Socioeconomic dimensions of mercury pollution abatement: Engaging artisanal mining communities in Sub-Saharan Africa

In recent years, strategies to tackle mercury pollution from artisanal gold mining have mainly included restrictions — banning mercury trade internationally, prescribing alternate technologies and tightening regulations on mining (e.g. banning mercury use). However, artisanal mining communities in Africa are often trapped in cycles of poverty that make it difficult for workers to improve technologies and reduce mercury pollution. This article assesses problems with narrow pollution abatement discourses and top-down regulations, examining the need for integrated approaches to address pollution and socioeconomic challenges in low income mining communities. It advances the hypothesis that pollution abatement strategies fail if they do not explicitly address local socioeconomic capacities for improving environmental management, informed by an adaptive understanding of labor dynamics. Case studies in Mozambique and Tanzania are examined where United Nations pilot projects sought to address local challenges. These combined training on improved technologies and environmental risk mitigation with efforts to empower miners by enhancing access to microfinance services and fairer gold marketing arrangements. These case studies demonstrate adaptive ways of engaging local concerns in mining areas, highlighting lessons that are especially urgent now that recent policy commitments from Europe and the United States to ban mercury exports have specifically sought to make mercury more expensive for African mining communities. Ultimately, the analysis suggests how regionally focused ecological economics research has a vital role to play in (a) revealing how narrowly conceived responses to pollution can yield counterproductive results as well as exacerbate exploitative labor conditions in low income contexts; and (b) stimulating analytic focus on innovative ways of integrating pollution reduction strategy with grassroots socioeconomic empowerment strategies.     

Bertrand competition when firms hold passive ownership stakes in one another

We show that the Bertrand oligopoly model with cost asymmetries may admit multiple Nash equilibria when firms hold passive ownership stakes in each other. The equilibrium price may be as high as the monopoly price of the most efficient firm.     

Horizontal product differentiation,prices and quantity selection of a multi-product monopolist

A monopolist which serves a market in which tastes are uniformly spread along a circumference of a circle selects an optimal set of product varieties. The cost of installing an additional variety increases with the difference from the ‘main product’. It is shown that variety prices decrease and the degree of differentiation between any two varieties increases as products get more differentiated.     

Will the role of the dollar as the international reserve currency be challenged?

The actual role of the US Dollar as the international reserve currency is an essential part of a financial architecture, which was conceived after World War II. Since then the world-wide economic, financial and political landscape has fundamentally changed. The article describes through which mechanisms the actual financial architecture will be challenged and what will be the consequences and occasional outcome.     

The Network Industry,Monopoly Regulation,and Social Optimum

This paper examines pricing policy, quality levels, consumer surplus and social welfare for the monopoly and non‐monopoly case. It is shown that given certain realistic assumptions, the network industry under unregulated monopoly would yield more social welfare than in the case of several producers in the industry, and would therefore be socially preferred.     

PUBLIC CAPITAL, PRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY AND CONVERGENCE IN THE SPANISH REGIONS (1964–93)

This paper analyses the behaviour of productive efficiency in the Spanish regions for the period 1964–93. From a growth accounting approach, it describes the regional evolution of total factor productivity (TFP'), based on a private inputs production function. A stricter measure of efficiency is then quantified, which is not equivalent to Solow's residual, since public capital is included in the production function and constant returns to scale are not imposed. Finally, on the basis of the measures of total factor productivity and efficiency, the study discusses the existence of technological convergence among Spanish regions and the role played in it by public capital. The renewed interest in the analysis of the process of growth reflected in economic literature in recent years has also occurred in the case of the Spanish economy, with some peculiarities which are worth mentioning. In the 1980s, two important institutional changes took place: a profound political and administrative decentralization, the regions now being autonomous in many decisions on public expenditure, and the incorporation of Spain into the European Community, which as it is well known has a powerful regional policy. Both changes have meant that the analysis of regional economies, and especially their growth paths, have received much more attention from politicians and economists, and even from the population in general. In particular, intense discussion has taken place regarding the effects of development policies and on criteria for geographical distribution of infrastructures. In both cases, much attention has been paid to discussing their capacity to contribute to convergence among the different regions. As a consequence of this greater interest in the analysis of growth from a regional perspective, efforts have also been made to improve the relevant statistical information. In particular, statistical series have been drawn up for investment and accumulated capital stock in each region, both private and public.' This information, only recently available and the first of its kind, as far as we know, in the European regions, substantially broadens the possibilities of research into the Spanish case in this field, where before not even the simplest exercises in growth accounting could be attempted. Further-more, since the series now available allow the time dimension of growth analysis to be combined with the regional dimension, it is possible to work with a panel of data and apply the corresponding techniques. This article analyses the growth of the Spanish economy over the period 1964–93, during which it can be observed that the per capita income levels of the Spanish regions converged. The objective of the study is to evaluate this process of convergence in income from the perspective of the productive efficiency of the regions, in three different ways. First, Section I considers the importance of the contributions of the private factors of production and of improvements in total factor productivity to the growth of output. Secondly, section II studies the existing relationship between the standard measure of efficiency (Solow's residual or TFP') and a stricter measure when the endowments of public capital are considered. Section III analyses whether or not the convergence in per capita income     

Deregulation,competition, and the network size in the market for telecommunication services

This paper analyzes the networking aspect in telecommunication services and the recent divestiture and increased competitiveness of the industry. The product considered is the right to access the network. The utility of a consumer from having access to a network depends on the network's quality, defined by the number of other local and long-distance consumers which can be reached. Network services are provided in two layers; On the lower layer consumers within a local access and transport area (LATA) are connected to a central office which provides the basic switching facility for local telecommunication. On the upper layer, LATAs are connected together by an interLATA carrier, to enable long distance communication from different localities.It is shown that relative to the choices of an unconstrained monopolist, larger networks at both layers may be obtained by imposing quality controls, while price controls may have the opposite effect. A divestiture policy in which all local carriers are connected to a single long distance carrier is likely to reduce the quality of services at both layers. Introducing competition among long-distance carriers further reduces the quality of long distances services but may improve the local service.     

Ambidexterity under scrutiny: Exploration and exploitation via internal organization,alliances, and acquisitions

Prior research on ambidexterity has limited its concern to balancing exploration and exploitation via particular modes of operation. Acknowledging the interplay of tendencies to explore versus exploit via the internal organization, alliance, and acquisition modes, we claim that balancing these tendencies within each mode undermines firm performance because of conflicting routines, negative transfer, and limited specialization. Nevertheless, by exploring in one mode and exploiting in another, i.e., balancing across modes, a firm can avoid some of these impediments. Thus, we advance ambidexterity research by asserting that balance across modes enhances performance more than balance within modes. Our analysis of 190 U.S.‐based software firms further reveals that exploring via externally oriented modes such as acquisitions or alliances, while exploiting via internal organization, enhances these firms' performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.