The Dynamics of Commoditization in a Vietnamese Uplands Village, 1980–2000

Commodity markets have become key forces transforming upland livelihoods, social relations and landscapes in Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia. This paper examines the processes of market formation and their effects on local livelihoods and social relations in a village of Vietnam's north-western uplands. The results indicate that villagers' reactions to new opportunities arising from decollectivization and market liberalization wove them into an increasingly intricate 'commodity web'. Differences among households widened as households with an initial advantage accumulated further advantages. Yet the relations governing access to land and product markets also provided a floor of subsistence for the disadvantaged. The findings demonstrate the need to interrogate commodity markets, investigate the practices and relations constituting them, and analyse how they distribute income and risks among the actors involved. The nature of commodity markets, together with the relations governing access to productive resources, influences processes of social differentiation in the uplands.     

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Japan: consumers' food safety perceptions and willingness to pay for tested beef*

The discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’, in Japan caused anxiety about consuming beef and beef products. As a result, there was a sudden fall in sales of beef that hurt the Japanese beef industry as well as major beef exporters to Japan. We analyse factors that affect Japanese consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) price premiums for BSE‐tested beef and estimate the mean WTP for BSE‐tested beef using data obtained from a consumer survey in Japan. A single‐bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation model is used to recover the premium amount. We find that attitudes to food safety, reduction in beef consumption following the BSE outbreak, and being female all have a statistically significant positive effect on the WTP for BSE‐tested beef. Interestingly, demographic variables such as age and income do not affect the WTP, possibly indicating that the BSE scare similarly affected multiple segments of the population. In our sample, consumers are willing to pay a premium on average of greater than 50 per cent for BSE‐tested beef.     

Testing for the Presence of Financial Constraints in US Agricultural Cooperatives: An Investment Behaviour Approach

This study examines the presence of financial constraints in US agricultural cooperatives. We test the cooperative capital constraint hypothesis with a panel data econometric analysis of agricultural cooperatives’ investment behaviour. Regression results suggest that agricultural cooperatives’ capital expenditures are significantly affected by the availability of internal funds. Results also indicate that the sensitivity of investment to cash flow is correlated with cooperative structural characteristics.     

Consumer Attitudes to Genetically Modified Food in Norway

There is a lack of public acceptance of genetically modified (GM) food products in Europe. Using a dichotomous choice contingent valuation methodology, we find that, on average, survey respondents with a positive attitude toward the use of biotechnology in food production, higher educated, younger, and male need less of a discount to choose to purchase bread made with GM wheat. Further, we estimate confidence intervals for the mean discount required for consumers to choose GM bread. The 95% confidence interval for the mean discount required for the respondents to choose the GM bread is a 37% to 63% discount relative to conventional bread.     

Control of unfair contract terms and social values: EC and Nordic approaches

The paper analyses the relationship between traditional market rational contract law and rules on the control of unfair contract terms. The question is asked to what extent Nordic and EC rules on such control express a radical departure from traditional contract values. As a background Nordic law is compared to the recently adopted EC Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts. The most important differences are that individually negotiated contracts as well as the essential terms of the contract are excluded from the scope of the Directive, exclusions which have no counterpart in Nordic law. The abstract and static approach of the Directive also differs from Nordic thinking.As to the question of the impact of these rules, the paper first focuses on the possibilities of the contractual fairness principle functioning as an instrument for redistribution of wealth. The EC Directive does not include this aim, as the contract balance is expressly left outside the scope of the Directive. Nordic law, which contains more possibilities in this respect, has mostly focused on deviators. Not even this adjustment-friendly milieu has exerted any general influence on the prevailing balance between contractual performances in the market. The fairness principle contains other social values as well, such as autonomy, responsibility, freedom, fair consequences, access to justice, security, and social responsibility. Many of these values, which in the welfarist contract law are interpreted materially, are in their formal form central also to the market society, based on the rule of law. The fairness principle, as understood in the EC Directive, does not in any radical way upset the traditional values of contract law.

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Die Kontrolle unlauterer Geschäftsbedingungen und gesellschaftliche Werte: Die Ansätze der Europäischen Gemeinschaft und der Nordischen Staaten

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag analysiert die Beziehung zwischen dem traditionellen marktrationalen Vertragsrecht und den Vorschriften gegen unlautere Geschäftsbedingungen. Er stellt die Frage, wie stark sich diese Regelungen der Nordischen Staaten und die der Europäischen Gemeinschaft von den traditionellen vertragsrechtlichen Prinzipien entfernen. Als Hintergrund wird das Nordische Recht mit der kürzlich verabschiedeten EG-Richtlinie über unfaire Bedingungen in Konsumentenverträgen verglichen. Der wichtigste Unterschied besteht darin, da\ individuell ausgehandelte Verträge ebenso wie essentienelle Bestandteile des Vertrages vom Anwendungsbereich der Direktive ausgeschlossen werden, ein Ausschlu\, der im Nordischen Recht keine Entsprechung hat. Der abstrakte und statische Ansatz der Direktive unterscheidet sich vom Nordischen Denken. Was die Wirkungen der Bestimmungen gegen unlautere Geschäftsbedingungen anlangt, so befa\t sich der Beitrag mit den Möglichkeiten des Prinzips der vertraglichen Fairne\ als Instrument für Wohlstandsumverteilung. Die EG-Richtlinie verfolgt dieses Ziel nicht, ebenso wie sie auch ausdrücklich das Prinzip des vertraglichen Gleichgewichtes nicht mit einbezieht. Nicht einmal aber das interventionistische Milieu des Nordischen Rechts hat irgendeinen allgemeineren Einflu\ auf das vorherrschende Gleichgewicht zwischen dem vertraglichen Marktergebnis beider Vertragsparteien ausgeübt. Hinter dem Fairne\-Prinzip stehen auch andere gesellschaftliche Werte, wie Autonomie, Verantwortlichkeit, Freiheit, Rechtsschutz, Sicherheit oder soziale Verantwortlichkeit. Viele dieser Werten werden im wohlfahrtsorientierten Vertragsrecht materiell interpretiert, sind aber in ihrem formalen Gehalt auch zentral für eine rechtsstaatlich fundierte Marktgesellschaft. Das Fairne\-Prinzip, so wie es die EG-Richtlinie versteht, stellt sich nicht grundlegend gegen die traditionellen Werte des Vertragsrechts.

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The paper was presented at the Fourth International Conference on Consumer Law in Buenos Aires, May 1993.     

Search reduction in hierarchical distributed problem solving

Knoblock and Korf have determined that abstraction can reduce search at a single agent from exponential to linear complexity (Knoblock 1991; Korf 1987). We extend their results by showing how concurrent problem solving among multiple agents using abstraction can further reduce search to logarithmic complexity. We empirically validate our formal analysis by showing that it correctly predicts performance for the Towers of Hanoi problem (which meets all of the assumptions of the analysis). Furthermore, a powerful form of abstraction for large multiagent systems is to group agents into teams, and teams of agents into larger teams, to form an organizational pyramid. We apply our analysis to such an organization of agents and demonstrate the results in a delivery task domain. Our predictions about abstraction's benefits can also be met in this more realistic domain, even though assumptions made in our analysis are violated. Our analytical results thus hold the promise for explaining in general terms many experimental observations made in specific distributed AI systems, and we demonstrate this ability with examples from prior research.This research has been sponsored, in part, by the National Science Foundation under grants IRI-9015423 and IRI-9010645, by the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, and by a Bell Northern Research Postgraduate Award.     

The importance of deep integration in preferential trade agreements: the case of a successfully implemented Ukraine–Turkey free trade agreement

Review of World Economics - We construct a 45-sector model of Ukraine with Turkey and seven other regions to estimate the impacts on Ukraine of effectively implementing the deep Free Trade...     

在变化的金融体系中维护金融稳定:吸取历史教训

本文为美国堪萨斯联储行长、经济学家Hoeing在EMEAP-BCBS-FSI联合举的亚太区银行监管高级会议上的主题发言.本文以金融结构演进为切入点,从理论层面分析了次贷危机的根源及对现行监管制度和维护金融体系稳定政策带来的挑战.作者的观点有助于业界深入思考金融市场化取向的改革、金融创新的利弊、金融监管制度乃至金融稳定政策的调整等重大前沿性问题.     

Alert or oblivious? Factors underlying consumer responses to marketing stimuli

Recently published studies have introduced consumer researchers to uses of priming theory in marketing messages. A two‐factor model of assimilation and contrast effects has been proposed which focuses on aspects of message context and cognitive resource differences between consumers. However, these accounts do not consider an important additional factor pertinent to the production of category‐based contrast effects in response to marketing communications. This article discusses recent priming research and presents theoretical discussion in support of the putative third factor of consumer wariness for predicting judgmental outcomes of priming effects in consumer market settings. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.