François Quesnay, Luigi Pasinetti and the historical contexts of economic theory

In 2002, Professor Luigi L. Pasinetti gave a keynote address at the Raffaele Mattioli Foundation and Library in honour of their acquisition of a rare third edition of François Quesnay’s Tableau Économique. This lecture subsequently appeared as a chapter in Italian in the conference volume edited by Giancarlo De Vivo in 2009. In honour of Luigi Pasinetti’s 90th birthday, Professor Coffman has offered the first English translation of Pasinetti’s essay on Quesnay, which she also introduces by reflecting on its rhetorical strategy, argumentative structure, and Pasinetti’s use of Quesnay to critique mainstream neoclassical economics. She ends her introduction by drawing attention to the place of the Tableau within contemporary debates about taxation and the optimal scale and capacities of the state

Assessment of Control of PPO-resistant Palmer Amaranth and Salvage Options in Herbicide-resistant Cotton

Palmer amaranth has been the most limiting weed in cotton production in the state of Arkansas for many years. Recently, resistance of Palmer amaranth to the protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting site of action has been discovered at various locations across the cotton-producing region of the state. Cotton varieties have been developed with resistance to synthetic auxin (WSSA Group 4) herbicides. However, research to date has shown PPO-resistant Palmer amaranth to be more difficult to control with herbicides that target alternative sites of action. Herbicide efficacy is also known to vary with weed size, varying spray parameters, and environmental conditions. Preliminary research on control of PPO-resistant Palmer amaranth with preemergence cotton herbicides suggests that herbicide mixtures containing fluometuron are the most consistent option for longevity of control. Preliminary results of postemergence (POST) experiments assessing control of PPO-resistant Palmer amaranth in herbicide-resistant cotton were inconclusive. Limited rainfall impacted both POST and residual weed control. When attempting to salvage a cotton crop, weed size plays an extremely important factor in whether the weeds will be controlled. Two-pass salvage treatments were effective in dicamba-resistant cotton containing mixtures of glufosinate or glyphosate and dicamba and showed little variation in control of large (taller than 15 cm) Palmer amaranth. Interval between applications in a two-pass salvage treatment is influential on control of large weeds, although it does not ultimately affect seedcotton yield. Increasing carrier volume from 70 L ha-1 to 140 L ha-1 was a more important factor in maximizing efficacy of a dicamba application than switching from TTI to AirMix nozzles or increasing the dicamba rate from 560 to 1,120 g ae ha-1. Differences in control between PPO-susceptible and PPO-resistant populations were also observed, as densities of surviving PPO-resistant Palmer amaranth were much higher than PPO-susceptible Palmer amaranth following dicamba application. Nomenclature: Palmer amaranth, Amaranthus palmeri S. Wats.; cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L.; synthetic auxin; dicamba; fluometuron; 2,4-D; glufosinat

Can inflation expectations be measured using commodity futures prices?

This paper reexamines the use of US commodity futures price data to show that the US deflation of 1929–1932 was at best no more than partially anticipated by economic actors. By focusing on the expected real interest rate, previous studies provide some empirical support for explanations of the Great Depression that are not exclusively monetary in nature. However, these studies did not consider the context and the market microstructures from which the data was sourced. Our analysis suggests that it is more likely that agricultural commodity markets adjusted to deflationary expectations by the end of 1930. Evidence from commodities futures markets, such as the Chicago Board of Trade, therefore should not be used to critique the Keynesian challenge to the classical monetarist explanation of the Great Depression

Organising Project Finance

Modern project finance is understood as a method of finance, whereby the borrower is generally a standalone corporate entity, often a special purpose vehicle and, therefore, a single-project enterprise. The advent of large-scale securitisation of project finance debt instruments helped to attract significant institutional capital, which had shied away from infrastructure debt because of the risk/return profile. This chapter argues that despite what some economic theory might predict, the manner in which a project is financed imposes formal ‘constraining and enabling’ conditions at all phases of the built-asset lifecycle. Successful project organisation and delivery depends upon an adequate understanding of these dynamics. Project governance should also ensure that there is a system of a detailed post-project evaluation of costs and benefits. The need for new public infrastructure in the twenty-first century is growing at a time when public finances are constrained

Economic interdependencies and political conflict: the political economy of taxation in eighteenth-century Britain

The recent financial crisis has highlighted conflicts of interests between socio-economic groups over economic policy. We use representations of economies as systems of interdependencies among productive sectors to conceptualize economic and political cleavages in terms of the contingent interplay of economic interdependencies between sectors and political conflict between the groups that represent those sectors. In doing so, we propose a structural and historical approach, which is illustrated with reference to three moments in the evolution of the eighteenth-century British fiscal system. Each of these case studies (the Beer Taxes of the 1690s, the Excise Crisis of 1733, and the Income Taxes of the Napoleonic Wars) reveals a different dimension of our approach. We close with some reflections on the conditions under which political conflict may be sustainable and provide directions for further inquiry.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Società Editrice il Mulino via http://dx.doi.org/10.1428/78897

EC74-860 Corn Conditioning and Storage Systems...Characteristics and Costs

Extension Circular 74-860 is about corn conditioning and storage systems...characteristics and costs