Vertical Integration and Market Foreclosure with Convex Downstream Costs

Received December 14, 2000; revised version received July 16, 2001     

Environmental problems in Belarus

Résumé By far the most pressing problbem facing Belarus is the radioactive contamination resulting from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station and the on-going threat to the environment posed by the destroyed reactor and those blocks which continue to produce electricity. The country is clearly not in a position to cope with the repercussions of the disaster. Western aid is required here, particularly to provide medical care for the population, decontaminate polluted areas, provide reliable measuring equipment and to analyse the level of contamination in food supplies. Air pollution, although worrying in some cities, is not as dramatic as in most of the polluted industrial centres of Russia and the Ukraine. Water pollution, too, is less serious than in most of the successor states to the Soviet Union. A serious problem is, however, posed by salification of the water supply by the potash industry. Recently environmental charges were introduced with the aim of improving environmental protection. Yet given rapid inflation and the persistence of soft budget constraints for enterprises, such charges are unlikely to have so far provided a significant incentive to more ecologically sustainable production in Belarus.     

Die wirtschaftlichen Wirkungen des technischen Fortschritts

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Estimating consumer willingness to pay for food quality with experimental auctions: the case of yellow versus fortified maize meal in Kenya

Biofortification of maize with provitamin A carotenoids is a new approach to the alleviation of vitamin A deficiencies in Africa. Unfortunately these varieties are yellow or orange, while consumers generally prefer white. Consumer willingness to pay for yellow and fortified maize was compared in experimental auctions in three regions in Kenya. The premium that consumers are willing pay for fortified maize (24%) was higher than the discount they require to buy yellow maize (11%), and in one zone consumers prefer yellow. Yellow color is, therefore, not an impossible obstacle for biofortified maize, although it would clearly be easier to introduce this maize first in regions where yellow maize is currently grown.     

Political disagreement in the classroom: testing cultural theory through structured observation

The cultural theory pioneered by Dame Mary Douglas has been tested with a range of research methods, but it has not yet been made subject to a ‘structured observation’. This method has been developed in psychology and management studies, and is especially useful for testing cultural theory’s prediction that fatalistic, hierarchical, egalitarian, and individualistic ways of perceiving and justifying tend to emerge in group debates about pressing social and environmental issues. We present the results of a structured observation of this prediction. Groups of high school students (aged 17–19) were asked for their opinions concerning three to five ‘wicked’ (i.e., highly complex) problems, and to discuss how to resolve them. Each utterance was coded according to the rationalities proposed by cultural theory. The results confirm cultural theory’s hypothesis that all four specific ways of defining, perceiving and resolving a wicked problem emerge when a number of people debate such an issue. We also discuss how Douglas’ cultural theory can be further developed and tested. Finally, we use our study to outline how the method of structured observation can contribute to political culture research in general.