Some Aspects of Incentive-Based Optimal Pricing and Environmental Regulation with Asymmetric Information.

The paper aims to analyze the problem of regulating a pollution-generating single product monopolistic firm in the presence of information asymmetry about the firm?s cost performance. Following Boyer and Laffont (1999), incentive-based optimal regulation of the firm?s price/ output and the environmental performance is characterized when costs are increasing in output and declining in pollution generated during production. Further, the regulatory agency/ legislator may or may not be politically motivated. When he/ she is politically inclined, the process of lobbying assumes that interest groups offer monetary contributions to the regulatory agency or the legislator. These contributions from the lobby help fund election campaigns. Thus, he/ she no longer behaves as a benevolent maximizer of social welfare, but instead maximizes a weighted average of social welfare and welfare of the lobby. Two alternative cases are considered: one, where the lobby represents environmental interests alone, and another, where the lobby stands solely for firm?s/ industry?s interests. The analysis derives interesting implications for incentive-based regulation of the firm. In general, pricing and environmental performance are distorted for the inefficient firm type under asymmetric information to restrict rents accruing to the efficient firm type. In the presence of the environmental lobby, the politically inclined regulator imposes more stringent environmental regulation under both full information and incomplete information as compared to the no-lobbying case. Interestingly, lobbying by the firm/ industry group also induces the politically motivated regulator to have more restrictive environmental regulation, albeit it now combines it with a higher regulated output for the inefficient firm type under incomplete information vis-…-vis the case of no-lobbying activity.

Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An econometric analysis

The theory predicts that IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Stronger IPRs increase the demand for skilled labor force as it raises the return on R&D activities. This causes a relative increase in skilled labor wages, creating a wage bias in favor of skilled labor against unskilled labor, thus aggravating income inequality within a country. Using dynamic panel data techniques and a sample of 60 countries over 1980-2011, we examine the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on income distribution of a country. Our results indicate that contrary to findings of previous research, strengthening of IPRs reduces income disparities within a country

Endogenous human capital formation, distance to frontier and growth

We examine human capital's contribution to economy-wide technological progress through two channels -- imitation and innovation -- innovation being more skilled-intensive than innovation. We develop a growth model considering an endogenous ability-driven skill acquisition decision of an individual. We show that skilled labor is growth enhancing in the ``imitation-innovation" regime and the ``innovation-only" regime whereas unskilled labor is growth enhancing in the ``imitation-only" regime. Steady state exists and, in the long run, an economy may or may not converge to the world technology frontier, depending on its initial position and the growth rate of the frontier economy. In the diversified regime, technological progress raises the return to ability and generates an increase in wage inequality between and within groups -- consistent with the pattern observed across countries

Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An econometric analysis

The theory predicts that IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Stronger IPRs increase the demand for skilled labor force as it raises the return on R&D activities. This causes a relative increase in skilled labor wages, creating a wage bias in favor of skilled labor against unskilled labor, thus aggravating income inequality within a country. Using dynamic panel data techniques and a sample of 55 countries over 1980-2011, we examine the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on income distribution of a country. Our results indicate that the impact of IPRs on income distribution is contingent upon level of development of a country.Strengthening of IPRs increases income inequality in countries with higher level of development having higher ability to innovate

Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An econometric analysis

This paper examines the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on within-country income inequality for a cross-section of 65 developed and developing countries for the time period 1995-2009.Our results indicate that strengthening of IPRs has led to an increase in income inequality in WTO-member developing countries after they started modifying their national IPR regimes to conform to the TRIPs requirements. IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Stronger IPRs increase the demand for skilled labor force as it raises the return on R&D activities. This causes a relative increase in skilled labor wages, creating a wage bias in favor of skilled labor against unskilled labor, thus aggravating income inequality within a developing country. Moreover, the effect on inequality is more pronounced for developing countries that are experiencing higher per capita GDP growth rates. As for the developed countries included in the sample, the analysis seems to suggest that IPRs have led to a decline in income inequality over the study period

Impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights Regime on income inequality: An econometric analysis

