A comprehensive bycatch market: investigating pricing mechanisms for ecosystem accountability

Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015This report takes an ecosystem approach to managing targeted and non-targeted species in the Bering Sea Aleutian Island commercial fisheries. The current regulatory environment sets biological harvest limits across fish stock's entire range, although the individual components of managing fisheries within a stock may lead to economic inefficiencies and difficulties in accounting for social costs due to blunt incentives. The research presented here outlines a model for scenario analysis and pricing mechanisms at each level of harvest across a species range. Due to the modeled indifference of harvesting in targeted or non-targeted fisheries, designations are made for degrees of ownership rights and monetary transfers to balance these rights in the presence of non-target bycatch. This report argues that efficiency gains can be made by managing behavior through pricing incentives at the margin

Incentive Contracting versus Ownership Reforms: Evidence from China's Township and Village Enterprises

We use a unique data set to study the implications of introducing managerial incentives and, in addition to incentives, better defined ownership for a firm's financial performance. The data set traces the ten-year history of 80 Chinese rural enterprises, known as township and village enterprises. During this period, these originally (mostly) community owned, local government controlled socialist collective firms were first allowed to introduce managerial incentive contracts and then to change to ownership forms of more clearly defined income and control rights. The study finds that introducing managerial incentives had a positive but statistically insignificant effect on these firms' performance measured by accounting return on assets or return on equity. It also finds that the performance is significantly better under ownership forms of better-defined rights than under community ownership even when the latter is supplemented with managerial incentive contracts. The findings shed lights on some important theoretical and policy issues.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39749/3/wp365.pd

Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report

Part of a series of reports that includes: Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report; Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report; Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary; Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical Report; Available at http://sites.bu.edu/cfb/OVERVIEW: Boston is known for its historic iconic buildings, from the Paul Revere House in the North End, to City Hall in Government Center, to the Old South Meeting House in Downtown Crossing, to the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, to 200 Clarendon (the Hancock Tower) in Back Bay, to Abbotsford in Roxbury. In total, there are over 86,000 buildings that comprise more than 647 million square feet of area. Most of these buildings will still be in use in 2050. Floorspace (square footage) is almost evenly split between residential and non-residential uses, but residential buildings account for nearly 80,000 (93 percent) of the 86,000 buildings. Boston’s buildings are used for a diverse range of activities that include homes, offices, hospitals, factories, laboratories, schools, public service, retail, hotels, restaurants, and convention space. Building type strongly influences energy use; for example, restaurants, hospitals, and laboratories have high energy demands compared to other commercial uses. Boston’s building stock is characterized by thousands of turn-of-the-20th century homes and a postWorld War II building boom that expanded both residential buildings and commercial space. Boston is in the midst of another boom in building construction that is transforming neighborhoods across the city. [TRUNCATED]Published versio

Asset bubbles and credit constraints

We provide a theory of rational stock price bubbles in production economies with infinitely lived agents. Firms meet stochastic investment opportunities and face endogenous credit constraints. They are not fully committed to repaying debt. Credit constraints are derived from incentive constraints in optimal contracts which ensure default never occurs in equilibrium. Stock price bubbles can emerge through a positive feedback loop mechanism and cannot be ruled out by transversality conditions. These bubbles command a liquidity premium and raise investment by raising the debt limit. Their collapse leads to a recession and a stock market crash.Published versio

Information theory and the role of intermediaries in corporate governance

We investigate the connection between corporate governance system configurations and the role of intermediaries in the respective systems from a informational perspective. Building on the economics of information we show that it is meaningful to distinguish between internalisation and externalisation as two fundamentally different ways of dealing with information in corporate governance systems. This lays the groundwork for a description of two types of corporate governance systems, i.e. insider control system and outsider control system, in which we focus on the distinctive role of intermediaries in the production and use of information. It will be argued that internalisation is the prevailing mode of information processing in insider control system while externalisation dominates in outsider control system. We also discuss shortly the interrelations between the prevailing corporate governance system and types of activities or industry structures supported

Where do we stand in the theory of finance? : a selective overview with reference to Erich Gutenberg

