Browsing by Author "Baden, John"

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America's Cargo Cult: The New Industrial Policy
(1984) Baden, John; Blood, Tom; Stroup, Richard
"A decade ago a vocal minority agitated for a no-growth, 'steady state' economy, in which wealth was created no faster than necessary to replace the wealth being lost. This goal was nearly reached when Congress imposed high marginal tax rates, inflation induced bracket-creep, increased regulation. Until recently, the most notable growth in the economy, aside from a few high technology areas, was in the underground economy. Discussing one such period, the editor of Fortune wrote, 'the country has just gone through a real life try out of zero growth [the period 1973-1975] which is remembered not as an episode of zero growth but as the worst recession since the 1930s.'"
Communes: The Logic of the Commons and Institutional Design
(1976) Bullock, Kari; Baden, John
"Among the sources of tension in American society is a substantial ambivalence toward competition. American children, like those in most other modernized societies are given a dual behavioral standard. For most social interactions, competition is an accepted and even a favored mode of behavior. In the family, however, unselfish and altruistic behavior is upheld as the ideal. Thus, the child is expected to learn to adjust his behavior to differing situations. Careful discrimination, then, became very important in determining appropriate action in any given situation. "There is no society that is perfectly successful in its acculturation of its children. Further, no individual is capable of perfect discrimination. He cannot apply one standard with perfection outside the family context, and concurrently apply another within. These weaknesses invariably create problems and tensions."
Conservation + Fiscal Conservatism = Free Market Environmentalism
(1984) Baden, John; Blood, Tom
"Through their tax dollars, Americans are unknowingly subsidizing the destruction of some of their best wildlife habitat. This perverse outcome is especially unfortunate, for Americans' appreciation of their environment has increased substantially during the last decade-and-a-half. Public opinion surveys, whether taken by Gallup or the local newspaper,consistently demonstrate that public concern for the preservation of lands and waters, and the natural communities they support, has spread across the nation. Yet we continue to have our tax dollars fund the destruction of America's great 'duck factories,' the prairie potholes, most notably with the Garrison Diversion project of North Dakota. A coalition made up of fiscal conservatives and conservationists has the potential of redressing problems such as those created by the Garrison Diversion. These projects affront both ecological and economic sensitivities."
Contracting for Public Service Delivery: An Alternative for Boomtowns
(1982) Lovejoy, Stephen; Marotz-Badden, Ramona; Baden, John
"Since the onset of the rise in energy costs in 1973, the U.S. has embarked upon an energy self-sufficiency program. One of the major components of this program is the increased use of coal and other energy resources. Many communities will be affected by such efforts as large-scale coal mining, construction of synthetic fuel and coal conversion plants,, and other energy-related projects. In some communities, residents have been favorably predisposed toward development in light of their stagnant or declining local economies. But in anticipating energy-related projects, local citizens tend to overemphasize economic benefits and to downplay or ignore the costs of development. However, as local citizens and leaders experience the actual benefits and costs, they may begin to use the political process to erect barriers against the development of energy resources. U.S. energy resources will continue to be developed. The question is, under what terms? Methods are needed to achieve a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of energy development."
Copernicus and the Fort Collins Computer: A Reappraisal of Public Land Management
(1984) Baden, John
"Recognizing that we do not live in the zipless world of Ronald Coase, where transaction costs are zero and where externalities are internalized, and being quite familiar with the various causes of market failure, I assert with confidence that while market failure does exist, it may not be overstated even by market critics, the relevant comparison is net imperfect markets and perfect governments but rather between imperfect institutions of both forms. "As we approach the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, it is important to recall that the authors of that document explicitly considered laws and public policies to be experiments. For nearly a hundred years, we have experimented with increasing governmental ownership, allocation, and management of the nation's resources. The data are coming in and the evidence is compelling: governmental failure is both more pervasive and more serious than market failure. Further, the failure of government to manage efficiently, equitably, and with environmental sensitivity are predictable consequences inherent to management by public officials."