The theory predicts that IPRs tend to raise income inequality by generating a more skewed distribution of wages. Stronger IPRs increase the demand for skilled labor force as it raises the return on R&D activities. This causes a relative increase in skilled labor wages, creating a wage bias in favor of skilled labor against unskilled labor, thus aggravating income inequality within a country. Using dynamic panel data techniques and a sample of 60 countries over 1980-2011, we examine the impact of strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on income distribution of a country. Our results indicate that contrary to findings of previous research, strengthening of IPRs reduces income disparities within a country

Knowledge priorities on climate change and water in the Upper Indus Basin: a horizon scanning exercise to identify the top 100 research questions in social and natural sciences

River systems originating from the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) are dominated by runoff from snow and glacier melt and summer monsoonal rainfall. These water resources are highly stressed as huge populations of people living in this region depend on them, including for agriculture, domestic use, and energy production. Projections suggest that the UIB region will be affected by considerable (yet poorly quantified) changes to the seasonality and composition of runoff in the future, which are likely to have considerable impacts on these supplies. Given how directly and indirectly communities and ecosystems are dependent on these resources and the growing pressure on them due to ever-increasing demands, the impacts of climate change pose considerable adaptation challenges. The strong linkages between hydroclimate, cryosphere, water resources, and human activities within the UIB suggest that a multi- and inter-disciplinary research approach integrating the social and natural/environmental sciences is critical for successful adaptation to ongoing and future hydrological and climate change. Here we use a horizon scanning technique to identify the Top 100 questions related to the most pressing knowledge gaps and research priorities in social and natural sciences on climate change and water in the UIB. These questions are on the margins of current thinking and investigation and are clustered into 14 themes, covering three overarching topics of “governance, policy, and sustainable solutions”, “socioeconomic processes and livelihoods”, and “integrated Earth System processes”. Raising awareness of these cutting-edge knowledge gaps and opportunities will hopefully encourage researchers, funding bodies, practitioners, and policy makers to address them

Knowledge Priorities on Climate Change and Water in the Upper Indus Basin: A Horizon Scanning Exercise to Identify the Top 100 Research Questions in Social and Natural Sciences

River systems originating from the Upper Indus Basin (UIB) are dominated by runoff from snow and glacier melt and summer monsoonal rainfall. These water resources are highly stressed as huge populations of people living in this region depend on them, including for agriculture, domestic use, and energy production. Projections suggest that the UIB region will be affected by considerable (yet poorly quantified) changes to the seasonality and composition of runoff in the future, which are likely to have considerable impacts on these supplies. Given how directly and indirectly communities and ecosystems are dependent on these resources and the growing pressure on them due to ever-increasing demands, the impacts of climate change pose considerable adaptation challenges. The strong linkages between hydroclimate, cryosphere, water resources, and human activities within the UIB suggest that a multi- and inter-disciplinary research approach integrating the social and natural/environmental sciences is critical for successful adaptation to ongoing and future hydrological and climate change. Here we use a horizon scanning technique to identify the Top 100 questions related to the most pressing knowledge gaps and research priorities in social and natural sciences on climate change and water in the UIB. These questions are on the margins of current thinking and investigation and are clustered into 14 themes, covering three overarching topics of ‘governance, policy, and sustainable solutions’, ‘socioeconomic processes and livelihoods’, and ‘integrated Earth System processes’. Raising awareness of these cutting-edge knowledge gaps and opportunities will hopefully encourage researchers, funding bodies, practitioners, and policy makers to address them

Joint knowledge production in climate change adaptation networks

Adaptation to changing and new environmental conditions is of fundamental importance to sustainability and requires concerted efforts amongst science, policy, and practice to produce solution-oriented knowledge. Joint knowledge production or co-production of knowledge have become increasingly popular terms to describe the process of scientists, policy makers and actors from the civil society coming together to cooperate in the production, dissemination, and application of knowledge to solve wicked problems such as climate change.Networks are particularly suited to produce knowledge in a joint fashion. However, the process of joint knowledge production (JKP) in networks has rarely been examined. In this paper, we present a sketch of the adaptation network landscape and assess how joint knowledge production supports the development of solution-oriented knowledge in climate change adaptation networks. We conclude that the processes of JKP are diverse, complex, and highly dependent on the interests and roles of actors within the network. To keep such processes alive, signposts in form of analysis and intermediary products along the network lifetime should be positioned as means of stocktaking and monitoring for the future