Estimation of Commodity Specific Production Costs Using German Farm Accountancy Data

A central problem in estimating per unit costs of production originates from the fact that most farms produce multiple outputs and standard farm-accounting data are only available at the whole-farm level. The seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) approach is used to estimate per unit production costs based on German farm accountancy data. Special emphasis is put on outlier detection prior to the estimation of production costs to increase the robustness of the results. Outlier observations are identified based on the Mahalanobis distance for each observation on the data set. It was observed that less negative cost coefficients are estimated after the exclusion of the outliers. The time series analysis of cost estimation based on SUR regression shows the costs of arable crops after 2004, affected by rising prices of fertilizer, seeds and energy, while the increase of livestock production costs after 2006 is attributed to feed costs.Multi-output, outlier detection, production costs, Seemingly Unrelated Regression, Agricultural Finance,

Data-driven through-life costing to support product lifecycle management solutions in innovative product development

Innovative product usually refers to product that comprises of creativity and new ideas. In the development of such a new product, there is often a lack of historical knowledge and data available to be used to perform cost estimation accurately. This is due to the fact that traditional cost estimation methods are used to predict costs only after a product model has been built, and not at an early design stage when there is little data and information available. In light of this, original equipment manufacturers are also facing critical challenges of becoming globally competitive and increasing demands from customer for continuous innovation. To alleviate these situations this research has identified a new approach to cost modelling with the inclusion of product lifecycle management solutions to address innovative product development.The aim of this paper, therefore, is to discuss methods of developing an extended-enterprise data-driven through-life cost estimating method for innovative product development

ESTABLISHING LINKAGES BETWEEN ECONOMIC THEORY AND ENTERPRISE BUDGETING FOR TEACHING AND EXTENSION PROGRAMS

Accounting techniques of farm enterprise budgeting are rarely linked to the axioms of static production theory and to capital theory. This paper illustrates how certain linkages may be established. Particular attention is given to handling problems of scale economies, optimal output levels, replacement of durable inputs, inflation, and technological change. Estimates in an illustrative budget are linked to specific points on average cost curves. Budgeting for representative farm situations is compared to budgeting for specific situations.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

AN EVALUATION OF INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT WITH HETEROGENEOUS PARTICIPATION

Principal component analysis in employed to develop indices that distinguish between participants and nonparticipants in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. Results of incorporating these indices into yield, net return, and production cost functions for cotton producers indicate that both yield and costs increase as the degree of producer participation in IPM increases. Although these results are inconsistent with previous research, they are consistent with the theoretical relationship between IPM and conventional input usage.Crop Production/Industries,

D-SPACE4Cloud: A Design Tool for Big Data Applications

The last years have seen a steep rise in data generation worldwide, with the development and widespread adoption of several software projects targeting the Big Data paradigm. Many companies currently engage in Big Data analytics as part of their core business activities, nonetheless there are no tools and techniques to support the design of the underlying hardware configuration backing such systems. In particular, the focus in this report is set on Cloud deployed clusters, which represent a cost-effective alternative to on premises installations. We propose a novel tool implementing a battery of optimization and prediction techniques integrated so as to efficiently assess several alternative resource configurations, in order to determine the minimum cost cluster deployment satisfying QoS constraints. Further, the experimental campaign conducted on real systems shows the validity and relevance of the proposed method

A time varying coefficient model for panel data: Foreign Direct Investment in European OECD countries

The present article reexamines some of the issues regarding the Knowledge-Capital Model that encompasses both horizontal and vertical Foreign Direct Investment described in detail in the literature. The empirical support for this model is however a mixture. This article proposes a new way of estimating coefficients by allowing them to vary over time. The estimation results obtained using data from fourteen European countries for the period from 1982 to 2004 confirm that these coefficients cannot be considered constant over time and that the vertical component of the Knowledge-Capital Model is relevant even in the context of European countries with relatively similar endowments.time-varying coefficients, foreign direct investment