(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

This paper derives the optimal level of restorative efforts required to restore environments degraded by invasive species invasion. Specific attention is focused on a case when restoration faces the risk of failure through relapse of the restored environment caused by repeat invasions. The level of restored environment may also play a role in its future improvement or susceptibility to failure. The tradeoff between the optimal level of environmental quality and number of restorative efforts required to attain that given environmental quality is highlighted. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Economics

Journal of Environmental Management

Environmental restoration of invaded ecosystems: How much versus how often?

Interlinked contracts have been examined almost exclusively in the context of the rural sphere. This article describes the nature of exchange regimes between two sets of primary collectors of recyclable waste, that is, waste pickers and itinerant buyers, and their dealers, in the city of Delhi. Far from the casualised labour transaction commonly described for the unorganised urban sector, the findings portray a picture of personalised and surprisingly long-term exchange between the parties. While a new institutional economics approach might explain the underlying motivation and consequent general form of the implicit contracts, it cannot explain the differential nature of each. It is suggested that in order to do that a political economy approach must be taken. This would understand interlinked transactions as being embedded within and consequently influenced by the particular social context, in this case of an inequitable and impermeable caste hierarchy amongst those that engage in waste work.

International Relations and Governance Studies

Journal of Development Studies

Interlinked contracts and social power: Patronage and exploitation in India's waste recovery market

The relevance and implications of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis are examined in the presence of stock effects and non-linearities associated with pollution generation. Stock effects lead to hysteresis and irreversibilities in environmental quality that are overlooked when emphasis is placed on the flow effects of pollutants only. It is demonstrated here that an optimal growth plan in the presence of stock effects shifts the focus away from prescribing economic growth as a panacea for environmental ills. Implications for currently industrializing economies are discussed. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

World University root node

Ecological Economics

The environmental Kuznets curve when the environment exhibits hysteresis

Treating globalization as an initial point of departure to examine how cultures may have a bearing on great power ambitions, one can identify and challenge seven popular fallacies surrounding the concept. Available histories of globalization amply demonstrate that it is not a new phenomenon and secondly, that it must not be simplistically equated with everything western. Further, ongoing processes of globalization suggest that conceptions of what constitutes 'culture' and similarly what constitutes 'greatness' are complicated and of crucial consequence in ascertaining any correlations between culture and predispositions to great power standing. One should not assume that greatness in conventional international relations usage is inevitably a generic predisposition of all cultures. The notion of an essentialist national culture is highly contentious as there is likely to be considerable divergence of opinion amongst diversely socially positioned domestic constituencies with regard to both the content of greatness and cultural inclinations to greatness as understood in the dominant international relations idiom.

Fulltext

International Studies

Globalization and the cultural grammar of 'great power' aspiration

The behavioral tendency to overestimate probabilities of loss can affect a farmer's participation in water markets. We examine this issue with a theoretical model of a nonexpected utility maximizing farmer who places subjective weights on the actual probabilities of loss of water rights due to market transactions. The farmer bargains over sharing of surpluses with the buyer of water. The farmer then incorporates the bargaining outcome in his intertemporal expected benefit maximization problem that accounts for the possible loss of water rights due to its sale out of agriculture. Three key results emerge. First, subjective weighting of probabilities leads to discounting of resources when farmers overestimate probabilities of loss. Second, if farmers have idiosyncratic time preferences, total water supply in the market would depend on the level of heterogeneity in the population. Third, considering the case of two farmers, we find that the farmer with lower endowments bears the burden of risk reduction, whereas the one with higher endowments sells more water for profits. As the level of risk increases, however, the relative difference in risk sharing declines. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.

Water Resources Research

How probability weighting affects participation in water markets

There is increasing demand for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. This paper presents lessons from the content and directions in soil science research in India, to make a case for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. It demonstrates how existing institutional and organizational contexts shape the research content of the soil sciences and its sub-disciplines. These contexts also shape the capacity of the soil sciences to understand and partner with other components of the wider natural resource management (NRM) innovation systems. The professional association has received little attention in the innovation systems literature, even within the nuanced, context specific and historically sensitive accounts of innovation. As a professional association, the Indian Society of Soil Sciences (ISSS) plays a limited role currently, with little engagement with the key professional and social issues that confront the soil sciences. The ISSS is presented here as a potential actor in the NRM innovation systems. The paper argues that with the involvement of the ISSS, the existing discipline-based, commodity oriented, linear and instrumentalist problem solving approach in the soil sciences can be reformed to a learning and partnership based innovation systems approach, enabling professional excellence, field level technology utilization, along with substantial policy and donor support. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Research Policy

The soil sciences in India: Policy lessons for agricultural innovation

This paper estimates the expected annual impacts of the Pink Hibiscus Mealybug infestation on the economies of Florida and the rest of the United States. The approach involves a Markov chain analysis wherein both short run and long run expected damages from infestation are calculated. Use is made of the CLIMEX model that predicts the potential pest-establishment regions in the US. While predictions based upon the CLIMEX model extend the scope of damages beyond Florida, the damages are significantly dependent upon the rate of arrival and detection of species in those regions. Damages are significantly higher when a longer time horizon is considered. When nursery owners bear the full cost of quarantines in the form of loss of sales and treatment costs of infected plants, the cost-effectiveness of quarantines as a regulatory tool is diminished. The long run propensity of the system, in terms of the fraction of time spent in the possible 'states' of infestation and control, determines the extent of damages, and not the annual value of crops that could be potential hosts to the pest. © Springer-Verlag 2006.

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment

Economic impacts of Pink Hibiscus Mealybug in Florida and the United States

We examine the management of livestock diseases from the producers' perspective, incorporating information and incentive asymmetries between producers and regulators. Using a stochastic dynamic model, we examine responses to different policy options including indemnity payments, subsidies to report at-risk animals, monitoring, and regulatory approaches to decreasing infection risks when perverse incentives and multiple policies interact. This conceptual analysis illustrates the importance of designing efficient combinations of regulatory and incentive-based policies.

A model of producer incentives for livestock disease management

Indian Journal of Social Work

The killing fields: Farmers' suicides in Maharashtra

This paper models investment/entry decisions in a competitive industry that is subject to a quantity control, either on output or on a production input. The quantity control is implemented via the sale of licenses for the restricted output/input. We show that liberalizing the quantity control could reduce investment in the industry under certain circumstances. Furthermore, the level of investment in the industry is different depending on whether the licenses are tradable or not. Key factors to consider are the elasticity of demand for the final good and the degree of input substitutability. Two examples are presented to illustrate the results.