Energy Development and Public Service Delivery in the Western States
(1977) Baden, John; Kremp, Sabine; Lovejoy, Stephen; Stroup, Richard; Thurman, Walter
"In the past several decades, the energy demands of the United States have increased dramatically. However, many of the raw materials necessary to meet this increased demand have come from foreign sources. Since the onset of the energy crisis in 1973, the U.S. has embarked upon an energy self-sufficiency program, ostensibly to protect the U.S. from vulnerability stemming from dependence upon foreign energy sources. One of the major components of this program is the increased exploitation of coal resource in the western U.S., especially in the Rocky Mountain-Northern Great Plains region. Many communities in this region are anticipating the development of large-scale coal mining (underground and strip), construction of plants to transform the coal into electricity or synthetic natural gas, and other related projects."
Environmental Entrepreneurship: Case Studies of Common Pools with the Ostroms at Indiana University
(2017) Baden, John
"1970 Bozeman was a small town with a cow college located in the most remote state the contiguous USA. How did this place become the epicenter for FME & NRE? Why did ecological and environmental entrepreneurship develop there? Like most entrepreneurial success stories, the answer mixes luck, ambition and location."
Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity
(W. H. Freeman, 1977) Hardin, Garrett; Baden, John
From p. 112: "The carrying capacity of a particular area is defined as the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely by a particular habitat, allowing for seasonal and random changes, without degradation of the environment and without diminishing carrying capacity in the future. There is some redundancy in this definition, but redundancy is better than inadequacy. Using deer as an example, the true carrying capacity of a region must allow for the fact that food is harder to get in winter than in summer and scarcer in drought years than in 'normal years.' If too many head of deer are allowed in the pasture they may overgraze it to such an extent that the ground is laid bare, producing soil erosion followed by less plant growth in subsequent years. Always, by eating the grasses that appeal to them, herbivores selectively favor the weed grasses that are not appealing, thus tending to diminish the carrying capacity for themselves and for their progeny in subsequent years."
The Federal Treasury as a Common Pool Resource and the Development of a Predatory Bureaucracy
(1979) Fort, Rodney D.; Baden, John
"Pessimism over the prospect of reducing the size and scope of government is pervasive. As Ralph Winter recently noted in Regulation, part of the basis for this pessimism is that elections become less and less relevant to outcomes as government grows. In this immobilizing ambiance government grows a pace with anti-government sentiment. The general purpose of this paper is to provide an important reason for this paradox of big government in such a hostile milieu. We contend that elections fail to control government size and growth due to specific failures in the representative system. One major failure has been the concentrated focus of political activities within bureaucracies. This shifted focus away from the representative arena is a result of placing increased responsibility for administering the 'transfer society' in the hands of the bureaucracy. At both the level of individual interaction with agencies and the level of inter-agency interaction the pervasive result of government growth, as distinguished from absolute government size, are manifest. It is time to suggest plausible modifications."
Increasing the Productivity of Federal Land Management: A Critique and Recommendations for Reform
(1984) Baden, John
"This brief paper will outline elements of a successful public land management policy regarding development. It will identify and explain some of the problems faced by producers, will list criteria for good policy,will suggest reforms of existing policy, and will conclude with a discussion of what individuals in the petroleum industry can do to improve the situation."
Innovation, Incentives, and Posterity: Wildlife and the Entrepreneur
(1984) Baden, John; Blood, Tom; Taylor, Shannon
"New institutions involving wildlife and habitat occupy an important place on the world's entrepreneurial frontier. Amenity demands for wildlife tend to increase disproportionally with income. Thus, there is potential for entrepreneurs to take advantage of the demand for high quality hunting experiences. This situation has already given rise to the development of ranches, farms, and commercial forests managed for the joint production of commodities and wildlife ranging from spring-creek trout to elk end deer. While this is encouraging news, such situations will occur only in isolated cases in the U.S. as long as ranchers shoulder the costs while rarely gaining any significant benefits for providing game habitat."
