Development of agricultural territories during the post-soviet period: Institutional aspect

The necessity of institutional proposals on the stable development of rural territories is justified in the article. A multivariant approach is proposed for studying the institutional environment of the countryside. The key trends of reformation of the countryside’s social and economic systems are defined based on the results of the our own empiric research.     

Weiter behandeln oder nicht?

Ein Fallbeispiel - Frau Schneider erkrankte im Alter von 73 Jahren an einer akuten myeloischen Leuk?mie (AML). Die eingeleiteten Therapien griffen nicht. Schlie?lich stimmte sie der Therapiebegrenzung zu. Vor welchen klinischen und normativen Herausforderungen stand das Behandlungsteam? Welche L?sungsans?tze für das praktische Vorgehen k?nnen aus diesem Fall geschlussfolgert werden?     

Regional Integration and Trade: Controlling for Varying Degrees of Heterogeneity in the Gravity Model

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in the 1990s prompted a renewal of interest in studying the effect of regional integration on trade. Using a panel dataset of bilateral export flows from 12 EU countries to 20 OECD trading partners over the period 1992–2003, the trade effect of European regional integration, denoted by an EU dummy, is examined across a number of fixed effects (FE) specifications, each of which has been claimed as the correct econometric specification of the gravity model. Typically parsimonious in (time‐varying) economic variables and abundant in fixed effects, the FE specifications allow for varying degrees of heterogeneity in the gravity model. Two gravity models are estimated: a gravity model of traditional trade determinants and a gravity model of new trade theory (NTT) determinants. Both gravity models provide reasonable coefficient estimates, although they vary somewhat across the FE specifications for the traditional gravity model. Both gravity models are congruent in suggesting that the coefficient of the EU dummy declines in magnitude and becomes insignificant as an increasing degree of heterogeneity is admitted into the model. This suggests the fundamental importance of the econometric specification when evaluating trade policy effects within a gravity framework.     

Making Good Decisions with Minimal Information: Simultaneous and Sequential Choice

The adaptive pressures facing humans and other animals to make decisions quickly can be met both by increasing internal information-processing speed and by minimizing the amount of information to be used. Here we focus on the latter effect and ask how, and how well, agents can make good decisions with a minimal amount of information, using two specific tasks as examples. When a choice must be made between simultaneously-available options, minimal information in the form of binary recognition (whether or not each item is recognized) can be used in the recognition heuristic to choose effectively. When options are encountered sequentially one at a time, minimal information as to whether or not each option is the best encountered so far is sufficient to guide agents using a simple search-cutoff rule to high performance along several choice criteria. Both of these examples have important economic as well as biological applications, and show the power of simple fast and frugal heuristics to produce good decisions with little information. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Shaping online consumer choice by partitioning the Web

This research explores how partitioning attributes in online search interfaces changes the valuations of those attributes—and impacts subsequent choice—such that attributes that are displayed as separate categories tend to receive greater decision weight than attributes grouped under umbrella categories. Across several choice domains—cars, dates, and hotels—we show that different attribute partitions impact the importance assigned to attributes (Studies 1 and 2), as well as consumer choices (Studies 3 and 4). We argue that these effects are due in part to users' willingness to use the implicit recommendations of interface designers to determine the importance of attributes, a willingness that extends to following explicit recommendations of online agents based on those attributes (Study 5). © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Stuck on gold: Real exchange rate volatility and the rise and fall of the gold standard, 1875-1939

Did the gold standard diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. Hard regimes like the gold standard limit monetary shocks by tying policymakers' hands; but exchange-rate inflexibility compromises shock absorption in a world of real disturbances and nominal stickiness. A model shows how lack of flexibility affects the transmission of terms-of-trade shocks. Evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exposes a dramatic change. The classical gold standard did absorb shocks, but the interwar gold standard did not, supporting the view that the interwar gold standard was a poor regime choice.     

Deregulating the domestic natural gas market: Conditions and mechanisms

The paper looks at topical points of the formation of the domestic natural gas market, the definitive ones being the rules of interaction between the monopoly company and the independent gas producers. Elaborated corporate interaction rules are presented as a Grid Code. The mechanism of a business game between key domestic gas market players is proposed as a Grid Code development tool.