Pork for Policy: Executive and Legislative Exchange in Brazil

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 gave relatively strong powers to the President. We model and test Executive-Legislative relations in Brazil and demonstrate that Presidents have used pork as a political currency to exchange for votes on policy reforms. In particular Presidents Cardoso and Lula have used pork to exchange for amendments to the Constitution. Without policy reforms Brazil would have had greater difficulty meeting their debt obligations. The logic for the exchange of pork for policy reform is that Presidents typically have greater electoral incentives than members of Congress to care about economic growth, economic opportunity, income equality and price stabilization. Members of Congress generally care more about redistributing gains to their constituents. Given the differences in preferences and the relative powers of each, the Legislative and Executive benefit by exploiting the gains from trade.

Brazilian Development: This Time for Real?

Wirtschaftswachstum; Strukturwandel; Wirtschaftliche Anpassung; Brasilien

All-aromatic biphenylene end-capped polyquinoline and polyimide matrix resins

Biphenylene end-capped polyquinoline and polyimide resins afford low void content graphite-reinforced composites with good initial properties. However, with both resins, rapid degradation occurs during oxidative isothermal aging at elevated temperatures. The degradation is not observed during isothermal aging under a nitrogen atmosphere which suggests that the biphenylene end-cap (or the resulting crosslink/chain extension structures) is not particularly thermooxidatively stable. The nature of the thermooxidative instability is currently under investigation

The effects of the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act on wheat genetic improvement:

The U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act (PVPA) of 1970 was meant to strengthen intellectual property protection for plant breeders. A model of investment under partial excludability is developed, leading to the hypotheses that any increase in excludability or appropriability of the returns to invention, attributable to the PVPA, would lead to increases in investment or efficiency gains in varietal R&D, improved varietal quality, and enhanced royalties. These hypotheses are tested in an economic analysis of the effects of the PVPA on wheat genetic improvement. The PVPA appears to have contributed to increases in public expenditures on wheat variety improvement, but private-sector investment in wheat breeding does not appear to have increased. Moreover, econometric analyses indicate that the PVPA has not caused any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields. However, the share of U.S. wheat acreage sown to private varieties has increased–from 3 percent in 1970 to 30 percent in the 1990s. These findings indicate that the PVPA has served primarily as a marketing tool with little impact on excludability or appropriability.Intellectual property., Plant breeding., Wheat., Economics.,

Building a Sustainable Agricultural Career Pipeline: Effective Recruitment and Retention Practices Used by Colleges of Agriculture in the United States

This national study examined effective student recruitment and retention practices used by colleges of agriculture in the United States among 1862 land-grant, 1890 land-grant, and non-land-grant institutions. Respondents reported that faculty at colleges of agriculture were primarily white. Through the analysis of sub-group percentages, the researchers found that the ethnic makeup of faculty was not reflective of the general population. The researchers found that administrators from 1862 land-grant institutions reported statistically significant differences (p \u3c .05) regarding the use of specific strategies to target underrepresented populations in student recruitment as compared to other institutional types. Further, 1862 land-grant institutions reported statistically significant differences in student retention strategies (p \u3c .05) as compared to other institutional types regarding the delivery of programs that aimed to retain first-year students. Based on key findings from this investigation, the authors developed the agricultural student retention model (ASRM) to help guide colleges of agriculture in improving their holistic retention program as they navigate inclusive and diverse institutional contexts. Additionally, key recruitment strategies were identified as well, that could facilitate holistic student recruitment efforts. Perhaps more significant progress can be made toward creating a sustainable agricultural workforce that is more reflective of U.S. population demographics using this model

De Facto and De Jure Property Rights: Land Settlement and Land Conflict on the Australian, Brazilian and U.S. Frontiers

We present a general model of the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. Settlers have an incentive to establish de facto property rights to avoid the dissipation associated with open access conditions. The potential rent associated with more exclusivity drives the “demand’ for commons arrangements. As the potential rental stream from land increases due to enhanced scarcity there is a greater demand for more exclusivity beyond what can be sustained with commons arrangements. In some instances claimants will petition the government for de jure property rights to their claims – formal titles. In other instances it may be cheaper to acquire titles through fraudulent means. To the extent that governments supply property rights to those with first possession, land conflict will generally be minimal, though there may be political protests. But, governments face differing political constituencies and may not allocate de jure rights to the current claimants. Moreover, governments may assign de jure rights but not be willing to enforce the rights. This may generate potential or actual conflict over land depending on the violence potentials held by the de facto and de jure land claimants. We examine land settlement and land conflict on the frontiers of Australia, the U.S. and Brazil. We are particularly interested in examining the emergence, sustainability, and collapse of commons arrangements in specific historical contexts. Our analysis indicates that the emergence of demand driven de facto property rights arrangements was relatively peaceful in Australia and the U.S. where claimants had reasons to organize collectively. The settlement process in Brazil was more prone to conflict because agriculture required fewer collective activities and as a result claimants resorted to periodic violent self-enforcement. In all three cases the movement from de facto to de jure property rights led to potential or actual conflict because of insufficient government enforcement.property rights, Australia, Brazil, United States

Social Reformers and Regulation: The Prohibition of Cigarettes in the U.S. and Canada

The apogee of anti-smoking legislation in North America was reached early in the last century. In 1903, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting the manufacture, importation, and sale of cigarettes. Around the same time, fifteen states in the United States banned the sale of cigarettes and thirty-five states considered prohibitory legislation. In both the United States and Canada, prohibition was part of a broad political, economic, and social coalition termed the Progressive Movement. Cigarette prohibition was special interest regulation, though not of the usual narrow neoclassical genre; it was the means by which a group of crusaders sought to alter the behavior of a much larger segment of the population. The opponents of cigarette regulation were cigarette smokers and the more organized cigarette lobby. An active Progressive Movement was the necessary condition for generating interest in prohibition, while the anti-prohibition forces played a more significant role later in the legislative process. The moral reformers' succeeded when they faced little opposition because few constituents smoked and/or no jobs were at stake because there was no cigarette industry. In other words, reform is easy when you are preaching to the converted.