Increasing Opportunity Costs Research Articles

Debt for nature swaps — Overview and discussion of key issues

Debt-for-nature swaps involve the purchase of a developing country's debt at a discounted value in the secondary debt market and cancelling the debt in return for environment-related action on the part of the debtor nation. The present debt situation of many DCs possessing tropical forests is seen as an opportunity to trade off bad debts against habitat preservation. As long as the amounts at stake are marginal relative to a country's debt burden, arrangements such as debt-for-nature swaps may prove beneficial because the opportunity costs of the freed funds are very low. Once such swaps take place on a larger scale, however, additionality may no longer be that obvious to the debtor government. Perhaps the most important contribution of aggressive promotion of such swaps will be awakening of policy- and decision-makers to the many consequences of accelerating environmental degradation of many unique and fragile tropical habitats along with an increased awareness of the increasing opportunity cost of diminishing renewable resources. Such an awakening may, in turn, lead to a changed political climate for environmental management in general, and an increased scope for international cooperation.

The size of government

Most research on the causes of growth in government expenditure has focused on the demand for government services. In this paper, we argue that in fact this growth may have occurred because of changes in supply. Changes in technology leading to increased specialization and thus increased opportunity costs of self-production have led to increased market production and increased record keeping. Also, female labor force participation has increased. Both of these factors serve to reduce the (efficiency) cost of collecting taxes; if the demand for government spending has not changed, this increase in supply would lead to a larger public sector. We estimate a system of simultaneous equations for the period 1929–1970 incorporating this hypothesis, and the results are consistent with the theory. We are able to explain virtually all of the growth of government; increases in female labor force participation seems to be a very important variable in this explanation.

Will U.S. Fertility Decline Toward Zero?

Although the U.S. is commonly categorized as a pronatalist country in reality the society is structurally antinatalist and aggregate forces within the society are gradually increasing the strength of the antinatalist structure. The population is not only declining toward zero population growth but is declining toward zero. In Europe during the 19th and 20th century industrialization led to social changes which gradually increased the disadvantages of raising children and decreased the advantages of raising children. Couples responded by reducing their fertility despite opposition from religious and political leaders. A similar trend occurred in the U.S. but experts are reluctant to recognize the decline as a problem. In the U.S. female participation in the labor force is increasing and women are finding it increasingly difficult to both work and raise children. Other factors which contribute toward making it less rewarding and more costly to raise children in the U.S. are: 1) the increasing cost of raising and educating a child; 2) the increasing psychological costs of raising children under modern conditions; 3) the growing acceptance on the part of husbands of a working role for their wives; 4) increasing opportunity costs for women who stay at home; 5) a lack of day care facilities; 6) the decreasing need for children to assume responsiblity for the care of aged parents; and 7) high divorce rates. In the past couples who chose not to have children were viewed as selfish. This attitude is also changing. In a nationwide telephone survey respondents were asked if voluntary childless couples were selfish. Only 1/4 of the respondents thought such couples were selfish and those least likely to view these couples as selfish were young educated respondents. These findings support the contention that U.S. society is structurally antinatalist and that attitudes in support of an already existing antinatalist behavioral pattern are now being adopted.

La balance commerciale, les termes de l'échange et la croissance économique

La balance commerciale, les termes de l'échange et la croissance économique