Just add milk: a productivity analysis of the revolutionary changes in nineteenth‐century Danish dairying

The late nineteenth‐century Danish agricultural revolution saw the modernization and growth of the dairy industry. Denmark rapidly caught up with the leading economies, and Danish dairying led the world in terms of productivity. Uniquely in a world perspective, high quality micro‐level data exist documenting this episode. These allow the use of the tool of modern agricultural economists, stochastic frontier analysis, to estimate production functions for milk and thus find the determinants of these productivity and efficiency advances. This article identifies the contribution of modernization through specific new technologies and practices.     

Benchmarking Risk Management Within the International Water Utility Sector. Part II: A Survey of Eight Water Utilities

Risk management in the water utility sector is fast becoming explicit. Here, we describe application of a capability model to benchmark the risk management maturity of eight water utilities from the UK, Australia and the USA. Our analysis codifies risk management practice and offers practical guidance as to how utilities may more effectively employ their portfolio of risk analysis techniques for optimal, credible, and defensible decision making. For risk analysis, observed good practices include the use of initiation criteria for applying risk assessment techniques; the adoption of formalised procedures to guide their application; and auditing and peer reviews to ensure procedural compliance and provide quality assurance. Additionally, we have identified common weaknesses likely to be representative of the sector as a whole, in particular a need for improved risk knowledge management and education and training in the discipline.     

Royal paternalism and the moral economy in the reign of Edward II: the response to the Great Famine

This article contains the first systematic discussion of Edward II's response to the famine of 1315–17, the most severe of the middle ages. While there had been earlier famines, that of 1315–17 produced the earliest surviving evidence of official attempts at remedial actions. Those included the enforcement of traditional regulatory measures such as the assizes of ale and weights and measures, and efforts to regulate brewing by preventing the use of wheat and limiting the amount of barley used. In addition, the government acted to encourage the import of grain and imposed prohibitions on export that were explicitly justified by scarcity and high prices. English bishops were urged to encourage those who were hoarding grain to hold only enough for themselves and their families and sell the rest. While it is unclear whether government actions had much effect, it is difficult to imagine under fourteenth‐century conditions that any government had the means or measures to respond effectively to famine. Nonetheless, some of the measures taken by Edward II's government, especially export prohibition and attempts to persuade or compel those with supplies of grain to sell it, had a long future ahead of them.     

多渠道销售势在必行

虽然曾经只有少数企业选择这种方案，但现在多渠道零售已成为零售商争相尽快实施的重要行动。这也不足为怪。从2002年到2007年，美国零售市场年销售额增长率徘徊在5％左右，而多渠道零售商每年增长8％。在同一时期内，标准普尔500指数的年平均股东回报率为8％，而多渠道零售商却创下了15％的佳绩。     

Cautious optimism at the World Food Council

How does the World Food Council assess the changes that have taken place on the food scene since its establishment nine years ago? What is the outlook for structural reform in the agricultural and food sectors? What are their thoughts on the new hunger lobby, and on the growing movement which questions the value of much official aid? How does the Council see the prospects for the next decade? Robin Sharp went to Rome to find out.     

Competition for memory retrieval between private label and national brands

Perceptions of private label brands (PLBs) reside in consumer memory along with national brands (NBs). When a consumer engages in a choice situation, both PLBs and NBs rely on links to retrieval cues in consumer memory to give them a chance of purchase. This study examines the underlying competition between NBs and PLBs across different retrieval cues. The findings show that PLBs link to the same attributes as NBs and so compete with NBs for retrieval. However, while any brand typically competes most with the brands more commonly associated with any specific cue, the study finds evidence of PLB sub-categorization. That is, if a consumer elicits one PLB for a certain cue, he/she has four times the propensity to elicit other PLBs than elicit a NB for that same cue. This heightened propensity suggests that when a consumer learns that one PLB has a particular quality, the consumer generalizes that quality to other PLBs. Therefore, retailers should realize that the image of competitor retailers' PLBs affects the image of their own PLBs.     

Reverse factor analysis: A modification of relevance tree techniques

This paper uses techniques of factor analysis to develop an algorithm for manipulating the issues-criteria matrices found in relevance trees. The new procedure provides a general framework that overcomes specific methodological shortcomings of a widely discussed tree scheme, PATTERN, as well as providing increased internal consistency in any relevance tree format. An example from urban policy decision making demonstrates the algorithm's versatility.     

Compliance and Controversy: The AAS 25 Reporting Paradox

The adoption of AAS 25, which specifies uniform reporting requirements for superannuation funds, has been particularly controversial. While the Australian Accounting Research Foundation (AARF) has maintained that uniform reporting practices for superannuation funds are necessary to provide performance information to investors, the superannuation industry has argued that AAS 25 will cause "confusion, misunderstanding and unnecessary concern among fund members". Although the controversy has been widely reported, little information has emerged about the extent to which funds were already complying, or substantially complying, with the standard. This paper reports the results of a survey which indicates, contrary to expectations, that in the two years before the introduction of AAS 25 most funds were reporting in a way which would effectively comply with provisions of the standard.