65 research outputs found
An Optimal Size for Rural Tourism Villages with Agglomeration and Club-Good Effects
No full textHelping to sustain a viable rural sector, rural tourism enjoys public support in many countries. We claim that due to club-good and agglomeration externalities in the rural accommodation market, public support should be integrated in a broader local development policy that regulates the number of accommodation units in a locality. To demonstrate this we extended an equilibrium model that accounts for product differentiation and oligopolistic competition to address club-good and agglomeration effects and applied it to data collected in north Israel. We show that under the prevailing regulation, the number of units is by far higher than the social optimum.Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, Political Economy,
São Thomé das Letras e São Jorge : gênese, conflito e identidade na constituição dos atrativos para um mercado turístico
No full textEste trabalho é resultado de uma dissertação de mestrado (defendida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social da Universidade de Brasília (PPGAS/UnB)) e de uma monografia de especialização (apresentada
no Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas Ambientais da Universidade de Campinas
(Nepam/Unicamp)). Na primeira, David Ivan Fleischer realizou estudo
no município de São Thomé das Letras, em Minas Gerais, sobre conflitos
sociais que existiam entre nativos e forasteiros, a partir da análise de situações
específicas como mineração, turismo, festas locais, religião e patrimônio
histórico. Na segunda, trabalho multidisciplinar de vários autores, Rodrigo
Paranhos Faleiro dedica-se a analisar o povoado de São Jorge, no município de
Alto Paraíso, em Goiás, para subsidiar a discussão central sobre a viabilidade
ou não do turismo ecológico.Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS)Departamento de Estudos Latino-americanos (ICS ELA
The Role of Cybermediaries in the Hotel Market
No full textThe advent of the Internet changed the way buyers and sellers interact. Although access to information seems unlimited, non-expert agents find it difficult to identify the information they can confidently use. A third-party expert or a cybermediary (an intermediary in the cyberspace) can help sort out the information for the contracting partners. In this paper, we study the case of the online hotel market and the role of the cyber travel agent (CTA). We claim that CTAs encourage hoteliers to exert effort in service quality and provide empirical evidence that these hotels are compensated with a price premium.Cybermediaries, Internet, travel agents, reputation, hotel market, Agricultural Finance, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,
Conservation and Ecotourism in Brazil and Mexico: The Development Impact
No full textConservation projects alter local productive modes and have an impact on livelihoods. For example, sea turtle conservation projects affect fishing communities through hunting restrictions. It is not painless for communities to improve fishing technology in order to prevent the accidental capture of sea turtles. The inability to adapt to environmental requirements forces fishermen to abandon traditional livelihoods. A combination of environmental conservation and ecotourism development can provide the solution. (...)Conservation and Ecotourism in Brazil and Mexico: The Development Impact
IRRIGATION PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS WITH WATER-CAPITAL SUBSTITUTION
No full textThe dynamics of biomass growth implies that the yield of irrigated crops depends, in addition to the total amount of water applied, on irrigation scheduling during the growing period. Advanced irrigation technologies relax constraints on irrigation rates and timing, allowing to better adjust irrigation scheduling to the varying needs of the plants along the growing period. Irrigation production functions, then, should include capital (or expenditures on irrigation equipment) in addition to aggregate water. We derive such functions and study their water-capital substitution properties. Implications for water demand and adoption of irrigation technologies are investigated. An empirical application confirms these properties.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
LAND REFORM AND DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL LAND MARKETS IN RUSSIA
No full textRussia has experienced dramatic changes in land ownership and land tenure since the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991: agricultural land has been largely privatized, individual landowners now have legal rights to most agricultural land in the country, and previous prohibitions on buying and selling of land have been removed by recent laws. The necessary preconditions for the development of agricultural land markets have been met and we are beginning to witness transactions that involve individual landowners, and not only the state. However, further development of the embryonic land market is severely circumscribed by the inadequacy of the administrative and technical infrastructure. In this paper we discuss the dynamically evolving legal framework for land reform, consider the impacts of land reform on privatization and ownership structure of agricultural land, and analyze the development of land market transactions. The analysis is based on official statistical sources and the results of a questionnaire-based survey conducted by the authors in 2003 in three regions. The paper concludes with a review of the existing constraints on land transactions and some policy recommendations.International Development, Land Economics/Use,
TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE
No full textFor decades, Russian agriculture had had little technological progress and virtually no foreign investment, which resulted in a stable production possibilities frontier and made the sector ideally suited to production function analysis. The production function estimations reported in Chapters 10-13 add to a series of previous studies of the input/output relationship in Russian agriculture (e.g., Clayton, 1980, 1984; Gray, 1981; Johnson and Brooks, 1983), which generally followed the same methodology. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, however, the average response production functions gave way in the economics literature to more sophisticated production analysis techniques that measured not only productivity but technical efficiency as well (Aigner, et al., 1977; Bauer, 1990). Some of the major methodological advances in applying technical efficiency analysis to individual firms were made by a joint Russian-American team in Moscow in the early 1980s (Jondrow, et al., 1982; Danlin et al., 1985), but lack of data for many sectors of the Russian economy precluded the application of this technique until the end of the decade. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the initial optimistic expectation was that many sectors of the new Russian economy could rapidly achieve both higher productivity and higher technical efficiency once market forces prevailed. Our research attempts to understand why this has not happened in Russian agriculture in terms of technical efficiency.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
LAND CONSOLIDATION AS A FACTOR FOR SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN MOLDOVA
No full textSince 1991, Moldova has carried out a wide range of radical reforms affecting its social and economic system. The land reform, which was practically completed in 2000, created over 1 million landowners among the rural population. Many of them entrusted their land to managers of newly created corporate farms. Others used their privately owned land to establish independent family farms. The creation of independent family farms (so-called "peasant farms") was one of the primary goals of the land reform. More than 280,000 peasant farms have been created, averaging 1,86 hectares in size. The small size of the peasant farms, whose holdings are furthermore split into 3-4 parcels, raises considerable concerns about their long-term viability and has led to an intense public debate regarding the impacts of fragmentation. In this paper, we use the data from several recent surveys in Moldova to support the case for land consolidation. We show that, in the individual sector, larger farms produce higher family incomes and thus farm augmentation makes a positive contribution to the well-being of the rural population. We also show that, for farms of a given size, productivity increases as the number of parcels decreases. After demonstrating the economic advantages of consolidation, we proceed to discuss the actual use of various market mechanisms for land consolidation, including leasing as well as buying and selling of land. We then show that, in our surveys, farms with leased land are in fact larger than farms that rely on owned land only. This completes the logical circle of our argument: land consolidation leads to better economic performance, while land leasing is actually used as a market mechanism for consolidation, which benefits both lessees (through increased farm incomes) and lessors (through income from lease payments for their land).land consolidation, land lease, land market, Moldova, Land Economics/Use,
DOES LAND REFORM IN TRANSITION COUNTRIES INCREASE CHILD LABOR? EVIDENCE FROM THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
No full textThis paper investigates the issue of child labor in the context of land reforms in transition economies, using farm household data from the Republic of Georgia. The results show that an increase in landholdings as an outcome of the land reform can, in the presence of market imperfections, lead to an increase in child labor. This is because the increased demand for labor on the family farm is stronger than the wealth effect generated by the land reform. However, this result is not uniform across farm families. First, it is only relevant for boys, because girls tend to assist in household activities rather than in farm work. Second, larger households are able to meet the increased demand for farm labor without the need for additional child labor. To the extent that smaller households tend to be poorer, it is mostly the poor households that sacrifice the future wellbeing of their male children in order to satisfy current needs. In this sense, the land reform may lead to a higher rural inequality in the long run. The policy implications are that land reforms in transition countries should include, as an integral ingredient, the development of rural land, labor and credit markets, in order to avoid the repercussions associated with increased child labor.Labor and Human Capital, Land Economics/Use,
On the Theory and Practice of Water Regulation
No full textWe study water regulation for a schematic water economy representing a wide range of real world situations. A water policy has inter- and intra-temporal components. The first determines the limits on extractions from the naturally replenished sources, given the stochastic nature of recharge processes associated with uncertain precipitation. The intra-temporal regulation is concerned mainly with the allocating of the extracted and produced water among the end-users. The prices that implement the optimal intra-temporal allocation are derived. Regulation issues associated with cost recovery and asymmetric information are discussed.scarcity, pricing, optimal allocation, water economy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, C61, D82, Q11, Q25,
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