Boycotting a dictatorship: who does it really hurt?

Consumer boycotts and international economic sanctions represent a frequent tool to protest against countries for their violation of human rights. This paper questions if such a kind of action hurts more the populations it is supposed to defend than governing classes it is targeting. Overall, boycotts of more rapacious regimes may decrease more the well-being of the population than the one of the governing class.consumer boycott, dictatorial regimes.

The Safety-net Use of Non Timber Forest Products

Incompleteness of insurance markets is a crucial weakness of developing countries. In this context, the poor households of rural regions often exploit common property resources, such as forests, as insurance in case of economics stress. The aim of this paper is to derive the implications of this insurance use on the forest cover, and thus on deforestation. The land-use choice between agricultural land and forest therefore resembles a portfolio diversification. However, I also show that this insurance strategy may lead to resource overexploitation and constitute a poverty trap.deforestation, household model, risk aversion, agricultural expansion, forest products

Prosecutor and lawyers in plea bargaining with complete information

In criminal law, when a conflict is solved by plea bargaining, the negotiation is mainly made between the prosecutor and the lawyer. Adopting a complete information framework about his type (selfish or altruistic), this paper compares two lawyer payment systems: flat fees and hourly-wage fees. We identify the system of fees in which the sentence is the lowest. We first show that under flat fees the prosecutor provides less effort when he faces an altruistic lawyer. Second, we show that under some conditions an altruistic lawyer may accept a higher sentence than a selfish lawyer.plea bargaining, lawyer's selfishness, system of fees

The environmental resource curse hypothesis: the forest case

The resource curse hypothesis relies on the resource-rich countries tendency to grow slower than resource-poor countries. Focusing on forest issues, this paper extends the resource curse hypothesis to environmental degradation: how do forest endowment and forest harvesting affect deforestation? Our empirical results show that countries with important forest cover and forestry sectors seem to deforest more than others, which supports the hypothesis of an environmental resource curse. Moreover, countries implied in important timber certification processes have lower deforestation levels.resource curse, tropical forest, deforestation

Les sources d’(in)efficacité des boycotts de consommateurs : L’approche par l’analyse économique

L’usage fréquent et répété de boycotts de consommateurs par un certain nombre d’acteurs de la protection environnementale et de la société civile conduit à s’interroger sur les chances réelles d’efficacité de cet outil. Croisant des éléments d’analyse économique des comportements et de théorie des jeux, nous proposons de distinguer les sources majeures d’inefficacité de ce type d’actions, et notamment, la faiblesse de la coordination entre acteurs, la présence potentiellement massive de passagers clandestins, les caractéristiques des marchés les caractéristiques des marchés et des technologies alternatives, etc. Ces travaux permettent de dégager des pistes de réflexion sur l’efficacité relative de la consommation citoyenne. Nous illustrons notre propos par l’exemple de l’exploitation de bois tropicaux.

Fuelwood consumption, restrictions about resource availability and public policies: impacts on the French forest sector

In the context of climate change and of increasing energy prices, the share of fuelwood in primary energy consumption may increase, especially in countries with large forest endowments. However, larger fuelwood consumption may have non-negligible impacts on forest sectors. This paper assesses those impacts for France using a new model of the French forest sector, and comparing four different policy options to boost fuelwood demand. First, supply- and demand-side policies yield very different outcomes, with a trade-off between trade balance and harvest intensity. Second, even a modest increase in fuelwood consumption leads to tensions over forest stock over time under pessimistic views about resource availability.forest sector modeling, fuelwood, bioenergy, public incentives.

Implementation of national and international REDD mechanism under alternative payments for environemtal services: theory and illustration from Sumatra

This paper develops an analytical model of a REDD+ mechanism with an international payment tier and a national payment tier, and calibrate land users' opportunity cost curves based on data from Sumatra. We compare the avoided deforestation and cost-eciency of government purchases across the two types of contracts fixed price and opportunity cost, and across two government types "benevolent" and "budget maximizing". Our paper shows that a fixed-price scheme is likely to be more efficient than an opportunity-cost compensation scheme at low international carbon prices, when the government is "benevolent" or when variation in opportunity cost within land users is high relative to variation in opportunity cost across land users. Thus, a PES program which pays local communities or land users based on the value of the service provided by avoided deforestation may not only distribute REDD revenue more equitably than an opportunity cost-based payment system, but may be more cost-efficient as well.

Forests and Development: Local, national and global issues.

no abstract availableForest management; Environmental policy;

Retributing forest carbon vs. stimulating fuelwood demand insights from the French forest sector model

Forests can contribute to climate mitigation by sequestrating carbon in forest biomass andby replacing fossil-fuel with fuelwood, with potentially conflicting implications for forest management.The present paper assesses the mitigation and the economic impacts of a "stock" policy(payment for sequestration in situ), a "substitution" policy (subsidy to fuelwood consumption),and a combination thereof on the French forest sector. The policies are consistent in that theyare based on the same social cost of carbon. To do so, we use the French Forest Sector Model(FFSM), which combines a dynamic model of French timber resource, and a dynamic partial equilibriummodel of the French forest sector. Simulations show that over the 2010-2020 period,the stock policy is the only one that performs better than Business As Usual (BAU) in terms ofcarbon. Over this period of time, the cumulative substitution benefits of the substitution policyare not sufficient to offset the loss of carbon in standing forests. However, the stock policy hasalso negative impacts on consumers welfare, and increasingly high costs as carbon in excess ofBAU is accumulated in forests. Combining both policies brings intermediate results and is thusless effective than focusing on a single policy.carbon storage, biomass energy, forest sector modeling