Agricultural Policies and Environmental Interaction in OECD Contries

Agriculture is heavily subsidized in most of the OECD countries. On the other hand, environmental externalities occur because of protection related pollution. In this study the structure of agricultural protection in the OECD countries was examined in a chronological and comparative perspective. In addition, the policy-environment interaction was scrutinized in order to better understand environmental implications of agricultural policies in the era of globalization. Evidence was found for international trade and environmental interaction in some of the OECD countries such that production and technological impact appear to be a prominent factor in environmental pollution.OECD, Agricultural Policy, Environment, EPI

Political Economy of Agricultural Policies and Environmental Weights

In this paper, a theoretical model was constructed to endogenously determine environmental weights in the agricultural sector. The conventional Political Preference Function was extended to include environmental weights. The model was applied to the wheat sector in the EU for the years 1990 and 2006. The results imply that designing protection levels that have small disparities between domestic and world prices and avoiding excess production cause a positive environmental surplus which leads to higher environmental weights.Environmental Weights, Political Preference Functions, EU, Agriculture

Fault-Tolerant, but Paradoxical Path-Finding in Physical and Conceptual Systems

We report our initial investigations into reliability and path-finding based models and propose future areas of interest. Inspired by broken sidewalks during on-campus construction projects, we develop two models for navigating this "unreliable network." These are based on a concept of "accumulating risk" backward from the destination, and both operate on directed acyclic graphs with a probability of failure associated with each edge. The first serves to introduce and has faults addressed by the second, more conservative model. Next, we show a paradox when these models are used to construct polynomials on conceptual networks, such as design processes and software development life cycles. When the risk of a network increases uniformly, the most reliable path changes from wider and longer to shorter and narrower. If we let professional inexperience--such as with entry level cooks and software developers--represent probability of edge failure, does this change in path imply that the novice should follow instructions with fewer "back-up" plans, yet those with alternative routes should be followed by the expert?Comment: 8 page

A GAME THEORETIC ANALYSIS OF TURKISH ACCESSION TO A EUROPEAN CUSTOMS UNION

The entrance of additional countries into a European customs union, in this case Turkey, and its impact on agriculture are examined. Results from a trade simulation model are used as components of a Political Preference Function and utilized within a game theoretic framework to identify the optimal strategies for Turkey, the EU, and the U.S. Turkey's best interest, from an agricultural perspective, involves adoption of agreements made in the Uruguay round of GATT as a developing country rather than applying EU protection. Although free trade is not the optimal solution, simulations indicate that the solution does involve the reduction of agricultural protection levels.International Relations/Trade,

Higher-Order Calculus of Variations on Time Scales

We prove a version of the Euler-Lagrange equations for certain problems of the calculus of variations on time scales with higher-order delta derivatives.Comment: Corrected minor typo

Noether's symmetry theorem for nabla problems of the calculus of variations

We prove a Noether-type symmetry theorem and a DuBois-Reymond necessary optimality condition for nabla problems of the calculus of variations on time scales.Comment: Submitted 20/Oct/2009; Revised 27/Jan/2010; Accepted 28/July/2010; for publication in Applied Mathematics Letter

Does Quality Matter in the Iron and Scrap Trade?

This paper sheds light on the iron and steel (IS) scrap trade to examine how economic development affects the quality demanded of recyclable resource. A simple model is presented that show a mechanism of how scrap quality impacts the direction of trade due to comparative advantage. We find that economic development in both importing and exporting countries has a positive effect on the quality of traded recyclables. Developed countries that intend to improve the domestic recovery of recyclables should raise the quality of separating recyclables while developing countries should tighten environmental regulations to help decrease the import of recyclables that cause pollution.Recycling (waste, etc.), Iron, International trade, Environmental problems, Developing countries, Developed countries, Iron and steel, Scrap, Environment, Trade