Laura Onofri

An Economic Model for Bioprospecting Contracts

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract characteristics or stylised facts. Against this background, it considers the main contractors involved in these private contracts, i.e. biodiversity sellers and biodiversity buyers, analysing both the magnitude and distribution of the respective payoffs. Particular attention is devoted to the different, mixed impacts of bioprospecting contracts and patenting on social welfare. The positive welfare impacts delivered by bioprospecting contracts are associated with the potential discovery of a new drug product, i.e. productivity gains, non-monetary benefit-sharing or transfers and royalty revenues. The negative welfare impact results from the legal creation of a monopoly and the related well-known effect on the consumer surplus. Finally, the potential redistribution effects are limited, and a potential enforcement of this objective may jeopardise the desirability of the contracts since this action would lead to a significant increase in the transaction costs.

The Economics of Warm Glow: A Note on Consumer's Behaviour and Public Policy Implications

The paper focuses on the ongoing debate on non-market valuation, including the valuation environmental goods, and the opportunity to use contingent valuation for policy guidance. In fact, contingent valuation critics argue that reported willingness to pay answers do not reflect real economic preferences and, for this reason, should not be used in cost-benefit analysis The attempt to contravene such critique finds many supporters. This paper starts from the latter stream of research and adds two original contributions. First, it sheds light on the individual warm glow motivational profile, exploring the empirical relationship between individuals socio-economic characteristics and warm glow. Second, it discusses some implications of the presence of warm glow for public policy.

Rules, Organizational Structures and Economic Performance: The case of Prosecco Cooperative Wineries in the Treviso Area

The study performs an economic analysis of the rules that govern the organization of production within Prosecco cooperative wineries in the Treviso area, in order to assess the economic impact on the wineries performance and the ability of the institution to minimize transaction costs. We first present an economic discussion of qualitative and quantitative information gathered for the 16 cooperative wineries in the Treviso area. Then we present a theoretical framework for the economics of transaction costs of the cooperative wineries. Despite the “fame” of the cooperative winery of an inefficient, assistance-based institution, it emerges the profile of a complex structure, which seeks to incorporate the values of social and cultural cohesion and competitiveness in the markets, within the mission of a company. There is a strong link between regulation of quality standards and impacts on the winery economic performance. In the case of the winery, achieving mutualism is paradoxically favored by the maximization of profits and the ability to do business.

Assessing biophysical and economic dimensions of societal value: an example for water ecosystem services in Madagascar

13.1 INTRODUCTION Policy decisions are often based on an assessment of value. However, the definition of value is highly context-dependent and policy decisions are ultimately a multiple-objectives problem, containing internal trade-offs that make alternative actions difficult to assess and rank. This chapter provides a demonstration of how to operationalize an ecosystem services-based approach, as defined in Chapter 2 of this book, to assess the social and economic value of water from a pluralistic viewpoint that can better support decision-making. Our approach to the biophysical analysis emphasizes explicitly identified beneficiaries (core element 1) along with an assessment and mapping of physical flows to them (core element 2). The biophysical interpretation is complemented by an analysis of economic productivity of water and by a policy analysis where the biophysical and economic analysis are integrated and discussed (core element 3), and implications of alternative management scenarios (protected versus non-protected areas) are addressed (core element 4). Notably, we quantify four key dimensions of ecosystem services, moving beyond the purely economic viewpoint that has dominated the policy translation of ecosystem services assessments so far. These are: • Input productivity: the relationship between inputs and final output, estimated in this study as water productivity in four selected economic sectors. • Economic value: the value of marginal productivity, in terms of the increases in economic productivity with the increase of an additional unit of input (in this case, per additional unit of water). • Sustainability of supply: defined as the ratio between the amounts of ecosystem-provided benefit (here: water services) and the estimated maximum demand that can be met for it in the same conditions. • Quality of supply: estimated by assessing the influence of the natural environment in preserving the quality of the ecosystem service. Our study was performed in the context of a World Bank-led global initiative that aims to integrate natural capital values into national account systems.