CRITERIA FOR JUDGING PUBLIC POLICIES AS THEY AFFECT ECONOMIC PROGRESS AND INTERDEPENDENCE

Public Economics,

Domestic Support for the U.S. Rice Sector and the WTO: Implications of the 2002 Farm Act

The U.S. rice sector is expected to receive some of the largest relative support under the 2002 Farm Act. USDA's rice baseline model is used to compute marketing loan benefits, while direct payments and counter-cyclical payments are estimated from endogenous prices and exogenous policy parameters. Alternative scenarios of reduced marketing loan benefits suggest that projected annual average sector revenue could decline by 4 to 27 percent.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Economic Analysis of Base Acre and Payment Yield Designations Under the 2002 U.S. Farm Act

The 2002 Farm Act provided farmland owners the opportunity to update commodity program base acres and payment yields used for calculating selected program benefits. Findings in this report suggest that farmland owners responded to economic incentives in these decisions, selecting those options for designating base acres that resulted in the greatest expected flow of program payments. Decisions of farmland owners in South Dakota, in upland cotton area, and in the Heartland region support the payment-maximization argument. In general, landowners favored maximizing payments over aligning base acres to current or recent plantings. Farmland owners with high-payment base acres, such as rice and cotton, held on to these base acres and, whenever possible, expanded them. Analogously, landowners with low-payment commodity base acres, such as oats and barley, switched to higher payment commodities whenever possible.base, 2002 Farm Act, direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, production flexibility contract payments, base acres, program yields, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management,

SUPPLY RESPONSE UNDER THE 1996 FARM ACT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE U.S. FIELD CROPS SECTOR

The 1996 Farm Act gives farmers almost complete planting flexibility, allowing producers to respond to price changes to a greater extent than they had under previous legislation. This study measures supply responsiveness for major field crops to changes in their own prices and in prices for competing crops and indicates significant increases in responsiveness. Relative to 1986-90, the percentage increases in the responsiveness of U.S. plantings of major field crops to a 1-percent change in their own prices are wheat (1.2 percent), corn (41.6 percent), soybeans (13.5 percent), and cotton (7.9 percent). In percentage terms, the increases in the responsiveness generally become greater with respect to competing crops' price changes. The 1996 legislation has the least effect on U.S. wheat acreage, whereas the law may lead to an average increase of 2 million acres during 1996-2005 in soybean acreage, a decline of 1-2 million acres in corn acreage, and an increase of 0.7 million acres in cotton acreage. Overall, the effect of the farm legislation on regional production patterns of major field crops appears to be modest. Corn acreage expansion in the Central and Northern Plains, a long-term trend in this important wheat production region, will slow under the 1996 legislation, while soybean acreage expansion in this region will accelerate. The authors used the Policy Analysis System-Economic Research Service (POLYSYS-ERS) model that was jointly developed by USDA's Economic Research Service and the University of Tennessee's Agricultural Policy Analysis Center to estimate the effects of the 1996 legislation.Supply response, major field crops, acreage price elasticities, normal flex acreage (NFA), 1996 farm legislation., Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

A 193 nm Deep-UV Lithography System Using a Line-Narrowed ArF Excimer Laser

A small field refractive projection system for operation at the 193.3 nm wavelength of a spectrally narrowed ArF excimer laser is being constructed. The 1 mm field, 20X system operates with a variable objective lens numerical aperture from 0.30 to 0.60, variable partial coherence, and control over illumination fill and mask tilt. A 30 W maximum power ArF excimer laser has been spectrally line-narrowed through incorporation of tilted Fabry-Perot etalons into the laser cavity, allowing linewidths on the order of7 cm\u27 (26 pm) with one etalon and 0.5 cm1 (2pm) with two etalons. This work reports laser line narrowing and lens performance results. Simulations of aerial image intensity distributions from lens aberration data will be presented for 0.25 and 0.20 micron geometry

Geosmin Occurrence in Lake William C. Bowen and Municipal Reservoir #1, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, 2005 to 2006

2008 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Addressing Water Challenges Facing the State and Regio

Warren McCulloch and the British cyberneticians

Warren McCulloch was a significant influence on a number of British cyberneticians, as some British pioneers in this area were on him. He interacted regularly with most of the main figures on the British cybernetics scene, forming close friendships and collaborations with several, as well as mentoring others. Many of these interactions stemmed from a 1949 visit to London during which he gave the opening talk at the inaugural meeting of the Ratio Club, a gathering of brilliant, mainly young, British scientists working in areas related to cybernetics. This paper traces some of these relationships and interaction

Summary of the VIN Field Program: Summer 1979

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewedOpe