The ability to provide public goods is essential for economic and social development, yet there is very limited empirical evidence regarding contributions to a real local public good in developing countries. This paper analyzes a field experiment where 200 households in rural Vietnam could make...

This study measures the impact of fanya juu bunds (an important soil and water conservation technology and the most popular type of contour bund in east Africa) on the value of crop production in a high-rainfall area in the Ethiopian highlands using cross-sectional multiple plot observations. We...

This paper investigates the impacts of market and institutional imperfections on technology adoption in a model that considers fertilizer use and soil conservation to be joint decisions. Controlling for plot characteristics and other factors, we found that a household’s decision to adopt...

Productivity gains from soil and water conservation (SWC) have empirical support in research stations. Previous empirical results from on-farm adoption of SWC are, however, varied. This study investigated the impact of soil conservation investment on farm productivity in three regions in Kenya....

This study adopts the stochastic metafrontier approach to investigate the role of soil conservation in small-scale highland agriculture in Ethiopia. Plot-level stochastic frontiers and metafrontier technology-gap ratios were estimated for three soil-conservation technology groups and a group of...

This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: Does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self-interested rational optimization? A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of...

Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechansism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark...

Is social capital always important for economic growth? A number of recent micro studies suggest that interpersonal trust and social capital will have its greatest impact on economic performance when court institutions are relatively weak. The conventional wisdom from macro studies, however, is...

In a representative Swedish sample people were asked to judge the relative extent that different groups of people are considered trustworthy in several dimensions, including their political views and reading habits. A statistically significant effect of similarity on perceived trustworthiness...

Unless people pay the taxes they are obliged to pay, a general welfare state will eventually collapse. Thus, for the welfare state to survive in the long run, tax compliance is of utmost importance. Using Swedish individual survey data we analyze which factors affect the perception of tax...