Agricultural and Resource Economics

In developing countries the most common policy responses to combat ill-health incidences like diarrhea have been through the public provision of water supply and sanitation systems. However, in a recent study Galiani et al. [JPE, Vol. 113, 2005] examine the impact of the privatization of water services on child mortality in Argentina, and provide evidence in support of the privatization of water services. In this paper, we examine the determinants of ill-health incidences of households, and provide results that suggest the public provision of water supply or a regulated market provision that ensures access to safe water to each household in the community. We present a simple model of health externalities of households' hygiene behavior, showing how hygiene behavior of one household affects ill-health incidences of other households. Then using a survey data of 1,402 households in rural Uttarakhand, India, we find that both household and community hygiene behavior are significant inputs in the determination of households' ill-health incidences, with the later having greater impact than the former, over and above effects attributable to households' socioeconomic status. Thus in the presence of large health externality of the household's hygiene behavior, which is strongly associated with the access to safe water, the private provision of water may not bring an optimal decrease in ill-health incidences.

Many projections of the impact of climate change on the crop, livestock and fishery production sectors of African agriculture are reported in the literature. However, they may be arguably too general to understand the magnitude of impact and to inform adaptation strategies and policy development efforts that are tailored to promoting climate-smart agriculture in the West African region alone. This paper was synthesized from several scholarly literature and aimed at providing up-to-date information on climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, policies and institutional mechanisms that each agriculture subsector had put in place in dealing with climate change and its related issues in West Africa. For each subsector (crop, fishery and livestock), the current status, climate change impacts, mitigation and adaption strategies have been analyzed. In addition, we reviewed recent policy initiatives in the region that foster the development and adoption of climate-smart agricultural options to improve resilience of farming systems and livelihoods of smallholder farmers to climate change risks. From community to national and regional levels, various strategies and policies are also being taken to guide actions and investment for climate-smart agriculture in West Africa.

Individuals extracting common-pool resources in the field sometimes form output-sharing groups to avoid costs of crowding. In theory, if the right number of groups forms, Nash equilibrium aggregate effort should fall to the socially optimal level. Whether individuals manage to form the efficient number of groups and to invest within the chosen groups as theory predicts, however, has not been

The common-property problem results in excessive mining, hunting, and extraction of oil and water. The same phenomenon is also responsible for excessive investment in R&D and excessive outlays in rent-seeking contests. We propose a "Partnership Solution" to eliminate or at least mitigate these excesses. Each of N players joins a partnership in the first stage and, in the common-property context, chooses his extraction effort in the second stage. Under the rules of a partnership, each member must pay his own cost of effort but receives an equal share (or a share partially reflecting relative effort) of the partnership's revenue. The incentive to free-ride created by such partnerships turns out to be beneficial since it naturally offsets the excessive extraction effort (or R&D investment or rent-seeking outlays) inherent in such problems. In our two-stage game, this institutional arrangement can, under specified circumstances, induce the social optimum in a subgame-perfect equilibrium: no one has a unilateral incentive (1) to switch to another partnership (or create a new partnership) in the first stage or (2) to deviate from socially optimal actions in the second stage. The game does have other equilibria, but the one associated with the "Partnership Solution" is strictly preferred by every player. Government can facilitate selection of this equilibrium by recommending the size of each partnership. Such "mediation" requires no enforcement power but can help coordinate expectations. Antitrust authorities should recognize that partnerships can have a less benign use. By organizing as competing partnerships, an industry can reduce output and raise prices, sometimes to the monopoly level. Even when the implicit threat of future punishment does not deter excessive output, the free-riding inherent in partnerships removes the temptation to overproduce.

The endogenous merger model of Kamien and Zang (QJE, 1990) is generalized to price competition with perfect complements and used to show that some socially desirable mergers will fail to occur. We also clarify the link between this merger model and the 'exogenous merger' literature. Correspondence to: Gerard Gaudet, Departement des sciences Cconomiques. Universite du Quebec i Montreal. C.P. 8888 Succursale A, Montreal. Quebec, Canada H3C 3P8. ' Their so-called decenrrulized gcme is actually a three-stage game. We restrict our attention here to their centroked gnmc. which reduces to a two-stage game. 01651765/92/$05.00 D 1992 -Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved ' See Cournot's treatment of 'Mutual Relations of Producers' in his chapter 9. Elaborating on Cournot's example, Sonnenschein (1968) showed that whatever may be said about quantity competition with perfect substitutes can be applied to price competition with perfect complements by simply interchanging the role of prices and quantities.

Analyses of trade quotas typically assume that the quota restricts the flow of some nondurable good. Many real-world quotas, however, restrict the stock of durable imports. We consider the cases where (1) anyone is free to export against such quotas and where (2) only those allocated portions of the total quota are free to export against such quotas. Recent econometric investigations of such quotas have focused on the price of the durable as an indicator of tightness induced by the quota. We show why this is an inappropriate indicator and suggest alternatives.

The common-property problem results in excessive mining, hunting, and extraction of oil and water. The same phenomenon is also responsible for excessive investment in R&D and excessive outlays in rent-seeking contests. We propose a "Partnership Solution" to eliminate or at least mitigate these excesses. Each of N players joins a partnership in the first stage and chooses his effort in the second stage. Under the rules of a partnership, each member must pay his own cost of effort but receives an equal share of the partnership's revenue. The incentive to free-ride created by such partnerships turns out to be beneficial since it naturally offsets the excessive effort inherent in such problems. In our two-stage game, this institutional arrangement can, under specified circumstances, induce the social optimum in a subgame-perfect equilibrium: no one has a unilateral incentive (1) to switch to another partnership (or create a new partnership) in the first stage or (2) to