Inequality and environmental policy

A positive theory of mitigation of environmental degradation is discussed in order to understand the formation of environmental policy. When an environmental problem is not mitigated, this is because those affected don't know it is happening, cannot locate the cause, don't have the resources to abate the problem if they are its producers, or don't have the political power to influence policy to stop the problem if they are not its producers. The last is related to inequalities in political power and its implications are examined further. These include implications for the spatial spread of unmitigated pollutants produced by the powerful as opposed to the poor, and the implications of political structure for the overall level of pollution. These and related hypotheses are examined with reference to examples, and, where possible, with representative data. It is shown that there is an important sense in which the "Environmental Kuznets Curve" does not exist.

Preference Evolution and Reciprocity

This paper provides an evolutionary theory of reciprocity as an aspect of preference interdependence. It is shown that reciprocal preferences, which place negative weight on the payoffs of materialists and positive weight on the payoffs of sufficiently altruistic individuals can invade a population of materialists in a class of aggregative games under both individual selection and random matching. Such preferences are efficiency-reducing when they are rare and efficiency-enhancing when they are widespread, suggesting that they can persist even under group selection and assortative matching. In comparison with simpler specifications of preference interdependence (such as pure altruism or envy), the survival of such preferences is therefore less sensitive to details of the evolutionary selection process.Reciprocity, Evolution, Preference Interdependence

Norm compliance and strong reciprocity

Strong reciprocity refers to the willingness to sacrifice one's own material self-interest to punish others for opportunistic actions. This propensity provides a decentralized mechanism for the enforcement of social norms, but its extent and persistence poses a theoretical puzzle. Since opportunistic individuals choose optimally to comply with or violate norms based on the likelihood and severity of sanctioning they anticipate, such individuals will always outperform reciprocators within any group. The presence of reciprocators in a group can, however, alter the behavior of opportunists in such a manner as to benefit all members of the group (including reciprocators). We show that under these circumstances, reciprocators can invade a population of opportunists when groups dissolve and are formed anew according to a process of purely random (non-assortative) matching. Furthermore, even when these conditions are not satisfied (so that an opportunistic population is stable) there may exist additional stable population states in which reciprocators are present.

Discrimination in an elite labour market? Job placements at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Using data on the IIM-Ahmedabad's 2006 batch of MBA graduates, we find that SC/ST (Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe) graduates get significantly lower wages (between 19 and 35 percent depending on the exchange rate used to convert foreign currencies) than those in the general category. This difference disappears once the lower GPAs (Grade Point Averages) of SC/ST candidates are accounted for, suggesting that the large wage difference is due to the weaker (on average) academic performance of SC/ST candidates. Controlling for work experience and GPA, there is no wage penalty to being female. Moreover, unlike the case in US and British labour markets, there is only weak evidence of wage premium to being more attractive, where attractiveness was measured in the standard manner by anonymous ratings of passport-type photographs by twenty raters. The study suggests that in the absence of any serious attempt to equalise school-level opportunities, the current policy of reservations at elite educational institutions will be insufficient to equalise career outcomes even for the minority of SC/ST candidates that can benefit from them.

Collective action in the commons: A theoretical framework for empirical research

A model of collective action in the commons that is intended to provide a framework for empirical research into the question of when cooperation is likely to be successful is presented. It is based on the presence of costly punishment opportunities, some players who have a taste for punishing those who violate agreements to cooperate (an assumption strongly supported by recent experimental research), and bounded rationality. It predicts that cooperation is more likely when communication is cheap, the technology of public good provision is sufficiently productive, effective punishment opportunities are available at sufficiently low cost, and when group size is large (holding constant the other parameters mentioned). Heterogeneity in the ability to inflict punishment or be hurt by it may result in collective action becoming infeasible, especially when there are increasing returns to the public good, but there is a range of parameters in which changes in heterogeneity will have no effect and circumstances in which heterogeneity will actually favor cooperation.

Collective action for forest conservation: Does heterogeneity matter?

Community management of forests by Van Panchayats (forest councils) to meet local needs has a long history in the Indian Central Himalayas. This essay examines the effects of village-level heterogeneity in caste and land ownership, and of female membership in the Panchayats on collective action for forest conservation. There is no evidence that caste heterogeneity or female membership of the Panchayat have any effect. There is some evidence that greater equality in land ownership may enhance collective action and forest conservation in pine forests but not broadleaved forests. This is puzzling since villagers' interest in conservation is greater in broadleaved than in pine forests.

