A GAME THEORETIC APPROACH TO ORGANIC FOODS: AN ANALYSIS OF ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION AND POLICY

Demand for healthy, safe and environmentally friendly food products has been increasing. In response, producers are marketing organic and other quality-differentiated foods, sometimes claiming to have followed sound environmental and animal welfare practices. These products frequently have unobservable quality attributes. If the profit-maximizing producer is able to deceive the consumer with a false claim, then he or she will enjoy a higher price with lower production costs (compared to the full disclosure outcomes). The analysis described in this paper shows that repeat-purchase relationships and third party monitoring are required for high-quality credence goods to be available. Policy implications of this analysis for national organic food standards are discussed.Demand and Price Analysis,

Critical fault patterns determination in fault-tolerant computer systems

The method proposed tries to enumerate all the critical fault-patterns (successive occurrences of failures) without analyzing every single possible fault. The conditions for the system to be operating in a given mode can be expressed in terms of the static states. Thus, one can find all the system states that correspond to a given critical mode of operation. The next step consists in analyzing the fault-detection mechanisms, the diagnosis algorithm and the process of switch control. From them, one can find all the possible system configurations that can result from a failure occurrence. Thus, one can list all the characteristics, with respect to detection, diagnosis, and switch control, that failures must have to constitute critical fault-patterns. Such an enumeration of the critical fault-patterns can be directly used to evaluate the overall system tolerance to failures. Present research is focused on how to efficiently make use of these system-level characteristics to enumerate all the failures that verify these characteristics

EFFECTS OF POSTING CALORIE INFORMATION ON QUICK SERVICE RESTAURANT MENUS

Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy,

Effects of Information and Country of Origin On Chinese Consumer Preferences for Wine: An Experimental Approach in the Field

Wine is a product whose value largely depends on the reputation associated with its region of production. China is a newcomer and latecomer to wine production and consumption. Wine consumption, especially imported wine, rarely exists outside of major urban areas. Therefore, understanding the Chinese local markets and consumer preference for wine products is important for foreign wine producers. WTP (Willingness-to-Pay), in economics, is the maximum amount a person would be willing to pay for a good, which is a useful tool to address consumers’ preference. In our study, we investigate the effects of information and origin of production on Chinese consumers’ WTP for wine. By using a second-price sealed-bid auction mechanism, which was first developed by Vickrey (1961), we organized experimental auctions in both Beijing and Shanghai, China. The items for auctions are four different wine products originated in China, France, USA, and Australia. And there are two comparison groups, with or without information exposure. With 436 participants in total, our experiments collected data on their WTP’s and socio-demographics. Our data shows that participants would like to pay the highest price for the wine from France, while their WTP for the Chinese wine is the lowest among the four. Furthermore, we find important factors affecting their WTP for wine, including age, gender, employment status, education status, household income, and household size. Our results provide meaningful and insightful marketing suggestions for the “new world” and Chinese wine producers, such as the target consumers and pricing strategy.wine consumption, willingness-to-pay, second price auction, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Marketing,

Development of a flight software testing methodology

The research to develop a testing methodology for flight software is described. An experiment was conducted in using assertions to dynamically test digital flight control software. The experiment showed that 87% of typical errors introduced into the program would be detected by assertions. Detailed analysis of the test data showed that the number of assertions needed to detect those errors could be reduced to a minimal set. The analysis also revealed that the most effective assertions tested program parameters that provided greater indirect (collateral) testing of other parameters. In addition, a prototype watchdog task system was built to evaluate the effectiveness of executing assertions in parallel by using the multitasking features of Ada

Impacts of the Westernization of Food Preferences on Medical Costs in China

The dietary changes in China to include more meat, dairy, and processed foods, are commonly attributed in literature to income increases, urbanization, and the availability of western food products. As seen in other Asian countries, these new food habits may increase obesity, diabetes, and other degenerative diseases among the Chinese people. These new health concerns will likely have economic consequences in terms of productivity losses and increased health care costs. This paper uses a Tobit model to analyze the influence of household demographics and food consumption on household medical costs in China. Results show that dietary choice has a definite impact on medical costs for the 800 households sampled. A nationwide dietary educational campaign in China may be useful in dampening the societal costs of dietary choice.China, dietary patterns, medical expenditure, westernization, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

COLLECTIVE REPUTATION AND QUALITY

Firms who sell a regional or specialty product often share a common or collective reputation, which is based on the group's aggregate quality. The dynamic problem of collective reputation is similar to the natural resource extraction problems. Therefore, for the analysis of this particular problem, we use differential games. If there is unrestricted access to a common property resource (the reputation stock), agents perceive its shadow value to be zero and extract too rapidly; i.e, they all "cheat" on quality, "milking" the rents generated by the existence of the resource (reputation stock). We show that when there exists a collective product reputation without firm traceability, the firms will extract too much from the stock of reputation. A firm is said to "extract" reputation from the reputation stock when it sells low-quality products at high prices given by the high past levels of quality. The firm builds on the group's reputation when it provides a product with a quality level which is higher than the expected level of quality. The results from this work support minimum quality standards for producer groups and regional and specialty products. This is in contrast to the findings of previous work. Finally, the implications of these results are discussed as they relate to the case study of Washington apples. We present the case of Washington apples in light of the results of the analytical model.Agribusiness,

FEDERAL GRAZING REFORM AND AVOIDABLE RISK

Recent rangeland reform attempts have increased ranchers'Â’ uncertainty of retaining grazing permits on federal land. This uncertainty is analyzed with a model of grazing on federal land. Ranchers facing this uncertainty will behave differently than if they were guaranteed the renewal of grazing permits at constant real grazing fees. It is shown that the socially optimal outcome may be achieved by adding avoidable risk through targeted rangeland reform. Rangeland reform attempts that create unavoidable risk can make both ranchers and environmental groups worse off.Agricultural and Food Policy,

CONSUMER PREFERENCES AND WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR FOOD LABELING: A DISCUSSION OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES

We discuss empirical research on consumer preferences and willingness to pay for several types of food quality or attribute labeling. The selected categories we include are eco-labels, GM food labels, U.S. state agricultural-product labels and European Protected Geographical Indication labels, BSE-tested-beef labels, and “"Fair Trade”" labels. We discuss generalizations that can be drawn from the studies as a group. Most importantly, we find that consumers must perceive high quality in order for the food product to command a premium. Furthermore, the perception of quality may sometimes differ across consumers.Consumer/Household Economics,

Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Washington Apples with Respect to Sensory Attributes

To evaluate consumers willingness to pay (WTP) for Washington apples, the effects of firmness and sweetness as the representative sensory attributes are investigated in addition to those of consumer demographics and preferences. A tasting survey was conducted in Portland, Oregon on two varieties of apples, Gala and Red Delicious. Survey data is analyzed by employing a dichotomous-choice contingent valuation method, the double-bounded model, and maximum likelihood estimates are obtained. This study shows that firmer and sweeter apples induce more WTP. Age is also an important factor affecting WTP for apples. Education, eating frequency, and race affect WTP in the Gala model but not the Red Delicious. Other variables, such as gender, annual household income level, and whether they buy organic food, do not add significant explanatory power in estimating consumers WTP.Consumer/Household Economics,