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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Trading Carbon Under Uncertainty: How Much Credit Should Be Given For Afforestation?, Ram Ranjan, James Shortle Dec 2007

Trading Carbon Under Uncertainty: How Much Credit Should Be Given For Afforestation?, Ram Ranjan, James Shortle

Ram Ranjan

This paper designs an optimal trading ratio between carbon abatement measures that are certain (such as curtailing carbon emissions) and those that have elements of uncertainty associated with them (such as sequestration through afforestation). Carbon sequestration through afforestation is prone to leak back into the atmosphere through loss of forestry caused by natural disasters or harvesting. When stock of carbon sequestered in plantations is uncertain its value should be discounted compared to measures that have a permanent impact on the atmospheric stock of carbon. An optimal trading mechanism would involve equating the ratio of the marginal costs of the two …


Exit Timing Decisions Under Land Speculation And Resource Scarcity In Agriculture, Ram Ranjan, Sorada Tapsuwan Dec 2007

Exit Timing Decisions Under Land Speculation And Resource Scarcity In Agriculture, Ram Ranjan, Sorada Tapsuwan

Ram Ranjan

This paper models the impact of water scarcity in agriculture on the timing of exit decisions for farmers faced with the prospect of declining profitability in agriculture but increasing benefits from land rezoning in the future. The prospects of land rezoning are modeled as a Poisson process. The analysis highlights the role of speculative rewards in making farmers resilient to declining profitability in agriculture and also identifies the circumstances under which water prices may become an ineffective policy tool for allocating water. An empirical application is performed for the case of a drought prone region in Western Australia. Results indicate …


Crime Prospects And Prospect Theory, Ram Ranjan Nov 2007

Crime Prospects And Prospect Theory, Ram Ranjan

Ram Ranjan

This paper models criminal behavior in a dynamic optimization setting where psychological factors such as subjective risk perception and time preferences play a key role in inducing illegal actions. When psychological perceptions over the actual magnitude of the reward and over the subjective risks of finding a victim or of being caught are dynamic, their influence on crime efforts could vary. Specifically, increasing punishment over rewards, ceteris paribus, deters crime, but increasing punishment and monitoring simultaneously, may encourage crime in the long term. It is also demonstrated that it may not be possible to distinguish between the impacts of hyperbolic …


Resilience In Ecology And Belief, Ram Ranjan Aug 2007

Resilience In Ecology And Belief, Ram Ranjan

Ram Ranjan

TThis paper explores the crucial linkage between societal risk perception and the survival of threatened ecosystems exhibiting non-linear stock dynamics. Perception of risk over specie’s importance and over its survival chances may be subject to resilience and therefore may differ from actual risks. Whereas, ecosystems stand a better chance of survival if they aren’t stressed beyond their resilience thresholds. When an ecosystem’s sustainability and the subjective perception of risks of their loss are both influenced by the stock of a common natural resource, several resource management outcomes are possible, not all of which may ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem. …


Achieving Economic And Ecological Resilience Through Natural Resource Management, Ram Ranjan Jul 2007

Achieving Economic And Ecological Resilience Through Natural Resource Management, Ram Ranjan

Ram Ranjan

Historically, the subsistence based lifestyles of small scale economies (SSEs) have avoided pushing the stock of their natural resources beyond thresholds where their resilience could be lost. However, rising frequencies of natural disasters coupled with a growing outside influence from the developed economies are increasingly putting pressure on the economic and natural resources of these societies. This paper explores the nature and role of inter-linkages between ecological and economic resilience in SSEs towards maintaining long term sustainability in the face of these external influences. It is shown that initial conditions associated with the stock of natural and physical capital could …


The Environmental Kuznets Curve When The Environment Exhibits Hysteresis , Ram Ranjan, James Shortle Apr 2007

The Environmental Kuznets Curve When The Environment Exhibits Hysteresis , Ram Ranjan, James Shortle

Ram Ranjan

The relevance and implications of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis are examined in the presence of stock effects and non-linearities associated with pollution generation. Stock effects lead to hysteresis and irreversibilities in environmental quality that are overlooked when emphasis is placed on the flow effects of pollutants only. It is demonstrated here that an optimal growth plan in the presence of stock effects shifts the focus away from prescribing economic growth as a panacea for environmental ills. Implications for currently industrializing economies are discussed.