ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND FACTOR MARKET PARTICIPATION: ADJUSTMENTS OF LAND AND LABOUR MARGINS OF AGRICULTURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN BANGLADESH

This paper assesses the impact of access to information on farm household's factor market participation. The paper tries to answer two questions. First, does use of telephone have any impact on farm household's factor market participation decision? Second, correcting for market participation, does use of telephone have any impact on the type of factor adjustment decision? For the first question, the paper uses a bivariate probit to correct for omitted variable bias and for the second question, the paper uses a two stage probit. Empirical findings of this paper suggest that access to information in the form of use of telephone has significant positive impact on factor market participation. The difference in market participation between telephone users and nonusers is around 14 percent. However, once a household participate in the market, the use of telephone does not have any impact on specific factor market participation.Consumer/Household Economics, Marketing,

Access to Information, Transaction Costs and Marketing Choice of Rural Households between Middlemen and Direct Buyers in Bangladesh

This paper assesses the impact of information cost and other transaction costs on rural producers' discrete choice between selling to middlemen and direct buyers, and continuous choice of selling intensity to middlemen and direct buyers. Using transaction costs economics as an analytical framework to decompose the different origins of transaction costs, the paper empirically investigates the impact of transaction costs on farm households' marketing behaviour in the context of Bangladesh. Empirical findings of this paper suggest that access to information in the form of access to telephone and other form of transaction costs play a significant role in producers' marketing behaviour. For information cost, a unit change in distance to telephone increases the probability of choosing direct buyer over middlemen by more than 4 percent and sales to direct buyer by more than 8 percent.

Does the Stock Market\u27s Equity Risk Premium Respond to Consumer Confidence or Is It the Other Way Around?

The increase in the equity risk premium during the 2007- 2009 Great Recession and the aging of the baby boomers in the United States have led analysts and financial industry experts to believe that risk aversion among stock investors has moved to a more-permanently higher range. If so, stocks would cease being an attractive asset class to be investing in for the future. In the past few years private investors have by and large shunned equities, just when stocks have become attractively priced and offer long-term potential for superior above-historical-average returns. Our empirical findings show that the recent increase in the equity risk premium (ERP) primarily reflects a temporary collapse in consumer confidence and that the ERP will mean revert once confidence returns. As long as consumer confidence in the sustainability of the economic recovery remains low, today\u27s elevated risk premium will persist. Once confidence starts to recover- as it has done after every recession since the 1960s- the required return premium among stock market investors also should diminish

A Microscopic Model of Gemini Surfactants: Self-assemblies in Water and at Air-Water Interface

We report the results of large scale Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of novel microscopic models of gemini surfactants to elucidate (i) their spontaneous aggregation in bulk water and (ii) their spatial organization in a system where water is separated from the air above it by a sharp well defined interface. We study the variation of the critical micellar concentration (CMC) with the variation of the (a) length of the spacer, (b) length of the hydrophobic tail and (c) the bending rigidity of the hydrocarbon chains forming the spacer and the tail; some of the trends of variation are counter-intuitive but are in excellent agreement with the available experimental results. Our simulations elucidate the effects of the geometrical shape, size and density of the surfactant molecules, the ionic nature of the heads and hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity of the spacer not only on the shapes of the micellar aggregates and the magnitude of the CMC, but also on their conformations close to the air-water interface.Comment: 19 pages in REVTEX, 25 Postscript Figures (now included

(WP 2013-09) Virtual Currency and the Financial System: The Case of Bitcoin

Technological development and the increased use of the internet have led to the proliferation of virtual communities. Some of these communities have created and circulated their own currency for exchanging goods and services. Bitcoin is currently the most popular among these virtual or digital currencies and has been in news recently because of the wild fluctuations in its ‘value’ and also significant venture capital investment in entities associated with it.1 Bitcoin is relevant in several areas of the financial system and is therefore of interest to central banks, consumers and investors. Digital currencies are part of a broader group of virtual currencies that include credit card points, air miles, loyalty points and coupons (Chart 1). With the advent of the Internet, mobile devices and detailed consumer information, companies are increasingly using digital currencies as a marketing tool. As a result, there has been a sharp increase in the use of digital currencies, particularly for app-based coins and tokens, mobile coupons, and personal data exchanged for digital content. As these trends evolve, digital currencies have the potential to become more popular and compete with traditional currencies. This paper aims to provide some clarity in particular on Bitcoin, its role and potential future use in the financial system and the risks associated with this form of digital currency.. It will begin by providing a short introduction to the Bitcoin network as well as describe the benefits of allowing the Bitcoin network to develop and innovate. It will highlight concerns for consumers, policymakers and financial regulators. Next it will analyze the role that Bitcoin could play in the financial system. The paper will conclude by providing recommendations to address policymakers’ concerns while allowing for further innovation within the Bitcoin network. An initial comprehensive overview of this kind is absent from the existing literature. This paper intends to fill that gap in the literature

Quality control by a mobile molecular workshop: quality versus quantity

Ribosome is a molecular machine that moves on a mRNA track while, simultaneously, polymerizing a protein using the mRNA also as the corresponding template. We define, and analytically calculate, two different measures of the efficiency of this machine. However, we arugue that its performance is evaluated better in terms of the translational fidelity and the speed with which it polymerizes a protein. We define both these quantities and calculate these analytically. Fidelity is a measure of the quality of the products while the total quantity of products synthesized in a given interval depends on the speed of polymerization. We show that for synthesizing a large quantity of proteins, it is not necessary to sacrifice the quality. We also explore the effects of the quality control mechanism on the strength of mechano-chemical coupling. We suggest experiments for testing some of the ideas presented here.Comment: Final version published in Physical Review