The Costs of Risk: Examining the Missing Link between Globalization and Social Spending

Globalization is often credited with the expansion of the welfare state and increased spending on social insurance programs. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between globalization and social welfare spending is mixed. One possible explanation for these mixed results might be country-specific factors that mediate the effect of globalization on social spending, such as key characteristics of a country's labor market. Countries with fluid, flexible labor markets likely respond to globalization differently than countries with rigid, inflexible markets. At the micro level, workers who find it costly to adjust to market volatility will likely demand compensatory and insurance programs to offset the high costs of adjustment. Given this, the relationship between globalization and social insurance is likely to be more sharply positive among countries with relatively immobile labor. I test this argument using data on social expenditures in both developed and developing countries. The findings indicate that trade exposure increases social spending in countries where workers face high adjustment costs. When workers face low adjustment costs, trade exposure has a strong reductive effect on social spending. This reductive effect declines as adjustment costs increase.

Traceability Adoption by Specialty Crop Producers in California

Surveys were sent to specialty crop producers in California, predominantly grower-packer-shippers, during the first half of 2006 to better understand the motives for traceability adoption. The questions in our survey allowed respondents to consider the benefits of tracing. A representative tracing system for melons was developed and costs for the system were collected from industry sources. Values were assigned to the benefits of traceability based on the cost of the representative system, responses collected in our survey, and using Borda’s rule. Results suggest that litigation concerns and firm reputation are the key drivers for maintaining traceability.Borda’s rule, California, partial budget, specialty crops, survey, traceability, Agribusiness, Crop Production/Industries,

Domestic Support Reform? A Closer Look at EU Policies Applied to Processed Fruits and Vegetables

Recent trade negotiations have attracted much attention to the consequences of domestic support applied to agricultural markets. In various markets, researchers have examined the economic effects of regimes and scenarios with less, or different forms of, domestic support including decoupled payments. Here we examine the domestic support regimes for processed fruits and vegetables in the European Union (EU) where major policy changes were applied in 2001 and again in 2008. The changes were billed as policy “reform” but no analysis has yet evaluated quantitatively the nature of what was reformed and what was not. A simulation model is used here to assess the price, production, and welfare effects of policies that have been applied to the EU processing tomato industry. Our results indicate that EU domestic support has increased EU tomato production by 7 to 12%, decreased production in other regions by 3 to 5%, and distorted the processing tomato market most during the period between 2001 and 2007.agricultural policy reform, domestic support, horticultural markets, European Union, Common Agricultural Policy, processing tomatoes, simulation analysis, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q18,

Two-Buck Chuck and Wine Quality: Hedonic Price Analysis of Cool Climate Wines

Demand and Price Analysis,

“Pill vs. Broccoli” – The Economics of Health Behavior and Vitamin Consumption

Health Economics and Policy,

Tilting mutation of weakly symmetric algebras and stable equivalence

We consider tilting mutations of a weakly symmetric algebra at a subset of simple modules, as recently introduced by T. Aihara. These mutations are defined as the endomorphism rings of certain tilting complexes of length 1. Starting from a weakly symmetric algebra A, presented by a quiver with relations, we give a detailed description of the quiver and relations of the algebra obtained by mutating at a single loopless vertex of the quiver of A. In this form the mutation procedure appears similar to, although significantly more complicated than, the mutation procedure of Derksen, Weyman and Zelevinsky for quivers with potentials. By definition, weakly symmetric algebras connected by a sequence of tilting mutations are derived equivalent, and hence stably equivalent. The second aim of this article is to study these stable equivalences via a result of Okuyama describing the images of the simple modules. As an application we answer a question of Asashiba on the derived Picard groups of a class of self-injective algebras of finite representation type. We conclude by introducing a mutation procedure for maximal systems of orthogonal bricks in a triangulated category, which is motivated by the effect that a tilting mutation has on the set of simple modules in the stable category.Comment: Description and proof of mutated algebra made more rigorous (Prop. 3.1 and 4.2). Okuyama's Lemma incorporated: Theorem 4.1 is now Corollary 5.1, and proof is omitted. To appear in Algebras and Representation Theor

Greece’s creditors are paying the price for not relaxing their conditions prior to the 2015 election

Greece has submitted new proposals to its creditors in an attempt to finally end the deadlock over the release of further bailout funding. Stephanie J. Rickard writes that the present impasse could have been avoided if the strategy pursued by the International Monetary Fund in previous loan programmes to other countries had been repeated. Drawing on a study of democratic countries under IMF programmes, she notes that the IMF has typically relaxed loan programme requirements in the leadup to elections. By failing to do so in the Greek case, the foundations were set for Syriza to come to power on an anti-austerity platform, making a compromise far more difficult

Import Demand for Horticultural Commodities in Developed and Emerging Countries

International trade of horticultural commodities is increasingly important in many regions of the world, yet import patterns of key horticultural crops are understudied in the agricultural economics literature. Using data between 1991 and 2005, we estimate the drivers of per capita import demand for six of the most highly traded horticultural commodities. The own price elasticity estimates were negative in all import demand models and, in most cases, the effects were statistically stronger for importers in emerging countries. Import demand for horticultural commodities in developed countries has been driven primarily by prices and the level of trade openness while income and diet considerations were more important in emerging countries. Furthermore, our results show that the determinants of import demand differed across the six models, and therefore, information can be lost when data for horticultural commodities are aggregated.Emerging markets, Horticultural commodities, Import demand, International trade, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, Q17,

Magnetic Flux Braiding: Force-Free Equilibria and Current Sheets

We use a numerical nonlinear multigrid magnetic relaxation technique to investigate the generation of current sheets in three-dimensional magnetic flux braiding experiments. We are able to catalogue the relaxed nonlinear force-free equilibria resulting from the application of deformations to an initially undisturbed region of plasma containing a uniform, vertical magnetic field. The deformations are manifested by imposing motions on the bounding planes to which the magnetic field is anchored. Once imposed the new distribution of magnetic footpoints are then taken to be fixed, so that the rest of the plasma must then relax to a new equilibrium configuration. For the class of footpoint motions we have examined, we find that singular and nonsingular equilibria can be generated. By singular we mean that within the limits imposed by numerical resolution we find that there is no convergence to a well-defined equilibrium as the number of grid points in the numerical domain is increased. These singular equilibria contain current "sheets" of ever-increasing current intensity and decreasing width; they occur when the footpoint motions exceed a certain threshold, and must include both twist and shear to be effective. On the basis of these results we contend that flux braiding will indeed result in significant current generation. We discuss the implications of our results for coronal heating.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure