From Experience: The Corporate Black Hole

There is a lot of creative potential lying dormant in corporations because too many managers fail to see innovation as a process to be deliberately managed. C. Joshua Abend sees innovation connected to virtually everything that happens—or doesn't happen—in an organization. He offers in this article ideas that managers can use to remove the impediments to increased innovation and productivity.     

Risk preference and optimal enterprise combinations in Kahuro division of Murang'a district, Kenya

Financing smallholder farming has been one of the major concerns of Kenya's agricultural development efforts. Many credit programs have evolved over the years but with dismal performance. In a study that sought to find the best way to finance smallholder agriculture, it became necessary to analyze and document, in the first place, the farmers' preferred enterprise patterns. Any financial innovations would hence address the preferred patterns. Of particular interest was the effect of risk preference on such patterns, which had been ignored in many previous farm management studies. Murang'a district was chosen as a typical smallholder district. Sample farmers, obtained through cluster sampling, were visited and structured questionnaires administered to cover farm events and physical resources of short rains 1995 to long rains 1996. This formed a basis for formulating the farm patterns. A quadratic programming model was used to analyze observed farm plans. The model incorporates farmers' risk preferences, revenue fluctuations, and resource and subsistence restrictions. The results showed that: (1) changes in risk preference do affect the optimal crop combinations; (2) the typical cropping pattern is rational as the farmer meets both food and cash under modest variability of income; (3) insisting on producing most subsistence food requirements by the farmers reduces efficiency and limits the feasible plans.     

基于GPRS通讯智能测控终端的危险品储运的远程监控及智能调度管理系统

工业气体被喻为工业的"血液",广泛应用于冶金、石化、制造以等领域,对国民经济的发展起着重要作用。文章介绍了基于GPRS通讯智能测控终端的危险品储运的远程监控及智能调度管理系统的组成。智能测控终端主要由LPC3231及周围电路组成,完成储罐或槽车的数据采集并由GPRS模块无线发送到供气公司,以便远程监控及智能调度管理。     

Economic juries and public project provision

Juries charged with evaluating economic policy alternatives are the focus of this study. The recruitment and management of juries is a principal-agent problem involving the design of incentive mechanisms for participation and truthful revelation of values. This paper considers a simple general equilibrium economy in which juries of consumers are used to estimate the value of public projects and determine their provision. The impact of participation fees on jury selection and representativeness, and on statistical mitigation of response errors, is analyzed. Manski set identification is used to bound selection bias and determine participation fee treatments that minimize welfare regret from imperfect jury findings.