Stop and Go Agricultural Policies with a Land Market

This article studies the design of farm policy in the presence of asymmetric information about farmers' productivity, a government objective to insure farmers a minimum "parity" income, an endogenous land rent, and diminishing returns on alternative (nonprogram crop) land uses. In this setting, acreage set asides are never part of an optimal farm policy, although compensated acreage limits are. When there are new farmer entrants who cannot be excluded from farm programs, optimal policy takes the form of a pure voluntary acreage limitation—or "buyout"—program in which high-cost producers participate and low-cost producers do not.     

The Application of Activity-based Costing in the United Kingdom's Largest Financial Institutions

Activity-based costing (ABC) has come to prominence in recent years as an attractive alternative to conventional costing systems. Its development has involved many service sector applications and its use throughout the core management accounting areas of decision making, control and performance measurement. This article contains the results of a 1994 survey of the UK's largest financial institutions to ascertain the extent and the nature of the adoption of ABC.     

An evaluation of consumer participation in hospital breast services

Community expectations and research demonstrate that consumers play an important role in shaping services for women with breast cancer. Consumer contribution has been mandated recently in Victoria, Australia, to ensure the inclusion of consumer involvement in the planning and decision‐making processes within health organizations. As part of the redevelopment of breast services in Victoria, Southern Health has been funded to plan local improvements to care co‐ordination for women diagnosed with breast cancer in the southern metropolitan area of Melbourne. The establishment of effective consumer participation in breast services is an integral aspect of this project and a range of initiatives has been undertaken to achieve meaningful consumer involvement including the appointment of a consumer advisor; appointment of staff with extensive knowledge in women's health and community development to the project; establishment of a consumer reference group; and plans made to improve the receptivity of health service systems to consumer input. A preliminary evaluation of this ongoing project has indicated that a productive role for consumers in service practice review and policy and planning activities has been established and some change and engagement of staff has occurred. There is still work to be done to promote the involvement of a wider range of health professionals and to increase the level of trust between consumers and staff.     

Price integration in the Australian rock lobster industry: implications for management and climate change adaptation

Rock lobster fisheries are Australia's most valuable wild fisheries in terms of both value of production and value of exports. Different states harvest and export different lobster species, with most of the landings being sent to the Hong Kong market. A perception in the Australian lobster industry is that the different species are independent on the export market, such that a change in landings of one species has no impact on the price of the others. This study investigates the market integration of Australian exports to Hong Kong for the four species and different exporting states. Our results indicate all four species and producers/export states are perceived to be substitutes for one another, so that, in the long run, prices paid to operators in the industry will move together. The integrated nature of the Hong Kong export market for Australian lobster suggests that the potential impacts of alternative fisheries management and development strategies at state and species levels cannot be considered in isolation, at least from an economic perspective. In addition, impacts of external shocks affecting production in one state (e.g. climate change) can be expected to affect all Australian lobster fisheries.     

Optimal Economic Rotation for a Mixed Species Even-Aged Forest

Most forest crops in real life are mixtures of species and the theory of optimal economic rotations as presented in literature does not quite apply to them. A model for determining the optimal economic rotation of a mixed species even-aged forest has, therefore, been developed. Data for jack pine and black spruce from an actual forest managed by a forest company have been used to demonstrate the value of the model. It has been concluded that at high discount rates faster growing components of a mixture should be given more importance in deciding the common optimal rotation. At low discount rates the slower growing components need to be emphasized.
La majeure partie de la récolte forestière consiste en réalité en mélanges d'essences et la théorie des rotations économiques optimales ne s'y applique pas tout à fait; Un modèle pour déterminer la rotation économique optimale a done áté developpé. Afin de démontrer la valeur de ce modéle, on s'est servi de données provenant d'une forêt de pin gris et d'épinette noire gárée par une compagnie forestiére. On a con-clu qu'avec des taux d'intérět éleves, on devrait donner plus d'importance aux constituants dont la croissance est la plus rapide lorsqu'il s'agit de décider la rotation commune optimale. Par contre, avec des taux d'tntérêt bas, on doit faire valoir les constituants à croissance plus lente.     

DO LIES ERODE TRUST?

Does honesty promote trust and trustworthiness? We investigate how being lied to (versus told the truth) in a Gneezy deception game affects behavior in a subsequent trust game with different players. Using a design that controls for potential treatment effects on payoffs, mood, and beliefs about the overall propensity for honesty in the experiment, we find that the specific experience of being lied to significantly erodes trust and trustworthiness.     

Derivative financial instrument use in Australia

This paper examines the relation between derivatives use and financial characteristics of Australian industrial and mining firms. The firm characteristics proxy for financial distress, tax losses, managerial ownership, growth opportunities, the ability to generate operating cash flows and liquidity. We also control for firm size, dividends and exposure to foreign exchange risk. The results show that firm size and leverage are the main explanatory variables for derivative use for both industrial and mining firms     

Productivity Impacts of Veil Nets on UK Crangon Vessels

As with many shrimp fisheries, the North Sea brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) fishery has been characterised by by‐catch and discarding of juvenile fish species that are of value to other fleet segments. To offset this externality, the mandatory use of veil nets or separator panels was introduced in 2003 for all vessels using an aggregate beam length of more than 8 m. Sea trials prior to this date suggested that retained catch might be reduced by between 8% and 35%, depending on the area and season. These studies, however, do not consider the behavioural response by fishers to reduce this impact. In this study, the actual impact of the restrictions on the productivity of UK Crangon vessels was estimated using a production frontier approach. The ex post analysis suggests that a productivity decline of around 14% has been experienced by UK vessels adopting this gear.