Abstract: This paper offers a measure of food insecurity. Its purpose is to capture the idea that the concept of food insecurity is inherently forward-looking. We apply our measure to construct a refinement of the measures of undernourishment used by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to assess food insecurity across countries. First, we account for the fact that food supply is subject to risk. This risk is an additional burden on the undernourished and on those who are at the edge of undernourishment. Second, unlike much of the previous literature, we use forecasts instead of data from past years in our assessment. To illustrate our approach we estimate risk-adjusted indexes for a sample of African and South East Asian countries to describe their state of food insecurity. In addition, we compare and contrast our results with FAO's estimates of undernourishment. The country rankings we obtain using the risk adjusted measures differ significantly from the country rankings for undernourishment obtained with FAO’s methodology.
Notes: Related paper: Gabbert, Silke & Weikard, Hans-Peter (2001) How widespread is undernourishment? a critique of measurement methods and new empirical results. Food Policy 26 (3), 209 - 228.
Abstract: This paper analyses stability of cartels in games with heterogeneous players and externalities. I introduce a class of sharing rules for coalition payoffs, called "optimal sharing rules", that stabilise all cartels that are possibly stable under some arbitrary sharing rule. To illustrate the impact of optimal sharing with heterogeneous players and positive externalities I analyse a public goods game. In contrast to games with identical players that are common in the study of international environmental agreements, my results show that large coalitions may well be stable when optimal sharing is applied.
Abstract: Economic modelling of semi-arid rangelands has received much attention in recent
literature. A major outstanding issue is how stochastic rainfall and the feedback effect
of heavy grazing pressures on vegetation productivity can be accounted for in these
models. This paper presents a model for calculating the optimal livestock stocking
rate in a semi-arid rangeland that accounts for stochastic rainfall, the ecological
feedback effect and variable prices. The model is developed for rangelands dominated
by annual rather than perennial grasses, such as the African Sahel. The feedback
effect is modeled on the basis of an ecological study, conducted in northern Senegal,
that analyzes the impact of different grazing pressures on vegetation productivity. The
paper presents both a general model and an application of the model to the Ferlo, a
semi-arid rangeland in northern Senegal.
Abstract: This paper presents a spatially explicit bioeconomic analysis of species conservation in agricultural areas. Wild species in fragmented agricultural landscapes are best approached as metapopulations consisting of a finite number of local populations. Economic analysis of species conservation in fragmented habitat needs to deal with metapopulation theory and its theoretical implications. This paper presents a spatially explicit bioeconomic model consisting of a straightforward economic land use model and an applied metapopulation model. This paper demonstrates that multiple equilibria and multiple local optima in metapopulations might lead to nonconvexities in the production possibilities set of agricultural profits and species conservation.
Abstract: Poverty indices are usually calculated on the basis of (cross section) income data from the past. As past income is fixed and future income is uncertain such measurement does not reflect the ex ante risk of falling into poverty. This paper presents refinements of commonly used poverty measures to account for income risk. It is shown that the standard headcount ratio underestimates poverty in societies with moderate poverty if income is risky. The Foster, Greer and Thorbecke measure always underestimates poverty if income risk is neglected.
Abstract: Clean air to breathe is no longer a free good. We have to pay for it. We pay taxes, fees and the costs of technologies introduced to cut back air pollution. As clean air has become scarce, economic and political institutions have been established to manage scarcity and these institutions will change as scarcity changes. One important group of air pollutants are greenhouse gases, the most prominent of which is carbon dioxide (CO2). In a sequence of summits at Geneva 1979, Toronto 1988, Rio 1992 and at the Conference of Parties (COP) of the UNFCC meetings thereafter, the international community has expressed its concern about climate change. Of the new institutions that emerge from a negotiation process the most important novelty is the introduction of tradable greenhouse gas emission permits (emission permits, for short). This brings with it the potential to reach a given pollution target in a cost effective way. The market mechanism equalises marginal abatement costs and directs the abatement investments to the cheapest options.
Greenhouse gas emissions reduction is a global public good. Apart from the efficiency question – where, when and by how much to cut back emissions – there are important distributional concerns. With tradability of emission permits distributional concerns will boil down to the question of initial endowments: who should receive the CO2 emission permits? The purpose of this paper is to address this question. Other important issues concerning the functioning of permits markets, transaction costs, emissions monitoring and the like will be neglected.
The introduction of emission permits is a change in property rights. One important question is to understand the process which shapes new property rights. This is an empirical question. In this paper, however, I would like to pursue a normative question. Can we identify guiding principles on which an initial distribution of property rights can be grounded? The answers developed in this paper are based on John Locke's (1690) and Robert Nozick's (1974) theory of property rights. This theory is in many ways incomplete and open to interpretation. Still, as will be demonstrated, it is useful as a main frame to develop insights into the problem at hand. My task here is not to develop a better understanding or a "correct" interpretation of Locke's and Nozick's writings, but rather to make constructive use of it.
The next section presents a brief sketch of the Locke-Nozick theory of property rights. Following sections examine how the theory can be applied to the case of emission permits. Section 3 considers the simplified case of a society of contemporaries. Section 4 takes issue with intergenerational distribution. Sections 3 and 4 develop an individual rights view. In practical politics, however, it is not individuals but sovereign nation states who negotiate climate policies and implement international agreements. The concluding section 5 discusses the relationship between individual rights and international policy.
