Serena Sandri

Endogenous Versus Exogenous Rules in Water Management: An Experimental Cross-country Comparison

Abstract This paper draws on institutional and experimental economics to investigate the role of exogenous and endogenous rules in irrigation systems. The hypotheses we examine argue that despite the differences between socio-economic and political settings, (1) endogenous rule-crafting can help water users to overcome appropriation and provision dilemmas in water-scarce environments like in the East Mediterranean countries and that (2) in market-like water governance systems, institutions other than the market itself, are less influential for overcoming appropriation and provision dilemmas than in hybrid governance systems. These hypotheses are being tested comparing the results of field experiments conducted in Jordan, the Republic of Cyprus and North Cyprus with 70 farmers. Field experiments simulate asymmetric access to resources and are based on variations of the irrigation game by Cardenas et al. to model and test asymmetric distribution of investment, harvest and revenue that favours upstream users. Empirical evidence shows that externally imposed allocation rules are able to bring in more equal distribution of revenue among upstream–downstream users but is likely to reduce the volume of investment and revenue, without resolving issues of free-riding. The authors argue that given the opportunity, water users (small farmers in our experiments) are able to craft their own rules improving the overall performance of the group in terms of investment and revenue, with a parallel improvement of equity in distribution. The implications and policy relevance of such findings are briefly discussed as they contradict typical practices of top-down policy delivery in the selected cases.

The Need for Entrepreneurial Education in Jordan : An Empirical Investigation = الحاجة إلى تعليم ريادة الأعمال في الأردن : دراسة تحليلية

Entrepreneurial or entrepreneurship education aims at developing an interdisciplinary mindset and a whole set of opportunity recognition and problem solving skills that go beyond the promotion of startups and business ventures management. Through the Rethinking Education Communication and the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan, the European Commission has explicitly recognized the importance of investing into entrepreneurship education, as a response to the challenges posed to the educational system by globalization, increased international concurrence, and youth unemployment. Jordan also faces these challenges, but substantial and coordinated efforts in entrepreneurial education are still missing. We believe that entrepreneurial education may represent a way of improving the dramatic situation with youth unemployment, boosting the structurally underdeveloped private sector, and preparing a new generation of youngsters capable of constructively adding to the labor market, by recognizing and exploiting new opportunities in an entre- and intrapreneurial way. The present analysis reviews and elaborates the concept of entrepreneurial education and empirically evaluates the need and potential of entrepreneurial education in Jordan. This is done via a questionnaire study run over a sample of undergraduate students from public universities in Jordan. Results are benchmarked to the findings of a large scale study run over European students in the frame of the ASTEE project (Moberg et al., 2014).