A model for forecasting wheat production

A model for forecasting production of wheat considering the effects of irrigation, fertilizer application, high yielding varieties, rainfall, labour and farm machinery is derived. Applicabilitty of this model is tested for Indian conditions and is found satisfactory. Strength and limitations of this model can be applied successfully to other national conditions also. This model has been applied to the prediction of wheat production using two growth relations.     

Excess supply equilibria

This paper addresses a fundamental problem in economic theory: How can there be equilibria of the economic system where some commodity is in excess supply, yet that commodity's relative price shows no tendency to fall? Of course, the principal example of such a phenomenon is an economy experiencing a prolonged period of involuntary unemployment of the labor force during which there is no significant change in the real wage.In the following pages, I shall describe a two-commodity, general equilibrium model that has a continuum of unemployment equilibria, one for any given unemployment rate. The important feature of this model is that workers establish their wage rates in an attempt to maximize expected utility. The information upon which these wage setting decisions are based is provided by actual labor market transactions.Despite the voluntary nature of the wage setting decision, I shall argue that each equilibrium of this economy exhibits involuntary unemployment in the Keynesian sense. For there will always be another equilibrium with a lower real wage, a higher level of employment, and at which (at least when workers are risk neutral) each worker achieves a higher level of expected utility.     

The multiple perspective concept : With applications to technology assessment and other decision areas

In the area of sociotechnological systems the science/technology based paradigms of analysis haver serious limitations. Building on the work of Graham Allison, we explore the use of multiple perspectives to develop greater insights; specifically, an organizational/societal perspective and a personal/individual perspective augment the conventional “technical” perspective. Application of the three perspectives to several technology assessments and other complex decision areas indicates that the concept can effectively narrow the gap between model and reality for decision making.

Section I describes the background leading to the study and Section II focuses on the limitations of the traditional perspective. Section III develops the multiple perspectives and Section IV summarizes illustrations and applications to date. The concluding section (V) offers guidelines to assist assessors, forecasters, policy analysts, and other users.     

Refinery mix in the U.S., Canada,and the E.E.C.

This paper examines the response of gasoline's share of a barrel of crude oil to changes in relative petroleum product prices. An inter-country comparison of the U.S., Canada, and the E.E.C. allows investigation of different parts of the production possibility frontier. In the U.S. and Canada, with relatively large amounts of cracking capacity, there is price responsiveness of the product mix to changes in relative product prices. In the U.S., both residual and distillates are substitutes in production for gasoline, but for Canada, only distillate is a substitute. Part of this difference is attributed to the U.S. oil quota. For the E.E.C. with relatively small amounts of cracking capacity there was no discernible effect of product prices on product mix.     

Reassessing the Social Foundations of Welfare (State) Regimes

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was formed in 1964 to ‘create a forum in which the more prosperous member countries [of the United Nations] would come under pressure to agree to measures benefiting the less-developed countries’. More specifically, its formation was ‘a deliberate effort to use international bureaucracy and conference diplomacy to alter current norms affecting trade and development’. UNCTAD's founding reflected the growth in membership of the United Nations of newly independent states. A large number of the e´lites of these new entities keenly felt the iniquity of the world order which had ushered in their formal statehood. UNCTAD and the later call for a ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO) therefore were rejoinders to problems encountered by developing countries as a result of the creation and operation of the Bretton Woods system.