Conference Paper

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10535/4

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The Economic Evolution of Wildfire Suppression Organizations
(2013) Lueck, Dean; Yoder, Jonathan
"Wildfires are destructive events, costing billions of dollars each year in damage, suppression and recovery costs. Fires also have rather unusual characteristics that make their management and control rather complex and seemingly irrational. Their occurrence has great spatiotemporal variance and preparation and timeliness is crucial for effective fire suppression. Fires tend not to coincide with landownership boundaries, so that land tenure and land use characteristics affect both private and public agency incentives to fight fires. Fire suppression institutions vary substantially over time and environments, ranging from private individual and cooperative action to large scale centralized government intervention, military style organization, specialization, and pre-positioned investments. Building on economic theories of contracts and institutional design, this article examines the economic rationale for the structure of observed wildfire suppression institutions and examines implications of the model in relation to several dimensions of fire policy historically across the US and the world. We utilize a set of historical and cross-sectional case studies to test our hypotheses about the organization of suppression. Finally we consider the implications for contemporary wildfire management."
The Effects of Geography on Property Rights in the Commonos: Theory, Evidence and Implications
(2013) Araral, Eduardo K.
"In the Northern Region of the Philippines can be found at least three different types of property rights in the same production system operated by the same ethnolinguistic group that has survived for long periods of time. To explain this puzzle, I provide a geographic risk model and building on Libecap’s (1989) contracting costs of property rights. I argue that these property systems essentially evolved in equilibrium overtime in response to these geographic risks. I illustrate my model with a comparative study of ancient commons (irrigation) with varied geography and property rights. My findings are consistent with the theoretical expectations. In the mountainous Ifugao region, where there is a need to maintain the ecological integrity of the watershed, the size of rice terraces, and kinship as basis of social order, the primogeniture system of property rights has developed in the last 2000 years. In the 400 year-old Zangjeras, where flooding and droughts require regular mobilization of labor, a unique property system of membership shares -- atar -- has developed. In the Cagayan Valley, where there is little risk of floods and droughts, typical modern private property rights have been adopted. The paper has four implications. First, it suggests that risk analysis should be incorporated into the study of the emergence and evolution of institutions in general and property rights in the commons in particular. Second, it helps explain the causes, consequences, diversity and vulnerability of institutions governing the commons. Third, the emergence, assignment, enforcement and transfer of property rights have important implications for the allocation of resources and the nature of production in the commons. Finally, understanding the effects of geographic risks has important practical implications for climate adaption in the commons and smallholder agriculture in particular."
Information Commons Between Peer-Production and Commodification: The Case of Cloud Computing
(2013) De Filippi, Primavera; Vieira, Miguel Said
"Internet and digital technologies allowed for the emergence of new modes of production involving cooperation and collaboration amongst peers (peerproduction) and oriented towards the maximization of the common goodas opposed to the maximization of profits. To ensure that content will always remain available to the public, the output of production is often released under a specific regime that prevents anyone from subsequently turning it into a commodity (the regime of information commons). While this might reduce the likelihood of commodification, information commons can nonetheless be exploited by the market economy. Indeed, since they have been made available for use by anyone, large online service providers can indirectly benefit from the commons by capturing the value derived from it. While this is not a problem as such, problems arise when the exploitation of the commons by one agent is likely to preclude others from doing the sameoften as a result of commodification. This is especially true in the context of cloud computing, where the content holder has become as powerful, if not more powerful than the copyright owner. Nowadays, regardless of their legal status, information commons are increasingly controlled by large corporations who can precisely define the manner in which they can be used or accessed. Digital communities need to be aware of these risks. This article proposes a theoretical and normative exploration of these issues, based on the analysis of recent trends in the area of cloud computing. It argues that, in order to reduce the likelihood of commodification, but still benefit from the advantages offered by cloud computing, digital communities should rely on decentralized platforms based on peertopeer architecturesthereby escaping from the centralized control of large service providers while nonetheless preserving the autonomy of the commons they produce."
Institutions for Spatially Managing the Harvest of Wild Forest Products: Implications for Welfare and Ecology
(2013) Robinson, Brian
"Wild forests products benefit many rural communities in developing countries. Often these forests also contain globally valuable ecosystem services, such as biodiversity and carbon, which may not be as important to local communities. This paper develops a spatial model for harvesting non-timber forest products (NTFPs), like wild mushrooms or medicinal plants. It asks: how much can management of harvests simultaneously improve welfare and ecological outcomes? I develop a theoretical model that accounts for the shape of the forest, the size of the harvest community, and incorporates real-world constraints. The results first show that even under open access conditions (uncooperative competition), if the forest is large relative to the size of the community then harvesters still profit. Second, managing a forest to maximize NTFP value does not always protect other regionally or globally important ecosystem services like biodiversity or water storage capacity. Using a unique dataset of mushroom harvests in Yunnan, China, I test for characteristics associated with harvester’s foraging distance. The results support the theoretical model’s spatial foundation, suggesting harvesters travel farther to avoid competition. More experienced and less-wealthy households tend to rely on more distant harvests. There are livelihood benefits to cooperation but potential ecological costs in some contexts. Regardless, limiting access likely disproportionately affects the most vulnerable."
Local Leadership and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods: Field Evidence from Bolivia
(2013) Jack, B. Kelsey; Recalde, María P.
