Consumers' perception of and attitudes towards organic food in Galicia (Northern Spain)

Although the organic sector is still relatively small, the demand for organic food is increasing throughout the world. The characterization of consumers' perception of and attitudes towards organic food is important to enable the development of marketing policies aimed at attracting conventional consumers to the sector. Consumers' behaviour studies must be conducted specifically for different regions and countries as perceptions and attitudes vary across the world. In the present study, a questionnaire was designed for administration to consumers in Galicia (Northern Spain). The questionnaire was administered to 830 consumers in 200 establishments to obtain data about the consumers' perception of and attitudes towards organic food. The survey results showed that one‐third of responders consume organic food and that the typical profile of a consumer of organic food is a middle‐aged, medium‐high class, university‐educated female living in a large village, who shops in supermarkets and preferably consume vegetables, fruits and eggs. Most people who declared that they consume organic products confuse these with home and locally produced food, indicating the potential for growth of the organic sector by providing such consumers with appropriate information. Most consumers (including conventional consumers) have a good opinion of organic food and consider that it is better for health, is of better quality than conventional food and avoid pesticide residues. However, price continues to be a barrier to the consumption of organic produce. Most respondents stated that they would consume more organic food if the price was only between 10% and 30% higher than the conventional equivalent. Finally, organic consumers in Galicia showed positive attitudes towards using local breeds in organic agriculture, both for producing food and for ecotourism and educational activities. Such activities could contribute to conserving breed biodiversity and adding value to organic farming.     

面对加入WTO 强化国际营销中的品牌营销

加入WTO给中国带来了很大机遇,也带来了严峻的挑战。要在国际贸易和营销中取得胜利,重要措施之一就是要强化品牌营销。品牌和商标对营销者和顾客都具有重要作用,而我国的品牌营销存在许多问题。针对我国国际营销的环境和存在的问题,我国应采取一些措施以强化品牌营销。     

Truthful germs are contagious: A local-to-global characterization of truthfulness

We study the question of which social choice functions from an abstract type space to a set of outcomes are truthful, i.e., implementable by truthful mechanisms, when utilities are quasi-linear. For convex domains, our main theorem characterizes truthful social choice functions as those satisfying two properties: local weak monotonicity and vortex-freeness. The first of these constrains the function values at any two sufficiently proximal points, while the second asserts that its line integrals around sufficiently small triangular loops must vanish.The characterization implies a local-to-global principle that allows one to deduce truthfulness of a function from its behavior on arbitrarily small neighborhoods of each point. Other consequences include a simple alternate derivation of the Saks–Yu Theorem that weak monotonicity characterizes truthfulness of functions having a convex domain and finite range, and a sufficient condition for constructing truthful functions by “stitching together” truthful subfunctions on different subsets of the domain.     

《毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系概论》教学研究

本文根据《中共中央、国务院关于进一步加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的意见》和《中共中央宣传部、教育部关于进一步加强和改进高等学校思想政治理论课的意见》为贯彻落实党的十七大精神,针对"毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系概论("以下简称"概论)"课程建设与教学,科研与教学方法及实践教学进行全方位的教学方面的研究和论述,同时根据本课程的特点,结合高校思政教学要求,对"概论"课程的教学实施阐述教学体会。     

锂离子电池正极材料LiFePO4的研究新进展

磷酸铁锂(LiFePO4)具有价格低廉、对环境友好、热稳定性高、比容量大等优点,成为目前锂离子电池正极材料的研究热点.对LiFePO4的制备方法和改性研究进行了综述,介绍了一些常用的表征方法.     

论双边税收协定中合伙人来自合伙企业所得的定性与课税

在适用双边税收协定时,因各国给与合伙企业的税收待遇不同,从而导致对合伙企业及其合伙人所得定性的冲突,产生双重征税或不征税。因此,当合伙企业在坐落国被视为纳税实体,而在合伙人居住国被视为纳税虚体时,应从税收协定出发考察合伙关系,并结合缔约国有关国内规定对利润、分红及特别报酬的定性予以分析,以避免上述问题。     

How to deal with dissent among experts. Risk evaluation of EMF in a scientific dialogue

This article describes the results of a scientific discourse which aimed at exploring the reasons for differences in expert health risk assessment of radio frequency electromagnetic fields of mobile telephony.

It starts with describing the structure of the discourse. Then, the reasons for the conflicting risk assessments are discussed. Differences are due to the selection and evaluation of relevant scientific studies by applying different scientific quality standards, to the methods used for generating a research synthesis and an overall risk evaluation. Consensus could be achieved regarding the selection of and the quality requirements for the scientific studies used for risk assessment as well as their significance for risk evaluation. However, dissent remained about the synthesis of scientific evidence into an overall risk evaluation and about the relevance of the precautionary principle for risk evaluation and its implications for the risk assessment framework.

Based on the analysis of these problems, a transparent, consistent and rational procedure for risk assessment is suggested to facilitate a risk characterization which better meets the demands of policy making and the public for an appropriate risk evaluation.     

Equity and efficiency as components of a social welfare function

An income distribution-based abbreviated social welfare function is an increasing function of equity and efficiency. When inequality is of relative type, we characterize variants of the Atkinson–Kolm–Sen and the Shorrocks abbreviated welfare functions, where the variation results from the existence of a corresponding trade-off parameter, and in each case if the parameter becomes one the two forms coincide. When the value of the parameter increases, equity gains more weight in the equity–efficiency trade-off. For absolute inequality, we characterize the Blackorby–Donaldson–Kolm welfare function. Some implications of the lexicographic-type equity used in the paper are also considered.     

Re-examination of wage, employment, and hours adjustments: what is crucial for differences in the adjustments?

Manufacturing wage, employment, and hours adjustments are significantly different among developed countries, typically between Japan and the US. The problem of explaining the differences is closely related to that of what effect the extent of wage flexibility has on labor market adjustments. However, prevailing theories are invalid or incomplete for explaining the differences. The differences in the adjustments cannot be unrelated with institutional features of the labor market. Indeed, the extent of wage flexibility depends on the differences in the institutional features. Using a new model with such an idea, this paper theoretically re-examines the cause of the differences in the adjustments. The crucial causes are the characteristics of wage flexibility as well as the differences of the institutional features. The characteristics are that wage adjustment is discontinuous, infrequent, and has a lower limit in comparison with changes in demand.     

PREMATURE MORTALITY AND POVERTY MEASUREMENT

There is a glaring paradox in all commonly used measures of poverty. The death of a poor person, because of poverty, reduces poverty according to these measures. This surely violates our basic intuitions of how poverty measures should behave. It cannot be right in concept that differentially higher mortality among the poor serves to reduce poverty. This article begins the task of developing poverty measures that are not perversely mortality sensitive. A family of measures is proposed that is an intuitive modification of standard poverty measures to take into account the fact that the rich live longer than the poor.