Local-level public goods and collective action

According to the author, "Given the vital importance of public goods in providing basic services necessary for alleviating poverty and in managing the local natural resource base for sustainable development, this brief offers an approach to understanding the problems communities face in providing different kinds of public goods." She examines why some public goods are "easier" to provide than others and why some communities are more successful than others in providing public goods and then explains the implications for policymakers. from Text.Public goods ,Poverty alleviation ,Collective action ,

The relationship between collective action and intensification of livestock production: the case of Northeastern Burkina Faso

In this paper, we develop a simple game-theoretic model to explore the relationship between management of common pool resources used as an input in livestock production (common pastures) and the adoption of inputs associated with intensified per animal production (veterinary services, purchased fodder, feed concentrates, etc.). Theoretically, it is shown that better managed pastures should lead to increased adoption of complementary inputs but decrease adoption of substitute inputs; impacts on stock levels, however, are ambiguous. An empirical model is developed and applied to data collected in northeast Burkina Faso in 2000 and 2002. Results indicate that better managed pastures, proxied by community-level cooperative capacity indices, are indeed associated with lower purchases of substitute goods, e.g. purchases of low-value feeds and greater purchases of complementary inputs, e.g. high-quality feeds. However, purchase of vaccines, likely to be a compliment in livestock production, is not associated with cooperative capacity.Collective action, game theory, common property, Capacity,

THE POTENTIAL ROLE OF PRICE INSURANCE TO IMPROVE WELFARE OF HONDURAN COFFEE PRODUCERS

Coffee is the major export crop in Honduras, but the export price is relatively low. This paper investigates the potential role for a coffee price insurance product - based on the use of the coffee future market - to increasing producer welfare by reducing coffee price risk faced by individual farmers. By constructing a typology of six different types of coffee farmers and developing a forecasting model, the authors show that more risk-averse farmers would prefer to buy the insurance contract than those with lower risk aversion. The subjective assessments analysis also show that Honduran coffee producers have optimistic expectations for coffee prices and appear to underestimate the variability of coffee prices.Risk and Uncertainty,

Institutional options for managing rangelands

"This brief considers the benefits and costs of alternative tenure and institutional arrangements and the impact of existing legal and policy frameworks on the sustainability and equity of pastoral production systems under three categories of landownership: (1) state ownership; (2) individual ownership; and (3) common property... Achieving efficient, equitable, and sustainable rangeland management depends on the costs and benefits of alternative systems. These costs and benefits, in turn, depend on agroecological, sociocultural, and economic characteristics. The conservation and management of rangelands require not only tenure security, but also an understanding of local livestock production and risk management strategies and factors that promote collective action, which can then be integrated into national policy formulation strategies and project designs." from Text.Property rights ,Public goods ,Poverty alleviation ,Common property ,Collective action ,

Liability Rules, Collective Organizations and the Provision of Food Safety

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Animal health and the role of communities: an example of trypanasomosis control options in Uganda

In many African countries, governments are re-thinking the role of the state in centrally providing certain goods and services. The rights and responsibilities for providing various public goods are being decentralized to lower levels of government administration, and/or being devolved directly to local citizens or user groups themselves. It is thus critical to ask: under what circumstances will local groups provide the socially optimal level of the public good? In this paper, we apply this question to the case of controlling an important vector-borne livestock disease in Uganda, trypanosomosis, which is transmitted by the tsetse fly. We investigate the underlying epidemiology of transmission and different options for control, and the implications for group provision of control, within the framework of a game-theoretic model. Results indicate that individual incentives to uptake tsetse and trypanosomosis control differ widely across different control methods. Since the costs of successfully implementing collective action are affected by individual incentives to participate in collective action, the model predicts which method/s are likely to be successfully implemented at the community level. More broadly, the model highlights under what circumstances community-provision is not likely to be optimal, depending on the underlying epidemiology of the disease, technological parameters, prevailing market characteristics, and socio-cultural conditions.

Participation by men and women in off-farm activities: An empirical analysis in rural northern Ghana

"Using survey data from the Upper East region of Ghana collected in 2005, the paper evaluates the household- and community-level factors influencing women's and men's decisions to participate in off-farm activities, either in the off-farm labor market or in local community groups, and the relationship with on-farm crop returns. Results indicate that crop returns are not affected by increased labor availability over a certain labor-land ratio. Female participation in off-farm labor markets increases at higher levels of labor availability, but participation in women's groups' only increases as labor scarcity is relaxed at lower levels. Alternatively, male participation in off-farm work increases over all levels of labor availability. Results also indicate that male labor is relatively more productive on-farm versus off-farm than female labor, and, though education increases the likelihood that both women and men will work off-farm (with no impact on crop revenues), the impact is greater for women. Finally, participation in off-farm work does not appear to be driven by the need to reduce exposure to risk or to manage risk ex post; wealthier households located in wealthier communities are more likely to participate in off-farm work. Evidence for participation in groups and risk is more complicated; wealthier households in wealthier communities are also more likely to participate, but so too are female-headed households with higher dependency ratios." from authors' abstractOff-farm labor supply, Participation, Community groups, Gender, Land management, Poverty reduction,

The effect of environmental variability on livestock and land-use management: the Borana Plateau, Southern Ethiopia

The Borana people are the predominant ethnic group on the Borana Plateau in southern Ethiopia, who have recently increased their reliance on crops. Rainfall in the region averages between 353 mm to 873 mm; variability is high, with coefficients of variation ranging from .21 to .68. Anectdotal evidence implies that the vulnerability of pastoralist households to drought is increasing; stock levels increase dramatically during good rainfall years but plummet when rainfall is poor, indicating that the drought cycle is becoming more pronounced. In recent years, there has also been a dramatic increase in land allocated to crops, and land allocated to pastures that are either privatized or accessible to only a small sub-group of people. It is hypothesized that one of the key determinants of the productivity and sustainability of the systems is the ability of community members to cooperate over the use and maintenance of these resources. In this paper, we develop indicators of cooperation and examine factors affecting these indicators. We then use these indicators to determine the impact of cooperation on stock densities and land allocation patterns. Results indicate that cooperation is positively related to factors that increase the profitability of livestock, but negatively related to the total number of households, the use of community pastures by non-community members, and heterogeneity of wealth within the community.Ethiopia., Pastoral systems Environmental aspects Africa., Land use Ethiopia., Livestock., Crops.,

About efficiency of collective provision of NRM investments in Burkina Faso

This paper presents an analysis of the importance of collective action for the realization of Natural Resource Management (NRM) investments and its effect on community-level efficiency in the provision of NRM investments. This study is based on survey data collected in 2002 in 78 villages of northeastern Burkina Faso. The general cooperative capacity of each community is first recovered for any type of collective activity and is then used to explain the probability of a community undertaking reforestation activities and/or stone bunds construction, as well as to explain the efficiency level in the realization of those investments. Empirical results show that greater cooperative capacity indeed increases the likelihood of NRM investments to be undertaken at the community level; however, greater cooperative capacity also appears to lead to inefficient provision of these public goods. (Résumé d'auteur

Excitable neurons, firing threshold manifolds and canards

We investigate firing threshold manifolds in a mathematical model of an excitable neuron. The model analyzed investigates the phenomenon of post-inhibitory rebound spiking due to propofol anesthesia and is adapted from McCarthy et al. (SIAM J. Appl. Dyn. Syst. 11(4):1674-1697, 2012). Propofol modulates the decay time-scale of an inhibitory GABAa synaptic current. Interestingly, this system gives rise to rebound spiking within a specific range of propofol doses. Using techniques from geometric singular perturbation theory, we identify geometric structures, known as canards of folded saddle-type, which form the firing threshold manifolds. We find that the position and orientation of the canard separatrix is propofol dependent. Thus, the speeds of relevant slow synaptic processes are encoded within this geometric structure. We show that this behavior cannot be understood using a static, inhibitory current step protocol, which can provide a single threshold for rebound spiking but cannot explain the observed cessation of spiking for higher propofol doses. We then compare the analyses of dynamic and static synaptic inhibition, showing how the firing threshold manifolds of each relate, and why a current step approach is unable to fully capture the behavior of this model