Economics and Information Theory

Global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change

Relationships between local and global scales deserve more attention than they have received in the global change research enterprise to date. This paper examines how and why scale matters, drawing on six basic arguments; examines the current state of the top-down global change research paradigm to evaluate the fit across relevant scale domains between global structure and local agency; and reviews current research efforts to better link the local and global scales of attention and action.

Global Change in Local Places: How Scale Matters

Surface irrigation is a common pool resource characterized by asymmetric appropriation opportunities across upstream and downstream water users. Large canal systems are also predominantly managed by the state. This paper studies water allocation under an irrigation bureaucracy subject to corruption and rent-seeking. Data on the landholdings and political influence of nearly quarter million irrigators in Pakistan’s vast Indus Basin watershed allow the construction of a novel index of lobbying power. Consistent with a model of misgovernance, the decline in water availability and land values from channel head to tail is accentuated along canals having greater lobbying power at the head than at the tail.

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Governing the commons? : water and power in Pakistan's Indus basin

The 1999 Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, the eleventh anniversary, was held at the Bank on April 28-30, 1999. The discussions focused on three trends of development: 1) the emerging international financial architecture; 2) challenges to social development; and 3) lessons from a decade of transition. Twelve papers were presented on a variety of topics including corporate governance, short-term capital flows, and the relationships between crime, violence, and inequitable development. The keynote addresses by Noble Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Secretary of the US Treasury Lawrence Summers, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, senior vice president, Development Economics and chief economist at the World Bank and former chair of the US Council of Economic Advisors, broach many of the topics that were central to the conference. They examine technological knowledge and innovation and global integration and look back at the arduous process of transition in the former Soviet Union.

Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 1997

Defense spending and economic growth in developing countries: A causality analysis

Issues in irrigation pricing in developing countries

This paper evaluates the welfare implications of the irrigation-induced technological change in rice production, based on the conceptual framework of Hayami and Herdt and using a modified formulation of the problem. The analytical model used incorporates demand and supply shifts, provides exact measures of changes in consumers' and producers' surpluses, and examines the implications for distributive justice in terms of impacts on incidence and severity of poverty and inequality in income distribution. The results of the analysis suggest that irrigation-induced technological change would significantly promote distributive justice.

Rajan K. Sampath

Papers

Defense spending and economic growth in developing countries: A causality analysis

Issues in irrigation pricing in developing countries

Effects of Irrigation-Induced Technological Change in Bangladesh Rice Production

Social, Economic, And Institutional Issues In Third World Irrigation Management

Irrigation management in developing countries : current issues and approaches