Economic Concepts of Organic Certification

Certification is a key element in marketing organic food products. Based on economic theory, this report wants to illustrate the economic reasoning for certification. The intention is to provide a description of economic concepts, which is understandable for a wider audience. We are focusing on the basic economic literature. Chapter 1 “Organic certification system” describes the current control system in the European Union. Why this is necessary, will then be explained based on a synopsis of economic literature. Of specific significance for organic certification and the CERTCOST project are the concepts of institutional economics and economics of crime. The relevant points of economic theory will be presented and discussed in chapter 2 “Theoretical framework”. Finally, the costs and benefits of organic certification will be illustrated in chapter 3 “Costs and benefits of organic certification”

A Residual Bootstrap for Conditional Value-at-Risk

This paper proposes a fixed-design residual bootstrap method for the two-step estimator of Francq and Zako\"ian (2015) associated with the conditional Value-at-Risk. The bootstrap's consistency is proven for a general class of volatility models and intervals are constructed for the conditional Value-at-Risk. A simulation study reveals that the equal-tailed percentile bootstrap interval tends to fall short of its nominal value. In contrast, the reversed-tails bootstrap interval yields accurate coverage. We also compare the theoretically analyzed fixed-design bootstrap with the recursive-design bootstrap. It turns out that the fixed-design bootstrap performs equally well in terms of average coverage, yet leads on average to shorter intervals in smaller samples. An empirical application illustrates the interval estimation

Truly On-The-Fly LTL Model Checking

We propose a novel algorithm for automata-based LTL model checking that interleaves the construction of the generalized B\"{u}chi automaton for the negation of the formula and the emptiness check. Our algorithm first converts the LTL formula into a linear weak alternating automaton; configurations of the alternating automaton correspond to the locations of a generalized B\"{u}chi automaton, and a variant of Tarjan's algorithm is used to decide the existence of an accepting run of the product of the transition system and the automaton. Because we avoid an explicit construction of the B\"{u}chi automaton, our approach can yield significant improvements in runtime and memory, for large LTL formulas. The algorithm has been implemented within the SPIN model checker, and we present experimental results for some benchmark examples

Commission to practice what it preaches

An ORGAP (Evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming) research project paper questions whether the EU Commission is line with its own Principles of good governance regarding the revision process of the EU Organic Regulation

Stakeholder participation and stakeholder protest: On the planned revision of the EU Organic regulation

POSTER In Germany organic stakeholders largely reject the draft of the revised EU Organic regulation. This was evident at a workshop held within the framework of the ORGAP project, which brought together leading representatives of the organic sector in March 2006. The objective of the workshop was to develop indicators on the evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming. The concerns voiced by stakeholders on the revision of the regulation were so strong that we consider it appropriate to i) report them and ii) to put them into perspective as a contribution to further discussion. This is the objective of this poster. MANUSCRIPT FOR THE POSTER PRESENTATION (TRANSLATED AND REVISED FROM https://orgprints.org/8515) Shortly before Christmas of last year, the Commission of the European Union (EU) published the draft of a new EU Organic Regulation. This draft proposal, which is intended to replace Council Regulation (EEC) 2092/91 and supplementary regulations, has provoked substantial criticism from the German organic sector. Thus the German farmers’ union (Deutscher Bauernverband, DBV) spoke of the “massive undermining of consumer protection” which could result from provisions in the draft. The German Federation of the Organic Food Industry (Bund Ökologische Lebensmittelwirtschaft, BÖLW) as the umbrella organization of organic producers, processors and traders rejects the present draft revision outright. The broad rejection of the draft replacement regulation was confirmed at a workshop held in the framework of the EU ORGAP project, which brought together leading representatives of the German organic sector on March 30, 2006 in Berlin. The ORGAP (Evaluation of the European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming) research project is of special interest in connection with the new EU Organic Regulation, since the draft regulation explicitly (and quite unusually) makes specific reference to this project: its results will be drawn upon at a later stage in order to draft the detailed implementation provisions for the regulation. The methodological approach of the ORGAP research project places a very strong emphasis on stakeholder integration