Comparing support for organic and conventional farming in the European Union using an adjusted Producer Support Estimate

This paper compares support for organic and conventional farmingin 2001, using the methodology of the Producer Support Estimate(PSE). Although market price support for organic products isdifficult to determine, our case study-based estimates indicatethat the PSE for organic farming ranged between 41 and 44 percent in the EU, compared with 35 per cent for conventional farming.However, the structure of support for the different commoditiesis similar between organic and conventional farming, althoughdirect payments are generally higher for organic farming. Noclear link between the level of support and the share of organicfarming in Member States could be detected. An annual calculationof separate PSEs for both forms of farming could provide usefulinformation about developments in support.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Performance and Trade Liberalisation

In a number of influential papers published by V. N. Balasubramanyam and collaborators during the decade of the 1990s, compelling arguments and supporting evidence was presented to indicate that export‐promoting trade and investment strategies attract more and more productive inflows of foreign capital than do import‐substituting strategies. This paper revisits these hypotheses in the context of more recent cross‐section data and reports evidence to suggest that the earlier findings are robust.     

Perceptions of sales force automation: Differences between sales force and management

Differences between management and salespeople in their perceptions of a new technology can affect the acceptance and implementation of that technology. For sales force automation (SFA) systems, the differences in the perceptions held by management and salespeople toward the SFA can affect the successful adoption and implementation of the system by the organization. This paper reports the results of an investigation that focused on the differences in perceptions held by the United States Army's recruiting force and its higher level management toward the Army's newly adopted SFA system, the Army Recruiting Information Support System (ARISS). The results of the study indicate that significant differences exist between the perceptions held by the recruiting force and higher level management toward ARISS, the SFA system. The results offer important insights into managing SFA system deployment and gauging user expectations.     

Die Diskussion über die Portabilität von risikogerechten Transferbeträgen in der Privaten Krankenversicherung

The capital funded health insurance system in Germany (the PKV) is afflicted with a lack of competition because insurants loose their ageing provisions if they switch their insurer. This leads to prohibitive switching costs even after few years of insurance. An intensified competition can only be achieved by transferring ageing provisions with the switch-over. But this raises complex economic and actuarial questions.The article starts with a motivation of the appropriateness of calculative ageing provisions. These quantities can be transferred. A further amount has to be transferred in order to avoid risk selection. Central requests for a mechanism to determine such risk adjustment amounts are derived. After that, options for an implementation are lined out.     

A spatial model for multivariate lattice data

In this article, we develop Markov random field models for multivariate lattice data. Specific attention is given to building models that incorporate general forms of the spatial correlations and cross-correlations between variables at different sites. The methodology is applied to a problem in environmental equity. Using a Bayesian hierarchical model that is multivariate in form, we examine the racial distribution of residents of southern Louisiana in relation to the location of sites listed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory.     

Wirbelsäulenerkrankungen —Praxisfälle aus der Versicherungsmedizin

Back problems are very widely spread among the population and incur a high cost for the public at large. Screening methods such as X-rays, CTs and so on frequently help to diagnose degenerative changes to the spine, which are then regarded as the cause of the pain. However, other causes (e. g. psychosomatic causes) are also frequently at the root of the back pain. The implications that back problems have for private occupational disability insurance are explained in this article.