Competing Screening Rules

Various studies show that agricultural cooperatives behave differently than their investor-owned counterparts. One explanation may be that the internal decision making process differs in these two governance structures. A model is developed to explore how endogenous screening rules affect efficient organizational choices and industrial structures. It is shown that screening level choice may outweigh architecture choice and that screening rules are strategic substitutes. Conditions are derived under which cooperatives are efficient organizational forms. It is also shown that competition may increase the attractiveness of investor-owned firms and circumstances are determined in which cooperatives and investor owned firms coexist in equilibrium.architecture, screening, cooperatives, duopoly, Agribusiness, Q13,

Geospatial Analysis of Spatial Patterns of U.S. Hospital Readmission Rates

Unplanned hospital readmission after a recent hospitalization is an indication of poor healthcare quality and a waste of healthcare resources. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) initiated the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs; however, studies found the risk adjustment method used in calculating the standardized readmission rate was less accurate without hospital region or community factors. Accordingly, this cross-sectional quantitative study was designed to examine spatial patterns in hospital readmission rates following Andersen\u27s behavioral model of health service utilization. This study was the first geospatial analysis on risk standardized hospital readmissions (RSRR) based on hospital geographic locations. Secondary data from the CMS was used in assessing the global and local geospatial cluster patterns using Global Moran\u27s Index, Anselin local Moran\u27s Index, and graphical analysis tool to identify cluster groups. The study found hospital-wide RSRR was significantly clustered across the country or at the local level. A total of 15 optimal cluster groups were identified with wide variability in cluster size. The hospital-wide and other seven CMS published RSRRs were significantly different among all clusters. The geographically bounded hospital RSRRs provided evidence in support of adding community or regional layer to risk adjustment of RSRR. The specific cluster groups with extremely high or low readmission rates can assist national and local policymakers and hospital administrators to identify specific targets to take actions. This research has social change implications for reducing hospital readmission rates and saving healthcare costs

Overfitting and forecasting: linear versus non-linear time series models

The main purpose of this dissertation is to compare the in-sample estimating and out-of-sample forecasting performance of a set of non-linear time series models, i.e., threshold autoregressive models, momentum threshold autoregressive models, exponential autoregressive models, generalized autoregressive models and bilinear models. First, a Monte Carlo simulation is used to study overfitting and forecasting. For AR processes, if the AIC and SBC criteria are used to select models, the possibility of overfitting is very high since the non-linear models and other linear models are very likely to have lower AIC and SBC. However, the MSPE for one-step ahead out-of-sample forecast can be used to identify the true AR processes. For TAR processes, the AIC can be used to identify the TAR-C models. The SBC and MSPE can identify the TAR process only if the difference of the persistence between the two regimes is large enough. Underfitting and misspecification are very likely to happen for a TAR process with small difference of the persistence between the two regimes. However, if we don\u27t know the true AR or TAR process, the MSPE can\u27t select the AR or TAR models in most cases. Thus, none of the AIC, SBC and MSPE can select the AR model for a given AR process with unknown order. For the TAR process, the AIC can consistently identify the TAR-C process and the SBC can identify the TAR-C process only if the difference of the persistency is large enough. Then, a set of linear and non-linear time series models are applied to the term structure of interest rates and the spread of wholesale and retail pork prices in U.S. It is shown that there are non-linear time series models can do better than the conventional ARMA models for both in-sample estimation and out-of-sample forecast. Also, it is very unlikely that the dominance of the non-linear time series models results from overfitting for both the term structure of interest rates and the spread of wholesale and retail pork prices in U.S. Thus, non-linear time series models are very useful for estimating and forecasting the non-linear time series

Continental saline environments interpreted from bedded gypsum of the Triassic Red Peak Formation (Chugwater Group), northcentral Wyoming