"We conduct a controlled field experiment in 52 communities in rural Bolivia to investigate the effect that local authorities have on voluntary public good provision. In our study, community members pool resources to provide environmental education material for local schools. We find that voluntary contributions increase when democratically elected local authorities lead by example. The results are driven by two factors: (1) individuals give more when they are called upon to lead than when they give in private, and (2) high leader contributions increase the contributions of others. Both effects are stronger when authorities, as compared to randomly selected community members, lead by example. We explore two underlying channels of leadership influence. First, we show that leaders signal information about the quality of the public good through their contribution decisions. Second, we explore how leader characteristics affect the likelihood that others follow. Specifically, our study shows that randomly selected community members are more influential the more they resemble authorities on observable characteristics."
Property Rights and Natural Resource Curses: Micro Evidence from a Tribal Fishery
(2013) Parker, Dominic P.; Rucker, Randal R.; Nickerson, Peter H.
"We a study a U.S. federal court ruling that had major impacts on the structure of property rights in-and the distribution of revenue from-Washington state's commercial fisheries. Known as the 'Boldt Decision', the 1974 ruling affirmed the right of Native American tribes to 50 percent of the fishery based on treaties signed in the 1850s. The ruling was an unexpected (but not undeserved) windfall for impoverished tribes because they had caught less than six percent of the salmon in the 25 years preceding 1974, and because half of the fishery revenues in 1973 amounted to $10,189 per tribal member. We find that the ruling conveyed limited long-run economic benefits to tribes, however, in part because it failed to re-create the efficient system of riparian property rights used by Pacific tribes at the time of the treaties. Instead, the post-1974 tribal fishery evolved to mimic the economically wasteful "rule of capture" and capital-intensive mobile fishing regime that is prevalent in non-tribal fisheries throughout the industrialized world. Our theory describes how individually rational decisions leads to rent dissipation and possibly a resource curse, and our empirical analysis identifies symptoms of a curse using data on fishing activity, schooling decisions, and income growth."
Scientific Data Commons Underutilisation: Causes, Consequences and Remedial Strategies
(2013) David, Paul A.; Steinmueller, W. Edward
"The collection, retention and stewardship of scientific data are activities that in publicly funded science typically involve the construction of ‘knowledge commons’--institutionalized agreements that afford both suitable access to research resources and facilitate the development of governance structures assuring that those participating in both the assembly and use of data benefit from the resulting data stores. Nevertheless, there are many impediments and some seemingly insurmountable barriers to realising the full potential of such commons. It is of increasing importance to consider the conditions that give rise to under-utilisation of database content and the difficulties of constructing such commons. The paper considers five key issues contributing to under-utilisation: 1. Asymmetries in the costs and benefits to participants preparing dataset for use by other parties giving rise to confusions or opportunistic behaviours impeding shared use: 2. Uncertainties arising from ‘latent’ property rights in scientific data contributed to knowledge commons. 3. Tensions arising from the interests of employers in controlling access to the knowledge gained by employees engaged in scientific and technological research activities, particularly the tacit knowledge and un-codified information that is not subject to explicit intellectual property rights. 4. Motives and consequences exist for ‘data hoarding’ in the emerging ‘big data’ era. 5. Problems in defining and governing ‘hybrid’ commons where freely accessible data is combined with data that is proprietary. Methods of governance as well as voluntary agreement are considered for addressing each of these issues."
A Theory of Voluntary Pooled Public Knowledge Goods and Coalition Formation
(2013) Dedeurwaerdere, Tom; Ghidi, Paolo Melindi
"In this paper we develop a theoretical model of the mechanisms behind the voluntary provision of impure public goods in coalitions in presence of important social networks effects. The model builds on the large empirical literature on coalitions for voluntary provision of pooled public knowledge goods, such as in social networks of open source software developers and consortia producing open data repositories. This literature shows that, under some conditions, the provision of public goods can be facilitated by social network effects such as group identity and social approval of individual pro-social attitudes. To integrate these effects in standard public good theory this paper follows a two-step strategy, based on the introduction of two types of impureness in standard public good theory: (1) impureness related to private excludable benefits (so-called ancillary private benefits of the public good); (2) impureness related to the satisfaction of the individuals social preferences. In a first step, the paper analyses the introduction of combined public and private benefits in coalition theory with standard preferences. In a second step the model is broadened to the case of impureness related to the social preferences. The analysis shows that, when the private benefit component of the impure public good is important, the effect of the social preferences on the coalition formation is ambiguous: with increasing/decreasing relative weight of the social approval of individual pro-social attitudes compared to the relative weight of the social group identity, the coalition size to be reached will be respectively larger/smaller compared to the coalitions formed by agents with standard preferences. Applications of the theoretical model to large-scale surveys of Free/Libre/Open-Source (FLOSS) software developers confirm the results of the model."
What Explains the Rising Popularity of Cash Renting?
(2013) Allen, Douglas W.; Borchers, Allison
"Over the past twenty years the ratio of cash rent to cropshare contracts across the United States has more than doubled. Predictably, some economists attribute this to ad hoc changes in the relative risk preferences of farmer and landowners. We suggest that it is the result of changes in cultivation practices. The switch from conventional to conservation tillage brought about by changes in herbicide technologies, fuel costs, and knowledge of the benefits of soil micro-organisms, has reduced the ability of farmers to exploit soil attributes. This removes the major incentive of cropsharing and makes cash renting more attractive. Using USDA field level data from across the United States, we find strong support for this hypothesis."

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Browsing Conference Paper by Conference "17th Annual Conference of The International Society for New Institutional Economics"