QUALITY INDICATORS AND INTERMEDIATE PRODUCTS: A NON-PARAMETRIC APPROACH

In this paper we propose a methodology to measure the characteristics and composition of intermediate products using productivity indicators based on directional distance functions. We evaluate how quality attributes interact with the quantity level in grapes production, and find evidence of a trade-off between quantity and aggregate quality for Chardonnay.Marketing,

PRODUCER ORGANIZATIONS AND SELF-REGULATION IN AGRICULTURAL MARKETS

The analysis proposed in this paper is concerned with the welfare effects of self-regulation by Producer's Organizations (PO) as an alternative to market or public intervention. Using the advances of the economics of incentives, it studies the interaction of asymmetric information and the democratic process in the quality choices of a group of heterogenous producers. With a simple model of adverse selection it presents the pricing rules and the quality provision in a group of producers facing an opportunity to gain from their collective capacity to establish a reputation for their quality products. This paper explicitly considers the democratic process through which quality-based reward schemes are decided upon and enforced in the PO. It distinguishes between a constitutional phase, in which each potential participant votes on whether to form a PO and the rules by which the PO will be run, and a working phase, in which the rules, including quality regulation, are enforced by the PO.Demand and Price Analysis, Industrial Organization,

THE WELFARE IMPACT OF SELF-REGULATION

This paper is concerned with welfare effects of self-regulation. It considers one group of heterogeneous producers modelling incentives they face when collectively deciding about production and trade of a commodity and employing a technology that take into account the trade-off between quality and quantity.Political Economy,

ADVERTISING, COLLECTIVE ACTION, AND LABELING IN THE EUROPEAN WINE MARKETS

In this paper we consider the role for collective action in advertising investments needed to compete on foreign markets and/or to enter into new markets. We model the choices facing producers in regions where both AO (high quality) and table (low quality) wines are produced. By joining forces with producers of other regions to invest in advertising, producers may penetrate into new markets. We show that it is profitable to enter into the new markets when, other things being equal, the size of the new market is relatively big, when the traditional market is relatively small, and when the size of the fixed investment in advertising is relatively small. We discuss the policy implications of the results, examining possible modifications of the AO system to facilitate collective action and improve investment levels.Marketing,

A SIMPLE MODEL OF VOLUNTARY VS MANDATORY LABELLING OF GMOS

We consider the welfare impact of the mandatory and voluntary labelling to inform consumers on GMOs content in foods. With a model of vertical differentiation in competitive markets, we evaluate the effects on price equilibrium and welfare levels. We find that the mandatory labelling scheme would be optimal in those countries with more GMO-averse consumers and no-GMOs practices producers. Voluntary labelling would instead optimally be chosen in those countries where producers are using GMOs and consumers are more concerned about the costs savings resulting in this technology adoption.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Labeling Policies in Food Markets: Private Incentives, Public Intervention, and Welfare Effects

This study considers the welfare impact of labeling policies of agricultural commodities with specific characteristics. Using a model of vertical differentiation, the effects on equilibrium and welfare levels are calculated. The introduction of the regulation and the emergence of two differentiated competitive markets leaves consumers and high-quality producers better off, while low-quality producers are worse off. With high costs and low quality differences, the total welfare impact of the regulation can be negative. Findings show that when high-quality producers can exercise market power, the regulation could be more easily accepted by producers, but it would have a negative effect on consumers.asymmetric information, food markets, labeling, market power, vertical differentiation, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Tweeting News Articles Readership and News Sections in Europe and the Americas

