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Government Subsidies (government + subsidy)
Selected AbstractsLessons from the past: the collapse of Jamaican coral reefsFISH AND FISHERIES, Issue 2 2009Marah J. Hardt Abstract Since Pre-Columbian times, humans have exploited Jamaican marine ecosystems with significant consequences for flora and fauna. This study focuses on the history of reef fish exploitation in Jamaica, from first human occupation to the present day, to determine how past fishing activities contributed to subsequent declines in the coral reef ecosystem. The pattern of declining reef fish populations was nonlinear. Reef fish first declined in prehistoric times but then potentially recovered, following genocide of the native human population. Reduced fishing pressure lasted until the mid-19th century. At that time, depletion of reef fish populations again occurred with a precipitous decline from the 1850s to the 1940s. The final shift from relatively abundant to overfished marine fauna corresponded to subtle changes in fish trap design as well as development of recreational fishing. Government subsidies throughout the second half of the 20th century exacerbated the declines. This analysis shows that local artisanal fisheries with relatively low levels of effort and seemingly subtle shifts in technology can significantly impact the coral reef ecosystem and that declines occurred decades to centuries before modern ecological studies began. This research shows how historical analysis can be a powerful tool to minimize shifted baselines and establish realistic targets for recovery and sustainable management of marine ecosystems. [source] Past and future sustainability of water policies in EuropeNATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 3 2003Bernard Barraqué The article contributes to a discussion on two global issues on water: water resources management, and water supply and sanitation. Focusing on Europe, it traces the legal roots of current systems in history: as a resource, water is considered as a common property, rather than a market good; while as a public service it is usually a commodity. Public water supply and sanitation technologies and engineering have developed under three main paradigms: quantitative and civil engineering; qualitative and chemical/sanitary engineering (both on the supply side); and the most recent one, environmental engineering and integrated management (on the demand side). The cost of public drinking water is due to rise sharply in view of the two-fold financial challenge of replacing an ageing infrastructure and keeping up with ever-rising environmental and sanitary quality standards. Who will pay? Government subsidies, or water users? The author suggests that apparent successes with privatisation may have relied heavily on hidden government subsidies and/or the healthy state of previously installed water infrastructure: past government subsidies are still felt for as long as the lifetime of the infrastructure. The article stresses the importance of public participation and decentralized local management of water and sanitation services. Informing and involving users in water management decisions is seen as an integral part of the ,ethics' side of the crucial three E's (economics, environment, ethics). The article strongly argues for municipal provision of water services, and hopes that lessons learnt and solutions found in the European experience may serve water services management efforts in other regions of the world. [source] The Economics of Carbon Abatement: An Integrated Diagrammatic FrameworkECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2009Ross Guest Q54; Q52; Q48 The aim of this article is to present the economics of carbon abatement in an integrated framework with application to key policy questions. While the core ideas are well known, the innovation here is to integrate the marginal costs and benefits of carbon abatement with the market for carbon permits in a diagrammatic framework. This framework is then used to analyse a range of issues in the public debate about carbon abatement and carbon trading schemes, such as special assistance for certain industries, tax concessions on particular carbon-intensive goods such as petrol, government subsidies for renewable energy, and the effects of uncertainty and technological change. [source] Demand and Supply of Auditing in IPOs: An Empirical Analysis of the Québec MarketINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 3 2000Jean Bédard This study examines the factors affecting the demand for higher-quality auditors at the time of an initial public offering in a small market characterized by low-litigation risk, government subsidies for companies going public, and the presence of large non-Big Six auditors, namely, the Canadian province of Québec. Our results, from an analysis of 212 Québec IPOs between 1983 and 1997, indicate that the choice of an auditor at the time of an IPO is significantly affected by the company's risk, size, and geographical dispersion. They also suggest that the Québec audit market is segmented between three types of service providers: the Big Six, the National firms and the Local firms. Local firms audit small local companies with low risk, National firms audit large local companies with moderate risk, and the Big Six audit large geographically dispersed companies with high risk. [source] Relationships among levels of government support, marketing activities, and financial health of nonprofit performing arts organizationsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NONPROFIT & VOLUNTARY SECTOR MARKETING, Issue 2 2007Theresa A. Kirchner This exploratory study researches and analyzes the empirical effects of financial levels of government support and marketing practices on the financial health of nonprofit performing arts organizations. Declining government subsidies and increasing competition from non-traditional sources have presented these organizations with unique opportunities and challenges that call for a market-centered, as well as an art-centered approach. Financial health is critical for the long-term