Evaluation of Demand under Rationing when Only Indirect Utility Functions are Known: A Note

This note outlines a simple routine for evaluation of consumer demand under disequilibrium (shortage of some commodities) when the representative consumer's preferences are characterized by a cost function, or an indirect utility function consistent with the conventional theory of consumer behavior. The routine may be applied whenever the explicit form of the direct utility cannot be easily derived from the indirect utility function

A Linear Expenditure System Allowing for Direct Substitutability of Various Foodstuffs

It is widely acknowledged that the Linear Expenditure System -- or any system derived on the assumption of additive utility function -- rules out direct substitution effects among the commodities. When applied to the study of the structure of demand for particular foodstuffs, any such demand study violates some of the legitimate intuition about actual substitutability of various food-stuffs: the similarity of nutritional content of any two (or more) otherwise "different" commodities does -- to a great extent -- seem to prejudge their actual substitutability. The paper presents a modified linear expenditure system, which, having all the advantages of the simple LES at the same time allows for direct substitutability of particular foodstuffs. The theory, related to K. Lancaster's idea of the "new approach to the demand study" appears rather fruitful. The estimates of the parameters of the system for Italy, the Netherlands, West Germany and Great Britain obtained on its basis exhibit a rather unusually high statistical significance. At the same time these estimates seem very much the same for all the four countries studied

A Generalized Theory of Household Behavior under Rationing

The results of Neary and Roberts (1980) relating rationed demand functions to the unrationed demand functions via the concept of "virtual" prices are shown to hold only in certain restricted circumstances. An alternative and generalized approach is suggested for the evaluation of effective demand under any arbitrarily-chosen rationing scheme

A General Outline of the Structure of a Simulation Model for Polish Agriculture

One of the main purposes of the Food and Agriculture Program at IIASA is to build a series of interconnected national agricultural models covering sufficiently large parts of the globe's food consumption, production and exchange. Poland, being a big agricultural producer and having a noticeable share of the international food and feed market, deserves some attention in this context. Another important factor favoring the choice of Poland as a subject of modeling effort is the fact that the current specific problems of the Polish economy may resemble the ones that sooner or later are likely to face many medium-size countries that have not yet attained the highest level of industrialization. Among these problems are the heterogeneity of agricultural technologies, observed economic phenomena and organizational patterns, mixed structure of land ownership (large-scale public ventures are typical as small private farms) impending intensification of rural-urban migration and a high level of foreign indebtedness

Efficient Use of Prices and Quantity Constraints for Control and Coordination of Linear Sectoral Production Models

A number of complex national agricultural models with linear programming description of the sectors of farms have been developed. Intended as tools for policy analysis, these models do not clearly endognize the government's behavior. However, it is interesting to explore the consequences and possibilities of an efficient utilization of the sectoral programming models for a fully conscious governmental decision making. The topic is especially important for those centrally planned economies where the failure of the administrative (command) methods of management of agriculture has been unequivocally acknowledged and yet no consistent alternative mechanism has so far emerged. The paper presents a scheme for the control and coordination of production plans generated by the linear aggregative (sectoral) programs. Thereby prices and, if need be, quotas and constraints on input availabilities may be set in such a way as to guarantee the satisfaction of the governmental goals while fully respecting sovereignty of the profit-motivated producers. It has been demonstrated that prices alone, even if fully controlled by the government, need not lead to the satisfaction of the achievable government's goals. It is only with the introduction of quotas on outputs and limits on available inputs that the possibility of a reconciliation of the government's goals with the behavior of profit-motivated sectors is recovered. However, the introduction of quantity restrictions imposes additional conditions that cannot be violated for fear that this would unleash uncontrollable speculation with respect to licenses for production and inputs. The analytical framework for the consistent simultaneous determination of prices and quantity restrictions has been given. This implies solving linear programming models with some nonconcave quadratic constraints

Estimates of the Disequilibria in Poland's Consumer Markets, 1965-1978

In the course of work on the development of the Polish agricultural policy model, the author has investigated the disequilibria in Poland's consumer markets. Since an understanding of consumer behavior is critically important in formulating plans and designing policies that facilitate the realization of plans, this is an important element in the Polish agricultural policy model

Characterization of Xylan Utilization and Discovery of a New Endoxylanase in Thermoanaerobacterium Saccharolyticum through Targeted Gene Deletions

The economical production of fuels and commodity chemicals from lignocellulose requires the utilization of both the cellulose and hemicellulose fractions. Xylanase enzymes allow greater utilization of hemicellulose while also increasing cellulose hydrolysis. Recent metabolic engineering efforts have resulted in a strain of Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum that can convert C5 and C6 sugars, as well as insoluble xylan, into ethanol at high yield. To better understand the process of xylan solubilization in this organism, a series of targeted deletions were constructed in the homoethanologenic T. saccharolyticum strain M0355 to characterize xylan hydrolysis and xylose utilization in this organism. While the deletion of -xylosidase xylD slowed the growth of T. saccharolyticum on birchwood xylan and led to an accumulation of short-chain xylo-oligomers, no other single deletion, including the deletion of the previously characterized endoxylanase XynA, had a phenotype distinct from that of the wild type.This result indicates a multiplicity of xylanase enzymes which facilitate xylan degradation in T. saccharolyticum. Growth on xylan was prevented only when a previously uncharacterized endoxylanase encoded by xynC was also deleted in conjunction with xynA. Sequence analysis of xynC indicates that this enzyme, a low-molecular-weight endoxylanase with homology to glycoside hydrolase family 11 enzymes, is secreted yet untethered to the cell wall. Together, these observations expand our understanding of the enzymatic basis of xylan hydrolysis by T. saccharolyticum

Epitaxial CrN Thin Films with High Thermoelectric Figure of Merit

A large enhancement of the thermoelectric figure of merit is reported in single-crystalline films of CrN. The mechanism of the reduction of the lattice thermal conductivity in cubic CrN is similar to the resonant bonding in IV–VI compounds. Therefore, useful ideas from classic thermo­electrics can be applied to tune functionalities in transition metal nitrides and oxides.Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (DE-SC0001299)Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (DE-FG02-09ER46577

Electronic reconstruction at the polar (111)- oriented oxide interface

Atomically flat (111) interfaces between insulating perovskite oxides provide a landscape for new electronic phenomena. For example, the graphene-like coordination between interfacial metallic ion layer pairs can lead to topologically protected states [Xiao et al., Nat. Commun. 2, 596 (2011) and A. Rüegg and G. A. Fiete, Phys. Rev. B 84, 201103 (2011)]. The metallic ion/metal oxide bilayers that comprise the unit cell of the perovskite (111) heterostructures require the interface to be polar, generating an intrinsic polar discontinuity [Chakhalian et al., Nat. Mater. 11, 92 (2012)]. Here, we investigate epitaxial heterostructures of (111)-oriented LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO). We find that during heterostructure growth, the LAO overlayer eliminates the structural reconstruction of the STO (111) surface with an electronic reconstruction, which determines the properties of the resulting two-dimensional conducting gas. This is confirmed by transport measurements, direct determination of the structure and atomic charge from coherent Bragg rod analysis, and theoretical calculations of electronic and structural characteristics. Interfacial behaviors of the kind discussed here may lead to new growth control parameters useful for electronic devices