A HEDONIC MODEL OF RICE TRAITS: ECONOMIC VALUES FROM FARMERS IN WEST AFRICA

New crop varieties often have been promoted in developing countries based upon superior yield vis-a-vis locally available varieties. This research presents a hedonic model for upland rice by drawing upon the input characteristics and consumer good characteristics model literature. Model specification tests determine that a combination of production and consumption characteristics best explains the willingness to pay for new upland rice varieties. This non-separable household model specification determined that four traits explain the willingness to pay for new rice varieties: plant cycle length, plant height, grain elongation/swelling and tenderness. Yield was not significant explanatory variable for the willingness to pay for seed. The implications of this model are two-fold. First, varietal development and promotion must include post-harvest characteristics in addition to production traits when determining which varieties to promote for official release. Secondly, non-yield production characteristics such as plant height and cycle length are significant factors in producers' assessments of the value of a new variety. Overall, this paper provides an alternative explanation for limited adoption of modern upland rice varieties in West Africa: varietal evaluation programs have focused too narrowly on yield evaluation and have not promoted varieties with superior non-yield characteristics than locally available varieties.hedonic, upland rice, West Africa, household modelling, Crop Production/Industries,

The market for energy in China

Since 1979, China embarked on an economic reform to modernize the country. The reform was so successful that China was able to grow by an impressive rate of 9 percent per anum between 1979 and 1997. The rapid development of the economy leads to a drastic increase in demand for energy. Since China has the largest population in the world, its energy demand is nothing but huge. Each year, for example, China needs to install as much as 10,000 MW of new electricity generation capacity, which equals the curent capacity of Netherlands. This increase in demand for energy, which is likely to continue, wil have implications for global energy markets, the world price of energy and for the global environment as emissions of greenhouse gases grow rapidly. Against this background, there is an urgent need for the country to better manage the energy sector so that the market can function in an orderly manner. To tackle this issue, I single out three important energy problems to study. First, I wil examine the current situation of the energy imbalance in China. Second, I wil forecast how rapid the energy demand wil grow in future so that the deficit between the demand and domestic supply can be identified. Lastly, I wil discuss some methods that can be used to manage the demand. My finding shows that energy-capital and energy-material inputs are complementary, whereas the relationship of energy and labour is insignificant. In addition, the simulation exercises also reveals that a high energy pricing policy might not be effective in mitigating the demand and in encouraging firms to employ labour intensive techniques. Also, rising energy prices may bring spiral inflation and deterioration in the balance of payments and foreign resources. Therefore, government should act cautiously when increasing energy prices

Data confession in the portuguese EDM

Este trabalho resulta da apresentação efectuada pelo autor no International Symposium Environment 2010: Situation and Perspectives for the European Union, Porto, Portugal, 6-10 May 2003A dual profit model is used to characterize the Entre Douro e Minho (EDM) region agriculture. The data comes from budgets for twelve representative farms. Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP is applied. First, shadow prices of fixed inputs are obtained for each farm from a linear program (LP) forcing base year (1994) net output and fixed input allocations. Second, the Maximum Entropy (ME) technique is used to recover the restricted profit functions. The model purely reproduces observed net output and fixed input data. A short run profit function is derived for the region from aggregation of the model. The corresponding long run profit function is also derived. The profit model reveals an inelastic response to prices in the short run, and a more elastic response in the long run. Nitrogen and water appear as complements. The inelasticity of nitrogen response to its own price precludes taxing nitrogen to control its use. In contrast, pricing water is an effective strategy, not only to control water use but also nitrogen use. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) recommends both strategies

A Game-Theoretic Approach for Runtime Capacity Allocation in MapReduce

Nowadays many companies have available large amounts of raw, unstructured data. Among Big Data enabling technologies, a central place is held by the MapReduce framework and, in particular, by its open source implementation, Apache Hadoop. For cost effectiveness considerations, a common approach entails sharing server clusters among multiple users. The underlying infrastructure should provide every user with a fair share of computational resources, ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met and avoiding wastes. In this paper we consider two mathematical programming problems that model the optimal allocation of computational resources in a Hadoop 2.x cluster with the aim to develop new capacity allocation techniques that guarantee better performance in shared data centers. Our goal is to get a substantial reduction of power consumption while respecting the deadlines stated in the SLAs and avoiding penalties associated with job rejections. The core of this approach is a distributed algorithm for runtime capacity allocation, based on Game Theory models and techniques, that mimics the MapReduce dynamics by means of interacting players, namely the central Resource Manager and Class Managers

Combinatorial Pen Testing (or Consumer Surplus of Deferred-Acceptance Auctions)

Pen testing is the problem of selecting high-capacity resources when the only way to measure the capacity of a resource expends its capacity. We have a set of $n$ pens with unknown amounts of ink and our goal is to select a feasible subset of pens maximizing the total ink in them. We are allowed to gather more information by writing with them, but this uses up ink that was previously in the pens. Algorithms are evaluated against the standard benchmark, i.e, the optimal pen testing algorithm, and the omniscient benchmark, i.e, the optimal selection if the quantity of ink in the pens are known. We identify optimal and near optimal pen testing algorithms by drawing analogues to auction theoretic frameworks of deferred-acceptance auctions and virtual values. Our framework allows the conversion of any near optimal deferred-acceptance mechanism into a near optimal pen testing algorithm. Moreover, these algorithms guarantee an additional overhead of at most $(1+o(1)) \ln n$ in the approximation factor of the omniscient benchmark. We use this framework to give pen testing algorithms for various combinatorial constraints like matroid, knapsack, and general downward-closed constraints and also for online environments

Building and Using Object-Oriented Frameworks for Semi-Structures Domains: The Sales Promotion Domain as Example

Object-oriented (00) frameworks are considered an important step forward in developing software applications efficiently. Success of frameworks has however predominantly been limited to structured domains.This paper describes a method for developing 00 domainframeworks for semi-structured domains. The complexityof such domains requires the use of more elaborate analysis and design techniques than those normallyused in 00 analysis and design. In the method describedhere, the knowledge of domain experts forms the basis for developing the framework. The 00 framework is constructed on the design level using a CASE-tool.Using the design model, the framework can be customized and extended to develop a variety of applicationsfor the domain. The approach is illustrated by developing a framework for the sales-promotions domain,and using this framework to build an application for product managers. It is concluded that the approach described here is beneficial to build and use 00 frameworksfor semi-structured domains