Naughty or nice? Punishment and the interaction of formal and informal incentives in long-term contractual relationships

The paper develops a model of repeated interaction between a buyer and a seller, which is then tested via laboratory experiments. The model allows for both formal and informal incentives in the contractual relationship between the parties. Formal incentives are explicit, performance-conditioned obligations enforced by third parties, such as a binding bonus paid for meeting an objectively measurable criterion. Informal incentives are non-binding promises to reward good performance. Although they are not enforced by external institutions, parties engaged in long-term interactions have incentives to “keep their words” about these promises and such payments can provide motivation for desirable performance. The current literature posits that these two types of incentives can function either as complements, so that joint use leads to better outcomes than either alone, or as substitutes, so that the availability of formal incentives may actually undermine the effectiveness of informal incentives. This study uses laboratory experiments to provide a rigorous test of hypotheses about the interaction of these incentives. The observed results suggest that the complementarity effect occurs in certain situations, but that the substitution effect does not occur as predicted, possibly because people do not punish transgressions in the manner that the theoretical model assumes.Relational contracts, experimental economics

THE NORTHEAST AND INTERREGIONAL COMPETITION FOR BROILERS

An interregional model which minimizes production and transportation costs for broilers was developed and tested. Ten production and 22 consumption regions were defined. The results indicate that current flow patterns are relatively efficient given the existing production capacities. As demand increases the increased production will tend to be in the Southwest (Texas) and to a lesser extent in the Southeast (North Carolina). Shadow prices indicate that in the longer run production in the Northeast will continue to decline in relative terms and perhaps in absolute terms.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The cultural and political influences on IT diffusion in the People\u27s Republic of China

This paper investigates how political and cultural influences impact the diffusion and use of information technology (IT) in the People\u27s Republic of China. Five separate interviews were conducted with individuals in five state-owned businesses. Based upon our interviews, it appears that the role and use of information technology in these organizations depends largely upon societal spectrums such as politics, culture, economic status, and the educational levels of the employees

A simple polymerase chain reaction-based method for the construction of recombinase-mediated cassette exchange donor vectors

Here we describe a simple method for generating donor vectors suitable for targeted transgenesis via recombinase-mediated cassette exchange (RMCE) using the ΦC31 integrase. This PCR-based strategy employs small attB tails on the primers used to amplify a sequence of interest, permitting the rapid creation of transgenes for in vivo analysis. Copyright © 2008 by the Genetics Society of America

Gauged Wess-Zumino terms and Equivariant Cohomology

We summarize some results obtained on the problem of gauging the Wess--Zumino term of a d-dimensional bosonic sigma-model. We show that gauged WZ-like terms are in one-to-one correspondence with equivariant cocycles of the target space. By the same token, the obstructions to gauging a WZ term can be understood in terms of the equivariant cohomology of the target space and this allows us to use topological tools to derive some a priori vanishing theorems guaranteeing the absence of obstructions for a large class of target spaces and symmetry groups in the physically interesting dimensions d<=4. (This is an expository summary of the results of hep-th/9407149.)Comment: 11 pages, uuencoded compressed .dvi file (uses AMSFonts 2.1+), QMW-PH-94-2

Implementation of RDA in the OPAL Consortium

The RDA Working Group, an informal subcommittee of the OPAL (Ohio Private Academic Libraries) Cataloging Committee was formed in 2011 to research the then under development RDA (Resource Description and Access) cataloging code and make recommendations to the entire membership of the OPAL Cataloging Committee on how to proceed with implementing RDA cataloging in the 24 small academic libraries which make up the OPAL Consortium. All of the OPAL libraries share one Innovative Interfaces, Inc. library system and share a public catalog, so it was important to develop some guidelines for RDA cataloging that all of the OPAL catalogers could follow. The OPAL Cataloging Committee recommended that the OPAL catalogers begin to use the RDA cataloging code on the date when the Library of Congress officially adopted RDA for all of its cataloging on March 31, 2013. At that time it became acceptable to add copy cataloged or original cataloged RDA records to the OPAL catalog. The OPAL Consortium purchased individual library subscriptions to the RDA Toolkit for each of the OPAL libraries, thereby providing all of the OPAL libraries with access to the premier tool for searching for RDA cataloging rules. In addition the RDA Working Group has also created some RDA training materials which include a MARC format field-by-field guide and examples of specific catalog records to show the differences in cataloging practice between AACR2 and RDA. These are accessible on the OPAL Cataloging Committee website for the OPAL catalogers to refer to as needed. Since all of the OPAL catalogers are contributing to a shared catalog, it is important for everyone “to be on the same page” in terms of RDA cataloging in OPAL, and the training materials created for OPAL catalogers have helped to facilitate a smooth transition to RDA among the catalogers of the OPAL consortium. OPAL catalogers also can contact each other with RDA questions through a listserv or through e-mail. This presentation includes a little theoretical background on the RDA cataloging code but will be largely practical in nature showing examples from some of the training materials created for the OPAL catalogers that may be helpful to other catalogers who are beginning to encounter RDA records in OCLC more and more frequently in copy cataloging and who are beginning to perform original cataloging following the rules of the RDA cataloging code