The Internal Organization of the Cooperative Firm: An Extension of a New Institutional Digest

Agribusiness,

Inclusion of theory-relevant moderators yield the same conclusions as Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea (2005): A meta-analytical reply to Heine, Kitayama, and Hamamura (2007)

Heine, Kitayama and Hamamura (2007) attributed the Sedikides, Gaertner and Vevea (2005) findings to the exclusion of six papers. We report a meta-analysis that includes those six papers. The Heine et al. conclusions are faulty, because of a misspecified meta-analysis that failed to consider two moderators central to the theory. First, some of their effect sizes originated from studies that did not empirically validate comparison dimensions. Inclusion of this moderator evidences pancultural self-enhancement: Westerners enhance more strongly on individualistic dimensions, Easterners on collectivistic dimensions. Second, some of their effect sizes were irrelevant to whether enhancement is correlated with dimension importance. Inclusion of this moderator evidences pancultural self-enhancement: Both Westerners and Easterners enhance on personally important dimensions. The Sedikides et al. conclusions are valid: Tactical self-enhancement is pancultural

More favorable and differential treatment of developing countries : toward a new approach in the World Trade Organization

The authors discuss options that could be considered in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to provide more favorable treatment-so-called special and differential treatment (SDT)-to small and low-income countries. They argue that there is a need both for differentiation across WTO members and for steps that would benefit all developing countries. The authors suggest the following to make the Doha Round more supportive of development: 1) A binding commitment by industrial countries to abolish export subsidies and nontariff barriers (tariff quotas) and to reduce most-favored-nation tariffs on labor-intensive products of export interest to developing countries to no more than 5 percent in 2010, and to no more than 10 percent for agricultural products. All tariffs on manufactures should go to zero by 2015, the target date for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Liberalization should also be undertaken by developing countries on the basis of a formula approach. 2) A binding commitment by industrial countries on services to expand temporary access for service providers by a specific amount-for example, equal to an additional 1 percent of the workforce-and not to restrict cross-border trade (for example, by telecom channels). 3) Unilateral action by all industrial countries to extend preferential market access for less developed countries, and to simplify eligibility criteria, especially rules of origin. 4) Affirmation by the WTO that core disciplines relating to the use of trade policy apply equally to all WTO members. 5) Acceptance of the principle that for small and low-income countries"one size does not fit all"when it comes to domestic regulation and to WTO agreements requiring substantial investment of resources. 6) Recognition that some WTO agreements need to be adapted to make them moresupportive of development, and a consequent willingness by industrial countries to modify them. 7) Expansion of development assistance to bolster trade capacity in poor countries and strengthening of the links between trade-related technical assistance and the mechanisms through which aid priorities are determined in developing countries. In practice, calls for specific types of SDT often appear to be motivated by a perception that a certain WTO rule is"anti-development"and that therefore developing countries should be exempted from the rule in question. The authors suggest that the appropriate solution to such problems is to change the rules rather than seek an opt-out. What should be up front changes in rules and what should be part of the negotiating agenda is a major issue which needs to be addressed at the Cancun Ministerial meeting. The suggestion that SDT should focus primarily on WTO rules and be limited to those countries that need it most-very small and poor economies-implies that criteria should be adopted to differentiate between countries. Leaving this to self-declaration-the current approach-is not feasible, while reliance on case-by-case, agreement-specific negotiation can generate excessive costs, discretion, and associated uncertainty. While the authors'preference is for a simple rule-of-thumb approach to determine eligibility, this is an issue that requires much more thought and discussion. They suggest that WTO members establish a high-level group to consider criteria that could be used for differentiation purposes and to determine the set of agreements to which differentiation will apply.Economic Theory&Research,Rules of Origin,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Decentralization,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Poverty Assessment,World Trade Organization

System in Preparing Negligence Cases

System is the secret of successful preparation of a case for trial. The systems used in one large plaintiffs attorneys\u27 office and one large defense office are described here

New Producer Strategies: The Emergence of Patron-Driven Entrepreneurship

Abstract—Existing research treats the cooperative structure as relatively homogeneous. The proposed paper argues that all cooperatives are not created equal – and consideration of organizational structure is critical when analyzing the economic impact of cooperation. In recent empirical work, we observe cooperatives forming as single- or multi-purpose; generating equity capital passively, quasi-passively, or proactively; vertically integrating in a centralized, federated, or a hybrid fashion; governing through fixed or proportional control rights; and instituting open, closed or class-varying membership criteria. The emergence of multiple-level rent-seeking cooperatives challenges our traditional rent dispersion models of collective action. We call these multi-level, patron, rent-seeking entities a form of collective entrepreneurship. This paper develops a set of criteria enabling us to distinguish between traditional forms of cooperation and collective entrepreneurship. We employ these characteristics to analyze and contrast these two extreme forms of collective action. We propose a continuum from single-level rent seeking, traditional, patron, user-driven cooperative forms; through forms of hybrids and macrohierarchies; to multiple-level rent seeking, patron, user-investor-driven collective entrepreneurship.Collective entrepreneurship, Agribusiness, Property Rights, Agribusiness,

Structural properties of electrons in quantum dots in high magnetic fields: Crystalline character of cusp states and excitation spectra

The crystalline or liquid character of the downward cusp states in N-electron parabolic quantum dots (QD's) at high magnetic fields is investigated using conditional probability distributions obtained from exact diagonalization. These states are of crystalline character for fractional fillings covering both low and high values, unlike the liquid Jastrow-Laughlin wave functions, but in remarkable agreement with the rotating-Wigner-molecule ones [Phys. Rev. B 66, 115315 (2002)]. The crystalline arrangement consists of concentric polygonal rings that rotate independently of each other, with the electrons on each ring rotating coherently. We show that the rotation stabilizes the Wigner molecule relative to the static one defined by the broken-symmetry unrestricted-Hartree-Fock solution. We discuss the non-rigid behavior of the rotating Wigner molecule and pertinent features of the excitation spectrum, including the occurrence of a gap between the ground and first excited states that underlies the incompressibility of the system. This leads us to conjecture that the rotating crystal (and not the static one) remains the relevant ground state for low fractional fillings even at the thermodynamic limit.Comment: Published version. Typos corrected. REVTEX4. 10 pages with 8 postscript figures (5 in color). For related papers, see http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~ph274cy

Ordering our world: the quest for traces of temporal organization in autobiographical memory

An experiment examined the idea, derived from the Self Memory System model (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), that autobiographical events are sometimes tagged in memory with labels reflecting the life era in which an event occurred. The presence of such labels should affect the ease of judgments of the order in which life events occurred. Accordingly, 39 participants judged the order of two autobiographical events. Latency data consistently showed that between-era judgments were faster than within-era judgments, when the eras were defined in terms of either: (a) college versus high school, (b) academic quarter within year, or (c) academic year within school. The accuracy data similarly supported the presence of a between-era judgment effect for the college versus high school dichotomy

Nonequilibrium Casimir-Polder Force between Nanoparticles and Graphene-Coated Silica Plate: Combined Effect of the Chemical Potential and Mass Gap

The Casimir-Polder force between spherical nanoparticles and a graphene-coated silica plate is investigated in situations out of thermal equilibrium, i.e., with broken time-reversal symmetry. The response of graphene coating to the electromagnetic field is described on the basis of first principles of quantum electrodynamics at nonzero temperature using the formalism of the polarization tensor in the framework of the Dirac model. The nonequilibrium Casimir-Polder force is calculated as a function of the mass-gap parameter, chemical potential of graphene and temperature of the graphene-coated plate, which can be both higher and lower than that of the environment. It is shown that the force value increases with increasing chemical potential, and this increase is more pronounced when the temperature of a graphene-coated plate is lower than that of the environment. The nonequilibrium force also increases with increasing temperature of the graphene-coated plate. This increase is larger when the plate is hotter than the environment. The effect is revealed that the combined impact of the chemical potential $\mu$ and mass gap $\Delta$ of graphene coating depends on the relationship between $\Delta$ and 2$\mu$. If $2\mu>\Delta$ the magnitude of the nonequilibrium force between nanoparticles and a cooled graphene-coated plate becomes much larger than for a graphene coating with $\mu=0$. The physical reasons explaining this effect are elucidated. Possible applications of the obtained results are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure