Separate Crop Accounts for the Western Grain Stabilization Program

Payouts from the Western Grain Stabilization Program are determined on the basis of prairie-wide net cash flow from grains. Of particular importance is what happens to the returns to wheat – the predominant crop. Thus while wheat producers in aggregate can be expected to benefit from the current program, producers of nonwheat crops may not. This paper examines the economics of separate crop accounts as a way of providing greater sensitivity to such producers. It is concluded that the gains are not large enough to warrant such a program change. Les paiements versés en vertu du Programme de stabilisation des grains de ?Ouest sont déterminés à partir des fonds autogénérés par la production céréalière à ?échelle des Prairies. Or, il est particulièrement important de savoir ce qu'il advient des revenus provenant de la production du blé, la culture prédominante dans cette région. Ainsi, même si on peut s'attendre que dans ?ensemble, les producteurs de blé tirent avantage du programme actuel, tel n'est peut-être pas le cas pour les producteurs ?autres céréales. Dans le présent article, nous examinons les aspects économiques ?un traitement séparé du blé et des autres céréales en guise de moyen pour mieux tenir compte des besoins de ces producteurs. Nous concluons que les avantages ainsi obtenus ne sont pas suffisamment importants pour justifier un tel changement du programme.     

Toward a usable general theory of oligopoly

Summary This paper propounds a determinate and operational framework for the analysis of the oligopolistic firm's and industry's price-output equilibrium. It emphasizes the implicit collusion and restrained rivalry in the realistic market structure revealed by empirical investigators, and thereby takes a different route from the traditional Cournot-Stackelberg and game-theoretic approaches. It incorporates the multiobjective nature of the firm's decisionmaking, and draws upon nonlinear programming and parametric programming theory to offer a flexible framework to accommodate a wide variety of behavior patterns in such industries. Several simple examples employing fictional data are used to illustrate the models.     

Pricing Efficiency in the Mortgage Market

Traditionally, the presence of serial correlation has been presumed to indicate an inefficient market for financial assets. As Latham [15] discusses, while the absence of serial correlation implies market efficiency, its mere presence does not imply inefficiency. Rather, market efficiency is a characteristic of security pricing. This study investigates pricing efficiency in the mortgage market. Using mortgage loan quotations for 343 institutions over a 71-week period, the empirical findings show that a wide variety of mortgage contracts are efficiently priced.     

Primal/Dual Positive Math Programming: Illustrated through an Evaluation of the Impacts of Market Resistance to Genetically Modified Grains

The goal of Howitt's positive mathematical programming procedure is to calibrate a mathematical programming model so that it will reproduce a set of base data for the primal variables. This article develops an analogous procedure allowing one to specify the levels of both primal and dual variables. This article also sheds light on a potential ambiguity of Howitt's procedure (with attendant policy evaluation impacts). The procedure is illustrated through application to an equilibrium displacement model focused on evaluating the consequences of the reluctance of U.S. trading partners to accept genetically modified crop products for U.S. production patterns and net farm income.     

Resource Scarcity and Agency Theory Predictions Concerning the Continued Use of Franchising in Multi-outlet Networks

A study of 439 franchisors was conducted to identify factors influencing changes in their propensity to franchise. Consistent with agency theory, franchisors with wide multinational scope were increasing their proportion of franchised outlets whereas franchisors with large outlets were emphasizing firm ownership. As predicted by resource scarcity theory, franchisors were decreasing their proportion franchised as they grew in size, although most of the decrease occurred while firms were relatively small. In contrast to resource scarcity theory, franchisors increased their proportion franchised over time. Key implications are that both agency and resource scarcity theories are needed to explain franchising, but perhaps future research should look beyond resource scarcities toward resource-based capabilities to better explain franchising decisions.     

Understanding the perpetration of employee computer crime in the organisational context

While hackers and viruses fuel the IS security concerns for organisations, the problems posed by employee computer crime should not be underestimated. Indeed, a number of IS security researchers have turned their attention to the ‘insider’ threat. Of this group, several focus on the offender, either in terms of a series of attributes required for perpetration, or with reference to forms of safeguards aimed at negating such behaviour. These studies are complemented by those texts which examine the organisational context in which rogue employees commit computer crime. Currently, however, there has been a lack of insight into the relationship between the offender and the context, during the commission process. To address this deficiency, two criminological theories are advanced. This paper illustrates how the theories, entitled the Rational Choice Perspective and Situational Crime Prevention, can be applied to the IS domain, thereby offering a theoretical basis by which to analyse the offender/context relationship during perpetration. By so doing, practitioners may use these insights to inform and enhance the selection of safeguards in a bid to improve prevention programmes. Furthermore, the importation of the Rational Choice Perspective and Situational Crime Prevention into the IS field opens up potentially new areas for future research.