How Coupled Are Decoupled Farm Payments? A Review of the Evidence

This survey paper explores the literature on decoupling of farm programs that has emerged in the last 10 years. The paper identifies and assesses the various channels of potential coupling of decoupled farm payments and provides taxonomy of coupling mechanisms found in theoretical and empirical papers. Coupling of decoupled payments is pervasive but effects when measurable are small, with the exception of the impact on land values. The paper points to unresolved issues on potential coupling mechanisms for further research.Subsidies; agricultural policy; decoupled; decoupling; farm payments; programs program; support

Decoupled Farm Payments and the Role of Base Acreage and Yield Updating Under Uncertainty

In the context of U.S. farm policy, this paper analyzes the effect that expectations about base acreage and yield updating in future policies have on a farmer's production decisions in the presence of price, yield and policy uncertainty. We consider a risk averse farmer producing a single crop whose income consists of market revenue and government payments. We consider two policy regimes. Decisions on acreage and fertilizer use made in the current policy regime are linked to government payments in the future policy regime through the possibility of a base acreage and yield update in the future regime. There is policy uncertainty about the possibility of the updates being allowed in the future. We combine stochastic dynamic programming with present value calculations to link current acreage and input use decisions to future program payments. The average optimal planted acreage and fertilizer use are increasing in the subjective probability of the future update. The estimated maximum percentage increase in the average optimal planted acreage is 6.25%. The estimated maximum percentage increase in the average yield, resulting from optimal fertilizer use is much smaller at 0.134%.

EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF HOSPITALS IN THE GREAT PLAINS: AN URBAN-RURAL COMPARISON

This study examined the efficiency of a sample of hospitals in the Great Plains using a nonparametric approach. Technical efficiency was less than either allocative or scale efficiency. Urban hospitals are relatively more efficient than rural hospitals with respect to all efficiency measures. Private hospitals are more efficient than others.Health Economics and Policy,

Cardiovascular disease and air pollution in Scotland: no association or insufficient data and study design?

<p><b>Background:</b> Coronary heart disease and stroke are leading causes of mortality and ill health in Scotland, and clear associations have been found in previous studies between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. This study aimed to use routinely available data to examine whether there is any evidence of an association between short-term exposure to particulate matter (measured as PM10, particles less than 10 micrograms per cubic metre) and hospital admissions due to cardiovascular disease, in the two largest cities in Scotland during the years 2000 to 2006.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> The study utilised an ecological time series design, and the analysis was based on overdispersed Poisson log-linear models.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> No consistent associations were found between PM10 concentrations and cardiovascular hospital admissions in either of the cities studied, as all of the estimated relative risks were close to one, and all but one of the associated 95% confidence intervals contained the null risk of one.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> This study suggests that in small cities, where air quality is relatively good, then either PM10 concentrations have no effect on cardiovascular ill health, or that the routinely available data and the corresponding study design are not sufficient to detect an association.</p&gt

Design of Digital Frequency Synthesizer for 5G SDR Systems

The previous frequency synthesizer techniques for scalable SDR are not compatible with high end applications due to its complex computations and the intolerance over increased path interference rate which leads to an unsatisfied performance with improved user rate in real time environment. Designing an efficient frequency synthesizer framework in the SDR system is essential for 5G wireless communication systems with improved Quality of service (QoS). Consequently, this research has been performed based on the merits of fully digitalized frequency synthesizer and its explosion in wide range of frequency band generations. In this paper hardware optimized reconfigurable digital base band processing and frequency synthesizer model is proposed without making any design complexity trade-off to deal with the multiple standards. Here fully digitalized frequency synthesizer is introduced using simplified delay units to reduce the design complexity. Experimental results and comparative analyzes are carried out to validate the performance metrics and exhaustive test bench simulation is also carried out to verify the functionality

How Coupled Are Decoupled Farm Payments? A Review of the Evidence

This survey paper explores the literature on decoupling of farm programs that has emerged in the last 10 years. The paper identifies and assesses the various channels of potential coupling of decoupled farm payments and provides a taxonomy of coupling mechanisms found in theoretical and empirical papers. Coupling of decoupled payments is pervasive but effects when measurable are small, with the exception of the impact on land values. The paper points to unresolved issues on potential coupling mechanisms for further research. Domestic subsidies to agriculture were brought under the discipline of global trade rules for the first time in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994. Member countries of the WTO decided to reduce the distortions that were caused by current levels of domestic farm subsidies. Under the URAA, domestic support is classified into three categories or boxes according to their impact on international trade. The amber box contains the most distorting subsidies, which are therefore required to be limited in use. The blue-box payments also cause some distortion but are required to be production limiting. The green box contains subsidies that cause no or minimal distortion. The subsidies in the blue and green boxes are excluded from all WTO disciplines. To reduce trade distortions caused by these farm subsidies, members were required to shift toward decoupled income support while reducing coupled support. Decoupled support policies are categorized as green-box payments. They are defined as payments that are fmanced by taxpayers and are not related to current production, factor use, or prices, and for which eligibility criteria are defined by a fixed, historical base period. Since they are exempt from WTO disciplines, decoupled payments have become an important part of income support provided to agriculture, especially in industrialized countries

Thoughts on Siponen and Klaarvuniemi’s ‘Demystifying Beliefs about the Natural Sciences in IS’: The way forward

This is a comment on the paper by Siponen and Klaarvuniemi concerning the natural sciences. It argues that many of their points are correct but have been made before, particularly within critical realism. It suggests that the way forward is via a ‘mechanisms’ view of natural (and social) science

Characterization of wind power resource in the United States

Wind resource in the continental and offshore United States has been reconstructed and characterized using metrics that describe, apart from abundance, its availability, persistence and intermittency. The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) boundary layer flux data has been used to construct wind profile at 50 m, 80 m, 100 m, 120 m turbine hub heights. The wind power density (WPD) estimates at 50 m are qualitatively similar to those in the US wind atlas developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), but quantitatively a class less in some regions, but are within the limits of uncertainty. The wind speeds at 80 m were quantitatively and qualitatively close to the NREL wind map. The possible reasons for overestimation by NREL have been discussed. For long tailed distributions like those of the WPD, the mean is an overestimation and median is suggested for summary representation of the wind resource. The impact of raising the wind turbine hub height on metrics of abundance, persistence, variability and intermittency is analyzed. There is a general increase in availability and abundance of wind resource but there is an increase in intermittency in terms of level crossing rate in low resource regions.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Chang