Bovine Brucellosis Programs: An Economic/Epidemiologic Analysis

This report analyzes the economic and epidemiologic impact of eight alternative bovine brucellosis programs in terms of their costs and benefits to society, consumers, producers and related agricultural industries. BRUSIM, a systems simulation model, was developed to measure the impact of various program components upon selected epidemiologic parameters and for determining associated costs and physical losses of brucellosis control/eradication programs for 1976 through 2005. The United States was delineated into 16 regions based upon such factors as prevalence, producer characteristics and cattle population. TECHSIM, an econometric model, was used for determining the total and net benefits accruing to society, consumers, producers, and related industries as a result of changes in beef and milk losses from alternative programs compared to a base program. The discounted values and associated program costs were used for determining benefit/cost ratios and related economic decision criteria. Cette étude analyse le choc économique et épidémiologique de huit programmes alternatifs de la brucellose pour bovine en termes de leurs coûts et avantages pour la société, les consommateurs, les producteurs et les industries agricoles reliées. BRUSIM, un modèle de simulation de système, a été développé pour mesurer le choc de divers composants d' un programme sur les paramètres épidémiologiques choisis et pour déterminer les coûts associés et les pertes physiques des programmes de contrôle ou d' éradication de la brucellose de l' année 1976 à travers 2005. Les Etats-Unis ont été divisés en 16 régions dependant des facteurs tels que la prévalance, les caractéristiques de producteur et la population de bétail. TECHSIM, un modèle économétrique, a été utilisé pour déterminer les bénéfices totals et nets que retirent la société, les consommateurs, les producteurs, et les industries reliées à cause des changements dans les pertes de rendement de viande et de lait dû aux programmes alternatifs en comparaison avec le programme de base. Les valeurs escomptées et les coûts associés des programmes ont été utilisés pour déterminer les rapports coûts-bénéfices et les critères de décisions économiques reliés.     

ASSISTING DEMOBILIZED RUSSIAN OFFICERS OBTAIN HOUSING: THE HOUSING CERTIFICATE OPTION

Under the dwelling purchase certificate program a retired or demobilized Russian officer returning from the "near abroad" is given a certificate which he can use to purchase a new housing unit in the market. The certificate is priced at estimated market price of dwellings, and prices vary by unit size and location (region). There was great uncertainty when the program was launched as to whether officers would find units available for purchase. In fact, most officers succeeded in using their certificate and most contacted several sellers in searching for housing.     

A Classification of Dutch Manufacturing based on a Model of Innovation

Summary The paper studies the degree of homogeneity of innovative behavior in order to determine empirically an industry classification of Dutch manufacturing that can be used for policy purposes. Defining homogeneity in terms of an economic model distinguishes our classification from existing taxonomies such as those of the OECD, Pavitt and the various classifications based on a principal components analysis. We use a two-limit tobit model with sample selection, which explains the decisions by business enterprises to innovate and the impact these decisions have on the share of innovative sales. The model is estimated for eleven industries based on the Dutch Standard Industrial Classification (SBI 1993). A likelihood ratio (LR) test is then performed to test for equality of the parameters across industries. We find that Dutch manufacturing consists of three groups of industries in terms of innovative behavior, a high-tech group, a low-tech group and the industry of wood. The same pattern shows up in the three Dutch Community Innovation Surveys. The empirical part of this study has been carried out at the Centre for Research of Economic Microdata at Statistics Netherlands. The authors wish to thank Statistics Netherlands, and in particular Bert Diederen, for helping us in accessing and using the Micronoom data set. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors. The authors also wish to thank Fran?ois Laisney, Patrick Waelbroek and participants at presentations in Maastricht, Strasbourg, Leuven and Lille for their helpful comments. The first author acknowledges financial support from METEOR.     

Applicability of the market appeal—robusticity matrix: a case study of heritage tourism

Hong Kong is a city where contemporary global culture coexists with traditional Chinese heritage. One way of promoting Hong Kong's traditional built heritage is to develop a number of linked sites as a heritage trail. For helping the development of such, this study evaluates the applicability of the market appeal—robusticity matrix on heritage tourism development, by assessing the potential for tourism in the single-surname villages of Hong Kong's New Territories. The study techniques include documentary research, questionnaire survey and interviews. The findings indicate the matrix is effective for enabling the assessment of heritage tourism potential because it simultaneously demonstrates the importance of two major considerations for both tourism industry and heritage managers, namely market appeal—an asset's appeal to tourists, and robusticity—its ability to endure visitation. The shortcomings of the model includes the inappropriateness of the technical term “product design needs” in the market appeal subset and lack of community concerns in the robusticity subset of the matrix.     

THE STOCK PRICE REACTION TO SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT ADVERTISEMENTS AND COMPANY VALUE

The research examines the stock price reaction to the announcement of the adoption of supply chain management‐enhancing tools and technologies to determine whether there is a significant response from the capital markets. The results show that the adoption of supply chain management‐enhancement tools appears to be value creating. The strength of the stock price reaction is positively related to the degree of certainty regarding the publication date of the publication.     

Testing Monetary Policy Intentions in Open Economies

Temple (2002) argues that the inflation level used in Romer (1993) lacks power in revealing the policy intentions of monetary authorities, Temple also points out that Romer's use of the openness-inflation correlation cannot be explained by time consistency theory. In this article, we demonstrate that more open economies experience less inflation volatility and persislence. We attribute our findings to the hypothesis that monetary authorities in more open economies adopt more aggressive monetary policies. This pattern emerges strongly after 1990. Our results indicate that the near-universal regime shift in 1990 is not just a simple process of increased monetary policy aggressiveness, but an increased response to economic openness.     

Grains — more or better storage?

From time to time attention is directed to startling losses in livestock and crops caused by parasites and diseases, many of which occur during storage.¹ It is important that the losses be reduced. Reduction of losses in storage in particular: (a) makes more food available from a given amount produced; (b) makes more of it available for the poor, who suffer most from shortages; and (c) makes it available at the time of greatest scarcity, before the next production season or harvest.² It is, however, equally important that resources should not be wasted in misguided efforts to reduce waste. In the normal condition of cruelly restricted resources, these should be used to reduce waste only if the return in doing so is as good as, or better than, in other activities.