The effects of option hedging on the costs of domestic price stabilization schemes

Casual observation leads to the conclusion that stabilization funds tend to be short-lived. While it may be that some funds have failed due to poor management or unwarranted political interventions, the stochastic components of commodity prices can generate insurmountable difficulties for even the most expert managers. Price-band schemes contain an element of information feed-back and offer transparent rules -- attributes which make such schemes preferable to many alternative mechanisms -- but the benefits to producers tend to be, on average, quite small. Similar average benefits can be generated with very small import taxes or producer subsidies. Nevertheless, such schemes can have large single-year effects. The simulation results demonstrate that, if adopted, such funds should be hedged unless the government is not at all adverse to the fund's financial failure. Still, hedged or unhedged, such funds will, with eventual certainty, generate large levels of debt as a statistically"rare"sequence of events must eventually occur. By hedging, the funds are more likely to survive in the short-run.Environmental Economics&Policies,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Rent (April 7-9, 2022)

Program for Rent

RENT

We’ve thought a lot about what RENT means to us in 2023. This play isn’t about one thing or one theme. While the play addresses the HIV/AIDS crisis head on, the themes of RENT also directly address homelessness, poverty, and gentrification. Modern audiences know that being behind on rent isn’t far-fetched because most people live paycheck to paycheck, regardless of their level of education or rigorous work ethic. As Americans, we don’t have many opportunities to let our anger out against the structures that confine us… government, patriarchy, institutions, capitalism… the list goes on. So, instead of punching up, we punch to the side. Americans have become greatly polarized in their viewpoints and their politics. RENT reminds us how to handle these emotions and these challenges with joy, resourcefulness, and love, in every season.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/theatreprograms/1013/thumbnail.jp

ASSESSING AND MITIGATING LAWN INSECTICIDE HAZARDS TO BEES AND OTHER BENEFICIAL INVERTEBRATES

Turfgrass settings, including lawns, golf courses, and sports fields, support many beneficial invertebrates that provide important ecosystem services. These non-target organisms and their associated predation, decomposition, and pollination services can be disrupted by the use of certain insecticides. I compared the ecotoxicity of representatives from three major turf insecticide groups, the neonicotinoids, premix formulations, and the anthranilic diamides, in lab and field realistic settings in order to inform industry initiatives towards environmental sustainability. In lab and field bioassays clothianidin, a neonicotinoid, and a premix clothianidin/pyrethroid spray were acutely toxic to beneficial insects. Populations of predators, springtails, and earthworms, as well as parasitism, predation, and decomposition rates were all reduced. In contrast, chlorantraniliprole, a novel anthranilic diamide with a similar spectrum of pests controlled, had no apparent impact on natural enemies, decomposers, or ecosystem services. This newer class is a good fit for industry initiatives to use relatively less toxic pesticides, with the caveat that golf course superintendents may see secondary pest outbreaks of ants and earthworms. Bumble bee colonies exposed to clothianidin-treated white clover for two weeks suffered acute effects including increased mortality of workers and decreases in the number of honeypots constructed in the hive. When hives were exposed to clothianidin treated clover for six days and then allowed to develop naturally over six weeks they exhibited delayed weight gain and produced no new queens. Colonies exposed to chlorantraniliprole-treated flowers suffered no observable adverse effects. When treated blooms were mowed, colonies exposed to newly-formed blooms exhibited no ill effects. After a single mowing neonicotinoid residues in clover nectar were reduced from \u3e 2000 ng/g, to \u3c 10 ng/g. Residues of imidacloprid were also short-lived in guttation water. Some 50 species of bees and other pollinators were collected from flowering white clover and dandelions in lawns across an urbanization gradient. Such weeds, an underappreciated resource for urban bees, could play a role in pollinator conservation if tolerated and not over-sprayed with broad-spectrum insecticides. Informing the public about the potential benefits these weeds could have for pollinators may help lead to more environmentally conscious management decisions

Solar Hydrogen Production by Solar Thermal Decoupled Electrolysis: Analysis of FE3O4 in Solution

The Valparaiso University Solar Research Project utilizes a solar thermal decoupled electrolysis process for the production of H2 from water. This study focuses on the electrochemical conversion of magnetite to hematite during the H2 production process. Laboratory experiments show that the expected amount of H2 gas forms at the cathode of the electrolytic cell, but we have encountered difficulties recovering the expected amount of solid hematite at the anode. An intensive study of the complex solution chemistry using cyclic voltammetry, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and solubility modeling showed that several dissolved iron species potentially exist in solution. Further work must be done to clarify which species are key participants in the overall electrochemical reaction. This information will help us to determine and implement reaction conditions that are favorable for precipitation of hematite or other oxidized iron species

Gravitational radiation timescales for extreme mass ratio inspirals

The capture and inspiral of compact stellar masses into massive black holes is an important source of low-frequency gravitational waves (with frequencies of ~1-100mHz), such as those that might be detected by the planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Simulations of stellar clusters designed to study this problem typically rely on simple treatments of the black hole encounter which neglect some important features of orbits around black holes, such as the minimum radii of stable, non-plunging orbits. Incorporating an accurate representation of the orbital dynamics near a black hole has been avoided due to the large computational overhead. This paper provides new, more accurate, expressions for the energy and angular momentum lost by a compact object during a parabolic encounter with a non-spinning black hole, and the subsequent inspiral lifetime. These results improve on the Keplerian expressions which are now commonly used and will allow efficient computational simulations to be performed that account for the relativistic nature of the spacetime around the central black hole in the system.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. Changed in response to referee's report. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa

Abolishing green rates : the effects on cereals, sugar, and oilseeds in West Germany

In 1987 the European Community began the ambitious task of forging a single market for goods and services across the national borders of its member states by 1992. Substantive reform of the Community's Common Agricultural Policy - necessary for the full integration of existing markets - has not yet been accomplished and has proven difficult to achieve. Creating a truly"common"agricultural policy in the European Community requires, at a minimum, eliminating price differences resulting from country- and commodity-specific exchange rates, known as"green rates."The authors discuss the various policy instruments that complicate the effects of these policy-determined price differences on crop production and the demand for inputs. They present a model that estimates the cross-commodity biases created by multiple policy instruments and that quantifies the effects of removing green-rate differentials in what was West Germany. The effects of price changes on domestic production are statistically significant in the model, although quantitatively small. This result suggests that eliminating green rates would lead primarily to a decline in farm income and a devaluation of fixed agricultural assets - which complicates the difficult task of attaining reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Crops&Crop Management Systems