The Jungle Behind the Industrial Policy
(1984) Baden, John; Blood, Tom
"Anthropologists and their subjects provide opportunities for more than the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity. Ethnographic studies may be relevant to important contemporary policy issues. For example, it is possible to view Melanesia's Cargo Cults as relevant analogies to industrial policies. In the vast openness of the Pacific Ocean lies a group of islands inhabited by tribes known collectively as Melanesians. For thousands of years, these tribes existed in a primitive state, depending primarily on domestic pigs, gardens, and copra (a tropical fruit) as staples and producing no important commercial product. Nevertheless, during the early 1900s, the German government settled there and attempted to build copra and rubber industries on the larger islands. Predictably, using central planning to build such an industrial base was unsuccessful. Among other problems, rubber and copra market prices were insufficient to cover shipping expenses. While the Europeans were unable to develop viable commercial activities, they caused a series of increasingly costly movements among the natives. Anthropologists have labeled these movements 'Cargo Cults'."
The Management of Social Stability: A Political Ethnography of the Hutterites of North America
(1969) Baden, John
"This is a study of the attempts of members of a small society, the Hutterians, to perpetuate their social and cultural systems in a setting they perceive as fundamentally alien and hostile. Collectively, the members of this group seek to be independent of the control of outsiders although perfect autonomy and self-sufficiency are, of course, precluded. The group stands inextricably involved in the political and economic affairs of the larger society."
The New Resource Economics
(1984) Simmons, Randy T.; Baden, John
"Proposals to privatize portions of the public lands have been misunderstood and misrepresented by academics, politicians, and some environmentalists. The confusion and ignorance about the new resource economics (NRE), which incorporates concepts about the tragedy of the cannons, the role of government, the importance of voluntary association, and the function of property rights, have distorted explanations of the implications of privatization. Our purpose is to provide understanding and to correct mispresentations by explaining the NRE. We argue that there are firm theoretical and empirical justifications for claiming that private management of many of the lands currently held by the federal government will more efficiently and equitably meet the needs and wants of the American people."
On Selling the National Forests: A Preliminary Analysis
(1972) Stroup, Richard; Baden, John
"During the past few years the Sierra Club and its allies have come to an agreement with those in the forest products industry. It seems clear, in fact, that nearly all parties agree that the National Forests are not being 'properly' managed. In brief, this means that none of the various competing interests feel that the National Forests are managed for them. From this we can infer that the Forest Service has not been 'captured' by any single group. Thus, given that the Forest Service has responsibility for substantial and highly valued resources and that it has great managerial discretion, we may be confident that the various interested parties will continue efforts to impose their policy preferences upon the decisions of the Forest Service."
The Political Economy of Governmental Corruption: The Logic of Underground Government
(1984) Benson, Bruce L.; Baden, John
"There is little doubt that taxes create incentives for tax avoidance. Illegal, underground markets arise in the private sector, and there is considerable evidence that the tax-induced underground economy is very large and is growing in the United States and in other parts of the world. It is also widely recognized that regulatory constraints induce private sector underground activity. This is evidenced by the thriving markets in drugs, prostitution, gambling, stolen goods, and the labor of illegal aliens despite laws against the sale or purchase of such goods and services. Thus, both taxes and regulation generate incentives for people to engage in illegal underground activities. People react accordingly. "Little attention has been paid, however, to the incentives faced by those doing the regulating and taxing. Do regulators and tax collectors also face incentives to engage in illegal activities? If so, what affects the strengths of these incentives? Is political corruption likely to be caused by the same factors that encourage corruption in the private sector? And how influential are the taxes and regulations? In the following pages, we delineate the opportunities for political corruption, examine the relative strength of incentives to participate in corrupt activities, and make predictions about the future opportunities for corruption."
