Estimating Production of Forest Cooperative Members

This study develops methods of estimating annual marketings by members of forestry cooperatives in order to formulate a long range business plan for the cooperative. A reliable prediction of total annual sales by the cooperative is possible, but individual product estimates are subject to significant errors. The report details cautions concerning the development and implementation of projections and makes specific recommendations. The system also permitted estimation of landowner service needs.Silviculture, forestry cooperatives, forestry management, marketing, Agribusiness,

MEASURING U.S. CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS USING CHOICE MODELING EXPERIMENTS: THE ROLE OF PRICE, PRODUCT BENEFITS AND TECHNOLOGY

Food biotechnology promises to deliver a wide range of enhanced consumer benefits. This study models consumer's willingness to trade-off the potential risks of GM foods with the possibility of extracting significant benefits. The results of the choice modeling experiments reflect how different attributes of price, product benefits, and technology influence consumer demand for genetically modified food products. The results suggest that direct health, environmental, and production related benefits have a positive effect on choice. The results also generally show that genetic modification is viewed negatively, with use of bacterium and animal based genetic modification being viewed more negatively than the use of plant based genetic modification.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

AN APPLICATION OF CHOICE MODELING TO MEASURE U.S. CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

Food biotechnology promises to deliver a wide range of enhanced consumer benefits. This study models consumer's willingness to trade-off the potential risks of GM foods with the possibility of extracting significant benefits. It estimates the marginal effects and relationships between product characteristics and consumer attributes on acceptance of GM foods.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

U.S. Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Labeling Information on Genetically Modified Foods: An Application of Choice Modeling

This study analyzes U.S. consumers' valuation of five types of genetically modified food labels on a cornflakes cereal product. Using a nationwide survey and choice-modeling framework, results indicate that consumers value the label "contains no genetically modified corn" the most with a mean willingness to pay of 20 more cents, followed by "USDA approved genetically modified corn" with a mean willingness to pay of 9 more cents, and "corn genetically modified to reduce pesticide residues in your food" with a mean willingness to pay of 7 more cents. Results also suggest that consumers negatively value the labels "contains genetically modified corn" with a mean willingness to pay of 13 less cents and "may contain genetically modified corn" with a mean willingness to pay of 2 less cents.Consumer/Household Economics,

A robust control scheme for flexible arms with friction in the joints

A general control scheme to control flexible arms with friction in the joints is proposed in this paper. This scheme presents the advantage of being robust in the sense that it minimizes the effects of the Coulomb friction existing in the motor and the effects of changes in the dynamic friction coefficient. A justification of the robustness properties of the scheme is given in terms of the sensitivity analysis

Companions to peculiar red giants: HR 363 and HR 1105

Recent IUE observations of two Tc-deficient S-type peculiar red giants that are also spectroscopic binaries, HR 363 and HR 1105 are reported. A 675 min SWP exposure of HR 363 shows emission lines of O I 1304 and Si II 1812 and a trace of continuum. Compared to the M giants, the far UV flux may be relatively larger, indicating a possible contribution from a white dwarf companion, but no high temperature emission lines are seen to indicate that this is an interacting system where mass-transfer recently occurred. However, HR 1105 appears to have a highly variable UV companion. In 1982, no UV flux was discerned for this system, but by 1986 C IV was strong, increasing by a factor of 3 in 1987 with prominent lines of Si III, C III, O III, Si IV, and N V. Using orbital parameters, these observations are consistent with high activity occuring when the side of the S-star primary illuminated by the companion faces the Earth, but since the IUE data were taken over 3 orbits, a secular change in the UV component cannot be excluded

On the Use of Valuation Mechanisms to Measure Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Novel Products: A Comparison of Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical Values

Willingness to pay (WTP) estimates for novel products are needed to assess consumers' valuation of these products as well as for product adoption and optimal pricing strategies. Using experiments in a retail setting, we compare hypothetical and non-hypothetical WTP values between a Becker-DeGroot-Marshak (BDM) auction mechanism and conjoint analysis. Our results suggest that the auction WTP values are higher than conjoint analysis WTP values. Moreover, the hypothetical WTP values are higher than the non-hypothetical WTP values in both elicitation mechanisms.Conjoint analysis, willingness-to-pay, auction, hypothetical, non-hypothetical, Consumer/Household Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,