Social Capital and the Terms of Trade for Farmland

Social capital is a person or group's sympathy for or sense of obligation to another person or group. This article introduces social capital into a neoclassical model of farmland exchange and shows how relationships alter the terms of trade. Empirical evidence from a survey of farmers shows that the type of relationship farmland sellers have with farmland buyers has a statistically significant and economically important effect on the minimum-sell price for farmland. Compared to the minimum-sell price when selling to a total stranger in an arm's-length transaction, farmland sellers discount prices to friendly neighbors and relatives and require a premium from unfriendly neighbors and influential people in the community.     

The effect of social security,health, demography and technology on retirement

This article studies the determinants of the labor force participation of the elderly and investigates the factors that may account for the increase in retirement in the second half of the last century. We develop a lifecycle general equilibrium model with endogenous retirement that embeds Social Security legislation and Medicare. Individuals are ex ante heterogeneous with respect to their preferences for leisure and face uncertainty about labor productivity, health status and out-of-pocket medical expenses. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy in 2000 and is able to reproduce very closely the retirement behavior of the American population. It reproduces the peaks in the distribution of Social Security applications at ages 62 and 65 and the observed facts that low earners and unhealthy individuals retire earlier. It also matches very closely the increase in retirement from 1950 to 2000. Changes in Social Security policy – which became much more generous – and the introduction of Medicare account for most of the expansion of retirement. In contrast, the isolated impact of the increase in longevity was a delaying of retirement.     

Estimating the social cost of pesticide use: An assessment from acute poisoning in Brazil

The intensive use of pesticides in countries like Brazil has ignored structural and institutional shortfalls, such as the lack of workforce training for the new, difficult to implement technologies, and the institutional vulnerability of the environmental protection, health, and safety sectors. As a result we have “invisible” or social, environmental and health costs which end up being socialised with the farmer, in general, having no incentives to recognise and internalise them. This study is intended to review and develop this problem in the light of the Brazilian reality. To this end, we make use of an empirical exercise to illustrate estimation of the social cost associated with acute poisoning by pesticide using the PREVS/IBGE data (Harvest Forecast Research) in the state of Paraná, Brazil. The results suggest that, for maize, the costs of acute poisoning could represent 64% of the benefits of using herbicides and insecticides, and, in the best of hypotheses, when some risk factors are eliminated, they may reach 8% of the benefits of the use of these products. Similarly, when we examine future scenarios for five and ten years, we find less encouraging results, as in ten years the costs of acute poisoning could reach around 85% of the benefit of using insecticides and herbicides for maize. However, there is the encouraging news that, if preventive measures were taken during this time, the gains would be considerable, about 6.5 times greater. We conclude that an assessment of the real benefits involved with pesticides in Brazil is required, principally in regard to the smallholder, where farmers need more training in the use — or even the elimination — of these hazardous substances. There are sustainable technological options available which are economically efficient, especially if we consider the social, environmental and health costs. In this context it is worth highlighting the role of regulatory measures as a mechanism which can reorient generation of negative external costs through the reduction of current incentives in the socialisation of private costs.     

Fixed-term employment contracts in an equilibrium search model

We develop a theoretical model of firm dynamics and unemployment and characterize equilibria with tenure dependent separation taxes. The model is a version of the Lucas and Prescott island model with undirected search. Two equivalent decentralizations are considered: one with spot labor markets and one with long-term employment relations. We model “temporary contracts” as the special case of a separation tax that only applies to workers with tenure higher than J. While in principle these contracts require a J-dimensional state space, equilibrium allocations solve a simple dynamic programming problem characterized by two-dimensional inaction set(s).     

Note on the existence and modulus of continuity of the {\textit{SLE}}_8 curve

We review one method for estimating the modulus of continuity of a Schramm–Loewner evolution (SLE) curve in terms of the inverse Loewner map. Then we prove estimates about the distribution of the inverse Loewner map, which underpin the difficulty in bounding the modulus of continuity of SLE for $\kappa =8$ . The main idea in the proof of these estimates is applying the Girsanov theorem to reduce the problem to estimates about one-dimensional Brownian motion.     

Intertemporal Budget Policies and Macroeconomic Adjustment in Indebted Open Economies

This paper analyzes the role of government intertemporal budget policies in a growing open economy including nominal assets in the presence of an upward sloping supply of debt. This introduces transitional dynamics that influence the effects of government policy instruments on economic growth and the long term fiscal liability. It is shown that capital income taxes or a combination of tax‐cum‐expenditure or government expenditure alone can balance the long term intertemporal government budget constraint. However, those results are shown to depend critically upon the extent of distortion in capital flows brought about the upward sloping supply of debt.     

Marketing metrics: Insights from Brazilian managers

This study examines how managers approach marketing measures in a Brazilian context. Using data from a large-scale empirical study in Brazil, we focus on managers' views of the practices in marketing measurement and identify which indicators they emphasize. The findings, which reflect Brazilian managerial practice, indicate that managers use a combination of metrics. Items such as total number of customers, number of complaints, and customer satisfaction are among the most known and most used metrics. When addressing the 10 most relevant metrics results yield 4 groups, including customer vision, financial, product vision, and market and innovation. Indicators pertaining to customer vision are the most important to Brazilian managers. Furthermore, we discuss the results and draw comparisons with similar studies conducted in the United Kingdom and China. Finally, we present conclusions and avenues for future research.     

Key Factors that Influence Consumer Preferences for Natural-Hyped Products

Natural-hyped products are receiving greater attention from and acceptance by consumers worldwide. Environmental factors that foster the demand for natural-hyped products, specifically hemp-based products include the deregulation of the cannabis industry and greater consumer desire for natural foods. Adding to this, the strategic use of stimulant type of cues (e.g., a cannabis leaf) included in product logos, ads, and packaging, seems to create hype associations when evaluating hemp-based products. In this context, this study presents empirical evidence (three experiments and two qualitative studies) that illustrates consumer preference for hemp-based products over ones that do not include hemp as an ingredient (hemp-free). The research focuses on identifying the psychological determinant that orients consumers towards hemp-based products. Findings suggest that the perceived naturalness is the psychological mechanism behind consumers positive evaluation of hemp-based products. Moreover, this study presents evidence that this evaluation is enhanced by the consumer's need for stimulation. Implications of the findings for the role of perceived naturalness and the need for stimulation in marketing strategies are discussed.     

伊利诺伊大学香槟分校商学院选聘董事的政治视角

无论是政党领导还是普通市民,拉丁美洲的左翼人士通常认为外国投资者和右翼政客是一伙的。这就为欲进入拉美市场的外国公司带来了麻烦,因为左翼政府不信任这些公司,并会严格限制这些公司的活动。请关注西班牙的跨国公司近年来在智利市场所取得的成功,他们知道怎样把左翼政治家的情绪转化为自己的优势。     

Proposition of a framework for interpretation of complex problems and initiatives focused on sustainability： The food, energy and biofuel crisis

The world faces a double crisis： the food crisis and energy crisis. The agribusiness is at the center of this societal dilemma, involving aspects from the volumes of production and productivity up to the way to produce them. Furthermore, there is a discussion about the need for establishing a trade-off between production of food and energy. A central aspect regarding the way of production is on how existing resources to be used and, especially, when its degradation occurs. These discussions indicate the need for interpretation and for proposition of solutions, under a complex perspective, for this double crisis. Accordingly, this paper proposes a framework for the interpretation of complex problems and for initiatives focused on sustainability that was applied to the context of food, energy and biofuel crisis. The theoretical background comprises two theories. The first is the complexity theory, which enabled the proposition of a system to understand the reality, distinguishing and combining the several existing realities without losing the global notion; The second is the sustainability theory, which enabled the systematization of stages for the planning of more sustainable actions to operate in that context; Lastly, it was possible to infer desirable characteristics that other theories could also be included, aiming to propose solutions that are more appropriated for this specific context.