Middlemen behaviour and generic advertising rents in competitive interrelated industries

This article focuses on the role of middlemen in determining the returns to generic advertising in a competitive industry where supply is uncontrolled, the price of marketing inputs is endogenous, and retail markets are interrelated through consumer preferences. Theoretical analysis suggests farm-gate returns (quasi-rents) are overstated when input substitution at middlemen level is ignored, a result confirmed in the empirical application. As for mark-up behaviour, represented by the farm-retail price transmission elasticity, a general result is that farm-gate returns to generic advertising always increase as the transmission elasticity decreases, provided retail demand is more elastic than input substitution. Endogenising the price of marketing inputs has little effect on advertising rents.     

Impact of domestic content requirement on the US tobacco and cigarette industries

Using a log-linear equilibrium displacement model we quantify the impact of the recent domestic tobacco content requirement on US cigarette manufacturing. We investigate effects on US growers and manufacturers, and competing tobacco imports. The policy increased domestic use of US-grown tobacco, but induced a small negative output effect. Tobacco imports decreased substantially. The paper also discusses the political–economic incentives for US manufacturers to comply with such policies. The political cooperation between US growers and manufacturers decreases the opposition of the latter to protectionist policies championed by the former.     

舟山市水产品加工业现状及发展方向

舟山是我国水产品加工业最为发达的地区之一，也是浙江水产品加工业的典型代表。在对舟山水产品加工业深入调研后，笔者总结出舟山水产品加工业具有企业众多、精深加工能力强、研发能力强、发展环境宽松等特点，但也存在企业规模小、来进料加工发展缓慢、物流成本高等弱点。通过对舟山水产品加工企业的原材料解决以及销售等两个重要问题进行深入剖析，笔者对舟山水产品加工业的发展提出了大力发展来进料加工、强化现代物流体系、组建水产品研发中心等建议。     

The impact of climate change on the external cost of pesticide applications in US agriculture

Agricultural pesticides have adverse impacts on the environment and human health. These impacts are sensitive to climate change because pest pressure and optimal pesticide application rates vary with weather and climate conditions. This study uses the Pesticide Environmental Accounting (PEA) tool and statistically estimated relationships between pesticide applications, weather and climate to compute the impacts of climate change on the external cost of pesticide applications. Using data from 32 US states, 56 crops and 325 pesticides, the current average external cost of pesticide use in US agriculture is calculated at US$42 per hectare. Under projected climate change this value increases up to $72 per hectare by 2100.     

Economic implications of alternative mill mud management options in the Australian sugar industry

Sugar mills produce a range of byproducts during the process of extracting sugar from cane. Mill mud is one of the byproducts produced in significant volume. The practice of spreading mill mud onto cane fields close by the mill has been the primary means of disposing of mill mud for many years. The continued application of mill mud at high rates, without appropriate recognition of its nutrient content, the soil condition, crop nutrient requirements, slope of the land, or proximity of application sites to environmentally sensitive areas has raised a number of concerns in recent years, including overfertilization, heavy‐metal contamination, leaching, and offsite impacts from drainage to waterways. This study develops a regional mathematical programming model to determine optimal rates of mill mud application for various soil types and distances from the mill in the Mackay region in central Queensland, Australia. The optimal application rate of mill mud varies according to soil type and by distance from the mill. Lower rates of mill mud application are economically desirable at greater distances from the mill. However, when the cost of mill mud application is shared between growers and the mill operator, the optimal application rates are reduced at some locations while increasing at others.     

Advertising,concentration and profitability in Greek food manufacturing industries

The conventional framework for cross-sectional studies of industrial organisation focuses on the hypothesised relations among structure, conduct and performance (SCP). This paper investigates these relationships for the food and beverage manufacturing industries in a European country, i.e., Greece. 3SLS method is used to estimate the parameters of the profitability, concentration and advertising model for a sample of 38 four-digit industries in 1994. The main results, which are in line with the relevant empirical work, show that profitability is determined by advertising, which, in turn, is affected by both profitability and concentration, while the latter is determined by economies of scale.     

Food scares, advertising, and the demand for meat cuts in Great Britain

Retail demand systems for 19 different cuts of meat for beef, lamb, pork, bacon and poultry in Great Britain are estimated from monthly time series of consumer expenditure from 1989-2000 using a two stage budget allocation process and an LA/AIDS specification. The unconditional expenditure, own and cross price elasticities are derived for the individual meat cuts. The impact of adverse publicity from meat scares, especially BSE, and of positive publicity through consumer promotion and advertising are incorporated into the modelling. Meat scares produced a reallocation of consumer spending from red to white meats during the 1990s. The impact of species-based advertising was shown to have complex spillover effects both within and between meat species, and the response of consumer demand to advertising was considerably less than to adverse publicity.     

我国海洋新兴产业发展现状、问题与对策

发展海洋新兴产业对调整海洋产业结构、促进海洋产业转型、提高海洋经济竞争力有重要意义。通过对“十一五”期间海洋新兴产业增速情况的分析,描述了海洋新兴产业的发展现状,结合各海洋新兴产业的发展中存在问题,归纳出各海洋新兴产业所处的发展阶段。从科学系统规划新兴产业、培养科技人才促进科技创新、可持续发展和着力发展海洋战略性新兴产业四个方面提出了加快海洋新兴产业的发展对策。     

Livestock pricing policy in sub-Saharan Africa: objectives,instruments and impact in five countries

Livestock pricing policies in many developing countries are often instituted without a good appreciation of the consequences of such policies for allocative efficiency, output and trade. This paper evaluates, in a comparative cross-country context, the objectives and instruments of livestock pricing policy in five sub-Saharan African countries: Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Zimbabwe during the period 1970-86. It assesses the extent to which pricing policy objectives have been attained, and also estimates the effects of price interventions on output, consumption, trade and government revenues in order to draw out lessons for the future. The empirical results indicate that in comparison with real border prices, a certain degree of success was achieved in stabilising real domestic producer prices in the study countries. The results also show that since the early 1980s, there has been a gradual shift away from taxation of producers. However, consumers still appear to gain as much as producers in three of the study countries, with negative consequences for foreign exchange earnings and government revenues. The analysis reveals the importance of domestic inflation and exchange rates as key variables for livestock pricing policies and highlights the need to address the macroeconomic imbalances that cause exchange rate distortions and high domestic inflation at the same time that direct price distortions are being tackled.     

AIDS,Economic Growth and the Epidemic Trap in Africa

Most studies find that AIDS has a relatively weak impact on economic growth because they assume that it affects only one flow variable and only in the short term (the flow of labour available and capable of working at a time t in the economy). But AIDS also has a long-term impact on stock variables that existing models do not take into account, specifically, on both human and physical capital. Integrating these two impacts in a growth model with multiple accumulation factors reverses the findings of standard impact evaluations. A fairly wide range of epidemic effects modifies the economy's long-term growth regime, creating what we might call an epidemic or regressive “trap”. Government action should be designed in view of this risk and should intervene preferentially in favour of human capital, through health and educational spending. Finally, this model changes the cost-efficiency calculations about expanding antiretroviral therapies to a large part of the working population and indicates that such treatment is substantially more cost-efficient than initially thought.     

澳大利亚的渔业管理与信息技术应用

本文介绍了澳大利亚自然经济概况、管理体制、渔业资源保护及安全生产管理等内容与方法.同时介绍了澳大利亚的信息系统建设，包括船舶监控系统、海洋环境与资源信息系统、配额管理及互动式语音报告系统等内容.通过对比分析，研究了中澳在渔业管理的异同之处，及加强我国渔业管理的一些建议。     

Demand for red meat,poultry, and fish in Morocco: an almost ideal demand system

There is a paucity of data and basic research needed for policy analysis in Morocco. Subjective estimates for elasticities are currently used in making policy recommendations. An Almost Ideal Demand System model is used to estimate demand elasticities for beef, mutton, poultry, and fish in Morocco. Mutton is shown to be a luxury good reflecting Moroccans' preference for mutton. Demand is shown to be more elastic than has been assumed in some past policy analyses.