7,603 research outputs found
LAND RENTAL MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN CHINA
The development of a land rental market in China may help stimulate further increases in agricultural production. This paper provides a description of land rental transactions in rural China, analyzes the determinants of land supply and demand and estimates the implications land rental activity has for increasing agricultural production.Land Economics/Use,
The effect of forecast bias on market behavior: evidence from experimental asset markets
This paper reports the results of 15 experimental asset markets designed to investigate the effect of optimistic forecast bias on market behavior. Each market is organized as a double oral auction in which participants trade a single-period asset with uncertain value. Traders are informed of the asset value distribution and, prior to trading, given the opportunity to acquire a forecast of the asset's period-end value. The degree of forecast bias is manipulated across experimental sessions so that in some sessions the forecast contains a systematic, upward (low or high) bias. We conduct sessions with inexperienced and experienced traders. The results suggest that market prices are supportive of a full revelation unbiased price in the unbiased markets and the experienced, low-bias markets. The results from the low-bias markets indicate that as long as traders have sufficient experience with such forecasts, asset prices reflect the debiased forecasts. In contrast, we find no evidence that high-bias forecasts are reflected in market prices, regardless of experience. We also find that the demand for forecasted information persists over time, but it is greater in the unbiased and low-bias conditions than in the high-bias condition. Finally, we provide little evidence that the net profit (that is, net of the information cost) of informed and uninformed traders differs, regardless of bias condition or experience level.Forecasting ; Asset pricing
Asset prices and informed traders' abilities: evidence from experimental asset markets
This study reports the results of fifteen experimental asset markets designed to investigate the effects of forecasts on market prices, traders' abilities to assess asset value, and the link between the two. Across the fifteen markets, the authors investigate alternative forecast-generating processes. In some markets the process produces an unbiased estimate of asset value and in others a biased estimate. The processes generating the biased forecasts, though, are less variable than the process generating the unbiased forecast. The authors find that, in general, period-end asset price reflects private forecasts, regardless of the forecast-generating process. Subsequently, they investigate whether traders' abilities to use forecasts differ across the forecast-generating processes. The authors find that most are able to properly use unbiased forecasts. They refer to them as smart traders. By comparison, a significant proportion is unable to properly use biased forecasts (typically traders' adjustments for bias are insufficient). Linking market outcomes and traders' abilities, the authors find that asset price appears to properly reflect unbiased forecasts as long as the market includes at least two smart informed traders who have sufficient ability to influence market outcomes. To obtain a comparable result in markets with the biased forecast, at least three smart informed traders with sufficient ability to influence market outcomes are necessary.Forecasting ; Markets ; Financial markets ; Risk
Uncertain litigation cost and seller behavior: Evidence from an auditing game
This paper reports the results of two experiments, each consisting of six sessions, designed to investigate difficulties that arise in estimating expected litigation costs in an auditing game. In each experimental session, the game consists of a series of periods in which sellers submit sealed offers to computerized buyers and, if hired, choose an effort level (low or high). The effort level affects the certain (direct) and uncertain (litigation) costs of performing the engagement. Across the two experiments, we vary the uncertainty surrounding the determination of the expected litigation cost. Our results strongly suggest that cognitive limitations hinder sellers' abilities to estimate total expected litigation costs. Across both experiments we observe a nontrivial number of suboptimal effort choices. Moreover, as the uncertainty of determining the expected litigation cost increases, the frequency of observed fee offers below the total expected cost of an engagement increases markedly.Accounting
Interdecadal variability and oceanic thermohaline adjustment
Changes in the strength of the thermohaline overturning circulation are
associated, by geostrophy, with changes in the east-west pressure difference
across an ocean basin. The tropical-polar density contrast and the east-west
pressure difference are connected by an adjustment process. In flat-bottomed
ocean models the adjustment is associated with viscous, baroclinic Kelvin wave
propagation. Weak-high latitude stratification leads to the adjustment having
an interdecadal timescale. We reexamine model interdecadal oscillations in the
context of the adjustment process, for both constant flux and mixed surface
boundary conditions. Under constant surface flux, interdecadal oscillations are
associated with the passage of a viscous Kelvin wave around the model domain.
Our results suggest the oscillations can be self-sustained by perturbations to
the western boundary current arising from the southward boundary wave
propagation. Mixed boundary condition oscillations are characterized by the
eastward, cross-basin movement of salinity-dominated density anomalies, and the
westward return of these anomalies along the northern boundary. We suggest the
latter is associated with viscous Kelvin wave propagation. Under both types of
boundary conditions, the strength of the thermohaline overturning and the
tropical-polar density contrast vary out of phase. We show how the phase
relationship is related to the boundary wave propagation. The importance of
boundary regions indicates an urgent need to examine the robustness of
interdecadal variability in models as the resolution is increased, and as the
representation of the coastal, shelf/slope wave guide is improved. (Abriged
abstract)Comment: 20 pages, AGU LaTeX, 12 figures included using epsfig, to appear in
JGR, complete manuscript also available at
ftp://crosby.physics.mun.ca/pub/drew/papers/gp1.ps.g
Dynamics of Quantum Dot Photonic Crystal Lasers
Quantum dot photonic crystal membrane lasers were fabricated and the large
signal modulation characteristics were studied. We find that the modulation
characteristics of quantum dot lasers can be significantly improved using
cavities with large spontaneous emission coupling factor. Our experiments show,
and simulations confirm, that the modulation rate is limited by the rate of
carrier capture into the dots to around 30GHz in our present system
HiPA: Enabling One-Step Text-to-Image Diffusion Models via High-Frequency-Promoting Adaptation
Diffusion models have revolutionized text-to-image generation, but their
real-world applications are hampered by the extensive time needed for hundreds
of diffusion steps. Although progressive distillation has been proposed to
speed up diffusion sampling to 2-8 steps, it still falls short in one-step
generation, and necessitates training multiple student models, which is highly
parameter-extensive and time-consuming. To overcome these limitations, we
introduce High-frequency-Promoting Adaptation (HiPA), a parameter-efficient
approach to enable one-step text-to-image diffusion. Grounded in the insight
that high-frequency information is essential but highly lacking in one-step
diffusion, HiPA focuses on training one-step, low-rank adaptors to specifically
enhance the under-represented high-frequency abilities of advanced diffusion
models. The learned adaptors empower these diffusion models to generate
high-quality images in just a single step. Compared with progressive
distillation, HiPA achieves much better performance in one-step text-to-image
generation (37.3 23.8 in FID-5k on MS-COCO 2017) and 28.6x
training speed-up (108.8 3.8 A100 GPU days), requiring only 0.04%
training parameters (7,740 million 3.3 million). We also
demonstrate HiPA's effectiveness in text-guided image editing, inpainting and
super-resolution tasks, where our adapted models consistently deliver
high-quality outputs in just one diffusion step. The source code will be
released
The Lyman Alpha Forest in Hierarchical Cosmologies
The comparison of quasar absorption spectra with numerically simulated
spectra from hierarchical cosmological models of structure formation promises
to be a valuable tool to discriminate among these models. We present simulation
results for the column density, Doppler b parameter, and optical depth
probability distributions for five popular cosmological models.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, uses aipproc.sty, to appear in the Proceedings of
the 9th Annual October Astrophysics Conference in Maryland, "After the Dark
Ages: When Galaxies Were Young (the Universe at 2<z<5)", ed. S. S. Holt and
E. P. Smith, October 12-14, 199
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