Population, Ethnicity, and Public Goods: The Logic of Interest Group Strategy
(1976) Baden, John
From Introduction: "Population control Is essentially a problem of choice. Societies face the necessity of choosing their level of population; we note that not to choose Is In Itself a choice. "There has been controversy, particularly between Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner, centered around the methods to be employed in any attempt at population control. There are those who baulk at any suggestions that lead to Institutionalized coercion methods as a threatening form of political repression. Barry Commoner, in his book The Closing Circle (Knopf, 1971), has advanced the argument that if a substantial majority of the members of a society were to voluntarily accept a program for birth control, then coercion would be rendered unnecessary. However, there seems to be a flaw In this position. The error became apparent when Garret Hardin demonstrated that leaders of subgroups within a society have a vested interest to admonish their followers to outbreed other subgroups. Admonitions of this nature possess the potentiality for undermining voluntary cooperation in birth control, if loyalties to the subgroup can be so directed. This brings us to the application of theories of population dynamics to issues of human population policy."
Primer on the Political Economy of Air Quality Management; for Engineers and Others with Low Tolerance for Mushy Data
(1973) Baden, John
"These essays were written for Professor Bob Gearheart's 'Air Quality Management' course in the Environmental Engineering Program at U.S.I. They were written from January 22 to February 18 of 1973. In no sense does this material constitute either research or even a review of the literature. This was essentially a sit-down-and-write-it-out effort. Further, I have made no systematic effort to learn about air pollution and its control. Hence, the following material is presented in a rather casual and perhaps cavalier manner. Ms. Virginia Ream's editing of my first drafts has cleaned up my residual illiteracy. "I have attempted to take the perspective of a political economist and examine a set of problems. If this effort is useful for engineers and others I would be willing to put the material into a more conventional form. I will, of course, be grateful to those who point out errors and/or make suggestions."
Property Rights: Our Best Environmental Tool
(1984) Stroup, Richard; Baden, John
"The environmental wave may have crested, but it is a strong and continuing one. During the 1970s, environmental issues exploded in perceived importance. An increasingly wealthy nation developed greater appreciation for natural amenities and a rising fear of technological threats to the environment. Throughout the 1970s, public opinion polls conducted by Harris, Gallup, CBS, and the Survey Research Center consistently demonstrated strong support for environmental protection and conservation. Despite the continuing tax revolt in 1980, 64 percent of California's voters supported a bond issue for water pollution control and 52 percent supported bonds for park acquisition. The expected backlash of the environmental movement was not strong, if it even existed."
Rationing Wilderness Use: Some Administrative and Equity Implications
(1975) Baden, John; Stankey, George H.
"The issue of rationing Wilderness use is upon us. Nationally, Wilderness use has been growing at approximately 10 percent a year since about 1946. Although the current economic situation casts uncertainty as to future trends, it does not seem unreasonable to expect further growth, and as a consequence more problems. In the following discussion, we would like to explore one of the important aspects of rationing--the equity implications. Well-intentioned programs to control use that fail to fully weigh the equity costs imposed by such programs will certainly encounter stiff public resistances. One particularly serious consequence of such resistance might be the unwillingness of citizen groups to accept any rationing program, even when such a program is needed to prevent deterioration of the Wilderness resource."
Revelation, Rationality and Institutional Design
(1976) Bullock, Kari; Baden, John
"Among the sources of tension in American society is a substantial ambivalence toward competition. American children, like those in most other modernized societies are given a dual behavioral standard. For most social interactions, competition is an accepted and even a favored mode of behavior. In the family, however, unselfish and altruistic behavior is upheld as the ideal. Thus, the child is expected to learn to adjust his behavior to differing situations. Careful discrimination, then, becomes very important in determining appropriate action in any given situation. "There is no society that is perfectly successful in its acculturation of its children. Further, no individual is capable of perfect discrimination. He cannot apply one standard with perfection outside the family context, and concurrently apply another within. These weaknesses invariably create problems and tensions. "One effort to resolve the problem involves the establishment of a communally organized society. Such a society is noted for its relative absence of individual property rights. Material wealth is dispersed equally among the members of the group and property is held in common. Since all share equally in group assets, the opportunity for discrimination among individuals on the basis of wealth is reduced, if not entirely absent."
