What drives smallholder farmers’ willingness to pay for a new farm technology? Evidence from an experimental auction in Kenya

We use an incentive compatible experimental auction to measure demand for a new agricultural technology, a triple layered hermetic storage bag. When used properly, the bag creates an airtight seal that reduces storage loss from insect pests and neutralizes aflatoxin contamination in stored grain. We find that demand for this new technology is highly elastic (4.3) and that the wholesaler could increase profit by lowering the price. We also find that farmers’ valuation for the bag is not significantly different based on the medium through which information about it is communicated to them, either text, audio or video messages. This suggests that practitioners should use the cheapest option for disseminating information, which is text messaging in this context. In addition, we find that farmers who have prior awareness of the bag are willing to pay 20% more on average than those previously unaware of it. In total, the highly elastic demand for the improved bags, along with the fact that prior awareness of the bag leads to higher willingness to pay, suggests that a one-time price subsidy for the new technology could spur demand and increase future adoption.     

后方仓库建设研究

后方仓库担负着全军通用和专用物资器材的战略储备、周转、保管、保养和发运等任务,具有十分重要的作用。文章对目前后方仓库普遍存在的问题进行了分析,为构建"效能型"保障新模式,提出了仓库物流建设应走信息化、自动化、军民融合以及复合型道路的发展方向,以全面提高后方仓库综合保障能力。     

粮食钢板仓技术状况及设计建议

简述了钢板仓在我国的发展历程及现状,分析了钢板仓在粮食储藏行业存在的技术和安全问题,针对钢板仓的特点,探讨了提高钢板仓储粮技术性能的措施和方法。     

高校数据仓库的构建技术研究

文章阐述了如何在高校创建数据仓库,以及数据仓库的组成与管理,并通过一个数据仓库应用的例子论述了在高校建立数据仓库的重要性及必然性。     

Unsettling aspects of voting theory

Summary. Voting procedures are known to be plagued with a variety of difficulties such as strategic voting, or where a voter is rewarded with a better election outcome by not voting, or where a winning candidate can lose by receiving more support. Once we know that these problems can occur, the next objective should be to completely understand how, why, and where they arise. Namely, for each election procedure, the new goal is to determine when such problems can occur, all voter types who can cause these difficulties, and the actions they must take. This paper develops an easily used approach to handle all of these issues for standard voting methods. New intuitive explanations for these various oddities follow from this approach. Received: August 14, 2002 ; revised version: September 4, 2002 RID="*" ID="*"My thanks to Richard Barrett and, in particular, to Hannu Nurmi for corrections, several useful comments, and suggestions they made about earlier versions. Also, my thanks to a referee for calling some excellent references to my attention. An earlier draft was presented at the 2002 Public Choice Society meeting. This research was supported by an NSF grant.     

基于一种存储服务构建方法与研究

存储技术的发展经历多个不同的阶级,目前储存技术正在向云存储服务阶段的发展。本文提出了一种基于REST(REpresentationalState Transfer)架构搜集应用元数据、以"原子数据信息服务"感知存储子系统资源、将面向服务SOA(Service Oriented Architecture)理念应用于存储架构设计、进而构建"集成存储服务容器"的按需存储服务构建方法。     

Competitive Storage,Biofuels and the Corn Price

The use of corn as an ethanol feedstock has been stimulated by US biofuels policy. This has changed both the position and the slope of the corn demand curve and increased the pass-through from crude oil to corn prices. The principal constraints on ethanol consumption and production have been regulation (the biofuels mandate), capacity constraints in ethanol refining and the blend wall, which puts a ceiling on the ethanol content of gasoline. The incidence of these constraints has varied over time. We model these impacts within the competitive storage model using structural break regression analysis. Our analysis shows that the pass-through has varied over time in relation to the share of ethanol in total US corn use. Our analysis provides robust empirical evidence of an increase in the pass-through from crude oil to corn prices over the period from the start of the century to a high level over 2004–2008 when corn use in ethanol was growing very fast. This enhanced sensitivity was driven by competition for corn as an ethanol feedstock with stock demand exerting strong upward pressure on the corn price.     

投票制转为审核制的评优问题分析

X公司优秀员工的评审机制由投票制改为审核制,虽然在一定程度上有进步,但还是存在着诸多问题:私立性动机替代了制度公正;管理者未能实质性控制评优局面;缺乏客观合理的材料审核标准;评优专家本身是优秀参评者;利益链纠葛涣散了团队精神。探索更加有效的评选机制势在必行,为此X公司需要从以下几个方面着手:"参评人回避+外聘专家"盲审参评人材料;核准制须从根本上做到科学性;割断利益链给考核制度减负。     

The Political Economy of Social Security

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ by age and by productivity. In such a setting, a redistributive pay-as-you-go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is higher than the rate of population growth. The workers with medium wages (not those with the lowest wages) and the retirees form a majority which votes for a positive level of social security. This level depends on the difference between the rates of population growth and interest as well as on the redistributiveness of the benefit rule.     

Young People's Attitudes Towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement?

SUMMARY

This article presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British General Election–specifically their attitudes towards the print advertising used by the main political parties during this election. In analysing the data, the authors were particularly interested in examining the claim that political advertising contributes to a sense of malaise–most acutely apparent among young people. While we found high levels of claimed advertising awareness, this was coupled with largely unfavourable attitudes towards most of the print advertising used in the election. Despite these judgements, most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins. Not surprisingly the evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of the role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young people. As a familiar discourse advertising offers the political classes an entry point to establish a dialogue with young sections of the electorate. However, for many young people, political advertising appears to help reinforce their predilection about politics being something one naturally distrusts.