Opportunity Cost

This paper has multiple objectives. I set out linkages of a causal model to portray how globalization influences international terrorist strategies. I also point to methodological and theoretical shortcomings in the literature with respect to the levels of disaggregation at which issues are analyzed, and I evaluate the opportunity-cost argument for assessing international terrorism. The paper and conclusions present perspectives on developments of terrorism in the context of globalization, including the relationship of terror to immigration.

This paper proposes a new approach to measure corporate contributions to sustainability called Sustainable Value Added. Value is created whenever benefits exceed costs. Current approaches to measure corporate sustainable performance take into account external costs caused by environmental and social damage or focus on the ratio between value creation and resource consumption. As this paper will show it is more promising to develop sustainable measures based on opportunity costs. Sustainable Value Added is such a measure. It shows how much more value is created because a company is more efficient than a benchmark and because the resources are allocated to the company and not to benchmark companies. The concept of strong sustainability requires that each form of capital is kept constant. As Sustainable Value Added is inspired by strong sustainability, it measures whether a company creates extra value while ensuring that every environmental and social impact is in total constant. Therefore, it takes into account both, corporate eco-and social efficiency as well as the absolute level of environmental and social resource consumption (eco-and social effectiveness). As a result, Sustainable Value Added considers simultaneously economic, environmental and social aspects. The overall result can be expressed in any of the three dimensions of sustainability. D

The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has been in the vanguard of the microfinance movement, showing the potential to alleviate poverty by providing credit to poor households. Part of this success has been built on subsidies. In 1996, for example, total subsidies evaluated at the economic opportunity cost of capital amounted to about US$26-30 million. The evidence helps to explain why institutions like Grameen have not just sprung up on their own as private commercial ventures, and it underscores the value of openly addressing the costs and benefits of subsidization. The paper also describes recent difficulties in maintaining high repayment rates. q

The authors of this article discuss how a mixed-methods research team designed and conducted a 4-year study (Variations in Teachers' Work and Lives and Their Effects on Pupils) that tracked 300 teachers in 100 schools in England over a 3-year fieldwork period. The authors discuss processes that led to new knowledge. Although mixed methods are becoming more popular, few published accounts describe in detail how researchers have moved beyond the use and integration of mixed methods to arrive at more synergistic understandings. The advantage of synergistic approaches is their consideration and combination of a greater range of data, resulting in more nuanced, authentic accounts and explanations of complex realities.

The theory of costs is a cornerstone of economic thinking, and figures crucially in the study of human action and society. From the first day of a principles-level course to the most advanced academic literature, costs play a vital role in virtually all behaviors and economic outcomes. How we make choices, why we trade, and how we build institutions and social orders are all problems that can be explained in light of the costs we face.

This volume explores, develops, and critiques the rich literature on costs, examining some of the many ways cost remains relevant in economic theory and practice. The book especially studies costs from the perspective of the Austrian or “causal-realist” approach to economics. The chapters integrate the history of economic thought with contemporary research, finding valuable crossroads
between numerous traditions in economics. They examine the role of costs in theories of choice and opportunity costs; demand and income effects; production and distribution; risk and interest rates; uncertainty and production; monopsony; Post-Keynesianism; transaction costs; socialism and management; and social entrepreneurship.

Together, these papers represent an update and restatement of a central element in the economic way of thinking. Each chapter reveals how the Austrian, causal-realist approach to costs can be used to solve an important problem or debate in economics. These chapters are not only useful for students learning these concepts for the first time: they are also valuable for researchers seeking to understand the unique Austrian perspective and those who want to apply it to new problems.

The UK's renewable energy policy has been characterised by opportunism, cost-limiting caps and continuous adjustments resulting from a lack of clarity of goals. Renewable electricity has had a specific delivery mechanism in place since 1990. The Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation (NFFO) did not deliver deployment; did not create mentors; did not promote diversity; was focussed on electricity and was generally beneficial only to large companies. A new support mechanism, the Renewable Obligation, began in April 2002. This may result in more deployment than the NFFO, but is also beneficial to electricity-generating technologies and large, established companies only. The UK Government published a visionary energy policy in early 2003 placing the UK on a path to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 60% in 2050. This paper argues that unless the Government 'learns' from it's past results, mistakes and difficulties, clarifies the reasons for supporting renewable energy and then follows through with a focussed policy aimed at delivery, diversity and the creation of mentors, it is likely to be no more successful than the previous 13 years of renewable policy. r

We provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the lower the EXECUTIVE opportunity costs of individuals, the more likely they are to undertake SUMMARY entrepreneurial activity. This prediction emerged from earlier theoretical work in which we modeled the decision of individuals to develop new ventures on their own, seek the backing of a venture capitalist, or remain as paid employees. We use a large sample, drawn from the 1992 Canadian Labor Market Activity Survey. We find that paid employees who choose to leave their employment to become entrepreneurs earned, prior to leaving, substantially less on average then those whose employment status did not change and who remained paid employees throughout the survey period. Specifically, we establish that the wages of those workers who chose to remain paid employees throughout the survey period were, on average, 12% higher than the wages of those who left their employment to become entrepreneurs. To obtain this result, we performed a multivariate regression analysis in which we isolated the effect of employment status by controlling for gender, age, education, marital status, and region of the country. The employment-status coefficient was 2349 (t = 2.644; p = .008), indicating that new entrepreneurs earned in 1988, on average, $2349 less than paid workers, ceteris paribus. In other words, 1988 paid employees who chose to become Journal of Bu,,me,,s Venturing 10, 95-106 © 1995 Elsevier Science lnc. 655 Avenue of the Amerlca~,,. New York, NY 10010 0883-9026/95/$9.50 SS DI 0883-9026(94)00017-0 96 AMIT ET AL.

We provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the lower the opportunity costs of individuals, the more likely they are to undertake entrepreneurial activity. This prediction emerged from earlier theoretical work in which we modeled the decision of individuals to develop new ventures on their own, seek the backing of a venture capitalist, or remain as paid employees. We use a large sample, drawn from the 1992 Canadian Labor Market Activity Survey. We find that paid employees who choose to leave their employment to become entrepreneurs earned, prior to leaving, substantially less on average then those whose employment status did not change and who remained paid employees throughout the survey period. Specifically, we establish that the wages of those workers who chose to remain paid employees throughout the survey period were, on average, 12% higher than the wages of those who left their employment to become entrepreneurs. To obtain this result, we performed a multivariate regr...

This paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) by combining two research perspectives that, until now, have been conducted separately: the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach to family business (Gomez-Mejia et al 2007). Our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in MSEs enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor, and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives. Moreover, we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm's ability to preserve the SEW, while at the same time pursuing financial goals. Our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on MSEs performance: employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by ROA. This effect also results in improved performance for women-led firms and for firms that have received family funding, but impairs MSEs performance when the business is the main source of the owner´s household income.

Abstract This paper discusses the key issues and concerns in the Cambodian government's efforts to implement three priority education policies for 2006–2010: ensure equitable access to education; increase quality and efficiency of the education services; and ...

Developing countries are in critical energy crisis. Pakistan spends almost 7 billion US$ on import of fossil fuels annually to congregate its energy needs. The renewable and sustainable energy resources are best substitute to the conventional fuels and energy sources. Pakistan takes the opportunity to have almost 159 million animals producing almost 652 million kg of manure daily from cattle and buffalo only; that can be used to generate 16.3 million m 3 biogas per day and 21 million tons of bio fertilizer per year. That compensate approximately 20% of nitrogen and 66% of phosphorus required in the crop fields. Apart from this sugarcane industry has got the potential to generate 3000 MW energy. Domestic biogas plants were started in Pakistan in 1959 and at present there is significant number of such working units. Biogas Support Program (BSP) was started in 2000 by Pakistani government. So far it has achieved the target of installing 1200 biogas units, whereas another 10,000 units are expected to be set up in coming 05 years that will harvest almost 27% of country's biogas potential. A biogas unit of 10 m 3 size is anticipated to save almost 92,062 PKR per year on account of conventional fuels spent otherwise. Women's opportunity cost, with introduction of biogas units reportedly increased; subsequently impacting positively on household income. Biogas energy generation systems are in demand and their number is increasing steadily. They are low-cost and can be run with very small budget. Biogas energy corridor can work as a good substitute for nearly 70% of country's population residing in rural areas. Installation of plants to bottle the biogas can be additional opportunity. The need of a national policy is imperative to bring this technology at farmer's doorstep.

Recently, it has been recognized that revenue management of cruise ships is different from that of airlines or hotels. Among the main differences is the presence of multiple capacity constraints in cruise ships, i.e., the number of cabins in different categories and the number of lifeboat seats, versus a single constraint in airlines and hotels (i.e., number of seats or rooms). We develop a discrete-time dynamic capacity control model for a cruise ship characterized by multiple constraints on cabin and lifeboat capacities. Customers (families) arrive sequentially according to a stochastic process and request one cabin of a certain category and one or more lifeboat seats. The cruise ship revenue manager decides which requests to accept based on the remaining cabin and lifeboat capacities at the time of an arrival as well as the type of the arrival. We show that the opportunity cost of accepting a customer is not always monotone in the reservation levels or time. This non-monotone behavior implies that ''conventional" booking limits or critical time periods capacity control policies are not optimal. We provide analysis and insights justifying the non-monotone behavior in our cruise ship context. In the absence of monotonicity, and with the optimal solution requiring heavy storage for ''large" (industry-size) problems, we develop several heuristics and thoroughly test their performance, via simulation, against the optimal solution, well-crafted upper bounds, and a first-come first-served lower bound. Our heuristics are based on rolling-up the multidimensional state space into one or two dimensions and solving the resulting dynamic program (DP). This is a strength of our approach since our DP-based heuristics are easy to understand, solve and analyze. We find that single-dimensional heuristics based on decoupling the cabins and lifeboat problems perform quite well in most cases.

Community-based conservation interventions can only be successful in the long term if their aims and activities are accepted by local people. A key determinant of acceptability is the perceived fairness of the distribution of the costs and benefits of the intervention. We examined the opportunities and challenges posed by benefit distribution in community-based Payment for Environmental Services (PES) interventions through a case study from Menabe, Madagascar. The intervention appears to be an overall success, with individuals reporting high levels of perceived fairness of payment distribution and a high proportion of individuals expressing overall net benefit. Nevertheless, a lack of adequate benefits accruing to those individuals facing high agricultural opportunity costs and evidence of sub-groups in the community reaping excessive benefits was noted across communities, and instances of poor governance were observed as a barrier to success in some communities. We present solutions to address these key challenges in the design and implementation of community-based PES interventions.

A central issue in archaeology is the study of technological change, and yet we have relatively little theory to explain the origin of technological novelty. Most models assume that inventions are generated as needed to solve adaptive problems. Alternatively, some view innovation as a creative and random process capable only of generating variation on which selection operates. This article considers the role of risk sensitivity in the production of technological invention. It is argued that evolutionary ecological models of risk and opportunity cost establish expectations for the contexts in which individuals are likely to stick to conservative technologies and when they are likely to be inventive. Archaeological evaluation of the risk-sensitivity theory of technological change requires attention to components of technological systems and their associated mechanical, operational, and strategic costs. The framework is examined with a case study of technological change from the prehistory of the Kodiak Archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska.

This article summarizes 5 years of research on resource choice and foraging strategy among Ache foragers in eastern Paraguay. Successes and failures of simple models from optimal foraging theory (OFT) are discussed and revisions are suggested in order to bring the models in line with empirical evidence from the Ache. The following conclusions emerge: (1) Energetic returns from various alternative resources and foraging strategies is probably the best single predictor of foraging patterns. (2) Nutrient constraints should be added only when they significantly improve the predictive power of the model. Importance of meat versus vegetable resources may be one important modification based on nutrients that enhances the ability of OFT models to account for empirical reality in human foragers. (3) Men's and women's abilities and foraging patterns differ enough that they should be treated separately in all OFT analyses. (4) Opportunity costs associated with resources that are processed when foraging is not possible may be sufficiently low to predict that high processing time resources will be included in the optimal diet even when their associated return rates (including processing) are lower than mean foraging returns. (5) When food sharing is extensive and foraging bands include several adult males and females, foragers may not need to modify foraging strategies in other ways in order to reduce the risk of not eating on some days.

Designing conservation areas entails costs that, if considered explicitly, can be minimized while still achieving conservation targets. Here we focus on opportunity costs which measure forgone benefits from alternative land uses. Conservation planning studies often use partial estimates of costs, but the extent to which these result in actual efficiencies has not been demonstrated. Our study partitions land costs into three distinct opportunity costs to smallholder agriculture, soybean agriculture and ranching. We demonstrate that opportunity costs to single stakeholder groups can be inaccurate measures of true opportunity costs and can inadvertently shift conservation costs to affect groups of stakeholders disproportionately. Additionally, we examine how spatial correlations between costs as well as target size affect the performance of opportunity costs to single stakeholder groups as surrogate measures of true opportunity costs. We conclude that planning with opportunity costs to single stakeholder groups can result in cost burdens to other groups that could undermine the long-term success of conservation. Thus, an understanding of the spatial distributions of opportunity costs that are disaggregated to groups of stakeholders is necessary to make informed decisions about priority conservation areas.

Do the inference strategies people select depend on the magnitude of time pressure? Is this dependency modified by the type of time pressure? These questions are addressed in three experimental studies in which participants made inferences after having searched for information on a computerized information board. In Study 1, time pressure was induced indirectly by imposing opportunity costs of being slow, a form of time pressure that is common in daily life but that has rarely been examined in the literature. A simple lexicographic heuristic (LEX) achieved the best fit in predicting participants' inferences. Studies 2 and 3 induced high time pressure either indirectly by imposing opportunity costs in terms of time or directly by limiting the time for each choice. Regardless of how time pressure was induced, under high time pressure the inferences could be best predicted with LEX, whereas under low time pressure a weighted linear model that integrates all available information predicted the inferences best. We conclude that people select strategies adaptively depending on characteristics of the situation.

Purpose -The purpose of this article is to consider why work-life balance has become a major issue, and the likely outcomes of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules. Design/methodology/approach -The article reviews international evidence on hours of work and time use, and the academic literature on employees' attitudes towards their hours of work, and perceptions and complaints about work-life imbalances. Findings -Working time has not lengthened and complaints about time pressure are unrelated to hours actually worked. The sources of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules will lie in a combination of other trends -increased labour market participation by women, work intensification, the spread of feelings of job insecurity, more work being done at odd hours, the spread of new information and communication technologies, free time increasing more slowly than spending power and aspirations, and relatively long hours becoming most common among employees (and the self-employed) in higher status jobs. An outcome is unlikely to be a general downward trend in hours worked on account of the substantial opportunity costs that would often be incurred by employees, and because some (mainly middle class) employees have access to a number of effective coping strategies.

The rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services. This increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved. If the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency.

There is a well-documented a "digital divide" in internet connection. We ask whether a similar divide exists for internet usage. Using a survey of 18,439 Americans, we find that high-income, educated people were more likely to have adopted the internet by December 2001. However, conditional on adoption, lowincome, less-educated people spend more time online. We examine four possible reasons for this pattern: 1) differences in the opportunity cost of leisure time, 2) differences in the usefulness of online activities, 3) differences in the amount of leisure time, and 4) selection. Our evidence suggests this pattern is best explained by differences in the opportunity cost of leisure time. Our results also help to determine the potential effects of internet access subsidies.

This paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) by combining two research perspectives that, until now, have been conducted separately: the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach to family business (Gomez-Mejia et al 2007). Our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in MSEs enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor, and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives. Moreover, we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm's ability to preserve the SEW, while at the same time pursuing financial goals. Our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on MSEs performance: employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by ROA. This effect also results in improved performance for women-led firms and for firms that have received family funding, but impairs MSEs performance when the business is the main source of the owner´s household income.

The WorldBankEconomicReview is a professional journal for the dissemination of World Bank-sponsored and outside research that may inform policy analyses and choices. It is directed to an international readership among economists and social scientists in government, business, and international agencies, as well as in universities and development research institutions. The Review emphasizes policy relevance and operational aspects of economics, rather than primarily theoretical and methodological issues. It is intended for readers familiar with economic theory and analysis but not necessarily proficient in advanced mathematical or econometric techniques. Articles will illustrate how professional research can shed light on policy choices.

Unpaid time represents a potentially significant input into the health production function. The paper sets out the basis for valuation of time inputs consistent with the notion of opportunity cost. Such analysis requires consideration of whether time displaced in the production of health involves lost work or lost leisure. Furthermore, because valuation of opportunity cost requires the consistent treatment of costs and benefits, the study also considers the valuation of outputs.

This paper estimates the economic returns to carbon abatement through biological sequestration in community managed forest under future REDD policy, and compares these for three possible management scenarios. For the estimation, the research relies on forest inventory data together with other socio-economic and resources use data collected from forest users in three sites of Nepal Himalaya. The paper estimates the incremental carbon from forest enhancement on a yearly basis over a five-year period using the value of $ 1 and $ 5 per tCO 2 for conservative analysis. The results based on the three sites indicate that community forest management may be one of the least cost ways to abate carbon with a break-even price under Scenario 2 which ranges from $ 0.55 to $ 3.70 per tCO 2 . However, bringing community forests into the carbon market may entail high opportunity costs as forests provide numerous non-monetary benefits to the local population, who regard these as the main incentive for conservation and management. An important finding of the research is that if forest resources use by local communities is not permitted, then carbon trading will not be attractive to them as revenue from carbon will not cover the cost foregone by not harvesting forest resources.

To strengthen the theoretical foundations of incentive system design for corporate entrepreneurship, we develop a moderated model of new venture participation, integrating financial, risk, and effort factors to more comprehensively understand the limits of economic utility maximization theory. We make explicit the trade-offs and opportunity costs for corporate employee-entrepreneurs. We use a conjoint field experiment to collect data on 1952 decisions made by 61 corporate employees to test how risk and effort moderate an employee's decision to participate in a new corporate venture. We find that these factors do interact to affect the choice to engage in corporate entrepreneurship projects.

Purpose -The purpose of this article is to consider why work-life balance has become a major issue, and the likely outcomes of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules. Design/methodology/approach -The article reviews international evidence on hours of work and time use, and the academic literature on employees' attitudes towards their hours of work, and perceptions and complaints about work-life imbalances. Findings -Working time has not lengthened and complaints about time pressure are unrelated to hours actually worked. The sources of the widespread dissatisfaction with current work schedules will lie in a combination of other trends -increased labour market participation by women, work intensification, the spread of feelings of job insecurity, more work being done at odd hours, the spread of new information and communication technologies, free time increasing more slowly than spending power and aspirations, and relatively long hours becoming most common among employees (and the self-employed) in higher status jobs. An outcome is unlikely to be a general downward trend in hours worked on account of the substantial opportunity costs that would often be incurred by employees, and because some (mainly middle class) employees have access to a number of effective coping strategies.

Carbon sequestration in forest sinks is an important strategy to remove greenhouse gases and to mitigate climate change; however its implementation has been limited under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol which has not created the incentives for widespread implementation. The objective of this paper is to analyze the sequestration costs of agroforestry afforestation and reforestation projects (ARPs) following a partial market equilibrium using average cost curves and economic break even analysis to identify the supply costs. The modelling done in this work contrasts the voluntary and clean development mechanism transaction costs. Data is based on the voluntary project, Scolel Té, being implemented in Mexico. Cost curves are developed for seven different sequestration options considering transaction and implementation costs; information from agricultural production in Chiapas Mexico is used to integrate opportunity costs of two agroforestry practices suggesting that sequestration costs may follow a "U" shape, with an initial reduction due to economies of scale and a subsequent increase caused by high opportunity costs. The widespread implementation of agroforestry options not requiring complete land conversion (e.g. living fences and coffee under shade) might be cost effective strategies not generating high opportunity costs. Results also suggest that payments in the early years of the project and lower transaction costs favour the development of ARPs in the voluntary market especially in marginal rural areas with high discount rates.

