SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT: THE MOBILE HYDROGEN FUEL CELL

Sustainable technology development implies large changes in technological systems. The illustrative process ‘hydrogen fuel cell in a boat’ is used here as an example of a learning process concerning a transition towards a hydrogen economy. Theoretically the concepts of constructive technology assessment, back-casting and social niche management are combined in this approach.     

Marketing Organic Pasta from Big Sandy to Rome: It's a Long Kamut ®

Bob Quinn spent 20 years propagating an ancient Egyptian wheat variety that is generally known as Khorasan wheat. Bob trademarked his wheat variety using the brand name "Kamut^®." Kamut^® brand wheat contains some nutritional, health, and taste advantages over modern wheat varieties, but lacks some of modern wheat's agronomic advantages. Kamut^® brand wheat is organically produced, and is used to make cereals, breads, cookies, snacks, pancakes, bread mixes, bulgur, pasta, and baked goods. Whole wheat products produced from Kamut^® brand wheat are less bitter than those produced from modern wheat varieties. Europe represents approximately two-thirds of the market for this product.     

Sunkist Growers: Refreshing the Brand

The objective of this case is to introduce students to what is possibly the most complex agricultural cooperative in the United States and learn more about the economic issues involved in citrus production globally. Students are asked to analyze a strategy built around brand loyalty with higher costs and an inability to dictate to growers what varieties are most valuable to retailers.     

Can Direct Payments Facilitate Agricultural Commercialisation: Evidence from a Transition Country

We investigate the impact of direct payments on agricultural commercialisation in Kosovo. Kosovo is one of the poorest countries in Europe but, with European assistance, provides substantial funds to support agriculture, made up of many small and often semi‐subsistence farms. Thus, the effect of this support is a central policy issue. Identifying the effect of direct payments on market participation faces endogeneity issues arising from the possible simultaneous determination of participation in support programmes and market participation. In order to achieve proper identification of the endogenous direct payments, we use a strategy of targeted identification search that employs several different methodological approaches. We find that direct payments for fruit and vegetables, and those for cereals and oilseeds have a positive effect on market participation. However, we cannot identify any definite effect of livestock payments.     

Host tourism aspirations as a point of departure for the sustainable livelihoods approach

The sustainable livelihoods (SL) approach offers a holistic framework and a practical toolkit to analyze tourism's impacts and interactions within a community. This study argues that the usefulness of the SL approach in tourism can be enhanced by ensuring that the approach is built on a genuine people-centered starting point. The exploration of the local community's representations of, and aspirations for, their roles in tourism as a future livelihood choice meets this need. To verify the value of this approach empirically, this study examined the case of Lhasa, Tibet, and local youth as the research respondents. The findings suggest that the young hosts in Lhasa urban area were heterogeneous in their responses to tourism as a future livelihood choice. They fell into four subgroups: in-betweeners, ambivalent supporters, alternative supporters, and lovers. Further, this study examined the profiles of these four subgroups and explored their responses. The study enhances the SL approach by taking tourism as an example and clearly defining the departure point for its adoption within the context of broader livelihoods portfolios. Additionally, it suggests some potential directions for tailored management strategies to meet youth and community perspectives.     

“Panelizing” Repeated Cross Sections

This paper considers the implementation of a non-stationary, heterogeneous Markov model for the analysis of binary dependent variables in a time series of repeated cross-sectional (RCS) surveys. The model offers the opportunity to estimate entry and exit transition probabilities and to examine the effects of time-constant and time-varying covariates on the hazards. We show how maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters can be obtained by Fishers method-of-scoring and how to estimate both fixed and time-varying covariate effects. The model is exemplified with an analysis of the labor force participation decision of Dutch and West German women using ISSP (and other) data from 10 annual Dutch surveys conducted between 1987 and 1996 and 7 annual West German surveys conducted between 1988 and 1994. Some open problems concerning the application of the model are discussed.     

Casinos,casino size,and crime: A panel data analysis of Michigan counties

Growth in legal gaming in the United States over the past quarter century or so is well-documented. One important factor fueling this growth was the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which permitted Native American tribes to establish, under agreements or “compacts” with the states in which they are located, casinos offering what is known as Class III gaming: slot machines, blackjack, roulette, and other games. Since the passage of the Act, there have been 21 Native American casinos established in Michigan. Also, three non-Native American casinos opened in Detroit in 1999 and 2000. This growth in the number of casinos has sparked a wide-ranging debate over the social and economic impacts of casino development.The purpose of this research is to focus on the crime issue in the broader casino debate. We investigate the impact of these Michigan casinos on the rates of burglary, robbery, larceny and motor vehicle theft (property crimes) in casino host counties as well as in nearby counties. We employ a panel data set with annual observations on all 83 Michigan counties for the period 1994–2010. The dataset includes crime rates taken from the FBI crime data series, variables for the presence of a casino in a county or in a nearby county, the scale of a casino's operations as measured by revenues, and a variety of control variables suggested by the broader literature investigating the factors that determine crime rates generally.Our results suggest that in most cases the property crime rates studied are not affected by the presence or size of a casino in a county or in a nearby county. The largest such impact, which is negative, is for motor vehicle theft. The size of a casino does have a small positive effect on the motor vehicle theft rate.