Bedded evaporites and associated red bed siliciclastics record saline lake and groundwater systems from Permo-Triassic Pangea. A major component of these red bed and evaporite systems is bedded gypsum. However, little attention has been paid to the textures of ancient gypsum. Observations of gypsum textures can refine interpretations of depositional environment and diagenetic history. This project describes textures of bedded gypsum from an outcrop of the Triassic Red Peak Formation (Chugwater Group) near Greybull, Wyoming. This thesis uses fieldwork, petrography, and x-ray diffraction to describe an outcrop of the upper Red Peak Formation, with a focus on textures of bedded gypsum, to make interpretations about depositional environments. The study outcrop is comprised of alternating units of bedded gypsum and red bed siliciclastic mudstone. The red mudstone units are massive, rich in blocky peds, host abundant cross-cutting gypsum veins, and are interpreted to be paleosols. Three distinct lithologies of bedded gypsum are described and identified: bottom- growth gypsum, laminated gypsum, and clastic gypsum. Bottom-growth gypsum is interpreted to have precipitated at the bottom of shallow saline surface water bodies. Laminated gypsum likely formed in shallow saline lakes and mudflats; here, gypsum cumulates precipitated and were later reworked. Clastic gypsum units are composed of eolian-reworked bottom growth gypsum crystals deposited in sandflats and dunes. The study section of the Red Peak Formation was formed in shallow saline lakes and associated mudflats, sandflats, dunes, and desert soils

Essays on the Governance of Agricultural Products: Cooperatives and Contract Farming

Dit proefschrift analyseert besluitvormingsprocedures en de toewijzing van besluitvormingsrechten in twee beheersstructuren in de landbouw sector: cooperaties en contracten. De belangrijkste onderzoeksvragen hebben betrekking op de wijze waarop zeggenschap de keten verticaal coördineert in verscheidene beheersstructuren in een transitie economie (China), en onder welke omstandigheden een bepaalde beheersstructuur efficiënt is. Het theoretisch onderzoek richt zich op de rol van de Raad van Commissarissen in coöperaties, terwijl het empirische onderzoek gericht is op de organisatorische en strategische attributen van Chinese land- en tuinbouwcooperaties en de contractuele arrangementen in de Chinese fruit- en groente sector. In het theoretisch onderzoek is vastgesteld dat de Raad van Commissarissen waarde toevoegen in coöperaties vanwege het tweemaal beoordelen van investeringsvoorstellen. Het niveau van het beoordelingscriterium is gekarakteriseerd als een strategisch substituut. Het tweede resultaat is dat Chinese coöperaties worden bestuurd door zowel kernleden als niet kernleden, waarbij relaties en capaciteiten van de bestuurders een grote rol spelen. Specifiek menselijk kapitaal, in de vorm van het bewerkstelligen en onderhouden van relaties, en toegang tot markten blijkt een grotere rol te spelen dan specifiek fysiek kapitaal om de keuze van beheersstructuur te verklaren in de huidige Chinese institutionele omgeving. In de derde plaats, vele besluitvormingsrechten zijn van boeren naar verwerkers verschoven in contracten. Kwaliteit, reputatie en specifieke investeringen door ondernemingen bepalen het aantal besluitvormingsrechten dat wordt toegewezen aan ondernemingen, terwijl marktmacht en specifieke investeringen van boeren geen rol blijken te spelen in de toewijzing van besluitvormingsrechten.This thesis studies decision making procedures and decision rights allocation of two governance structures in agricultural sectors: cooperatives and contract farming. The main research questions are how authority coordinates upstream and downstream activities within various governance structures in a transitional institutional setting (China), and under what conditions one particular governance structure is efficient. The theoretical research focuses on the role of the board of directors in agricultural cooperatives, while the empirical research focuses on the organizational and strategic attributes of Chinese farmer specialized cooperatives and the contracting arrangements in the Chinese fruit and vegetable industry. It is found that, firstly, the board of directors adds value to cooperatives because of its dual screening characteristic. The screening levels are strategic substitutes. Secondly, the Chinese farmer specialized cooperatives are co-governed by both core members and non core-members based on relations and abilities. Human asset specificity in terms of establishing and maintaining relations and access to markets seems to be more important than physical asset specificity in accounting for governance structure choice in the current institutional setting. Thirdly, under contract farming, many decision rights are shifted from farmers to firms. Quality, reputation and specific investments by firms positively influence the number of decision rights allocated to agri-business firms, while monopsony-oligopsony power and specific investments by farmers do not play a role in allocating decision rights.Yamei Hu was born in Dezhou, China on 24 January, 1976. She studied Economic and Trade English from 1993 to 1995 at Yantai University. After two years’ working experience in a foreign trade company, she went to study Economics as a postgraduate student in Shandong University in 1997. In 2000, she received her MA in Economics from Shandong University with a thesis on von Hayek’s economic thoughts. She went on to study Economics in Renmin University of China. In 2003, she defended her PhD thesis on the deregulation of China’s financial markets and received her PhD in Economics. In July 2003, Yamei joined the Ph.D. program in the Department of Organization and Personnel Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests cover the theory of the firm, governance structures, industrial organization, institutional changes in developing countries, and transition economics. For her PhD thesis, she focused on the governance of agricultural products and conducted both theoretical and empirical research. The research of this thesis has been presented at International Society of New Institutional Economics, Economics and Management of NETworks, International Association of Agricultural Economists, European Association of Agricultural Economies, EURESCO seminar in Chania, University of Missouri, and Wageningen University. Parts of the thesis are published already

