Contract Production of Green Peas

This paper analyzes a contract between farmers and a large company in the Danish food industry, Danisco Foods. Production of green peas requires a very accurate coordination, which is obtained through centralized decision-making. The contract is based on a tournament system providing risk sharing between the farmers. General problems from the contract theory such as hold up, moral hazard, risk sharing and screening are analyzed. The paper illustrates the tradeoffs between these problems in design of contracts. By negotiating the contract through a pea-growers association, the farmers gain some bargaining power. Thus the farmers can ensure that Danisco Foods uses only one contract for all farmers. This paper analyzes the consequences of the farmers' strategy. Throughout the analysis several modifications of the contract is suggested in order to improve the incentives.contract theory, coordination, incentives, risk sharing, Agribusiness,

Discrimination and Strategic Group Division in Tournaments

The contracts we consider in this paper must solve three problems: moral hazard, insurance and discrimination. The moral hazard problem is that of providing the agents with incentives to perform in a way that maximizes the profit to the principal, when the agent's actions are unobservable. The insurance problem is that of minimizing the cost of risk through risk minimization and risk sharing. The issue of discrimination is that of paying agents with different skills sufficiently to participate, without overcompensating other agents. We show how the principal may benefit from a strategic division of the agents into different tournaments or groups. The optimal number of groups from the principal's point of view is determined through a trade-off between moral hazard, insurance and discrimination issues.Agribusiness,

Incentives, Information Systems and Competition.

We show how different competitive regimes affect the ability to provide incentives based on noisy information systems. Reduced competition facilitates incentive provision. This may rationalize both vertical integration and horizontal integration as seen in many agricultural markets with uncertain quality grading. Moreover, if trading terms are settled before the information is observed, a noisy information system suffices to give proper incentives. This may rationalize the use of long term conditional price contracts in the trading of many agricultural products.Quality; Testing; Industrial Organization; Information Externalities

OFFERETS PSYKOLOGI – KOGNITION OG RELIGION I EVOLUTIONÆR BELYSNING

Offeret udgør en ritualiseret centralstruktur i al religiøs praksis verden over, men hvad symboliserer denne handling egentlig? I herværende artikel anskues fænomenet fra en evolutionær psykologisk vinkel, og gennem tværkulturelle, komparative og eksperimentelle data argumenteres der for, at offeret ikke først og fremmest er et religiøst begreb, men snarere må betragtes som en nøglefaktor i menneskets socialitet, afspejlende et medfødt reciprocitetsprogram som er velkendt i dyreverdenen fra spermacethvaler og vampyrflagermus til primaterne og os selv. Det religiøse offer, som iscenesat ritual, tjener derfor nok som inspiration for den menneskelige samfærdsel, men er i grunden det symbolske udtryk for samme – og således et derivat, som henter dets hele indre hellighed fra dets evne til symbolsk fortætning af netop den udvekslingsnormativitet, der allerede er gældende praksis mellem mennesker uden for den intime yngelplejes nære relation. Det overordnede forhold mellem religion og evolution diskuteres dernæst, og det påpeges, at religionen er en af de nichekonstruktioner, der kan have gjort sig gældende i udviklingen af den menneskelige socialitet og moral. Dels som leverandør af udløsende nøglestimuli og dels som selekterende miljøfaktor i egen ret