Social Science and the New Resource Economics: Copernicus and the Fort Collins Computer
(1983) Baden, John
"Much of the analysis being conducted in natural resource economics and policy is statistical, technical, and formal. Shadow prices for nonmarketed resources, linear programming models of optimal timber harvest scheduling, and the application of optimal control theory to groundwater management all provide examples of the ingenious application of these techniques. The level of sophistication in this research is impressive, but the implications are often enigmatic and sometimes irrelevant. "The new resource economics (also referred to as the new institutional economics), with its focus on institutions and their effects on individual decision makers, is a more encouraging and quite possibly a more relevant approach to natural resource policy. This new economics takes decision-makers as the relevant units of analysis and then focuses on the information and incentives provided by the institutions within which they operate. The propositions underlying this approach are, first, that individuals act on information and incentives and, second, that institutions generate information and structure incentives. By focusing on the institutional structuring of information and incentives, it is possible to explain important aspects of pollution, the rapid depletion of resources, the extinction of animal and plant species, and inefficient resource use."
Transgenerational Equity and Natural Resources
(1978) Baden, John; Stroup, Richard
From Introduction: "Increasing attention is being paid to matters of equity. At the level of discussion 'decisions' can produce psychic benefits while iqnorinq the reality checks of costs. At this level it is harmless. At the level of action, however, we should be more careful. "Attention to equity is found in those intellectual areas where we expect it, i.e., in the fringe whose outer limits of sanity are demarcated by the CoEvaluation Quarterly. Of greater potential interest, however, a substantial number of mainstream academies also consider the issue. Included in the latter category are K. Boulding, F. Hirsh (Social Limits to Growth), R. Nisbet (Twilight of Authority) and D. Bell (Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism)."
Underground Academics: Growth in a Declining Industry
(1984) Baden, John
"Although the financial plight of universities is well-known, it is also uneven. As expenses increase and federal grants, loans, and fellowships decrease, the traditional university mold is being strained. While many of the proponents of a no-growth or steady-state, sustainable society reside in or on the edges of the university community, the unpleasant consequences of their avowed preferences are providing reality checks on their visions. The nasty realities of no-growth are witnessed in the plight of the gypsy scholar. "University administrators' have responded to this situation in predictable ways; by cutting back programs and by squeezing the revenue generating components of the university. Thus, they foster the academic analog of the subterranean economy."
Wildlife Habitat and Economic Institutions: Feast or Famine for Hunters and Game
(1984) Blood, Tom; Baden, John
"In Montana, few issues generate higher emotions than wildlife and hunting issues. The right of free access to game is often assumed to be a God-given, natural right. Unfortunately, the reality check of population pressures is challenging these conceptions. We recognize that many of the alternatives explored in this paper are highly controversial, but we also believe that clear and dispassionate analysis is preferable to frustration punctuated by pounding on bar tables. "Montana is indeed a treasure state, but its primary treasures are not restricted to commodities. Its aesthetic and environmental qualities are of immense value and are increasing in worth. Given that wildlife is a superior good--that is, that demand increases disproportionately with income--and that recreation tends to be non-taxed, we can reasonably expect our wildlife resources to come under increasing pressure. "The key to meeting increased demand lies with improved management. The question is what set of institutions will generate incentives for managers to use their land to produce wildlife alongside timber, livestock, and other agricultural products. A system of property rights and private management provides the most efficient, ecologically sensitive, and equitable scheme yet designed. It is this approach that we will explore in this paper."