Afforestation and forestry land allocation in northern Vietnam: Analysing the gap between policy intentions and outcomes

Many tropical countries have recently implemented similar forest policies including large-scale afforestation programmes and the devolution of land-use rights. Their success in enhancing livelihoods and contributing to improved environmental services has been widely questioned. This paper discusses the impacts of state afforestation efforts and forestry land allocation on farmers’ land-use decisions in northern Vietnam. It links policy outcomes with factors located beyond the local level by analysing the decision-making process at the policy implementation stage. Our study suggests that the current national afforestation campaign has not successfully involved households in the forestry sector and that forestry land allocation to households has often disrupted existing land-use systems with little impact on afforestation. These discrepancies between policy intentions and outcomes are partly linked to the relative freedom provinces have to interpret and adapt policies during the implementation stage. In this respect, the political and economic context has played a significant role in providing particular financial and bureaucratic incentives to the former State Forest Enterprises and to civil servants. However, we argue that these actors have been allowed or even encouraged to take advantage of these incentives by national policy-makers thanks to: (1) the lack of clarity or the poor adequacy of the policies designed at the central level, and (2) the blurred character of prevailing national discourses promoting afforestation and community-based forest management. We recommend that national policy-makers allow flexibility in policy implementation but develop mechanisms of accountability and control between the provincial and the central authorities.     

Is Exporting a Source of Productivity Spillovers?

This paper investigates whether exporting generates positive productivity spillover effects on other plants in the same industry and on plants in vertically related industries. Using data for Chilean manufacturing plants from 1990 to 1999, we find strong evidence that domestic as well as foreign-owned exporting plants improve productivity of local suppliers. We also find some evidence of horizontal spillovers from exporting but these are mainly generated by plants with foreign ownership. These results suggest that positive productivity spillovers are not only generated by the presence of foreign-owned exporting plants but also by exporting activity of domestic firms. The results are robust to controls for agglomeration of economic activity, the importance of non-exporting foreign-owned plants, and plant unobserved heterogeneity. JEL no.  F10, F23, O3, O54     

International Capital Mobility and the Costs of Us Import Restraints*

Abstract This paper evaluates general equilibrium welfare effects of tariffs, quotas, and voluntary export restraints under different assumptions about international capital mobility. We show analytically that, when induced terms-of-trade and rental-rate effects are considered, the qualitative influence of capital mobility on the costs of protection cannot be ascertained unambiguously. Simulation estimates for the US indicate the practical importance of capital mobility, as well as of terms-of-trade and rental-rate adjustments, in determining the ultimate welfare effects of import restraints.     

Collateral or utility penalties?

In a two-period economy with incomplete markets and possibility of default we consider the two classical ways of enforcing the honoring of financial commitments: by using utility penalties and by using collateral requirements that borrowers have to fulfill. First, we prove that any equilibrium in an economy with collateral requirements is also an equilibrium in a non-collateralized economy where each agent is penalized in their utility if his or her delivery rate is lower than the payment rate of the financial market. Second, we prove the converse: any equilibrium in an economy with utility penalties is also an equilibrium in a collateralized economy. For this to be true, the payoff function and initial endowments of the agents must be modified in a quite natural way. Finally, we prove that the equilibrium in the economy with collateral requirements attains the same welfare as in the new economy with utility penalties.     

Has Distance Died? Evidence from a Panel Gravity Model

The estimated coefficient of distance on the volume of tradeis generally found to increase rather than decrease throughtime using the traditional gravity model of trade. This distancepuzzle proved robust to several ad hoc versions of the modelusing data for 1962–96 for a large sample of 130 countries.The introduction of an "augmented" barrier to trade functionremoves the paradox, yielding a decline in the estimate of theelasticity of trade to distance of about 11 percent over the35-year period for the whole sample. However, the "death ofdistance" is shown to be largely confined to bilateral tradebetween rich countries, with poor countries becoming marginalized.     

US—Mexico fresh vegetable trade: the effects of trade liberalization and economic growth

Studies of US‐Mexico vegetable trade have generally emphasized the importance of US tariffs in determining the competitive advantage of US producers. Even so, research has identified at least four factors related primarily to the different levels of economic development in the US and Mexico that also have important effects on US‐Mexico agricultural trade in general and fresh vegetable trade in particular. These include the differential growth rates of US and Mexican real wages, production technology (yields), and per capita income as well as cyclical movements in the real Mexican Peso/US Dollar exchange rate. This study examines the relative contribution of NAFTA and the development‐related factors to likely future changes in US fresh vegetable imports from Mexico. The analysis employs an econometric simulation model of US and Mexican markets for five fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, bell peppers, and onions) accounting for 80% of US fresh vegetable imports. The results suggest that the 1994–1995 Peso devaluation rather than NAFTA was primarily responsible for the sharp increase in US imports of Mexican vegetables observed in the first years following the implementation of NAFTA. Over time, however, the results suggest that differences in the growth rates of US and Mexican production yields and, to a lesser extent, of US and Mexican real incomes and/or real wage rates could plausibly contribute more to the future growth of US tomato, squash, and onion imports from Mexico than the trade liberalizing effects of NAFTA.     

Institutional Constraints,Stakeholder Pressure and Corporate Environmental Reporting Policies

Within the theoretical framework of socio‐political economics, and more specifically of stakeholder theory, this work examines whether companies operating under different institutional constraints and stakeholder pressure tend to emphasize different models of corporate environmental reporting. Furthermore, the paper tests whether different corporate environmental reporting policies are driven by the countries' corporate governance systems. A sample of 3931 international companies was examined through a logistic biplot and conditional mean linear regression models. The main results reveal that companies follow two distinct environmental reporting approaches, which depend on specific stakeholders and institutional requirements. The first model, which is followed by firms within codified law countries, mostly focuses on water and emissions. The second approach, mainly followed by companies operating in common law countries, emphasizes materials and energy issues. This finding reveals that companies gradually modify their environmental strategies to make themselves more compatible with the characteristics of the social and institutional environment, which will result in several corporate benefits. The paper provides several outstanding implications for companies' strategic managers, national institutions and firms' stakeholders, especially for investors and customers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment