Enabling development : the impact on residential amenity : a survey of the experiences of affected parties under the RMA : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University

The majority of resource consent applications for land use under New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 are not publicly notified. This enables development, through the efficient processing of applications considered to be of minor or localized effect. However written approvals may be required from all persons the consent authority considers adversely affected by such applications. If these approvals are not forthcoming, the application is then subject to "limited notification", and notified, if at all, only to affected parties. A study was undertaken to determine what influences people to give or withhold such written approval, and what were the outcomes for those people. The study sought to discover whether responses within the process mirror wider environmental issues. In 2008 a questionnaire was sent to a sample of affected parties in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty, and in 2009, most of the respondents were subsequently interviewed. The theoretical framework behind the research is broad and ranges from the current planning context in New Zealand to the underlying philosophical concepts of the freedom of the individual and their rights, environmental justice, reasons and motivations behind planning disputes, including underlying psychological factors and the meaning of place. Whilst some responses were predictable, the extent of negative experiences was surprising, suggesting changes in both process and practice would lead to better outcomes for affected parties. Key Words: RMA, notification, planning process, affected parties, amenity, public interest, rights, justice, environmental attitudes, environmental behaviour

Monitoring by Peers or by Delegates? Joint Liability Loans under Moral Hazard

This paper analyzes the conditions under which joint liability loans to encourage peer-monitoring would be offered and chosen ahead of monitored individual liability alternatives on a competitive loan market when production and monitoring activities are subject to moral hazard. In contrast to other analyses, the case for joint liability loans does not rest on an assumed monitoring or information advantage by borrowers but instead relies on a incentive diversification effect that cannot be replicated by outside intermediaries. Joint liability clauses are chosen to implement a preferred Nash equilibrium in a multi-agent, multi-tasking game, where borrowers must be given incentives to be diligent as financed entrepreneurs and as monitors of others. Potential side contracting or collusion amongst borrowers is shown to only harm credit access, even when borrowers enjoy a monitoring advantage relative to outsiders.Joint-Liability; Group-Lending; Credit-Cooperatives; Financial-Intermediation

Latifundia Economics

This paper proposes a simple general equilibrium theory of agrarian production organization to explain the emergence and persistence of latifundia - minifundia type patterns of agrarian production organization such as have prevailed historically in many parts of Latin America. When land ownership is concentrated, the exercise of market power over land can facilitate the exercise of control over labor, as labor supply to landlord estates is affected by peasant access to land. Equilibria may emerge where landlords, behaving as multimarket Cournot oligopolists, inefficiently hoard land to drive up land rentals and corral cheaper labor into their expanding estates. Labor-service tenancy arrangements, similar to those used in practice, emerge as landlords try to price discriminate. These contracts help to restore allocative inefficiency but lead to lower equilibrium peasant wages and welfare. Population growth, differential technical progress on landlord and peasant farms, and other changes in the physical and economic environment are shown to transform equilibrium patterns of agrarian production organization in ways that are consistent with agrarian trajectories observed in late nineteenth century Chile and several other regions and periods. The model also clarifies how agentsÂ’ incentives to challenge property rights change along with equilibrium agrarian structures.

Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries

This review examines portions of the vast literature on rural financial markets and household behavior in the face of risk and uncertainty. We place particular emphasis on studying the important role of financial intermediaries, competition and regulation in shaping the changing structure and organization of rural markets, rather than on household strategies and bilateral contracting. Our goal is to provide a framework within which the evolution of financial intermediation in rural economies can be understood.Rural Finance, Financial Intermediation, Agricultural Credit

Community Based Targeting for Social Safety Nets

This paper interprets case studies and theory on community involvement in beneficiary selection and benefit delivery for social safety nets. Several considerations should be carefully balanced in assessing the advantages of using community groups as targeting agents. First, benefits from utilizing local information and social capital may be eroded by costly rent-seeking. Second, the potential improvement in targeting criteria from incorporating local notions of deprivation must be tempered by the possibility of program capture by local elites, and by the possibility that local preferences are not pro-poor. Third, performance may be undermined by unforeseen strategic targeting by local communities in response to national funding and evaluation criteria, or by declines in political support.

Why isn't there more Financial Intermediation in Developing Countries?

Financial intermediation, Mutual insurance , Safety nets , Microfinance , Microcredit

Land Reform and the Political Organization of Agriculture

The modern theory of agrarian organization has studied how the economic environment determines organizational form under the assumption of stable property rights to land. The political economy literature has modelled the endogenous determination of property rights. In this paper we propose a model in which the economic organization of agriculture and the political equilibrium determining the distribution of property rights are jointly determined. In particular, because the form of organization may affect the probability and distribution of beneÞts from agrarian reform, it may be determined in anticipation of this impact. The model offers a reason for why tenancy, despite its economic advantages has been so little used in countries where agrarian reform is a salient political issue. We argue that this in particular helps to understand the dearth of tenancy and the relative failure of land reform in Latin America.Agrarian Organization, Political Economy, Land Reform

Class position and Economic Behavior in a Tunisian Village: Selective Separability in a Multi-Factor Household Model

The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, we examine, using a unique dataset collected in the Tunisian village of El Oulja, what might be termed "all or nothing" separability (Benjamin, 1992) by testing, while controling for plot characteristics (Udry, 1996), the proposition that farm input use is independent of household characteristics. Second, we test for separability in the context of a model of class structure based on the seminal work of Eswaran and Kotwal (1986). In order to do so, we construct a model of class structure which offers an appealing representation of the typology of household types in the village when they are classified in terms of (i) their hiring in of wage labor, and (ii) their hiring out of family labor. We use a two-stage estimation technique in which we first estimate the probability of class membership as a function of household characteristics using discrete choice methods. In the second stage we estimate labor intensity per hectare using a Lee-Heckman procedure in which the inverse-Mill ratio from the first stage is included as an additional explanatory variable. As with the case of the test for "all or nothing" separability, the test for selective separability involves exclusion restrictions on household characteristics, although these are now conditional on class membership. Our empirical results strongly support the selective separability hypothesis as well as our theoretical model: most of the "action" in terms of non-separability stems, as one would expect from the model, from the class of "self-cultivators" who neither hire in wage labor nor hire out family labor. Our paper extends the work of DeJanvry, Sadoulet and Benjamin (1996) on Mexican ejidatarios to plot- as opposed to household-level estimation. Moreover, our paper provides an elaboration on and an empirical bridge to theoretical models, such as Roemer (1982), Eswaran and Kotwal (1986), and Carter and Zimmerman (1995) which examine how credit constraints and imperfections on factor markets shape the class structure of the agrarian economy. The implications and scope for government intervention in the context of market imperfections are also examined.class structure, selective separability, Household models

Managing Economic Insecurity in Rural El Salvador: The role of asset ownership and labor market adjustments

Rural households often rely heavily on short-term readjustments in labor supply between wage and self-employment in farm and non-farm activities as an essential strategy to protect consumption and the value of productive investments against unexpected shocks and to take advantage of changing economic opportunities. The efficacy of such coping strategies, and hence a householdÂ’s vulnerability to shocks, may in turn be affected by that householdÂ’s ownership of land or other assets. This paper employs a two-round panel survey of 494 rural households in El Salvador to study the impact of a 1997 weather-related downturn in economic activity and agricultural labor demand on household incomes and welfare. Examining the changing pattern of household labor supply and poverty, reveals that the loss of wage labor hours was a primary determinant of the rise in poverty in this period, and that landless agricultural laborers were particularly vulnerable. Panel regression analyses suggest that households that owned even small amounts of land or other productive assets were better able to protect the marginal return to household labor in the downturn year. The results lend support to the view that in response to shocks, households fall back on farm and non-farm self-employment activities were productivity was determined by their ability to intensify the use of land and other owned assets. Controlling for other factors, ownership of land and other assets also helped households to maintain children's school enrollments.

Why isn't there more financial intermediation in developing countries?

This paper proposes to organize thinking about the opportunities for improving and extending financial markets and safety nets for the poor, by focusing on factors that may explain why the linkage of local financial networks and safety nets with the larger economy often fails or is incomplete. Understanding the nature of these impediments is the first step in proposing policies to help promote more effective linkage and intermediation. We propose four explanations for the slowness of adoption of intermediation (high costs of delegated monitoring aggravated by limited intermediary capital; lock-in and crowding out effects from local insurance arrangements, social norms against cooperation with intermediaries; and political resistance to new institutions that shift the balance of power in local polities). Of course, financial repression and weak legal systems remains important as cause of lack of intermediation. We conclude with a review of public policy for more effective intermediation