Corporate risk management may employ financial or operative means to reduce the exposure to unexpected currency fluctuations. This article utilizes a real options framework to establish that operative hedging through the creation of operational flexibility represents a strategic complement to any variance-minimizing financial hedge. In addition, operational flexibility creates an asymmetric exposure profile and, as a result, alters the composition of the financial hedge portfolio. It alters the number of symmetric hedge contracts employed as well as their contractual rate and provides an economic argument for the use of (exotic) currency options. Operational flexibility acts as a value driver and may therefore be utilized, independent of its usefulness for risk management. The analysis further shows that operative hedging entails an implicit opportunity cost in the form of foregone option value. D

Reports of the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh have led to rapid growth in funding for microfinance in both rich and poor countries. But has Grameen been costeffective? This paper compares output with social cost for Grameen in a present-value framework. For a social investor in the time frame 1983-97, the cost of a person-year of membership in Grameen was about $20, and the cost of a dollar-year of borrowed purchasing power was about $0.22. Although the paper does not measure social benefits, most evidence in the literature suggests that benefits exceed these estimates of costs. Grameen-if not necessarily other microfinance organizations-was probably a good social investment.

This report reviews the literature on the links between energy access, welfare, and gender in order to provide evidence on where gender considerations in the energy sector matter and how they might be addressed. Prepared as a background document for the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development, and part of the Social Development Department's ongoing work on gender and infrastructure, the report describes and evaluates the evidence on the links between gender and energy focusing on: increased access to woodfuel through planting of trees and forest management; improved cooking technologies; and access to electricity and motive energy.

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. We study a model where an employer, trying to fill a vacancy, engages in optimal sequential search by drawing from two subpopulations of candidates who differ in their "discourse systems": during an interview, a minority candidate with a discourse system not shared with the employer conveys a noisier unbiased signal of ability than does a majority candidate. We show that, when the employer is "selective," minority candidates are underrepresented in the permanent workforce, fired at greater rates, and underrepresented among initial hires, even though the employer has no taste for discrimination and the populations are alike in their average ability. Furthermore, workplace diversity is increased if: (1) the cost of firing is reduced, (2) the cost of interviewing is increased, (3) the opportunity cost of leaving the position unfilled is increased, or (4) the prior probability that a candidate can perform the job is increased. Indeed, if the prior probability is sufficiently high, or the cost of firing sufficiently low, then minority candidates may be overrepresented in the permanent workforce. JEL Classification Numbers: D21, D63, D83, J71, J78.

The originality of the REDD proposal is its incentives-based mechanism designed to reward the governments of developing countries for their performance in reducing deforestation as measured against a baseline. This mechanism is founded on the hypothesis that developing countries 'pay' an opportunity cost to conserve their forests and would prefer other choices and convert their wooden lands to other uses. The basic idea is, therefore, to pay rents to these countries to compensate for the anticipated foregone revenues. The reference to the theory of incentives (in its principal-agent version) is implicit but clear. In this REDD-related framework, the Government is taken as any economic agent who behaves rationally i.e. taking decisions after comparing the relative prices associated to various alternatives, then deciding to take action and implementing effective measures to tackle deforestation and shift the nation-wide development path. Such an approach ignores the political economy of the state, especially when dealing with "fragile" or even "failing" states facing severe but chronicle institutional crises, which are often ruled by "governments with private agendas" fuelling corruption. Two assumptions underlying the REDD proposal are particularly critical: (i) the idea that the government of such a state is in a position to make a decision to shift its development pathway on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that anticipates financial rewards, and (ii) the idea that, once such a decision has been made, the "fragile" state is capable, thanks to the financial rewards, to implement and enforce the appropriate policies and measures which could translate into deforestation reduction. The first sections of the article discuss the pertinence of applying such a REDD version of the theory of incentives to Governments, and particularly to Governments in fragile states, with respect to the historical patterns and the practical way those states work. The last sections discuss the possibility of alternative architecture for REDD, focusing on policies and measures targeting the drivers of deforestation, and investments for intensifying agriculture, reforming land tenure and enhancing the functioning of the judicial system. We will show why incentive mechanisms should be used at another scale, for the benefits of local economic agents (companies, rural households, communities, etc.), and how a scaling down is likely to alleviate some of the constraints faced by incentives when dealing at Government level.

