Digging deeper: How do different types of organic consumers influence the increasing organic market share?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sub markets with different degrees of maturity develop during a period of general organic growth, and how different consumer segments behave on these sub markets. The paper uses actual purchasing behaviour of six consumer segments with different attitudes towards food in general and organic production and products in particular. The data is from the Danish market for organic foods, which is one of the most mature markets in the world. The segmentation splits consumers into a positive and a non-positive half, each half consisting of three different segments. The estimations show that the development in general organic consumption varies between segments, and that their behaviour varies between sub markets. The positive half of the population has driven the overall growth in organic budget share at the Danish market over the period 2005 to 2007, while the other half have not changed their consumption significantly. The results indicate that for the most dedicated organic consumers, the organic budget share may be approaching a saturation point for some types of food, but also identifies other types of food which still have a growing organic budget share, even among the most dedicated consumers. The combination of attitudes and actual behaviour for a large number of consumers is new, and the results provide a valuable contribution to the ongoing investigation of organic consumers, and provide new nuances to the understanding of the latest organic growth.organic budget shares, organic consumers, consumer segments, latent class analysis, demand

An Empirical Investigation of Continuous-Time Equity Return Models

This paper extends the class of stochastic volatility diffusions for asset returns to encompass Poisson jumps of time-varying intensity. We find that any reasonably descriptive continuous-time model for equity-index returns must allow for discrete jumps as well as stochastic volatility with a pronounced negative relationship between return and volatility innovations. We also find that the dominant empirical characteristics of the return process appear to be priced by the option market. Our analysis indicates a general correspondence between the evidence extracted from daily equity-index returns and the stylized features of the corresponding options market prices.

Agricultural Risk Management - Experiences from an Action Research Approach

A new model for risk management in agriculture is described in the paper. The risk model is constructed as a context dependent process, which includes four main phases. The model is aimed at agricultural advisors, who wish to facilitate and disseminate risk management to farmers. It is developed and tested by an action research approach in an attempt to make risk management more applicable on family farms. Our obtained experiences indicate that farmers don't apply probabilistic thinking and other concepts according to formal decision theory.Risk management, consulting, action research, farm families, Risk and Uncertainty,

Discrimination of binary coherent states using a homodyne detector and a photon number resolving detector

We investigate quantum measurement strategies capable of discriminating two coherent states probabilistically with significantly smaller error probabilities than can be obtained using non- probabilistic state discrimination. We apply a postselection strategy to the measurement data of a homodyne detector as well as a photon number resolving detector in order to lower the error probability. We compare the two different receivers with an optimal intermediate measurement scheme where the error rate is minimized for a fixed rate of inconclusive results. The photon number resolving (PNR) receiver is experimentally demonstrated and compared to an experimental realization of a homodyne receiver with postselection. In the comparison it becomes clear, that the perfromance of the new PNR receiver surpasses the performance of the homodyne receiver, which we proof to be optimal within any Gaussian operations and conditional dynamics.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Improved readout of qubit-coupled Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill states

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill encoding of a qubit in a harmonic oscillator is a promising building block towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. Recently, this encoding was experimentally demonstrated for the first time in trapped-ion and superconducting circuit systems. However, these systems lack some of the Gaussian operations which are critical to efficiently manipulate the encoded qubits. In particular, homodyne detection, which is the preferred method for readout of the encoded qubit, is not readily available, heavily limiting the readout fidelity. Here, we present an alternative read-out strategy designed for qubit-coupled systems. Our method can improve the readout fidelity with several orders of magnitude for such systems and, surprisingly, even surpass the fidelity of homodyne detection in the low squeezing regime.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Udviklingen i det økologiske forbrug

I DETTE KAPITEL undersøges, hvordan forbruget af økologi har udviklet sig i perioden fra 2005 til 2007. Resultaterne viser, at de segmenter, der er beskrevet i kapitel 1, har meget forskellig adfærd både med hensyn til udvikling i generelt øko-forbrug og med hensyn til udvikling inden for forbruget af økologi i specifikke varegrupper. Overordnet set har den ene halvdel af befolkningen drevet den generelle vækst i øko-andelen, vi har set i perioden, mens den anden halvdel ikke har ændret sit forbrug signifikant. Med hensyn til forbrug i specifikke varegrupper er det interessant, at øko-andelene for frugt og grønt er steget relativt meget, og at en stor del af denne stigning kommer af, at nye husstande er begyndt at købe økologi. Kapitlet beskriver også, hvordan de forskellige segmenter fordeler deres indkøb på butikstyper. Det viser sig, at disse mønstre ikke har ændret sig i perioden, så den observerede stigning i øko-andele skyldes ikke, at folk er begyndt at købe mere ind i butikker med fokus på økologi. Det tyder altså på, at udbuddet af økologi er steget i alle typer af butikker. Resultaterne viser også, at alle køber en stor del af deres økologi i discount-supermarkeder, og understreger dermed, at udbuddet af økologi i de relativt billige butikker må fastholdes og eventuelt udvides, hvis man ønsker at fremme forbruget af økologiske fødevarer. Samtidig køber alle segmenter dog så meget ind i supermarkeder, der ikke fokuserer ret meget på økologi, at der er grund til at tro, at det samlede salg af økologi kunne øges, hvis udbuddet af økologi blev øget i disse supermarkeder

Heralded generation of a micro-macro entangled state

Using different optical setups based on squeezed state and photon subtraction we show how optical entanglement between a macroscopic and a microscopic state - the so-called Schrodinger cat state or micro-macro state - can be generated. The entangled state is heralded and is thus produced a priori in contrast to previous proposals. We define the macroscopicity of the macroscopic part of the state as their mean distance in phase space and the success rate in discriminating them with homodyne detection, and subsequently, based on these measures we investigate the macroscopicity of different states. Furthermore, we show that the state can be used to map a microscopic qubit onto a macroscopic one thereby linking a qubit processor with a qumode processor