CENTRALIZED AND DECENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT OF LOCAL COMMON POOL RESOURCES IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM FISHING COMMUNITIES IN COLOMBIA

This article uses experimental data to test for a complementary relationship between formal regulations imposed on a community to conserve a local natural resource and nonbinding verbal agreements to do the same. Our experiments were conducted in the field in three regions of Colombia. Our results suggest that the hypothesis of a complementary relationship between communication and external regulation is supported for some combinations of regions and regulations but cannot be supported in general. We conclude that the determination of whether formal regulations and informal communication are complementary must be made on a community‐by‐community basis. (JEL C93, H41, Q20, Q28)     

OPTIMAL COMPETITIVE BALANCE IN A SEASON TICKET LEAGUE

Theory predicts that a planner maximizing the sum of fan and owner surpluses from a league dominated by season ticket sales may prefer more, less, or the same level of competitive balance produced by a league of profit‐maximizing owners. The optimal level of balance depends on the relationship between marginal impacts of talent rearrangements in larger‐revenue and smaller‐revenue markets. Ultimately, then, judging whether an increase in balance enhances welfare rests on careful and thorough empirical investigation. Our reading of the literature and the policy debate shows that this careful work remains to be done. (JEL D6, L83)     

THE EFFECT OF PRAYER ON GOD'S ATTITUDE TOWARD MANKIND

This paper uses data available from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) survey on religious attitudes and powerful statistical methods to evaluate the effect of prayer on the attitude of God toward human beings. ( JEL C21, Z12)     

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS AND COMMUNITY DISSENSION IN RURAL OKLAHOMA

Contemporary research on immigrant settlement and adaptation emphasizes the interactions of ethnic-immigrant resources and local economic contexts. Yet, understandably, most research in this field continues to focus on major urban centers, truncating our view of the range of these interactions and the extent to which theories and concepts emerging from immigrant "magnets" generalize to more peripheral regions of the country. To address this shortcoming, we use census data from the postwar period to examine immigrant settlement trends in the Deep South Triad of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Findings indicate that this peripheral region of an otherwise booming South is extremely diverse in terms of its foreign-born population and that the largest groups (British, Vietnamese, Indians, and Hondurans) exhibit strong yet distinct patterns of concentration in the regional economy. These findings suggest that many of the same immigrant-adjustment processes documented in core immigrant cities generalize reasonably well to very different regional contexts withsubstantially lower rates of immigration and employment growth.     

THE AUCTION MARKET FOR MODERN PRINTS: CONFIRMATIONS, CONTRADICTIONS, AND NEW PUZZLES

Using a large data set with 80,214 repeat sales, we find that the real return on a diversified portfolio of modern prints sold at auctions worldwide averaged a modest 1.51% during the period 1977–2004. We address several issues regarding the performance of modern prints as investments: the selection bias arising from the self-interest of auction houses; the impact of an ever-expanding universe of auction houses on investment returns; the "masterpiece" effect, or whether more expensive works of art outperform the market as a whole; and the differences in returns that arise due to random fluctuations in collector tastes. ( JEL Z11, G11, G14)     

STRICT PRODUCT LIABILITY AND SAFETY: EVIDENCE FROM THE GENERAL AVIATION MARKET

This paper examines the impact of a strict product liability standard on the accident rate in the general aviation (GA) industry. Liability expenses increased by 775% between 1976 and 1986, reducing the sales of new GA aircraft by 90% and increasing the age of the GA fleet. Using both aggregate and model‐specific data, our results indicate that the increase in the age of the GA fleet increased the accident rate by 25%–35% during 1981–2000. In addition, the higher price of GA aircraft boosted sales of homebuilt planes, which have higher accident and fatality rates than GA aircraft. (JEL K13, L62, L15)     

The Prevention of AIDS Among Injecting Drug Users

Correspondence to Dr Beth Crisp, School of Social Inquiry, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia 3217 Summary There is great potential for the spread of HIV amongst injectingdrug users (IDUs) if they engage in unsafe injecting and sexualpractices. This paper identifies a range of obstacles to safebehaviour, including availability of sterile injecting equipment,legal/policy factors, social norms and personal factors suchas ignorance, beliefs, intoxication and craving. Two alternativepolicy options—harm reduction and use reduction—arediscussed along with specific strategies for ameliorating risk.Strategies include drug treatment, provision of sterile injectingequipment, bleach, promoting alternate methods of drug administration,HIV testing and counselling and peer endorsement of safe behaviour.The paper concludes by considering the implications of thesepolicy and programme options at the level of service delivery.     

THE EFFECT OF REWARDS AND SANCTIONS IN PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS

A growing number of field and experimental studies focus on the institutional arrangements by which individuals are able to solve collective action problems. Important in this research is the role of reciprocity and institutions that facilitate cooperation via opportunities for monitoring, sanctioning, and rewarding others. Sanctions represent a cost to both the participant imposing the sanction and the individual receiving the sanction. Rewards represent a zero-sum transfer from participants giving to those receiving rewards. We contrast reward and sanction institutions in regard to their impact on cooperation and efficiency in the context of a public goods experiment . ( JEL C92)     

Rejoinder to “Who Owns Democracy?”*

Dans cette réplique, nous discutons brièvement quelques malentendus et oublis apparents dans un commentaire, publié dans le numéro 42.3 de la RCSA , pp. 267–82, concernant notre comparaison entre le Canada et les États-Unis, et tentons de les résoudre.
In this rejoinder, we briefly discuss and seek to resolve some apparent misunderstandings and oversights in a commentary published in the CRSA (42.3: 267–82) about our research comparing Canada and the United States.