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We study the impact of global food price shocks on local violence across Africa. In food-producing areas, higher prices reduce conflict over the control of territory ("factor conflict") and increase conflict over the appropriation of surplus ("output conflict"). We argue that this difference arises because higher prices increase the opportunity cost of soldiering for producers while simultaneously inducing consumers to appropriate surplus as real wages fall. In areas without crop agriculture, higher prices increase both forms of conflict. We validate our local-level findings on output conflict using survey data. Our findings help reconcile a growing but ambiguous literature on the economic roots of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sender randomly draws a "prospect" characterized by its profitability to the sender and its relevance to a receiver. The receiver observes only a signal provided by the sender and accepts the prospect if his Bayesian inference about the prospect's relevance exceeds his opportunity cost. The sender's profits are typically maximized by partial information disclosure, whereby the receiver is induced to accept less relevant but more profitable prospects ("switches") by pooling them with more relevant but less profitable ones ("baits"). Extensions include maximizing a weighted sum of sender profits and receiver surplus and allowing the sender to use monetary incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioprospecting has been touted as a source of finance for biodiversity conservation. Recent work has suggested that the bioprospecting value of the "marginal unit" of genetic resources is likely to be vanishingly small, creating essentially no conservation incentive. This result is shown to flow specifically from a stylized description of the research process as one of brute-force testing, unaided by an organizing scientific framework. Scientific models channel research effort toward leads for which the expected productivity of discoveries is highest. Leads of unusual promise then command information rents, associated with their role in reducing the costs of search. When genetic materials are abundant, information rents are virtually unaffected by increases in the profitability of product discovery and decline as technology improvements lower search costs. Numerical simulation results suggest that, under plausible conditions, the bioprospecting value of certain genetic resources could be large enough to support market-based conservation of biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of eliciting honest preferences from individuals who must be assigned to a set of positions is considered. Individuals know that they will be charged for the positions to which they are assigned. A set of prices that provide no incentive for the individual to misrepresent his preferences is suggested. It is shown that these prices constitute an element of the optimal solution to the dual of a linear programming assignment problem. Both the optimal allocation and the prices to be charged can be derived by solving two linear programming problems once preferences have been elicited. The procedure can usefully be viewed as a simulation of a competitive market under conditions where such a market cannot be expected to function well. It results in an efficient allocation where alt resources are valued at their opportunity costs and "consumer surplus" is maximized; its outcome thus has the desirable properties of competitive market equilibria. The central task of this paper is to develop a workable quasi-market allocation procedure to use in "assignment" problems when the market would otherwise be too thin. If individuals' preferences are known, then the problem of finding the efficient match is not difficult.[1] In general, however, preferences are not known, and the problem is more complicated. We must at the same time elicit preferences. and use them in making assignment. Since the participants will know that their reported preferences affect the assignment, it is not trivial to devise a procedure that requires only information that individuals will voluntarity report. In the language of game theory, we want a procedure that is "incentive compatible," that is, one in which everyone has an incentive to do what is required to guarantee an efficient outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy-production subsidies are, paradoxically, shown to be likely to increase U.S. dependence on imported oil. Standard studies of net energy yields are shown to be seriously biased upward for two reasons. First, many omit indirect energy inputs, which, our input-output calculation shows, probably causes large errors. Second, those studies all omit the energy opportunity costs of nonenergy inputs (e.g., the fuel substituted elsewhere for the labor used to produce energy). We prove that, absent externalities, any fuel-output subsidy which causes an otherwise unprofitable expansion must yield an incremental fuel output smaller than the increment in energy input plus the energy opportunity costs of other inputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital theorists have traditionally argued that individuals invest in education until the marginal gain in productivity is equal to the marginal opportunity cost. However, the observed correlations among income, education, and ability measures are also consistent with education being used to screen for exogenous ability differences. This paper tests for such an informational role, arguing that screening will be much more important in some occupations than in others. Subsamples of "screened" and "unscreened" occupations are isolated and compared. It is concluded that observed differences, not readily explained by the traditional model, are consistent with the educational screening hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the high value of human time. It deals with two widely different population equilibrium concepts. It extends the explanation of the secular increases in the value of human time. It takes a critical look at the usefulness of the household model in analyzing fertility in countries characterized by high birth and death rates and by substantial increases in national income in a context where the level of the economic value of human time is very low and not increasing much. The idea of a population equilibrium is viewed strictly as an analytical concept to guide economic thinking in deriving testable propositions pertaining to fertility. Two very different concepts of a population equilibrium are formulated. The first concept, as it was envisaged by the early English economists, has long been a standard part of economics. It assumes that the supply of land is fixed and that diminishing returns gradually increase the price of food as a consequence of population growth. The foundation of the second concept is the high price of human time relative to the price of the services of material factors and goods.

The concept of domestic resource cost (DRC), measuring the opportunity cost of net foreign exchange by activity, is systematically analyzed in relation to the more recent seemingly unrelated literature on the effective protective rate (EPR). The ex ante normative interpretations of DRC as a comparative advantage investment criterion, as well as its use in the ex post measurement of distortions, are discussed. A suggested reinterpretation of Corden's EPR procedure makes the two concepts essentially identical in theory, although still somewhat different in actual measurement and in their respective emphases on normative versus positive applications. This distinction may have some importance in the "substitution problem." In a world of trade restrictions and distorted foreign exchange rates, considerable effort is being spent on devising frameworks which should be analytically satisfactory and at the same time practically useful for the measurement of the opportunity cost of producing or saving foreign exchange as well as for the measurement of economic costs of various restrictive systems. Two seemingly unrelated schools have developed in this field, that of domestic resource cost (DRC) and that of effective protective rate (EPR) measurement, but although they have been developed independently they turn out to be very closely related to each other. This is the main subject of the present paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the opportunity cost of marriage. Significance of marital customs and institutions in the prevention of rational maximization; Consideration on domestic economics; Interpretation of opportunity cost on property and other contractual arrangements.

Comments on the concept of opportunity cost theory in California. Determination of earning capacity; Consideration of opportunity cost as a minimum estimate of revenue; Estimation on the shares of income.

Investigates the minimization of opportunity cost and maximization of utility function. Analysis on the utility ordering of money income and leisure; Derivation of tax costs; Determination on the compensating monetary equivalents of intangibles.