While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross-country regressions analysing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect insignificant or even surprising negative effects of schooling. In this...

In a recent article Bas Jacobs found that the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) is one when taxation gives second best resource allocation. This conclusion is based on a claim that there are certain shortcomings with the standard definition of MCF, for example that the size and sign of the...

This paper provides a new and improved measure of the marginal cost of public funds (MCF). It is based on a benchmark tax which is distributionally neutral and non-distortive. This is in contrast to the MCF-measure used in the previous literature, that has used the regressive uniform lump-sum...

We propose a theory of tax centralization in politico-economic equilibrium. Taxation has dynamic general equilibrium implications which are rationally internalized at the federal, but not at the regional level. The political support for taxation therefore differs across levels of government....

The formation of peer groups with social norms for private contributions to a public good is analyzed in an n-player two stage game. First people choose a peer group, then they choose whether to contribute. The first choice is made through a learning process represented by evolutionary dynamics,...

Several economists have maintained that social and internalized norms can enforce cooperation in public good situations. This experimental study investigates impacts of social and internalized norms for cooperation among strangers in a public good game. The experiment has two treatment effects....

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

In contrast to previous studies on cross-group comparisons of conditional cooperation, this study keeps cross- and within-country dimensions constant. The results reveal significantly different cooperation behavior between social groups in the same location.

Organic agriculture, as an adaptation strategy to climate change and variability, is a concrete and promising option for rural communities and has additional potential as a mitigation strategy. This article is a short review of this topic. Adaptation and mitigation based on organic agriculture...

Many African countries are richly endowed with land, but the productive potential of the land base has been underutilised in farming systems with low intensity of external inputs and high intensity of labour. At the same time, mining and erosion of soils have been common features of rural Africa...