In this article we investigate the impact of social media readership to the editorial profile of newspapers. We analyze tweets containing links to news articles from eight of the largest national newspapers in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, and Germany. The data collection follows the first two weeks of October 2012 and includes 2,842,699 tweets with links to news articles. Twitter-shortened links were resolved using a three-pass routine and assigned to 1 of the 21 newspaper sections. We found the concentration of links to news articles posted by top users to be lower than reported in the literature and the strategy of relaying headlines on Twitter via automatic news aggregators (feeds) to be inefficient. The results of this investigation show which sections of a newspaper are the most and least read by readers in different parts of the world, with German readers placing greater emphasis on Politics and Economy; Brazilians on Sports and Arts; Spaniards on Local and National news; Britons and Americans on Opinion and World news. We also found that German and Spanish readers are more likely to read multiple national newspapers, while British readers more often resort to foreign sources of news. The results confirm that feedback to news items from a large user base is pivotal for the replication of content and that newspapers and news items can be clustered according to the editorial profile and principles of newsworthiness inherited from legacy media. The results of this investigation shed light onto the networked architecture of journalism that increasingly depends on readership agency

Development of human locomotion

Neural control of locomotion in human adults involves the generation of a small set of basic patterned commands directed to the leg muscles. The commands are generated sequentially in time during each step by neural networks located in the spinal cord, called Central Pattern Generators. This review outlines recent advances in understanding how motor commands are expressed at different stages of human development. Similar commands are found in several other vertebrates, indicating that locomotion development follows common principles of organization of the control networks. Movements show a high degree of flexibility at all stages of development, which is instrumental for learning and exploration of variable interactions with the environment

Mental imagery of object motion in weightlessness

Mental imagery represents a potential countermeasure for sensorimotor and cognitive dysfunctions due to spaceflight. It might help train people to deal with conditions unique to spaceflight. Thus, dynamic interactions with the inertial motion of weightless objects are only experienced in weightlessness but can be simulated on Earth using mental imagery. Such training might overcome the problem of calibrating fine-grained hand forces and estimating the spatiotemporal parameters of the resulting object motion. Here, a group of astronauts grasped an imaginary ball, threw it against the ceiling or the front wall, and caught it after the bounce, during pre-flight, in-flight, and post-flight experiments. They varied the throwing speed across trials and imagined that the ball moved under Earth's gravity or weightlessness. We found that the astronauts were able to reproduce qualitative differences between inertial and gravitational motion already on ground, and further adapted their behavior during spaceflight. Thus, they adjusted the throwing speed and the catching time, equivalent to the duration of virtual ball motion, as a function of the imaginary 0 g condition versus the imaginary 1 g condition. Arm kinematics of the frontal throws further revealed a differential processing of imagined gravity level in terms of the spatial features of the arm and virtual ball trajectories. We suggest that protocols of this kind may facilitate sensorimotor adaptation and help tuning vestibular plasticity in-flight, since mental imagery of gravitational motion is known to engage the vestibular cortex

Neural extrapolation of motion for a ball rolling down an inclined plane

It is known that humans tend to misjudge the kinematics of a target rolling down an inclined plane. Because visuomotor responses are often more accurate and less prone to perceptual illusions than cognitive judgments, we asked the question of how rolling motion is extrapolated for manual interception or drawing tasks. In three experiments a ball rolled down an incline with kinematics that differed as a function of the starting position (4 different positions) and slope (30°, 45° or 60°). In Experiment 1, participants had to punch the ball as it fell off the incline. In Experiment 2, the ball rolled down the incline but was stopped at the end; participants were asked to imagine that the ball kept moving and to punch it. In Experiment 3, the ball rolled down the incline and was stopped at the end; participants were asked to draw with the hand in air the trajectory that would be described by the ball if it kept moving. We found that performance was most accurate when motion of the ball was visible until interception and haptic feedback of hand-ball contact was available (Experiment 1). However, even when participants punched an imaginary moving ball (Experiment 2) or drew in air the imaginary trajectory (Experiment 3), they were able to extrapolate to some extent global aspects of the target motion, including its path, speed and arrival time. We argue that the path and kinematics of a ball rolling down an incline can be extrapolated surprisingly well by the brain using both visual information and internal models of target motion