Assessing Consumer and Producer Preferences for Animal Welfare Using a Common Elicitation Format

We assess pig farmers’ willingness‐to‐accept (WTA) higher farm animal welfare (FAW) standards and consumers’ willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for thus enhanced standards. The analysis is based on discrete choice experiments with nearly identical choice sets for both farmers (N=140) and consumers (N=554). Based on preference estimates from a random parameter logit (RPL) model, supply and demand curves for high‐welfare pork in Germany are estimated and market equilibria are derived for alternative levels of FAW. We find that estimates of consumer WTP are significantly positive for all FAW attributes: consumers value more surface space per pig, more bedding and manipulable material, less surgical interventions and shorter transportation times. In contrast, our model revealed significant producer WTA estimates only for surface area per pig and the amount of bedding material on offer, but not for the other FAW attributes. Farmers who expect to continue farming and engage in direct marketing are more likely to adopt higher FAW standards. Male consumers and those who find price more important than brand, origin or taste are less likely to buy high‐welfare pork, as are consumers who never purchase organic meat products. Market simulations for high‐welfare pork indicate increasing divergence between demand and supply with rising FAW standards. We estimate a market share of 44.6% for pork produced in compliance with an entry‐level FAW programme with standards only slightly above the legal minimum. Programmes with more demanding standards are estimated to gain much smaller market shares.     

Managing Oil Price Risk in Developing Countries

This article presents a simple framework for understanding theimpact of oil dependence on growth in terms of an optimal savingsand investment strategy. Among the more important factors underlyingthis strategy is the extent to which oil price changes are temporaryor permanent. This in turn determines whether a country shouldrely on stabilization and savings funds or the use of financialinstruments to manage oil revenues—or both. Country experienceswith stabilization and savings funds are surveyed, and the caseis presented for using financial instrument to manage oil pricerisk. Policy implications for enhancing the use of financialinstruments are explored, including an expanded role for internationalfinancial institutions.      

Economics training and hyperbolic discounting: training versus selection effects

This paper contributes to the literature on the effects of economics training on behavior by examining the link between hyperbolic discounting and the number of economics classes taken by a sample of 1310 college graduates at Ohio University. A strong negative correlation is found between economics training and hyperbolic discounting behavior. Regression analysis shows that dynamic consistency is a determinant of taking economics classes. Once the endogeneity of these variables is accounted for, economics training is no longer a statistically significant determinant of hyperbolic discounting. Thus, the selection effect of studying economics outweighs the training effect. Behavioral variables are found to be more important in explaining hyperbolic discounting than demographic variables. The study suggests the importance of controlling for both the selection effect and the training effect for all studies that examine the role of economic training on behavior.     

Trading and Investing in Volatility Products

Since the banking crisis the market for volatility exchange‐traded products has developed rapidly as it opens to clients beyond the large institutional investor pool. Speculation is driven by increasingly complex leveraged and inverse exposures including those that attempt to trade on significant roll costs in volatility futures curves. Longer‐term investors use these products for the purposes of equity diversification, driven by fears of an ongoing Eurozone crisis. We survey the burgeoning academic literature in this area and present a comprehensive and up‐to‐date comparison of the market and statistical characteristics of European and US exchange‐traded volatility products.     

NGOs in Bangladesh: Activities, resources, and governance

This paper reports results from one of the first large, nationally representative surveys of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a developing country. The NGO sector in Bangladesh is highly organized and relatively homogeneous. Most NGOs utilize a branch and headquarters structure in which branches have limited autonomy from headquarters. At the branch level, most NGOs in the country, whether big or small, focus on credit services, derive more of their income from fees for services than from grants, rely on salaried rather than voluntary staff, keep detailed financial accounts that are externally audited, and hire middle-class college educated men as managers. The convergence to a modal institutional form probably is the result of the persuasive power of ideas, sociological pressures toward acculturation and conformity, as well as material incentives.     

Tourenplanung mittelst?ndischer Speditionsunternehmen in Stückgutkooperationen: Modellierung und heuristische L?sungsverfahren

Zusammenfassung Mittelst?ndische Speditionsunternehmen arbeiten infolge zunehmender Globalisierung sowie gestiegener Kundenerwartungen verst?rkt in Stückgutkooperationen zusammen. Für die Kooperationspartner ergeben sich dadurch eine Vielzahl neuer Anforderungen bei der Erstellung eines Tourenplans. Neben der Berücksichtigung heterogener Fahrzeuge und Kundenzeitfenster sowie simultaner Auslieferung und Einsammlung sind z. B. ein mehrfacher Fahrzeugeinsatz vorzusehen und Belegungszeiten der Verladerampen im Depot zu berücksichtigen. Das resultierende Tourenplanungsproblem kann als gemischt-ganzzahliges lineares Programm formuliert und für kleine Probleminstanzen mit dem Solver ILOG CPLEX gel?st werden. Zur L?sung komplexer Instanzen werden in der Praxis h?ufig Entscheidungsunterstützungssysteme eingesetzt. Verfahren, die in einem solchen System zum Einsatz kommen, müssen in der Lage sein, in kurzer Zeit gute L?sungen zu generieren. Wir stellen dazu ein Sampling Verfahren, ein Lokales Suchverfahren und einen Genetischen Algorithmus vor, die in einer Performance-Analyse miteinander verglichen werden.

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Heuristic Algorithms for Vehicle Routing Problems of Less-Than-Truckload Carriers

Summary As a consequence of globalisation and increasing customer expectations, medium-sized less-than-truckload carriers operate together in cooperations. Each cooperative member faces a multitude of requirements when constructing a low-cost, feasible set of routes. Taking up this problem, we take into consideration among other aspects heterogeneous vehicles, time windows, simultaneous pick-up and delivery at customer locations, as well as the multiple use of vehicles and assignment of vehicles to loading bays at the depot. The resulting vehicle routing problem can be formulated as a mixed-integer linear program, and we use ILOG CPLEX to solve small instances. In order to solve practical problem instances, there is a need for decision support systems. Algorithms which are to be implemented in such a system must be able to quickly generate good solutions. For this reason, we present a sampling procedure, a local search and a genetic algorithm, which we compare in a performance-analysis.

     

»Informational Utility«

The experiment examined factors that influence the selective exposure to media information. Earlier research has shown that dimensions of the informational utility model — magnitude of perceived consequences, perceived likelihood of their materialization, and perceived immediacy — govern selective news exposure. This approach is extended by the dimension of efficacy to predict the recipients’ selection of information. In an experimental procedure, two online newsmagazines with either positive or negative news only were presented. The 2x3x2 design varied efficacy (low vs. high), the established information utility dimensions (magnitude, likelihood, and immediacy) and the level of their intensity (low vs. high). Findings show that efficacy, as well as the established utility dimensions, foster the selection of news in recipients. The impacts of the dimensions is additive and applies to both positive and negative news.     

Raising Value at Risk

In this paper I consider the properties for a coherent risk measure, outlined by Artzner et al. (1996), and relate these requirements to a well-known measure, value at risk (VaR), which attempts to evaluate economic risk. I show how the usual method of calculating VaR does not adhere to the coherency requirements and discuss the implications of such a result. As well, I discuss the use of the mean excess loss function to help solve this problem.     

Modelling the term structure of interest rates: An efficient nonparametric approach

We propose a new approach for estimating the coefficients of the term structure equation by means of the volatility of the interest rates and the slope of the yield curve. One advantage of this approach consists in the fact that the drift and the market price of risk are jointly estimated and need not be individually specified. We then generate trajectories in a test problem to investigate the finite properties of this approach. Our simulation results show that this new approach outperforms the classic nonparametric models in the literature. Finally, an application to USA Treasury Bill data is also illustrated.