Gasoline Prices: Cyclical Trends and Market Developments

Gasoline prices experience volatility often credited to fluctuations in the crude oil market, but gasoline is subject to its own supply and demand pressures. Cyclical trends such as seasonal changes in refining costs, production adjustments, and changes in demand contribute to gasoline price movements over a typical year. Recently, however, market developments not influenced by seasonal fluctuations have affected prices. From 2010 to 2014, increased access to cost-advantaged domestic sources of crude oil has expanded domestic gasoline production, and evolving consumption patterns in the United States and abroad have altered both import and export demand. Between January 2005 and September 2008, the producer price index for gasoline trended generally higher. (See chart 1.) The onset of the Great Recession pressured producer prices lower in the fourth quarter of 2008, a 67.8-percent drop, before prices started to rebound in early 2009. By mid-2011, prices reached prerecession levels and remained in a tight range before dropping more than 50 percent in the latter half of 2014 and early 2015. This Beyond the Numbers article examines the many factors that contributed to shifting producer gasoline prices from 2005 through 2014

Critique [of Racism and the Canadian State by Daiva K. Stasiulis]

Stasiulis\u27s two-part essay offers a critique of the policies on immigration and racism pursued by the Canadian government during the past decade or so. While the government\u27s multicultural institutions seek to ameliorate racism, its immigration agencies get blamed for intensifying the problem. The latter agencies are better supported than the former which are on the fringes of state power, and, according to the author, have little chance of changing immigration policies

Output-Based Refunding of Emission Payments: Theory, Distribution of Costs, and International Experience

In this paper, we discuss the effect of refunding environmental charges. Taxes often are resisted by polluters because they imply both abatement and tax costs. We show that when charges are refunded, the incentives for abatement are essentially the same as for a tax, but the output reduction that often accompanies a tax scheme is forgone. We describe and examine the refund emissions payment (REP) scheme as a policy instrument for emissions abatement and compare it with taxes and permits with regard to allocative properties, distribution of costs, property rights, and, consequently, the politics of implementation. As an empirical example, the Swedish charge on nitrogen oxides is analyzed.

Catastrophic Transculturation in Dracula, The Strain and The Historian

The article notes that what Paul Brantlinger has referred to as the Imperial Gothic insists that the encounter between cultures results not in a transcultural merger, but in an apocalyptic struggle for survival. As this struggle is often tied to past and present-day imperial sentiment, the article suggests that both late-Victorian and contemporary fiction can effectively be discussed with the help of Marie Louise Pratt's concept transculturation. Through a reading of three vampire narratives, Stokers's Dracula (1897), Del Toro and Hogan's The Strain (2009) and Kostova's The Historian (2005), the article demonstrates how past and present imperial gothic texts describe the derailment of European modernity and insists that cultural encounter produce monstrous hybrids that threaten an ontological and/or epistemological apocalypse. In this way, the cultural encounter that these gothic novels imagine result in catastrophic transculturation and the article argues that this is a common way of understanding the transnational meeting in American neo-imperial discourse

Farm Management Aspects of Agricultural War Production in South Dakota

ncreasing demands for meat, milk, fats, cereals, and oils make it essential that South Dakota farmers adjust their individual programs to achieve maximum production. This increased production may be brought about by a fuller utilization of crop land and land otherwise left idle, by shifting from low to high nutrient production crops, by adjusting livestock feeding practices for a more efficient use of feed and by the adoption of other improved farm management practices

Twenty Years Agricultural Statistics for South Dakota 1924 - 1943

The purpose of this pamphlet is to bring together into a single volume, pertinent crop and livestock statistics which will be useful in determining wartime and post-war adjustments- In South Dakota agriculture. This data should be particularly useful in developing recommendations for adjustments on the county and type-of farming area levels. Information on land use; crop acres, yield and production; size of farm and livestock numbers and production are given for counties, production areas and for the state as a v/hole for the period 1924-43. Statistical data, particularly on livestock, was not complete enough prior to 1924 to allow for a longer period of years. This pamphlet should be of especial interest to state and federal personnel who are working on agricultural production problems on the state and county level. County agents and others on the county level should find the information useful in adjusting county and individual farm production to changing demand situations

Southeastern South Dakota Farm Record Project 1943 Annual Report

A new farm record project was started in 1943 by the Agricultural Experiment Station in cooperation with the Agricultural Extension Service. Previous to 1943 it had been customary for the Extension Service to summarize farm records sent in to the state office by farmers. The purpose of the new project was to obtain more detailed farm record information which would be useful in planning improvements in the organization and operation of farms in the various areas of the state. The analysis of the records and the preparation of the report was carried out by the Experiment Station under the direction of C. R. Hoglund. The organization and educational work in the field was handled by the Extension Service with George E. Anderson in charge. The following county agricultural agents actively cooperated in the project: J. Ervin Boyd, Minnehaha; C. M. Culhane, Moody; Carl 0. Reed, Clay; and Howard Schultz, Lake. It is expected that two or three additional counties will be added to the project in 1944 in this area. Most of the farm record cooperators were visited one or two times during the spring and summer and again at the end of the year when the records were closed. Thirty-eight farm records were closed but only 33 are included in this report. The records not used were either not typical of the area or were not complete enough to use. The cooperators kept records which included cash receipts -and expenses, beginning and end of year inventories of feed and seed, machinery and equipment, buildings and land, and livestock; crop record; livestock record and a record of farm produce and fuel used by the household. Supplementary information was obtained on the family labor supply, feed fed to productive livestock and on crop and live stock practices used. Climatic conditions were favorable for both small grain and better than average for corn and other intertilled crops. March, April and May moisture averaged over one inch less than average and the total yearly rainfall ranged from one to over two inches below normal. Lack of moisture accompanied by high winds during April and May did some damage to both small grain and corn. Favorable climatic conditions during late simmer and fall made possible high com yields. Operator\u27s labor earnings have been calculated on a full owner basis in order to more nearly compare all farms on an equal basis. However, each cooperator received an earnings’ statement on the basis of his actual tenure situation. The farm record data used in this report have been tabulated for high profit and low profit farms as well as for the group average. Summaries of farm inventories, crop acreage and yields, livestock numbers, farm produce and fuel furnished the household and farm earnings are given in the following tables for the high profit, low profit and the average of all farms. Farm organization and efficiency measures have also been prepared for these three groups of farms