A NOTE ON THE EFFICIENCY OF INCOME REDISTRIBUTION WITH SIMPLE AND COMBINED POLICIES

Recent studies have investigated the efficiencies of policies that use several policy instruments simultaneously (for example, a policy that uses a production subsidy combined with a production quota). Several studies of very specific cases find that optimal combination of two policy instruments is more efficient than optimal independent use of either. In this note we demonstrate using set theory and maximization theory, that all such specific results are examples of a more general result, which is that by combining m instruments efficiently, a government can always be at least as efficient as when using a subset of those m instruments. This result holds for any of the several definitions of "efficiency" in the literature.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Steigerung der Marktorientierung von oberösterreichischen KMU durch externen Wissenstransfer

Due to the ever faster changing framework conditions on the markets, market orientation as a strategic approach to corporate management today represents a key factor for success and survival for companies. However, especially companies in the SME sector have problems in implementing this approach in business practice. Almost 50 % of all newly founded SMEs do not survive the first five years of their life and one of the main reasons for this is the lack of alignment of entrepreneurial thinking and action with market conditions. For this reason, science demands a professionalization of marketing in SMEs as well and sees a need for research in this respect to determine where the concrete deficits in the marketing process lie in practice and how these deficits can be reduced through external knowledge transfer. This paper addresses this problem and examines it on the basis of the Austrian specific situation of the Chamber of Commerce as knowledge provider and its member companies as knowledge consumers. This special constellation allows the investigation of the phenomenon under the idealized conditions that firstly, there is a simplified access to knowledge because the chamber of commerce approaches the enterprises proactively and secondly, the factor of high costs of external consulting is eliminated because the chamber of commerce charges only very moderate contributions towards expenses for its qualification services to the member enterprises. Since this field of research is relatively unexplored in connection with the specific constellation prevailing in Austria, an explorative approach was chosen. The aim is to discover correlations and recognize qualitative potentials with regard to the phenomenon of further development of the marketing process in SMEs through external knowledge transfer. The investigation is based on a single case study of the Chamber of Commerce with the member companies as embedded analysis units. In addition, the views of five experts on marketing in SMEs are obtained by means of interviews in the sense of a triangulation. The research results showed that the central deficits in the companies' marketing process are in the area of strategic marketing and especially in the situation analysis. Despite the idealized conditions prevailing in Upper Austria, these deficits are generally not eliminated by the inclusion of external know-how, as entrepreneurs in the SME sector do not recognize the necessity of a comprehensive, company-specific marketing concept

The Economics of Delaying Policy Change: An Application to the 1992 CAP Reform

Positive political economy is usually concerned with economic explanations of observed policy choices, while the timing of a policy reform has not gained similar attention. This is somewhat surprising since policy makers most often are free to decide both the design and timing of a policy reform. Drawing on insights from recent developments in the finance literature on investment under uncertainty, here we apply the idea of option value to the analysis of government policy making. Common political-economic explanations of the 1992 CAP reform are that policymakers felt domestic political pressure to make the CAP more efficient, and also international political pressure and to bring the CAP in line with treaty obligations. Although these arguments are sound, they fail to explain why policy-makers did not enact the reform earlier, especially during times of decreasing world market prices prior to 1992. We address this question using the theory of option value, which is the value of being able to wait in decisionmaking. Commonly governments are free to decide when to reform policy. Waiting to reform policy can improve government decisions. For while waiting decision-makers may observe market parameter changes as they occur. (For example, they may obtain better information about changes in world prices.) This reduces their uncertainty about the effects of their decisions. Giving up the option to wait incurs a cost which has to be taken into account in policy decisions. We illustrate the option value concept using a political-economy model of the 1992 CAP reform. We show empirically that if decision-makers had not had the option to wait to reform policy, it would have been more efficient to implement the 1992 CAP reform in the mid 1980s.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Towards a Theory of Policy Making