Does decentralization work? Forest conservation in the Himalayas

This paper studies the effect of decentralization of management and control on forest conservation in the central Himalayas. The density of forest cover (measured with satellite images and field surveys) in forests managed by village councils is compared with that in state-managed forests and in unmanaged village commons. Geographic proximity and historical and ecological information are used to identify the effects of the three types of management regimes. Village council management does no worse, and possibly better, at conservation than state management and costs an order of magnitude less per unit area. Relative to unmanaged commons, village council management raises crown cover in broadleaved forests (the type of forest that may provide the most benefits to villagers under the rules) but not in pine forests.

A comparative analysis of colour preferences in temperate and tropical social bees

This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.The spontaneous occurrence of colour preferences without learning has been demonstrated in several insect species; however, the underlying mechanisms are still not understood. Here, we use a comparative approach to investigate spontaneous and learned colour preferences in foraging bees of two tropical and one temperate species. We hypothesised that tropical bees utilise different sets of plants and therefore might differ in their spontaneous colour preferences. We tested colour-naive bees and foragers from colonies that had been enclosed in large flight cages for a long time. Bees were shortly trained with triplets of neutral, UV-grey stimuli placed randomly at eight locations on a black training disk to induce foraging motivation. During unrewarded tests, the bees’ responses to eight colours were video-recorded. Bees explored all colours and displayed an overall preference for colours dominated by long or short wavelengths, rather than a single colour stimulus. Naive Apis cerana and Bombus terrestris showed similar choices. Both inspected long-wavelength stimuli more than short-wavelength stimuli, whilst responses of the tropical stingless bee Tetragonula iridipennis differed, suggesting that resource partitioning could be a determinant of spontaneous colour preferences. Reward on an unsaturated yellow colour shifted the bees’ preference curves as predicted, which is in line with previous findings that brief colour experience overrides the expression of spontaneous preferences. We conclude that rather than determining foraging behaviour in inflexible ways, spontaneous colour preferences vary depending on experimental settings and reflect potential biases in mechanisms of learning and decision-making in pollinating insects.We acknowledge research grant funding provided by the Royal Society for International Joint Projects and UKIERI (DST-2014-15-041). B.G.S. was funded by a PhD studentship award from MHRD, Govt. of India

Awareness and the demand for environmental quality : drinking water in urban India

The demand for environmental quality clean air, potable water, sanitation, safe food is often presumed to be low in developing countries due to poverty. However, individuals in developing countries often lack the necessary information to make good decisions about environmental hazards in their day-to-day lives. Even if households can afford to take private measures to improve environmental quality, very often they choose not to do so, because they are not aware of the health risks associated with inferior environmental quality. A key policy question is whether increasing awareness about the adverse health effects of environmental pollution will increase demand for a cleaner environment? // In this paper, a household survey from urban India is used to estimate the effects of awareness and wealth on household decisions to purify home water. Average costs of different home purification methods are used to get estimates on willingness to pay for better drinking water quality in Delhi. It is found that measures of awareness such as schooling and exposure to mass media have statistically significant effects on adoption of different home purification methods and therefore, on willingness to pay. The interesting result is that these effects are similar in magnitude to wealth effects – this suggests that lack of awareness may be as important as poverty in influencing demand for clean water

Consumption-based carbon accounting: does it have a future?

Internationally, allocation of responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is currently based on the production-based (PB) accounting method, which measures emissions generated in the place where goods and services are produced. However, the growth of emissions embodied in trade has raised the question whether we should switch to, or amalgamate PB accounting, with other accounting approaches. Consumption-based (CB) accounting has so far emerged as the most prominent alternative. This approach accounts for emissions at the point of consumption, attributing all the emissions that occurred in the course of production and distribution to the final consumers of goods and services. This review has a fourfold objective. First, it provides an account of the logic behind attributing responsibility for emissions on the basis of consumption instead of production. Issues of equity and justice, increased emissions coverage, encouragement of cleaner production practices, and political benefits are considered. Second, it discusses the counterarguments, focusing in particular on issues of technical complexity, mitigation effectiveness, and political acceptability. Third, it presents the spectrum of implementation possibilities—ranging from the status quo to more transformative options—and considers the implications for international climate policy that would accrue under various scenarios of adopting CB accounting in practice. Fourth, it looks at how CB accounting may be adjusted to fit with current political realities and it identifies policy mechanisms that could potentially be utilized to directly or indirectly address CB emissions. Such an approach could unlock new opportunities for climate policy innovation and for climate mitigation