TEACHING TOOLS: A POLLUTION RIGHTS TRADING GAME

This article describes a classroom game in which students simulate the US. EPAS market for emission allowances to understand the efficiency benefits of market-based incentives for pollution control. It can be used in either a principles or environmental economics course. Acting as managers of coal-fired power plants facing different clean-up costs, students compare the cost of pollution reduction to the cost of acquiring permits to emit pollution. The game can be conducted in one 50-minute class period with discussion of the results carried over to the next class. (JEL A2)     

THEORIES OF COMMITMENT, ALTRUISM AND RECIPROCITY: EVIDENCE FROM LINEAR PUBLIC GOODS GAMES

Theories of commitment, altruism, and reciprocity have been invoked to explain and describe behavior in public goods and social dilemma situations. Commitment has been used to explain behaviors like water conservation and voting. Altruism has been applied to explain contributions to charities and intergenerational transfers and bequests. Reciprocity has been invoked to explain gift exchange and labor market decisions. This paper describes a set of experiments, which distinguish between these competing theories by testing their comparative statics predictions in a linear public goods setting. Results provide strong support for reciprocity theories over either theories of commitment or of altruism. ( JEL C9, D64, H41, C72)     

Igbo professional migratory orders,hometown associations and ethnicity in the USA

In this article I examine ethnographically the discursive means by which Igbo speakers in hometown associations in the USA are crafting lives and communities abroad to express a territory‐bound sense of ethnic group membership. I contend that Igbo speakers living abroad are undergoing a process of ethnic formation or ethnification that is structured by increased rates of immigration and recent historical and political change in Nigeria. In response to these events, shifting representations of self and group identity incur an essentialist quality from abroad. Such essentialism is a paradoxical earmark of globalization for the brain‐drain Igbo professional.     

Inside out: some notes on carrying out feminist research in cross-cultural interviews with South Asian women immigration applicants

This article considers a number of important issues raised in the growing literature with regard to the place of ethnicity in feminist research methodology and the woman-to-woman interview. Drawing on examples from the author's experiences of conducting interviews with South Asian women immigration applicants, the article firstly illustrates that because of a different ethnicity, a white feminist researcher is likely to be regarded as an outsider by the minority-ethnic interviewees, regardless of the sharing of gender. Secondly, using the ideas of 'personal' and 'structural' power the article discusses how the researcher's outsider status complicates the power relations between the interviewer and the participants.