success of a nonprofit performing arts organization. Few empirical studies have examined the interrelationships between these key variables. This study analyzes a sample of 63 American professional symphony orchestras employing 20 years of data. The correlations among financial levels of government support and marketing activities were positive and significant, the correlations among levels of government support and financial health were negative and significant, and the correlations between levels of marketing activity and financial health were negative and varied in significance. Causal analyses were less conclusive, but significant causal relationships were found for large symphony orchestras, indicating that segmentation research may be warranted. Implications and opportunities for future research are presented which have potential application for government agencies, academic researchers, and arts organization managers, boards of directors, and donors. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] GENTRIFICATION AND THE GRASSROOTS: POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REVANCHIST SUBURBJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2006Christopher Niedt Drawing from a year of fieldwork in Dundalk, MD, I argue that developers and the neoliberal state will probably find popular support for gentrification as they reinvest in the politically divided industrial suburbs of the United States. Local homeowners and community associations have emerged as gentrification supporters for three interrelated reasons. First, many of them have drawn from a resurgent national conservatism to explain decline as an effect of government subsidies and "people from the city;" their desire to reclaim suburban space,a "suburban revanchism",although avoiding accusations of racism makes gentrification-induced displacement appealing. Second, the rebirth of urban neighborhoods and other industrial suburbs provides visual evidence of gentrification's success. Third, the neoliberal state's retreat from social programs and its emphasis on private-sector redevelopment allay suspicion of government and enable collaboration between the local state, developers, and homeowners. The redevelopment efforts of two local organizations illustrate how residents have become indispensable partners in Dundalk's emergent pro-gentrification coalition. [source] Past and future sustainability of water policies in EuropeNATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 3 2003Bernard Barraqué The article contributes to a discussion on two global issues on water: water resources management, and water supply and sanitation. Focusing on Europe, it traces the legal roots of current systems in history: as a resource, water is considered as a common property, rather than a market good; while as a public service it is usually a commodity. Public water supply and sanitation technologies and engineering have developed under three main paradigms: quantitative and civil engineering; qualitative and chemical/sanitary engineering (both on the supply side); and the most recent one, environmental engineering and integrated management (on the demand side). The cost of public drinking water is due to rise sharply in view of the two-fold financial challenge of replacing an ageing infrastructure and keeping up with ever-rising environmental and sanitary quality standards. Who will pay? Government subsidies, or water users? The author suggests that apparent successes with privatisation may have relied heavily on hidden government subsidies and/or the healthy state of previously installed water infrastructure: past government subsidies are still felt for as long as the lifetime of the infrastructure. The article stresses the importance of public participation and decentralized local management of water and sanitation services. Informing and involving users in water management decisions is seen as an integral part of the ,ethics' side of the crucial three E's (economics, environment, ethics). The article strongly argues for municipal provision of water services, and hopes that lessons learnt and solutions found in the European experience may serve water services management efforts in other regions of the world. [source] Optimal auditing in the banking industryOPTIMAL CONTROL APPLICATIONS AND METHODS, Issue 2 2008T. Bosch Abstract As a result of the new regulatory prescripts for banks, known as the Basel II Capital Accord, there has been a heightened interest in the auditing process. Our paper considers this issue with a particular emphasis on the auditing of reserves, assets and capital in both a random and non-random framework. The analysis relies on the stochastic dynamic modeling of banking items such as loans, reserves, Treasuries, outstanding debts, bank capital and government subsidies. In this regard, one of the main novelties of our contribution is the establishment of optimal bank reserves and a rate of depository consumption that is of importance during an (random) audit of the reserve requirements. Here the specific choice of a power utility function is made in order to obtain an analytic solution in a Lévy process setting. Furthermore, we provide explicit formulas for the shareholder default and regulator closure rules, for the case of a Poisson-distributed random audit. A property of these rules is that they define the standard for minimum capital adequacy in an implicit way. In addition, we solve an optimal auditing time problem for the Basel II capital adequacy requirement by making use of Lévy process-based models. This result provides information about the optimal timing of an internal audit when the ambient value of the capital adequacy ratio is taken into account and the bank is able to choose the time at which the audit takes place. Finally, we discuss some of the economic issues arising from the analysis of the stochastic dynamic models of banking items and the optimization procedure related to the auditing process. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Der Markt für Venture Capital: Anreizprobleme, Governance Strukturen und staatliche InterventionenPERSPEKTIVEN DER WIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK, Issue 3 2002Georg Gebhardt In this paper we give an overview, with special emphasis on Germany, of the recent development of the market for venture capital. We analyse the financial contracting problems that arise when entrepreneurs need capital from outside investors, and demonstrate how these problems are addressed by the institutions and contracts observed in the market for venture capital. Finally, we discuss the arguments in favour of government subsidies for private R&D, and argue that there are positive incentive effects if these subsidies are given to venture capital financed projects, rather than to established firms. [source] The Economical Control of Infectious Diseases*THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 492 2004Mark Gersovitz The structure of representative agents and decentralisation of the social planner's problem provide a framework for the economics of infection and associated externalities. Optimal implementation of prevention and therapy depends on: (1) biology including whether infection is person to person or by vectors; (2) whether the infected progress to recovery and susceptibility, immunity, or death; (3) costs of interventions; (4) whether interventions target everyone, the uninfected, the infected, or contacts between the two; (5) individual behaviour leading to two types of externalities. By way of example, if people recover to be susceptible, government subsidies should equally favour prevention and therapy. [source] Producer Willingness to Pay for Precision Application Technology: Implications for Government and the Technology IndustryCANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2003Darren Hudson This paper focuses on the willingness to pay (WTP) for precision application/site-specific management technologies on the part of agricultural producers. We use a contingent valuation survey to elicit WTP for a package of technologies and examine the impact of government subsidies on potential demand. Results suggest that producer WTP is significantly lower than current technology prices, necessitating a 60% government subsidy to induce adoption, on average. Agronomic factors such as soil characteristic variability and soil quality are important determinants of WTP. In addition, how well the technology integrates into current farming practices and equipment also appears important. Les auteurs s'intéressent à la volonté des agriculteurs de payer pour des applications de précision ou des technologies de gestion adaptées à l'exploitation. Ils recourent à une étude d'évaluation des contingences pour jauger la volonté de payer un ensemble de technologies et pour préciser l'incidence des subventions gouvernementales sur la demande potentielle. Les résultats laissent croire que la volonté de payer est sensiblement plus faible que le coût actuel de la technologie, de sorte que l'adoption d'une technologie requiert une subvention publique de 60 %, en moyenne. Les paramètres agronomiques comme la variabilité des propriétés et la qualité du sol jouent un rôle important dans la volonté de payer. Enfin, la manière dont une technologie s'intègre aux pratiques agricoles et au matériel existants paraît aussi avoir son importance en la matière. [source] The restructuring and privatisation of British Rail: was it really that bad?FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2002Michael G. Pollitt Abstract This paper uses a social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) framework to assess whether rail privatisation in Britain has produced savings in operating costs. The paper shows that major efficiencies have been achieved and consumers have benefited through lower prices, whilst the increased government subsidy has been largely recouped through privatisation proceeds. We also find that output quality is no lower (and is probably better) than under the counterfactual scenario of public ownership (pre-Hatfield). The achievement of further savings is key to delivering improved rail services in the future. This paper finds that a privatised structure, where shareholders demand a return on their investment, has led to significant improvements in operating efficiency. It remains to be seen whether the new regime, with a not-for-profit infrastructure owner, will deliver the same efficiency improvements. [source] Producer Willingness to Pay for Precision Application Technology: Implications for Government and the Technology IndustryCANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2003Darren Hudson This paper focuses on the willingness to pay (WTP) for precision application/site-specific management technologies on the part of agricultural producers. We use a contingent valuation survey to elicit WTP for a package of technologies and examine the impact of government subsidies on potential demand. Results suggest that producer WTP is significantly lower than current technology prices, necessitating a 60% government subsidy to induce adoption, on average. Agronomic factors such as soil characteristic variability and soil quality are important determinants of WTP. In addition, how well the technology integrates into current farming practices and equipment also appears important. Les auteurs s'intéressent à la volonté des agriculteurs de payer pour des applications de précision ou des technologies de gestion adaptées à l'exploitation. Ils recourent à une étude d'évaluation des contingences pour jauger la volonté de payer un ensemble de technologies et pour préciser l'incidence des subventions gouvernementales sur la demande potentielle. Les résultats laissent croire que la volonté de payer est sensiblement plus faible que le coût actuel de la technologie, de sorte que l'adoption d'une technologie requiert une subvention publique de 60 %, en moyenne. Les paramètres agronomiques comme la variabilité des propriétés et la qualité du sol jouent un rôle important dans la volonté de payer. Enfin, la manière dont une technologie s'intègre aux pratiques agricoles et au matériel existants paraît aussi avoir son importance en la matière. 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