Politique agricole et bien-être des consommateurs

The Swiss agriculture is considered to be one of the more subsidized in the world. Using an applied general equilibrium model, we study the effects of two reforms of the agricultural policy on the welfare of various categories of households. Our framework of analysis allows to take into account the high number of agricultural policy instruments set up by the government. The analysis of the reform AP 2002 shows that, in spite of almost non-existent aggregate welfare gains, great disparities appear between the various households considered. The farmers are by far the losers whereas the pensioners and the wealthy employees profit largely from the reform. With regard to project AP 2007, the effect of an auction of the tariff quotas is positive for most of the households in the sense that it increases their welfare gains compared to the reform AP 2002. However, the farmers, the pensioners as well as some other households do not improve their situation compared to AP 2002. As a whole, the project AP 2007 is nevertheless positive for the population except for the farmers and the some other households.agricultural policy; applied general equilibrium; welfare

Excitation of travelling multibreathers in anharmonic chains

We study the dynamics of the "externally" forced and damped Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) 1D lattice. The forcing has the spatial symmetry of the Fourier mode with wavenumber p and oscillates sinusoidally in time with the frequency omega. When omega is in the phonon band, the p-mode becomes modulationally unstable above a critical forcing, which we determine analytically in terms of the parameters of the system. For omega above the phonon band, the instability of the p-mode leads to the formation of a travelling multibreather, that, in the low-amplitude limit could be described in terms of soliton solutions of a suitable driven-damped nonlinear Schroedinger (NLS) equation. Similar mechanisms of instability could show up in easy-axis magnetic structures, that are governed by such NLS equations.Comment: To appear in Physica D (2002

Statistical mechanics of a nonlinear discrete system

Statistical mechanics of the discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation is studied by means of analytical and numerical techniques. The lower bound of the Hamiltonian permits the construction of standard Gibbsian equilibrium measures for positive temperatures. Beyond the line of $T=\infty$, we identify a phase transition, through a discontinuity in the partition function. The phase transition is demonstrated to manifest itself in the creation of breather-like localized excitations. Interrelation between the statistical mechanics and the nonlinear dynamics of the system is explored numerically in both regimes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Localization and Equipartition of Energy in the beta-FPU Chain : Chaotic Breathers

The evolution towards equipartition in the $\beta$-FPU chain is studied considering as initial condition the highest frequency mode. Above an analytically derived energy threshold, this zone-boundary mode is shown to be modulationally unstable and to give rise to a striking localization process. The spontaneously created excitations have strong similarity with moving exact breathers solutions. But they have a finite lifetime and their dynamics is chaotic. These chaotic breathers are able to collect very efficiently the energy in the chain. Therefore their size grows in time and they can transport a very large quantity of energy. These features can be explained analyzing the dynamics of perturbed exact breathers of the FPU chain. In particular, a close connection between the Lyapunov spectrum of the chaotic breathers and the Floquet spectrum of the exact ones has been found. The emergence of chaotic breathers is convincingly explained by the absorption of high frequency phonons whereas a breather's metastability is for the first time identified. The lifetime of the chaotic breather is related to the time necessary for the system to reach equipartition. The equipartition time turns out to be dependent on the system energy density $\epsilon$ only. Moreover, such time diverges as $\epsilon^{-2}$ in the limit $\epsilon \to 0$ and vanishes as $\epsilon^{-1/4}$ for $\epsilon \to \infty$.Comment: 20 pages, Revtex - Submitted to Physica

Bushes of vibrational modes for Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chains

Some exact solutions and multi-mode invariant submanifolds were found for the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) beta-model by Poggi and Ruffo in Phys. D 103 (1997) 251. In the present paper we demonstrate how results of such a type can be obtained for an arbitrary N-particle chain with periodic boundary conditions with the aid of our group-theoretical approach [Phys. D 117 (1998) 43] based on the concept of bushes of normal modes for mechanical systems with discrete symmetry. The integro-differential equation describing the FPU-alfa dynamics in the modal space is derived. The loss of stability of the bushes of modes for the FPU-alfa model, in particular, for the limiting case N >> 1 for the dynamical regime with displacement pattern having period twice the lattice spacing (Pi-mode) is studied. Our results for the FPU-alfa chain are compared with those by Poggi and Ruffo for the FPU-beta chain.Comment: To be published in Physica

On modulational instability and energy localization in anharmonic lattices at finite energy density

The localization of vibrational energy, induced by the modulational instability of the Brillouin-zone-boundary mode in a chain of classical anharmonic oscillators with finite initial energy density, is studied within a continuum theory. We describe the initial localization stage as a gas of envelope solitons and explain their merging, eventually leading to a single localized object containing a macroscopic fraction of the total energy of the lattice. The initial-energy-density dependences of all characteristic time scales of the soliton formation and merging are described analytically. Spatial power spectra are computed and used for the quantitative explanation of the numerical results.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure