以色列农业发展经验对我国西北干旱区农业现代化的启示

农业现代化是我国农业发展的出路,而我国西北干旱区农业现代化进程比较缓慢。以色列农业现代化凭借高科技的支撑,完美的市场化操作,政府的全力支持顺利地实现。文章借鏊以色列农业现代化发展经验,结合我国西北干旱区农业现状,提出了相应的改进对策。     

Discoveries, innovations, and business cycles

There is considerable evidence that the density of basic innovations is peaked at definite periods with intervals of about 40–60 years. This has been used as support for the behavior of economic cycles as postulated by Kontradieff and amplified by Schumpeter. Recently some economists have used this model to forecast economic recovery in the middle or late 1980s.This paper points out that the shape of the clusters of innovation or inventions are different and sharper than those of economic depression or economic recovery. The transfer of knowledge from basic inventions to industrial innovations shortens as one moves from the 18th to the 20th century, and some probable explanations for this are offered. The importance of discoveries and limited discoveries to the process of invention and innovation is discussed. Also shown is that discoveries reveal cluster phenomena which are functionally related to the clusters of invention and innovation.     

Water pricing and water allocation in israel

Marginal valuation of water is complicated because water authorities in most countries do not equate prices across users. Standard analyses imply that unequal valuation of water by users is inefficient and that economic efficiency can be improved by equating prices after accounting for transportation costs. Such inefficiencies are usually explained by the influence of political interest groups. We suggest alternatively that motivations such as food self-sufficiency, ideological settlement objectives, equity, and long run considerations may take precedence over short-run economic efficiency in Israeli water markets. If so, new peace accords, water projects, and water price equalization appear to have important complementary effects when exploited in combination.     

Why do parents who usually vaccinate their children hesitate or refuse? General good vs. individual risk

This study examines vaccination hesitancy or refusal following the 2013 polio outbreak in Israel, based on two theoretical models. The first is Sandman’s theoretical model, which holds that risk perception is comprised of hazard plus outrage. The second model is the affect heuristic that explains the risk/benefit confounding. It aims to expose the barriers that inhibited parental compliance with OPV vaccination for their children. The study employed mixed methods – a questionnaire survey (n = 197) and content analysis of parents’ discussions in blogs, Internet sites, and Facebook pages (n = 2499). The findings indicate that some parents who normally give their children routine vaccinations decided not to give them OPV due to lack of faith in the health system, concerns about vaccine safety and reasons specific to the polio outbreak in Israel. Some vaccinated due to a misunderstanding, namely, they believed that OPV was supposed to protect their children, when it was actually for overall societal well-being. This study highlights the difficulty of framing the subject of vaccinations as a preventive measure, especially when the prevention is for society at large and not to protect the children themselves. The findings of this study are important because they provide a glimpse into a situation that can recur in different places in the world where a disease considered to have been ‘eradicated’ returns, and the public is required to take measures which protect the public but which might put individuals at risk. The conclusions from the analysis of the findings of this study are that the public’s risk perception is based on a context-dependent analysis, which the communicating body must understand and respect.     

Patterns of development and conservation in agricultural lands—The case of the Tel Aviv metropolitan region 1990–2000

Until the 1990s Israel was implementing a strict agricultural land preservation policy program, rooted in Zionist ideology. This was changed when shifts in Israeli planning and land policy towards the end of the 20th century brought about accelerated growth and sprawling development in agricultural lands at the urban–rural fringe, particularly in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region (TMR). In this article we describe the background for policy shifts and the resulting impact on metropolitan growth, and then proceed to identify patterns of development in former agricultural lands and their impact on conservation, based on a study of statutory land use plans converting agricultural land to built-up uses within the TMR. It was found that most of the plans were converting large tracts of agricultural land to residential uses, characterized by low-density suburban-type family housing, thus reducing considerably the spatial conservation potential. In addition, only relative small portions of land were conserved as public open space within plans’ boundaries, and even then only about half of that was actually effective for active open space uses.     

The water market in Israel: An example for increasing the supply

In this study we search for solutions to the problem of Israel's water shortage. To illustrate the shortage, we first model the water market in Israel, i.e., the corresponding supply and demand of water, and from it the dynamics of water prices. A direct way to solve the shortage problem and to reduce the high equilibrium price can be found via a different way of sharing water among the Levant countries, or by bringing more water from outside the region. The latter can take the form of conveying Nile water or water from Turkey or by constructing desalination plants along the shores. In this study we concentrate on the importing of Nile water.The costs of most of the solutions are too high compared to the returns to water in agriculture. This relation is continuously changing with the increasing demand for water for domestic and agricultural use. Our analysis shows that within 5–10 years the marginal value product of water in the area west of the Jordan river would equal the marginal costs of water from the Nile, $0.40m³.     

The influence of political conflicts on country image and intention to visit: A study of Israel's image

This paper analyzes the image of Israel, a country subject to continuous conflicts, and the effect of a political event on its image. A measurement model is examined before and after a specific international incident, the Mavi Marmara conflict between Turkey and Israel, in order to understand how this event influences the image that the Turks have of Israel, as well as their intention to visit the place. The results confirm that, when people have previous animosity towards a nation, the image of this country is formed mainly through its affective component and not through its cognitive one. The research concludes that a political conflict between two countries significantly damages the country image through the affective component and boosts the previously held animosity. The incident also increases the negative influence of the affective image on the overall country image and on the intention to visit the place.     

2009年以色列科技发展综述

本文对2009年以色列科技发展的重大政策动向、研究与开发支出、新的科技统计数据与指标、高科技产业发展,以及科技成果和国际科技合作动态等情况进行了综合评述。