“Buy-back” in international trade: A rationale

Conclusion When a technology proprietor cannot exploit his advantage by means of ownership of a production facility abroad, a sales contract with “buy-back provisions” may, in fact, be a trade-enhancing resolution to a situation of information-asymmetry between buyer and seller. The important implication is that not all forms of countertrade can be summarily dismissed as inefficient. Just as foreign direct investment can be seen to be a response to environmental or market imperfections, “buy-back” may be a way to deal with institutional or regulatory obstacles such as the prohibition of foreign ownership.     

Law and Economics: What and Why

Can economics contribute anything to our understanding of law? David Friedman of the University of Chicago Law School, argues that economics can increase our understanding of the law and improve the drafting of legislation.     

Determining the economic gains from regulation at the extensive and intensive margins

Among the second-best approaches for the regulation of pollution,little attention has been paid to the distorting effect of intensivemargin policies on the extensive margin. This article shows,within a dynamic framework, that regulation of the intensivemargin has to be complemented by regulation of the extensivemargin. Depending on the elasticity of the pollution functionwith respect to nitrogen use, the appropriate regulation atthe extensive margin is zero, a tax or a subsidy. We show empiricallythat combining a nitrogen tax with land-use taxes is about 18per cent more cost efficient than a nitrogen tax alone and 58per cent more efficient than off-site abatement in the formof groundwater treatment.     

The Common Heritage Principle:

A bstract An effort is underway to apply the common heritage principle to certain unique global resources while promoting economic development Under this precept, property rights to such resources are said to belong to all nations and their citizens rather than being subject to national sovereignty The doctrine is examined in theory and as applied in the outer space and law of the sea treaties Its possible application to Antarctica is explored in relationship to the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) which is now considering a minerals regime for the continent Assessing the international political situation suggests the powerful bloc of ATS nations will ignore the common heritage principle However, a different outcome is possible, given a convergence of the Antarctic mining and global atmospheric issues of the greenhouse and ozone varieties Under this scenario, the global atmosphere and Antarctica would be common property resources whose property rights are owned by all nations     

Nostalgia versus Pragmatism? How attitudes and interests shape the term sustainable agriculture in Switzerland and New Zealand

National public debates on sustainable agriculture are often framed by the respective attitudes and interests of the dominant stakeholders involved.     

Credit Constraints in Manufacturing Enterprises in Africa

We investigate the question of whether firms in Africa's manufacturingsector are credit constrained. The fact that few firms obtaincredit is not sufficient to prove constraints, since certainfirms may not have a demand for credit while others may be refusedcredit as part of profit maximising behaviour by banks. To investigatethis question, we use direct evidence on whether firms had ademand of credit and whether their demand was satisfied in theformal credit market, based on panel data on firms in the manufacturingsector from six African countries. Of those firms with a demandfor credit, only a quarter obtained a formal sector loan. Ouranalysis suggests that while banks allocate credit on the basisof expected profits, micro or small firms are much less likelyto get a loan than large firms. We also find that outstandingdebt is positively related with obtaining further lending. Therole of outstanding debt is likely to be a reflection of inefficiencyin credit markets, while the fact that size matters is consistentwith a bias as well, although we cannot totally exclude thatthey reflect transactions costs on the part of banks. We presentan analysis showing how much more profitable small firms mustbe to obtain a loan than large firms.