Is the value of environmental goods sensitive to the public funding scheme? Evidence from a marine restoration programme in the Black Sea

In this paper, we conduct choice experiments in Turkey and Ukraine on the valuation of a marine restoration programme in the Black Sea, to examine whether the value of environmental goods is sensitive to the source of public financing. We contribute to the debate on the optimal composition of public expenditure, an issue that can be controversial in times of financial crises. We discriminate between two funding regimes through the reallocation of public spending. The first proposes financing the marine restoration programme by reducing public expenditure for investments in renewable energy, and the second by reducing public expenditure for civil servants’ training. The results reveal that the marginal value of public money depends on the funding source. Furthermore, attribute values are sensitive to the trade-off implied by the funding scheme. The magnitude of the results differs in the two countries considered, because of their heterogeneity in political and cultural dimensions.     

Engaging with Social Networks: The Bourdieu-Becker Encounter Revisited

Economic implications of social networks are of great importance and economic motives may well play crucial roles in network formation and dissipation. Although historically speaking the mainstream economics' attention to the subject had rather been limited, in the previous couple of decades, the economics discipline developed its own branch of social network analysis and incorporated in their analysis individuals' networking decisions based on a standard Beckerian cost-benefit calculus. In understanding the scope of this new branch in economics discipline to incorporate social dimensions of the economy, this article aims to bring a Bourdieusian critique toward this approach, given that Bourdieu had been critical to a Beckerian cost-benefit reductionism in decision-making and had himself developed his own approach to social relations.