The evolution of peasant economy in the industrial center of Russia at the end of the XIXth - beginning of the XXth century: (according to the Zemstvo statistical data)

Die Kontroverse um den russischen Agrarkapitalismus ist ein Jahrhundert alt. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Faktoren, die die Evolution der Landwirtschaft im industriellen Zentrum Rußlands um die Jahrhundertwende determinieren. Eingegangen wird dabei auf die Arbeitsmarktstrukturen, unternehmerische Aktivitäten hinsichtlich industrieller Produktion und die Verteilung und Nutzung landwirtschaftlicher Flächen. Die Daten von 27 Verwaltungsbezirken (uyezds) werden mittels einer Komponentenanalyse, einem Regressionsmodell und der Methode additiver fuzzy-sets analysiert. (pmb)'The dispute on Russian agrarian capitalism is a century old. The author's aim is to reveal and to analyse the factors which determined the evolution of peasant economy in the Industrial Center on the turn of the century. The conditions for the development of the hiring of labourers, industrial activity and peasant land in use were also brought to light. The research was carrried out on the uyezds results of Zemstvo statistics. The methods used are: principal components analysis, regression models on the principal components and one of the new methods - the method of additive fuzzy types.' (author's abstract

Adoption subsidy versus technology standards under asymmetric information

Market-based instruments are believed to create more efficient incentives for firms to adopt new technologies than command-and-control policies. We compare the effects of a direct technology regulation and of an adoption subsidy under asymmetric information about the costs of technological advances in controlling the socially undesirable activities. We show that the policy maker may want to commit to her policy. The reason is that asymmetric information about adoption costs induces the policy maker to set subsidy levels that increase over time; firms, expecting higher subsidies in the future, postpone investment. Direct regulation offers a commitment possibility that allows to prevent firms from postponing investment

The optimal degree of polarization

In the literature on electoral politics, full convergence of policy platforms is usually regarded as socially optimal. The reason is that risk-averse voters prefer a sure middle-of-the-road policy to a lottery of two extremes with the same expectation. In this paper, we study the normative implications of convergence in a simple model of electoral competition, in which parties are uncertain about voters' preferences. We show that, if political parties have incomplete information about voters' preferences, the voters may prefer some degree of policy divergence. The intuition is that policy divergence enables voters to correct policies that are based on a wrong perception of their preferences

How Polarization and Political Instability affect Learning through Experimentation

In a multiperiod setting, decision-makers can learn about the consequences of their decisions throughexperimentation. In this paper we examine how in a two-party system polarization and political instability affectlearning through experimentation. We distinguish two cases:the decision to be made is not salient and does notaffect the outcome of the following elections (exogenous elections) andthe decision is salient and the election outcome depends on it (endogenous elections).We show that while the possibility of learning increases activism,the existence of political instability distorts learning. Furthermore, in contrast to the existing literature, wedemonstrate that, when elections are exogenous, polarization between political parties does not always decreaseactive learning. In the case with endogenous elections we find that electoral concerns may induce candidates not toexperiment, even if the majority of voters prefers activism.Active learning; Elections; Polarization

Adoption Subsidy Versus Technology Standards Under Asymmetric Information

abatement technologies, asymmetric information, command-and-control instruments, market-based instruments, D80, H23, O38,