Centralized versus individual: Governance of farmer professional cooperatives in China

Based on a national representative survey conducted in 2009, this study shows that the decision-making within Farmer Professional Cooperatives (FPCs) in China is decentralized to individual farmers. However, there is a trend that the decision rights of farming are decomposed to marketing, production and input procuring. While the rights for production and input procuring stay with family farmers, marketing rights tend to be collectivized. Compared to FPCs having external initiating sources, FPCs initiated by farmers are more inclined to introduce centralized decision-making. The governance structure of FPCs in transition China presents hybrid forms of both hierarchy and family farming. --Farmer,Cooperatives,Governance,China

CARE: Co-Attention Network for Joint Entity and Relation Extraction

Joint entity and relation extraction is the fundamental task of information extraction, consisting of two subtasks: named entity recognition and relation extraction. Most existing joint extraction methods suffer from issues of feature confusion or inadequate interaction between two subtasks. In this work, we propose a Co-Attention network for joint entity and Relation Extraction (CARE). Our approach involves learning separate representations for each subtask, aiming to avoid feature overlap. At the core of our approach is the co-attention module that captures two-way interaction between two subtasks, allowing the model to leverage entity information for relation prediction and vice versa, thus promoting mutual enhancement. Extensive experiments on three joint entity-relation extraction benchmark datasets (NYT, WebNLG and SciERC) show that our proposed model achieves superior performance, surpassing existing baseline models

Organization and Strategy of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives in China

A description and analysis of China's Farmer Specialized Cooperatives is presented. Data is presented regarding the historical development of farmer cooperatives in China, the membership composition of a sample of 66 farmer cooperatives in the Zhejiang province, and the various attributes (governance, quality control system, and strategy) of a watermelon cooperative in this province. Many cooperatives are being transformed in organizations with a market orientation. These cooperatives exhibit substantial heterogeneity, in terms of farmers being member and skewness in the distribution of control rights. Human asset specificity in terms of establishing and maintaining relations and access to markets seems to be more important than physical asset specificity in accounting for governance structure choice in the current institutional setting.Farmer Cooperative, China, Governance Structure, Business Strategy, Agribusiness, Q13,

Character of frustration on magnetic correlation in doped Hubbard model

The magnetic correlation in the Hubbard model on a two-dimensional anisotropic triangular lattice is studied by using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method. Around half filling, it is found that the increasing frustration $t'/t$ could change the wave vector of maximum spin correlation along ($\pi,\pi$)$\rightarrow$($\pi,\frac{5\pi}{6}$)$\rightarrow$($\frac{5\pi}{6},\frac{5\pi}{6}$)$\rightarrow$ ($\frac{2\pi}{3},\frac{2\pi}{3}$), indicating the frustration's remarkable effect on the magnetism. In the studied filling region =1.0-1.3, the doping behaves like some kinds of {\it{frustration}}, which destroys the $(\pi,\pi)$ AFM correlation quickly and push the magnetic order to a wide range of the $(\frac{2\pi}{3},\frac{2\pi}{3})$ $120^{\circ}$ order when the $t'/t$ is large enough. Our non-perturbative calculations reveal a rich magnetic phase diagram over both the frustration and electron doping.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure