THE EFFECT OF MARKETING COOPERATIVES ON COST-REDUCING PROCESS INNOVATION ACTIVITY

This paper examines the market and welfare effects of cooperative involvement in cost-reducing process innovation activity in the context of a mixed oligopsony where an open-membership marketing co-op competes with an IOF. The presence of the marketing co-op is shown to result in increased producer prices and welfare gains for all farmers, members and non-members of the co-op. The effect of the marketing co-op on process innovation activity depends on the relative quality of its final products, the degree of producer heterogeneity, and the size of innovation costs.Agribusiness,

THE EFFECT OF COOPERATIVES ON PRODUCT INNOVATION IN THE AGRI-FOOD SYSTEM

This paper develops a game-theoretic model of heterogeneous consumers to analyze the effect of cooperative involvement on quality-enhancing product innovation activity, the pricing of food products, and the welfare of the groups involved in the context of a mixed duopoly where an openmembership consumer co-op competes with an IOF. Analytical results show that the involvement of the member welfare-maximizing co-op in R&D can be quality and welfare enhancing by increasing the arrival rate of product innovations and reducing the prices of food products. The effectiveness of the coop is shown to depend on the nature of product differentiation and the relative quality of its products, the degree of consumer heterogeneity, and the size of innovation costs.cooperatives, product innovation, mixed oligopoly, retained earnings, Agribusiness,

Cascades and Dissipative Anomalies in Compressible Fluid Turbulence

We investigate dissipative anomalies in a turbulent fluid governed by the compressible Navier-Stokes equation. We follow an exact approach pioneered by Onsager, which we explain as a non-perturbative application of the principle of renormalization-group invariance. In the limit of high Reynolds and P\'eclet numbers, the flow realizations are found to be described as distributional or "coarse-grained" solutions of the compressible Euler equations, with standard conservation laws broken by turbulent anomalies. The anomalous dissipation of kinetic energy is shown to be due not only to local cascade, but also to a distinct mechanism called pressure-work defect. Irreversible heating in stationary, planar shocks with an ideal-gas equation of state exemplifies the second mechanism. Entropy conservation anomalies are also found to occur by two mechanisms: an anomalous input of negative entropy (negentropy) by pressure-work and a cascade of negentropy to small scales. We derive "4/5th-law"-type expressions for the anomalies, which allow us to characterize the singularities (structure-function scaling exponents) required to sustain the cascades. We compare our approach with alternative theories and empirical evidence. It is argued that the "Big Power-Law in the Sky" observed in electron density scintillations in the interstellar medium is a manifestation of a forward negentropy cascade, or an inverse cascade of usual thermodynamic entropy

Cascades and Dissipative Anomalies in Relativistic Fluid Turbulence

We develop first-principles theory of relativistic fluid turbulence at high Reynolds and P\'eclet numbers. We follow an exact approach pioneered by Onsager, which we explain as a non-perturbative application of the principle of renormalization-group invariance. We obtain results very similar to those for non-relativistic turbulence, with hydrodynamic fields in the inertial-range described as distributional or "coarse-grained" solutions of the relativistic Euler equations. These solutions do not, however, satisfy the naive conservation-laws of smooth Euler solutions but are afflicted with dissipative anomalies in the balance equations of internal energy and entropy. The anomalies are shown to be possible by exactly two mechanisms, local cascade and pressure-work defect. We derive "4/5th-law"-type expressions for the anomalies, which allow us to characterize the singularities (structure-function scaling exponents) required for their non-vanishing. We also investigate the Lorentz covariance of the inertial-range fluxes, which we find is broken by our coarse-graining regularization but which is restored in the limit that the regularization is removed, similar to relativistic lattice quantum field theory. In the formal limit as speed of light goes to infinity, we recover the results of previous non-relativistic theory. In particular, anomalous heat input to relativistic internal energy coincides in that limit with anomalous dissipation of non-relativistic kinetic energy