SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Schamel, Guenter.

In Germany, the focus of agricultural policy is now "the consumer". In the aftermath of the BSE crisis, farmers are encouraged to produce higher quality "ecological" food for which consumers are willing to pay more. Food is an experience good and quality signals are becoming a more important determinant of the prices received. However, given consumers' cognitive limitations, all signals can not receive equal attention. We argue that consumer attention to product quality signals increases with its producer's quality performance, and given attention spillovers (collective reputation), with the expertise of associated producers. Over time, collective reputations should have an effect on price when attention (or quality performance) is low, but should lose...

How to Win Schumpeterian Competition. Technological Transfers in the German Plastics Industry from the 1930s to the 1970s

Palavras-chave: Food and beverages; Consumer economics; Regional and producer reputation; Consumer/Household Economics; L66; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24933

Streb, Jochen.

Introducing the concept of innovation capital we will analyse conditions under which a national industry is able to succeed in international Schumpeterian competition. Then we will discuss the significance of this concept for the economic development of the German plastics industry from the 1930s to the 1970s. Using a repeated game model of technological cooperation we will especially focus on technological transfers from chemical firms to plastics fabricators. We will deploy both a microeconomic approach when viewing product innovations transferred by the so-called Kunststoffrohstoffabteilung (KURO) of chemical firm BASF, and a macroeconomic approach when looking at the development of total factor productivity in the German plastics fabricating industry....

Dynamic Quotas with Learning

Palavras-chave: Technological transfer; Schumpeterian competition; Repeated game; Plastics industry; Germany; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; D83; L65; N64; O31.

Ano: 1999

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/28374

Karp, Larry S.; Costello, Christopher.

We study the optimal quota sequence, in a stationary environment, where a regulator and a non-strategic firm have asymmetric information, The regulator is able to learn about the unknown cost parameter by using a quota that is slack with positive probability, It is never optimal for the regulator to learn gradually, In the first period, he either ignores the possibility of learning, or he tries to improve his information, Regardless of the outcome in the first period, he never experiments in subsequent periods.

Mass Media and Public Policy: Global Evidence from Agricultural Policies

Palavras-chave: Quotas; Asymmetric information; Searching; International Relations/Trade; D83; L50.

Ano: 2000

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6245

Olper, Alessandro; Swinnen, Johan F.M..

Mass media plays a crucial role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media’s incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups’ influence in policy-making. We use data on agricultural policy from 67 countries, spanning a wide range of development stages and media markets, to test these predictions. We find that, in line with theoretical hypotheses, public support to agriculture is strongly affected by the mass media. In particular, an increase in the share of informed voters, and a greater role of the private televisions in society is associated with policies which benefit the majority more: it...

Measuring Transactions Costs from Observed Behavior: Market Choice in Peru

Palavras-chave: Mass Media; Media Structure; Information; Agricultural Protection; Political Economy; Agricultural and Food Policy; International Development; Political Economy; Public Economics; D72; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51694

Vakis, Renos; Sadoulet, Elisabeth; de Janvry, Alain.

Farmers incur proportional and fixed transactions costs in selling their crops on markets. Using data for Peruvian potato farmers, we propose a method to measure these transactions costs. When opportunities exist to sell a crop on alternative markets, the observed choice of market can be used to infer a monetary measure of transactions costs in market participation. The market choice model is first estimated at the reduced form level with a conditional logit, as a function of variables that explain transactions costs. We then use these market choice equations to control for selection in predicting the idiosyncratic prices that would be received on all markets and the idiosyncratic proportional transactions costs that would be incurred to reach all markets....

Definitions of Biodiversity and Measures of Its Value

Palavras-chave: Transactions costs; Market choice; Information; Marketing; D23; D83; O12.

Ano: 2003

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25110

Simpson, R. David.

The destruction of natural habitats has prompted concerns about the loss of biological diversity. Regrettably, however, there is no consensus among either biologists or economists on the most meaningful measures of biodiversity. Fundamentally different definitions are useful in asking fundamentally different questions. Considerable attention has been given to the value of diversity in search models. A measure of "aggregate variability" is appropriate to such models. Values derived from search models tend to be well behaved; they exhibit diminishing returns in diversity. In contrast, a definition of diversity as "relative abundance" is more appropriate to more complex objective functions. Values derived in these models are not necessarily well behaved. The...

Non-Constant Discounting in Continuous Time

Palavras-chave: Biological diversity; Biodiversity; Diversity index; Abundance; Search; Variability; Consistency; Contingent valuation; Diminishing returns; Increasing returns; Environmental Economics and Policy; D43; D83; Q20.

Ano: 2002

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/10551

Karp, Larry S..

This note derives the dynamic programming equation (DPE) to a differentiable Markov Perfect equilibrium in a problem with non-constant discounting and general functional forms. We begin with a discrete stage model and take the limit as the length of the stage goes to 0 to obtain the DPE corresponding to the continuous time problem. We characterize the multiplicity of equilibria under non-constant discounting and discuss the relation between a given equilibrium of that model and the unique equilibrium of a related problem with constant discounting. We calculate the bounds of the set of candidate steady states and we Pareto rank the equilibria.

Palavras-chave: Hyperbolic discounting; Time consistency; Markov equilibria; Non-uniqueness; Observational equivalence; Pareto efficiency; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; D83; L50.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25050

Filtering with Search

Taub, Bart.

A firm monopsonistically hires labor from a pool containing both skilled and unskilled workers. The marginal value of a worker depends on the match between the job and the worker's skill level. Unskilled workers can have negative productivity if they are placed in a skilled job. The firm cannot distinguish the two types. The workers are initially dispersed and search for the high wage jobs from the firm. The workers' skill levels are correlated with their patience; equivalently, they obtain indirect benefits, such as non-firm-specific career capital, from jobs that use their skill appropriately. By judiciously choosing different wages for different types of jobs, the firm can partially filter the appropriate worker types and match them with the appropriate...

Product Attribute Saliency and Region of Origin: Some Empirical Evidence from Portugal

Palavras-chave: Labor and Human Capital; C73; D83; E24; J64.

Ano: 2001

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/26256

Santos, J. Freitas; Ribeiro, J. Cadima.

This paper empirically investigates the extent to which consumer preferences may act as promoters of regional products. Three products are studied in terms of the importance consumers attach to various product attributes with particular emphasis on region of origin information. The estimation of a hedonic price function, which relates the price of Portuguese regional products to its various attributes, provided empirical support to the hypothesis that region of origin matters to consumers. The study shows that wine, olive oil and cheese from some regions of origin have a significant impact on price. Particularly, some regions of origin are expected to have price premiums, while others are expected to have discounts.

Confirmatory Bias under Food-Borne Risk: A Lab Experiment

Palavras-chave: Regional products; Hedonic approach; Wine; Olive oil; Cheese; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; C21; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24667

Cao, Ying; Just, David R.; Wansink, Brian.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the interaction between consumers’ past eating behaviors, risk perceptions and future information processing procedure. In the study, participants were required to choose whether or not to eat chicken that was potentially be tainted with Avian Influenza (AI). Results showed that people decreased the consumption when facing ambiguous signals regarding the food quality, but would not cease to eat altogether. Due to a taste of consistency, participants updated their risk perceptions and judgments based on their eating behaviors. The more chicken individuals ate the more favorably they tended to rate the food, suggesting confirmatory bias. Even though consumers with previous experience could pick up signals faster,...

Learning in Organic Farming An Application on Finnish Dairy Farms

Palavras-chave: Cognitive Dissonance; Confirmation Bias; Self-compliance; Justification; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; D03; D12; D83; Q18.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61312

Sipilainen, Timo; Oude Lansink, Alfons G.J.M..

Organic farming technology may be relatively unknown to farmers at the time when they switch from conventional into organic farming. Therefore, experience gained over time and learning by doing may be important determinants in the efficiency of organic farming. It may also take time to reach the optimal nutrient stock of soil and optimal nutrient supply for arable crops under organic farming. Thus, efficiency of organic farming can either grow or decrease over time depending on the nature of the technology and the learning process. This paper estimates technical efficiency of organic farming and its development over time. We control for possible selection bias and regional heterogeneity when estimating a stochastic frontier distance functions for a sample...

Valuation of Biodiversity for Use in New Product Research in a Model of Sequential Search

Palavras-chave: Technical efficiency; Technical change; Output distance function; SFA; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies; C23; D24; D83; O30; Q12.

Ano: 2005

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/24493

Simpson, R. David; Sedjo, Roger A..

We develop a model of search in which a researcher chooses the size of sequential batches of samples to test. While earlier work has considered similar questions, the contribution of this paper is to use the search model to place a value on the marginal research opportunity. The valuation of such opportunities may be of little interest or relevance in many of the contexts in which search models are employed, but we apply our analysis to an area of considerable societal interest: the valuation of biological diversity for use in new product research. While data from which to make inferences are limited, we find that, using plausible estimates of relevant parameters, the value of biodiversity in these applications is negligible.