For the past 20 years, financial markets research has concerned itself with issues related to the evaluation and management of financial securities in efficient capital markets and with issues of management control in incomplete markets. The following selective overview focuses on key aspects of the theory and empirical experience of management control under conditions of asymmetric information. The objective is examine the validity of the recently advanced hypothesis on the myths of corporate control. The present overview is based on Gutenberg's position that there exists a discrete corporate interest, as distinct from and separate from the interests of the shareholders or other stakeholders. In the third volume of Grundlagen der BWL: Die Finanzen, published in 1969, this position of Gutenberg's is coupled with an appeal for a so-called financial equilibrium to be maintained. Not until recently have models grounded in capital market theory been developed which also allow for a firm's management to exercise autonomy vis-à-vis its stakeholder. This paper was prepared for the Erich Gutenberg centenary conference on December 12 and 13, 1997 in Cologne

Organization and Strategy of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives in China

A description and analysis of China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives is presented. Data is presented regarding the historical development of farmer cooperatives in China, the membership composition of a sample of 66 farmer cooperatives in the Zhejiang province, and the various attributes (governance, quality control system, and strategy) of a watermelon cooperative in this province. Many cooperatives are being transformed in organizations with a market orientation. These cooperatives exhibit substantial heterogeneity, in terms of farmers being member and skewness in the distribution of control rights. Human asset specificity in terms of establishing and maintaining relations and access to markets seems to be more important than physical asset specificity in accounting for governance structure choice in the current institutional setting.Farmer Cooperative, China, Governance Structure, Business Strategy, Agribusiness, Q13,

Missing Market in Labor Quality: The Role of Quality Markets in Transition

This paper characterizes a key feature of the classic socialist economy and state-owned enterprise, namely that of missing markets in labor quality. Under the socialist regime in which students and workers were assigned to work units, the rights of managers to monitor and reward workers were limited. The exchange of labor services was based more on measures of quantity rather than quality. Workers who performed functions broadly consistent with that of their assigned occupations for the duration of the designated workweek received the standard wage. With the reassignment of property rights, this situation has changed. Students and workers have resumed control over the accumulation of their human capital the trade of skill and effort. Managers have acquired greater authority to monitor labor - to discriminate in setting wages and bonuses and to hire and fire - as well as stronger incentives to use this authority to raise efficiency and profits. The result is an emerging market in labor quality.A 1995 cross section of enterprise data spanning 10 ownership types is used to test the hypothesis of an emerging labor quality market. The results show that certain non-state forms of ownership, in which the rights of managers to monitor and reward skill and effort are presumed to be relatively well developed, encourage labor quality, most notably training, which raises productivity. The relative inability of state enterprises to monitor and reward high quality labor is likely to create an adverse selection problem in which the most skilled and motivated workers exit from the state sector, so as to cause a "hollowing" of skilled workers and weakened enterprise performance. The theoretical contribution of this paper is to generalize Coase's analysis of the critical role of property rights in creating resource markets to the creation and exchange of quality in all goods. Analytically, the conditions for a missing market in labor quality are equivalent to those for a missing market in pollution abatement and water quality. The analysis underscores the importance of property rights in creating the conditions for the accumulation and efficient exchange of human capital.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39645/3/wp260.pd

Rail Privatisation: The Economic Theory

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of economic theory to the rail privatisation proposals contained in the Railways Act 1993. After a review of the latest rail privatisation literature four major themes emerged: (1) Contestability and Barriers to Entry. (2) Franchising. (3) Vertical Integration. (4) Horizontal Integration. Following a short review of the rail privatisation proposals the paper presents each theme in the context of the proposals. In conclusion, we highlight a number of future issues which will require monitoring and research in the future. In particular, we identify a number of hypotheses, put forward by both those in favour and against the Government's proposals, that should be tested

Incentive Contracting versus Ownership Reforms: Evidence from China's Township and Village Enterprises

We use a unique data set to study the implications of introducing managerial incentives and, in addition to incentives, better defined ownership for a firm's financial performance. The data set traces the ten-year history of 80 Chinese rural enterprises, known as township and village enterprises. During this period, these originally (mostly) community owned, local government controlled socialist collective firms were first allowed to introduce managerial incentive contracts and then to change to ownership forms of more clearly defined income and control rights. The study finds that introducing managerial incentives had a positive but statistically insignificant effect on these firms' performance measured by accounting return on assets or return on equity. It also finds that the performance is significantly better under ownership forms of better-defined rights than under community ownership even when the latter is supplemented with managerial incentive contracts. The findings shed lights on some important theoretical and policy issues. Classification-JEL: