Einkommens- und anpassungsprobleme der landwirtschaft in der EuropÄischen wirtschaftsgemeinschaft

Summary Income and Adaptation Problems in Common-Market Agriculture. — Agricultural income within EEC can only be satisfactory if farms are large and if, at the same time, total agricultural production is reduced. Agricultural structure may in future take the following forms: (1) Family-run farms that have some additional business, (2) side-line farms alongside of which there are relatively few largescale processing-industry enterprises, (3) large-scale agricultural and stock-breeding farms resulting from enlargement, co-operation or fusion. The price level should allow farms that are capable of survival and enlargement to develop on their own means. At the same time, it should induce small farmers to give up agriculture. If the price level cannot fulfil these two postulates at the same time, the farms capable of surviving should be subsidized with a view to improving their structure. In EEC, Germany surrenders market shares to France because, in France, there are fewer possibilities of earning non-agricultural incomes. Therefore, agricultural production in France is still kept up, or even increased, while it is being reduced in the Federal Republic. This kind of adaptation of production, which is not dictated by the existing natural location advantages, must be considered faulty. It will have to be corrected by national measures until the respective production and income conditions have reached a certain measure of conformity.

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Résumé Problèmes de revenu et d’adaptation dans l’agriculture de la CEE. — Dans la CEE, le revenu agricole ne peut être satisfaisant que si les fermes sont assez grandes et que la production agricole totale est en même temps réduite. A l’avenir, la structure agricole pourra prendre les formes suivantes: 1. Fermes exploitées par des familles, qui possèdent en même temps des entreprises additionnelles, 2. fermes exploitées en occupation secondaire, à c?té desquelles il y a relativement peu de grandes entreprises de l’industrie de transformation, 3. grandes fermes à agriculture et élevage, qui résultent d’agrandissements, de coopérations ou de fusions. Le niveau des prix devrait permettre aux fermes vitales et capables d’être agrandies de se développer avec leurs propres moyens. Il devrait en même temps amener les petits paysans à abandonner l’agriculture. Si le niveau des prix n’arrive pas à remplir ces deux conditions en même temps, les fermes vitales devraient recevoir des subventions, qui leur permettraient de corriger leur structure. Dans la CEE, l’Allemagne abandonne une part du marché à la France, parce qu’en France il y a moins de possibilités de gagner un revenu accessoire non-agricole. C’est pourquoi la production agricole fran?aise est maintenue, et même augmentée, pendant que celle de la République Fédérale est réduite. Une telle adaptation de la production, qui n’est pas dictée par les avantages naturels de location, doit être regardée comme fautive. Elle devra être corrigée par des mesures nationales, jusqu’à ce que les conditions de production et de revenu auront atteint une certaine mesure de conformité.

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Resumen Problemas de ingreso y adaptación de la agricultura en la Comunidad Económica Europea. — El sector agricola en el Mercado Comiin sólo puede conseguir un nivel de ingresos adecuado a través de empresas mas grandes y eficientes y reduciendo al mismo tiempo la producción total. La base de la estructura agraria en el futuro podria ser: (i) Empresas familiares, que podrian ser suplementadas con empresas secundarias. (2) Empresas secundarias, aparte de las cuales existe un numéro relativamente reducido de empresas grandes dedicadas a la elaboraci?n de productos. (3) Ampliación, cooperación o concentración de empresas grandes dedicadas a la producción agrícola y ganadera. El nivel de precios tiene que ser tal que las empresas capaces de subsistir puedan desarrollarse por medios propios. Al mismo tiempo, este nivel de precios tiene que incentivar a las empresas peque?as a abandonar la producción. Si ambas condiciones no pueden realizarse simultáneamente, habría que conceder a las empresas capaces de subsistir subvenciones que ayuden a mejorar la estructura. En el Mercado Común se da el caso de que la agricultura alemana pierde posiciones en el mercado francés, lo que es debido al hecho de que en Francia los agricultures apenas tienen la posibilidad de conseguir ingresos fuera de la agricultura por lo que se mantiene el nivel de producción, e incluso se incrementa, mientras que en Alemania sucede lo contrario. Mientras que los ajustes de producción no se Orienten en las ventajas naturales de locación, el desarrollo marcha en una dirección equivocada. En esta situación y hasta que las condiciones de producción e ingresos se hayan igualado más o menos, cabe adoptar medidas nationales de compensación.

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Riassunto Problemi di reddito e di adattamento dell’agricoltura nella Comunità Economica Europea. — Un reddito sufficiente dell’agricoltura può essere raggiunto nella CEE soltanto per mezzo di aziende più grandi ed efficienti e riducendo nello stesso tempo la produzione totale. Basi della futura struttura agraria possono essere: (1) Aziende ruralifamiliari che siano integrate con imprese collaterali a scopo di lucro. (2) Aziende collaterali a scopo di lucro accanto alle quali ci siano relativamente poche grandi imprese della produzione di trasformazione organizzate in maniera industriale e (3) grandi aziende agricole con produzione vegetale ed animale sorte mediante aumento, collaborazione o fusioni. Il livello dei prezzi deve rendere possibile uno sviluppo con forze proprie alle aziende capaci di esistere e di aumentare. Si devono stimolare, però, contemporaneamente le piccole aziende a ritirarsi dall’agricoltura. Per quanto il livello dei prezzi non possa appagare ambedue queste condizioni contemporaneamente,alle aziende capaci di esistere devono essere pagate sovvenzioni con effetto di miglioramento della struttura. Nella CEE l’agricoltura tedesca lascia alla Francia quote di partecipazione al mercato perchè lì le possibilità di reddito fuori dell’agricoltura sono sfavorevoli. La produzione è perciò 1ì ancora mantenuta o ingrandita mentre nella Repubblica Federale essa è già ridotta. Un tale adattamento della produzione non orientato a naturali vantaggi di ubicazione è da considerarsi uno sviluppo sbagliato a cui si potrebbe rimediare con misure di compensazione nazionali fino a che i rapporti di produzione e reddito abbiano raggiunto una certa armonia.

     

Beyond survival: the implementation of new forms of work organization in the UK and German steel industries

This paper outlines and analyses the major changes in work-force organization that have been introduced by British and German steel producers in the past decade, against a backcloth of retrenchment in the industry, new product development and technological change. Including multiskilling, a reduction in demarcation and team–working, these changes have had a major effect upon the composition of the work–force and the nature of work undertaken at the shopfloor level.

While these changes have had a common broad trajectory, they have been introduced at a different pace and in different forms. The contrasts are provided not only at the international level, but between plants in the same countries. The paper further outlines the response of trade unions to these changes and the implications for industrial relations at the shopfloor level.     

Credit risk and sustainable debt: a model and estimations of why the Euro is stable in the long-run

Sustainable debt has become the key issue in rating of private as well as sovereign debtors. The problem of how to estimate sustainable debt has also been at the center of the debate over the Asian 1997–1998 financial crisis. If the external value of the currency depends on the external debt of a country, it is necessary to estimate the creditworthiness of the country. This paper studies credit risk and sustainable debt in the context of a dynamic model. For a dynamic growth model with an additional equation for the evolution of debt, we demonstrate of how to compute sustainable debt and creditworthiness. The model is estimated by employing time series data for the core countries of the Euro-area. The computations show that the Euro-area has large external assets. Using time series methods, the sustainability of external debt (assets) is estimated for those core countries of the Euro-area. Those estimations show that the Euro will be a stable currency in the long-run.     

Market share instability and stock price volatility during the industry life-cycle: the US automobile industry

Market share instability, during certain stages of the industry life-cycle, has become a stylized fact in the industrial organization literature. In the finance literature, volatility in the form of excess volatility, i.e. the much larger volatility of stock prices than dividends (although stock prices should in theory trace the present value of future dividends), has given rise to controversies regarding stock price determination (Campbell and Shiller, 1988; Shiller, 1989). Recent evolutionary models, both theoretical and empirical, have tied the presence of market share instability to industry specific variables, such as specific periods in the industry life-cycle and specific “technological regimes”. The object of the paper is to explore whether there is a relationship between market share instability and stock price volatility and to what degree this relationship is connected to the concept of the industry life-cycle, and hence to industry specific factors. To do so, we explore the relationship in one particular industry, the US automobile industry. Since neither life-cycle nor finance theories attack this problem directly, we use insights from both approaches to build hypotheses which guide the data analysis. The empirical results confirm many of these hypotheses, suggesting that the degree of excess volatility is indeed partly affected by industry specific factors.     

The premiss-based approach to judgment aggregation

In the framework of judgment aggregation, we assume that some formulas of the agenda are singled out as premisses, and that both Independence (formula-wise aggregation) and Unanimity Preservation hold for them. Whether premiss-based aggregation thus defined is compatible with conclusion-based aggregation, as defined by Unanimity Preservation on the non-premisses, depends on how the premisses are logically connected, both among themselves and with other formulas. We state necessary and sufficient conditions under which the combination of both approaches leads to dictatorship (resp. oligarchy), either just on the premisses or on the whole agenda. Our analysis is inspired by the doctrinal paradox of legal theory and is arguably relevant to this field as well as political science and political economy. When the set of premisses coincides with the whole agenda, a limiting case of our assumptions, we obtain several existing results in judgment aggregation theory.     

Conservation Incentives for Consumers

This paper investigates profit-maximizing conservation incentives of a utility, where the interest in conservation results from prices regulated below the marginal costs of supply and where consumers differ with respect to their subjective time preference. Conventional least-cost planning implies that a program should focus on inefficient consumers (those who apply high discount rates). However, this scheme provokes strategic reactions of the consumers. Hence, incentive-compatible conservation schemes-one tied to efficiency, the other tied to electricity consumption-are derived that differ starkly from the above finding and from actual programs.