6,744 research outputs found
Markets, Contracts, or Integration? The Adoption, Diffusion, and Evolution of Organizational Form
The rise of contract farming and vertical integration is one of the most important changes in modern agriculture. Yet the adoption and diffusion of these new forms of organization has varied widely across regions, commodities, or farm types, however. Transaction cost theories and the like are not fully effective at explaining the variation of adoption rates of different organizational forms, in part because of their inherent static nature. In order to explain the adoption, diffusion and evolution of organizational form, a more dynamic framework is required. This paper lays out such a framework for understanding the evolution of organizational practices in U.S. agriculture by drawing on existing theories of economic organization, the diffusion of technological innovation, and organizational complementarities. Using recent trends as stylized facts we argue that the agrifood sector is characterized by strong complementarities among its constituent features and that these complementarities help explain the stylized facts. We also discuss several testable hypotheses concerning changes in organizational form in agriculture.contracting, vertical integration, organizational innovation, diffusion, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, L14, L22, Q13, O33,
Simulation of the Burridge-Knopoff Model of Earthquakes with Variable Range Stress Transfer
Simple models of earthquake faults are important for understanding the
mechanisms for their observed behavior, such as Gutenberg-Richter scaling and
the relation between large and small events, which is the basis for various
forecasting methods. Although cellular automaton models have been studied
extensively in the long-range stress transfer limit, this limit has not been
studied for the Burridge-Knopoff model, which includes more realistic friction
forces and inertia. We find that the latter model with long-range stress
transfer exhibits qualitatively different behavior than both the long-range
cellular automaton models and the usual Burridge-Knopoff model with nearest
neighbor springs, depending on the nature of the velocity-weakening friction
force. This result has important implications for our understanding of
earthquakes and other driven dissipative systems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, published on Phys. Rev. Let
Approaching equilibrium and the distribution of clusters
We investigate the approach to stable and metastable equilibrium in Ising
models using a cluster representation. The distribution of nucleation times is
determined using the Metropolis algorithm and the corresponding
model using Langevin dynamics. We find that the nucleation rate is suppressed
at early times even after global variables such as the magnetization and energy
have apparently reached their time independent values. The mean number of
clusters whose size is comparable to the size of the nucleating droplet becomes
time independent at about the same time that the nucleation rate reaches its
constant value. We also find subtle structural differences between the
nucleating droplets formed before and after apparent metastable equilibrium has
been established.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figure
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