Author Addresses: D Dalcher, Department of Computing Science, Software Forensics Center, Middlesex University, Trent Park, Bramley Road, London, N14 4YZ, UK; [email protected]. L Drevin, Computer Science and Information Systems, Potchefstroom University, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa; [email protected] (Currently on study leave – at Middlesex University) Permission to mak...

The recent increased emphasis on impact assessment is due in part to the rapidly changing nature of funding for agricultural research and the shifts that have occurred in what is expected of the agricultural research community. The reasons for doing impact assessment are relatively clear: ex post studies can determine the impact of past investment in research on target beneficiaries and are a w...

— Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) affects millions of people, causing serious health problems. Golden Rice (GR), which has been genetically engineered to produce b-carotene, is being proposed as a remedy. While this new technology has aroused controversial debates, its actual impact remains unclear. We develop a methodology for ex ante evaluation, taking into account health and nutrition details, as...

Comparing Quasi-Experimental Designs and Structural Models for Policy Evaluation: The Case of a Reform of Lone Parental Welfare This paper compares two different ways of doing policy evaluation: on the one hand, quasiexperimental methods (or “ex-post” evaluations) which exploit the introduction of a reform and identify its effect by comparing treated and untreated individuals; on the other hand...

In a partition model, we show that each maximin individually rational and ex-ante maximin efficient allocation of a single good economy is implementable as a maximin equilibrium. When there are more than one good, we introduce three conditions. If none of the three conditions is satisfied, then a maximin individually rational and ex-ante maximin efficient allocation may not be implementable. Ho...

This paper studies two disclosure regimes when a firm with superior private information must rely on a strategic certifier to disclose credibly its prospects. In the ex ante (ex post) disclosure regime, the firm must decide on whether to hire the certifier before (after) observing the certifier's noisy assessment. Endogenously determined certification fees can actually cause the disclosure prob...

We study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents. We consider four institutional settings: Contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information. We find that an effort-maximizing designer of the contest prefers the sequential to the simultaneous setting from an ex ante perspective. Mo...

We present a model of N-player contracting with transaction costs and endogenous property rights. Ex ante agreed surplus sharing can be altered ex post, after irreversible investments in production (characterised by the generalised Cobb-Douglas production function). The actual surplus sharing is determined ex post, after each player has chosen a costly action to alter the surplus sharing in his...