During the last two decades, researchers have sought to develop categories of entrepreneurs and their businesses along a variety of dimensions to better comprehend and analyze the entrepreneurial growth process. Some of this research has focused on differences related to industrial sectors, firm size, the geographical region in which a business is located, the use of high-technology or low-technology, and the life-cycle stage of the firm (i.e., start-up vs. more mature, formalized companies). Researchers have also considered ways in which entrepreneurs can be differentiated from small business managers. One of these classifications is based on the entrepreneur's desire to grow the business rapidly. This is the focus of our study.

Although shrimp ®sheries are of great economic importance worldwide, they produce serious ecological disturbances and aect other resource harvesting activities such as small-scale ®sheries. We tested performance of the Square Mesh/Extended Funnel bycatch reduction device (BRD) in the bottom trawl shrimp ®shery of the Gulf of California. Eciency of the BRD was determined under controlled conditions in terms of exclusion rate of ®sh bycatch, shrimp-capture loss and exclusion of certain ®sh species selected as indicators. Average exclusion rate for ®n®sh species was 37% and that for shrimp, 7%. Total bycatch was decreased by 40% in comparison to the control trawl (no BRD). Extrapolation of this result to the entire commercial¯eet suggests that BRD use would allow the exclusion of 73 thousand tons of bycatch per year in the Gulf. Their use would also help the recovery of certain endangered species, such as Totoaba macdonaldi. For this endemic ®sh, the exclusion rate of juveniles in our trials was 81%. An economic analysis showed that with a shrimp-capture loss of 7%, an average shrimp boat will continue to realize pro®ts, but that opportunity costs could make this type of shrimping ®nancially unattractive. #

By motivating avoidance of contaminants, the experience of disgust guards against disease. Because behavioral prophylaxis entails time, energy, and opportunity costs, Fessler and Navarrete [Evol. Hum. Behav. 24 (2003) 406-417] hypothesized that disgust sensitivity is adjusted as a function of immunocompetence. Changes in immune functioning over the course of pregnancy offer an opportunity to test this notion. Relative to later stages, the first trimester of pregnancy involves substantial suppression of the maternal immune response, and both maternal and fetal vulnerability to pathogens are greatest during this phase; food-borne illnesses, in particular, pose a threat during the first trimester. Using a Web-based survey of 496 pregnant women, we compared participants in the first trimester with those in later stages of pregnancy. Results reveal heightened disgust sensitivity in the first trimester, notably including disgust sensitivity in the food domain. This pattern is not simply a consequence of elevated nausea during the first trimester, as, although disgust sensitivity and current level of nausea are correlated, first trimester women remain more easily disgusted in the food domain even after controlling for the greater incidence of nausea. These results provide preliminary support for 1090-5138/04/$ -see front matter D (D.M.T. Fessler). Evolution and Human Behavior 26 (2005) 344 -351

This paper extends a formal theory of structural aspects of organizational change initiated by Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll (2002a, hereafter HPCa). This analysis focuses on the implications of limited foresight of the cascades of consequences of architectural changes. Foresight is generally limited by complexity (defined with respect to calculative capacity of the actors) and opacity (defined with respect to the presence of enclaves). Complexity and opacity lead actors to underestimate the lengths of periods of reorganization and the associated costs of change, thereby prompting them to undertake changes with adverse consequences. The key theorem holds that the deleterious consequences of architectural change increase with an organization's complexity and opacity.

This contribution investigates the role of education in domestic terrorism for 133 countries between 1984 and 2007. The findings point at a nontrivial effect of education on terrorism. Lower education (primary education) tends to promote terrorism in a cluster of countries where the socioeconomic, political and demographic conditions are unfavorable, while higher education (university education) reduces terrorism in a cluster of countries where conditions are more favorable. This suggests that country-specific circumstances mediate the effect of education on the (opportunity) costs and benefits of terrorism. For instance, the prevalence of poor structural conditions in combination with advances in education may explain past and present waves of terrorism and political instability in the Middle East. The results of this study imply that promoting education needs to be accompanied by sound structural change so that it can positively interact with (individual and social) development, thereby reducing terrorism. JEL Classification: D74; I21; I25