The paper presents a theory of policy timing that relies on uncertainty and transaction costs to explain the optimal timing and length of policy reforms. Delaying reforms resolves some uncertainty by gaining valuable information and saves transaction costs. Implementing reforms without waiting increases welfare by adjusting domestic policies to changed market parameters. Optimal policy timing is found by balancing the trade-off between delaying reforms and implementing reforms without waiting. Our theory offers an explanation of why countries differ with respect to the length of their policy reforms, and why applied studies often judge agricultural policies to be inefficient.Policy analysis, Uncertainty, Dynamic model, Transaction costs, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Preliminary Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Great Western Development Strategy: Safeguarding Ecological Security for a New Western China

The Great Western Development Strategy (GWDS) is a long term national campaign aimed at boosting development of the western area of China and narrowing the economic gap between the western and the eastern parts of China. The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) procedure was employed to assess the environmental challenges brought about by the western development plans. These plans include five key developmental domains (KDDs): water resource exploitation and use, land utilization, energy generation, tourism development, and ecological restoration and conservation. A combination of methods involving matrix assessment, incorporation of expert judgment and trend analysis was employed to analyze and predict the environmental impacts upon eight selected environmental indicators: water resource availability, soil erosion, soil salinization, forest destruction, land desertification, biological diversity, water quality and air quality. Based on the overall results of the assessment, countermeasures for environmental challenges that emerged were raised as key recommendations to ensure ecological security during the implementation of the GWDS. This paper is intended to introduce a consensus-based process for evaluating the complex, long term pressures on the ecological security of large areas, such as western China, that focuses on the use of combined methods applied at the strategic level

“Control-Alt-Delete”: Rebooting Solutions for the E-Waste Problem

A number of efforts have been launched to solve the global electronic waste (e-waste) problem. The efficiency of e-waste recycling is subject to variable national legislation, technical capacity, consumer participation, and even detoxification. E-waste management activities result in procedural irregularities and risk disparities across national boundaries. We review these variables to reveal opportunities for research and policy to reduce the risks from accumulating e-waste and ineffective recycling. Full regulation and consumer participation should be controlled and reinforced to improve local e-waste system. Aiming at standardizing best practice, we alter and identify modular recycling process and infrastructure in eco-industrial parks that will be expectantly effective in countries and regions to handle the similar e-waste stream. Toxicity can be deleted through material substitution and detoxification during the life cycle of electronics. Based on the idea of "Control-Alt-Delete", four patterns of the way forward for global e-waste recycling are proposed to meet a variety of local situations

Measuring the social costs of suboptimal combinations of policy instruments: A general framework and an example

Since most agricultural programs employ two or more policy instruments simultaneously, it is notable that little research has attempted to find optimal instrument combinations and no research exists which evaluates the social costs (unrealized benefits) of combining instruments suboptimally. In our paper we report a simple and feasible method to find optimal policy instrument combinations, and we provide the first general, formal approach to measuring the social costs of suboptimal policy instrument combinations. Our approach is illustrated in an analysis for five major U.S. crops (com, feed grains, wheat, rice, cotton). The simple model we employ for the illustration suggests that except for the feed grains program, the observed programs combined policy instruments quite suboptimally. We conclude that agricultural economics research now can and should begin placing increased emphasis on studying optimal policy instrument combinations. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

A NOTE ON THE EFFICIENCY OF INCOME REDISTRIBUTION WITH SIMPLE AND COMBINED POLICIES

Recent studies have investigated the efficiencies of policies that use several policy instruments simultaneously (for example, a policy that uses a production subsidy combined with a production quota). Several studies of very specific cases find that optimal combination of two policy instruments is more efficient than optimal independent use of either. In this note we demonstrate using set theory and maximization theory, that all such specific results are examples of a more general result, which is that by combining m instruments efficiently, a government can always be at least as efficient as when using a subset of those m instruments. This result holds for any of the several definitions of "efficiency" in the literature