems in transition economies. Law enforcement implies coordination problems and multiplicity of equilibria due to a law abidance and a fiscal externality. We analyze two institutional mechanisms for solving the coordination problem. A first mechanism, which we call “dualism”, follows the scenario of Chinese transition where the government keeps direct control over economic resources and where a liberalized non-state sector follows market rules. The second mechanism we put forward is accession to the European Union. We show that accession to the European Union, even without external borrowing, provides a mechanism to eliminate the “bad” equilibrium, provided the “accessing” country is small enough relative to the European Union. Interestingly, we show that accession without conditionality is better than with conditionality because conditionality creates a coordination problem of its own that partly annihilates the positive effects of expected accession.     

The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe: Payments for wildlife services

Payments for environmental services (PES) have been distinguished from the more common integrated conservation and development projects on the grounds that PES are direct, more cost-effective, less complex institutionally, and therefore more likely to produce the desired results. Both kinds of schemes aim to achieve similar conservation outcomes, however, and generally function in analogous social, political and economic environments. Given the relative novelty of PES, what lessons can be learnt and applied from earlier initiatives? In this paper, we describe the evolution over the first 12 years (1989-2001) of Zimbabwe's Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE), a community-based natural resource management programme in which Rural District Councils, on behalf of communities on communal land, are granted the authority to market access to wildlife in their district to safari operators. These in turn sell hunting and photographic safaris to mostly foreign sport hunters and eco-tourists. The District Councils pay the communities a dividend according to an agreed formula. In practice, there have been some underpayments and frequent delays. During 1989-2001, CAMPFIRE generated over US$20 million of transfers to the participating communities, 89% of which came from sport hunting. The scale of benefits varied greatly across districts, wards and households. Twelve of the 37 districts with authority to market wildlife produced 97% of all CAMPFIRE revenues, reflecting the variability in wildlife resources and local institutional arrangements. The programme has been widely emulated in southern and eastern Africa. We suggest five main lessons for emerging PES schemes: community-level commercial transactions can seldom be pursued in isolation; non-differentiated payments weaken incentives; start-up costs can be high and may need to be underwritten; competitive bidding can allow service providers to hold on to rents; and schemes must be flexible and adaptive.     

Assessing poverty-deforestation links: Evidence from Swat, Pakistan

This paper contributes to the debate on the links between poverty and forestry degradation; the view that due to poverty and the meeting of subsistence needs the poor use natural resources more intensively and hence cause them to degrade. Using the case of the forest rich Swat district, Pakistan, the paper addresses the issue empirically, historically, and institutionally. We do not find empirical support for the “poverty-environment nexus”, in that the poor and other income groups are equally resource dependent and also show that resource degradation is not associated with poverty. Our historical and institutional analyses provide alternative explanations for resource degradation. Selective and rotating ownership patterns, starting with the 17th century, provided limited incentive for resource conservation. It also created tension between de jure and de facto owners, that has persisted, and is one source of forest degradation. Ill-defined resource rights have also exacerbated the impacts of several other factors contributing to forest degradation which is compounded by poor management, corruption, and perverse incentives.     

Resource abundance and regional development in China1

Over the past several decades, China has made tremendous progress in market integration and infrastructure development. Demand for natural resources has increased from the booming coastal economies, causing the terms of trade to favour the resource sector, which is predominantly based in the interior regions of the country. However, the gap in economic development level between the coastal and inland regions has widened significantly. In this paper, using a panel dataset at the provincial level, we show that Chinese provinces with abundant resources perform worse than their resource‐poor counterparts in terms of per capita consumption growth. This trend that resource‐poor areas are better off than resource‐rich areas is particularly prominent in rural areas. Because of the institutional arrangements regarding property rights of natural resources, most gains from the resource boom have been captured either by the government‐ or state‐owned enterprises. Thus, the windfall of natural resources has more to do with government consumption than household consumption. Moreover, in resource‐rich areas, greater revenues accrued from natural resources bid up the price of non‐tradable goods and hurt the competitiveness of the local economy.     

资源环境约束条件下甘肃农业与农村经济可持续发展问题研究

在资源环境约束条件下解决农业与农村经济可持续发展的问题是当前西部农村社会发展中的重要课题之一。本文主要从甘肃省资源环境禀赋的现状出发,运用实证分析方法,解读了甘肃省在农业资源配置中存在的问题及其资源环境恶化对甘肃农业与农村经济可持续发展的影响水平,并进一步提出了在资源环境约束条件下促进甘肃农业与农村经济可持续发展建议和方法。