Rural development interventions — A behavioural perspective

From their review of the literature on rural development, the authors believe that inadequate attention is paid to the behavioural bases of the intervention process and to ways of understanding complex motivational processes within communities. Two models are suggested as tools for categorizing resistances to change and pressures for change in relation to traditional communities, and as a conceptual framework for explaining motivational processes. The first area of intervention draws on Lewin's force‐field analysis model as a means of categorizing pressures for and resistances to change. The second area, that of motivation, uses Vroom's expectancy model to analyse community motivational patterns.     

Fifteen Theses on Classroom Teaching

The Southern Economic Association initiated a lecture series on teaching to be presented at its annual meeting. This paper, given on November 24, 2000, was the first such lecture. The editor invited the author to publish the lecture in Southern Economic Journal. Portions of the paper are the fruits of the author's more than 30 years of experience teaching economics. Parts of the paper are based on writings regarding pedagogy outside the discipline of economics. The paper puts forward 15 theses about teaching economics in the classroom. The theses range from propositions about why economics is a particularly difficult subject to teach to suggestions about how the classroom teaching of economics can be improved.     

The Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities in Federal Systems: The Political Economy of NIMBY

This paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system. We first show that a decentralized systemyields the first-best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free-riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions. In our model, each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions.This leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity. Thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large, and in thegovernment's weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities. The centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level.Since compensation has proved difficult, a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system.     

The British and American Rules: an Experimental Examination of Pre-trial Bargaining in the Shadowof the Law

A commonly held view is that the frequency and value of pre-trial settlements in civil disputes are greatly influenced by the cost allocation regime that is in place if the case goes to trial. There is a large and growing theoretical literature on this subject but almost no empirical evidence. This is due simply to the scarcity of relevant data owing to the confidentiality generally associated with such matters. However, the area is an ideal one to analyse experimentally. In this paper we consider the effect of the British and American rules for cost allocation using such an experimental methodology. We find that the two rules produce no difference in the frequency of pre-trial settlements but that the British rule produces higher settlements (pro-pursuer) if the probability of the pursuer winning is large.