Improving Food Safety at the Dairy Farm Level: Farmers' and Experts' Perceptions

This study examines farmers' and experts' perceptions of important action points for improving food safety on the dairy farm. Adaptive conjoint analysis is used to elicit these perceptions. A comparison on the basis of professional background (farmers versus experts) shows no major differences in the perceptions regarding chemical and microbiological hazards. Two-stage cluster analysis of individual perceptions regarding chemical and microbiological hazards results in four and three distinct groups, respectively. Although results indicate a rather good level of farmers' knowledge of most important action points, the findings can be used to modify current education programs aimed at improving farm-level food safety.     

Tests of ex ante versus ex post theories of collateral using private and public information

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant empirical literature has been unable to isolate each of these effects. This paper attempts to do so using a credit registry that is unique in that it allows the researcher to have access to some private information about borrower risk that is unobserved by the lender. The data also include public information about borrower risk, loan contract terms, and ex post performance for both secured and unsecured loans. The results suggest that the ex post theories of collateral are empirically dominant, although the ex ante theories are also valid for customers with short borrower–lender relations that are relatively unknown to the lender.     

全面维修管理

摘要对全面维修管理所包含态度、战略、组织机构、设施、人力资源管理、计算机化的维修管理系统、持续改进以及丈档九个部分,做了详尽的论述     

Papua New Guinea: longer term developments and recent economic problems

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has much to learn from the Indonesian economic experience of coping with one booming sector while creating an environment in which the economy could generate jobs. PNG's macroeconomic policy adjustments to the boom-bust cycles which characterise its economy work extremely well by comparison to most other developing countries experiencing the same difficulties. At the microeconomic level, policy improvement has been harder, with the rhetoric far out-distancing the actual advances. The challenge is to improve the productivity of the agricultural sector, to raise the education levels, and to attract investment to provide employment. At present the investment environment is bleak because of the deteriorating law and order situation.     

The Value of a Utilitarian Curriculum: The Case of Technological Education

The position taken in this paper is that narrow conceptions of human development and the purposes of schooling have tended to displace rather than situate subjects like technology in the curriculum. Arguments which support this position, however, are only possible when the paradigm through which schooling is operationalized, is inverted. Viewing classic school subjects as abstractions which perpetuate narrow conceptions of pedagogy is a contentious position to take. But taking it and understanding how a utilitarian curriculum spawns real human development and learning gives a whole new perspective to curriculum theory and practice.     

A random coefficient autoregressive Markov regime switching model for dynamic futures hedging

The random coefficient autoregressive Markov regime switching model (RCARRS) for estimating optimal hedge ratios, which generalizes the random coefficient autoregressive (RCAR) and Markov regime switching (MRS) models, is introduced. RCARRS, RCAR, MRS, BEKK‐GARCH, CC‐GARCH, and OLS are compared with the use of aluminum and lead futures data. RCARRS outperforms all models out‐of‐sample for lead and is second only to BEKK‐GARCH for aluminum in terms of variancereduction point estimates. White's data‐snooping reality check null hypothesis of no superiority is rejected for BEKK‐GARCH and RCARRS for aluminum, but not for lead. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:103–129, 2006     

The concept of absorptive capacity: Origins,content and practical relevance

Ever since the end of the Second World War there have been regular calls for a comprehensive and extensive “Marshall Plan” for Third World countries. One of the most popular lines of counter-argument is that developing countries do not even possess the necessary absorptive capacity to make effective use of larger international transfers of purchasing power. On the strength of this “Low Absorptive Capacity Thesis”, as S.P. Schatz called it in 1961¹, a politically unpleasant prlblem, yet one which represents a question of principle in development policy, has for years been dismissed or passed on to the fundamental planning departments of development aid institutions and to the representatives of science and research. What exactly lies behind this problem?