Consumer Valuations of Beef Steak Food Safety Enhancement in Canada, Japan, Mexico, and the United States

Food safety concerns have had dramatic impacts on food and livestock markets in recent years. We examine consumer preferences for beef steak food safety assurances. We evaluate the extent to which preferences are heterogeneous within and across country‐of‐residence defined groups and examine the distributional nature of preferences with respect to marginal improvements in food safety. Using mixed logit models, we find that consumers in Canada, Japan, Mexico, and the United States have willingness to pay preferences that are nonlinear in the level of food safety risk reduction. In particular, consumers in Japan and Mexico have preferences that are convex and consumers in Canada and the United States have preferences concave in the level of food safety enhancement. Les inquiétudes entourant la sécurité alimentaire ont eu des répercussions considérables sur le marché du bétail et le marché des aliments au cours des dernières années. Nous avons examiné les préférences des consommateurs concernant l'assurance de la sécurité alimentaire de la viande de b?uf. Nous avons évalué dans quelle mesure les préférences des consommateurs étaient hétérogènes au sein de groupes établis selon le pays de résidence et entre ces groupes, et avons examiné la nature distributionnelle des préférences à l'égard des améliorations marginales de la sécurité alimentaire. L'utilisation de modèles logit mixtes nous a permis d'établir que la volonté de payer des consommateurs du Canada, du Japon, du Mexique et des États‐Unis étaient non linéaires lorsqu'il était question de diminuer le degré de risque concernant la sécurité alimentaire. Les préférences des consommateurs du Japon et du Mexique étaient convexes, tandis que celles des consommateurs du Canada et des États‐Unis étaient concaves lorsqu'il était question d'accroître le niveau de sécurité alimentaire.     

Risk attitudes and the structure of decision‐making: evidence from the Illinois hog industry

Research offers mixed evidence about the risk management decision‐making process of producers. Whether producers’ characteristics drive behavior directly or through risk attitude remains a puzzle. We assess whether managerial/firm characteristics directly affect choices or if their influence occurs indirectly through impacts on risk attitude. The findings, which support indirect effects, indicate that failure to represent relationships between risk attitude, other characteristics, and behavior appropriately can mask the effect of risk attitude. A more complete understanding of the structure of decision‐making may assist economists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders in designing and targeting mechanisms to manage or transfer risk.     

社会质量理论指导下我国农村扶贫事业发展研究

我国农村扶贫工作进入新阶段,面临新的挑战,发展我国农村扶贫事业势在必行。以社会质量理论为指导,其核心包含社会经济保障、社会团结、社会融合和社会赋权四个维度,借鉴其合理内核,包括：建立健全农村就业和社会保障网络、完善监督评估机制、改变贫困治理方式、以增权理念推进农村扶贫开发工作,以推进我国农村扶贫事业的进程,真正实现贫困人口脱贫致富,人们幸福安康,社会和谐的美好新局面。     

The Role of Farmer's Behavioral Attitudes and Heterogeneity in Futures Contracts Usage

The relationship between farmers' behavioral attitudes and use of futures contracts is examined, taking into account non-directly observable variables and the heterogeneity of farmers. The relationships are tested on a stratified data sample of 440 farmers. Cluster analysis and covariance structure equation models are used to validate the relationships. Farmers are found not to be homogenous regarding the factors influencing their use of futures. Heterogeneity at the segment level masked important effects at the aggregate level, notably risk attitude. Furthermore, several psychological constructs for farmers related to market orientation, risk exposure, market performance and entrepreneurial behavior play important roles in their use of futures contracts.     

Unravelling the dynamics of access to farmland in Tigray,Ethiopia: The ‘emerging land market’ revisited

This article uses ethnographic evidence from Tigray to revisit the debate on informal rural land markets in present-day Ethiopia. It explores informal farmland rental from a historico-anthropological, micro-analytical perspective in relation to the formal allocation of land use rights and to other informal land transfer practices. It shows how different rationales for land rental give rise to different socially embedded tenancy configurations. On the basis of this empirical evidence, the paper questions the appropriateness of the common idea that in Ethiopia ‘the land rental market is expanding’. It argues that research and policy thinking on land in Ethiopia could gain analytical power and relevance by adopting a less monolithic and abstract view on people's informal land transfer practices.     

On the Optimal Hedge of a Nontraded Cash Position

In this paper, we focus on the optimal demand for futures contracts by an investor with a logarithmic utility function who attempts to hedge a nontraded cash position. When the analysis is conducted in the “cash-commodity-price” space, we show that the value function associated with the Bernoulli investor program is not additively separable, thus suggesting that this investor hedges against shifts in the opportunity set as represented by the commodity price. By establishing the equivalence between the cash formulation of the problem and the wealth formulation, we are able to analyze the problem in the “wealth-commodity-price” space. In this space, we show the additive separability of the value function when the futures settlement price process is perfectly locally correlated with the commodity price process. The demand for futures in this instance is composed of (a) a mean-variance term and (b) a minimum-variance component that is a classic feature of models with nontraded assets. Since the first-best (nonmyopic) optimum is attained, however, the deviation from a mean-variance demand should not be interpreted as the expression of a nonmyopic behavior but rather as an attempt to restore a first-best optimum. On the other hand, when the correlation between the futures price and the underlying commodity price is imperfect, in general, the value function does not separate additively, the first-best solution cannot be attained, and the optimal futures trading strategy involves a hedging term against shifts in the opportunity set.     

New Futures Markets in Agricultural Production Rights: Possibilities and Constraints for the British and Dutch Milk Quota Markets

Farms are increasingly being affected by policies that involve production rights. Because of fluctuations in the prices of these rights in the spot market, farmers face a price risk. Establishing a futures market might enable them to hedge against this price risk. Rights futures have some features that differ from those of traditional commodity futures. This makes them an effective and efficient tool for managing price risk. The implications of these findings will be illustrated for milk quotas in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. Prior conditions which might make a futures market for milk quotas successful in both countries will be deduced.     

Transport Infrastructure and Industrial Location: The Case of Thailand

This paper addresses the impact of transport infrastructure projects of manufacturing employment in Thai regions. After a theoretical review we consider the impact of various transport modes: road, rail and ports. We find that roads and ports have a positive impact on industrial location, although the size of the impact is modest. Labor appears to be a more important location factor in Thailand. For the analysis of the data, geographical information systems (GIS) appear to be a quite useful tool.     

The airbus-boeing dispute: Implications of the WTO boeing decision

Editorial

The airbus-boeing dispute: Implications of the WTO boeing decision     

商科院校实践教学与实用技能培养体系的构建与实施

构建实践教学体系必须落实＂宽、厚、活＂的教学思想,以此为基础,提出构建实践教学培养体系的原则与方法。根据商科院校相关专业对知识结构、能力培养的需要,围绕本科人才培养计划的总体框架,构建商科院校＂五面九块＂的创新型实践教学体系,这给我们进一步研究实践教学体系的制订与修改提供了重要的借鉴与参考。