Reforming Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa marketing and pricing system

Cote d'Ivoire has historically taxed cocoa producers. Market reforms over the past 10 years have somewhat succeeded in making domestic and foreign marketing more transparent and competitive. But they have not done much to raise producer prices in real terms or as a share of the FOB (free on board) price. Maintaining fixed producer prices and marketing costs and margins has encouraged rent-seeking and led to efficiency losses. New reform will fully liberalize the country's export marketing system by eliminating public management of exports. This means the end of mandatory export authorization, of public forward sales, and of fixed minimum producer prices and marketing margins. The new reform is expected to improve producers'incomes. The authors find that the benefits from the new reform (in terms of lower implicit taxes, lower marketing costs and margins, and higher producer prices) will outweigh the costs from eliminating public forward sales and fixed producer prices. Results from a general equilibrium model indicate that reducing export taxes would have a small negative effect on aggregate income but would improve income distribution for poorer rural areas. The fact that Cote d'Ivoire has market power in the world cocoa market justifies a higher optimal export tax than the current one. But raising export taxes may eventually reduce its market share and worsen income distribution, at the expense of the poorer rural sector.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Markets and Market Access,Labor Policies,Consumption,Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies

Neural network based speech synthesizer: A preliminary report

A neural net based speech synthesis project is discussed. The novelty is that the reproduced speech was extracted from actual voice recordings. In essence, the neural network learns the timing, pitch fluctuations, connectivity between individual sounds, and speaking habits unique to that individual person. The parallel distributed processing network used for this project is the generalized backward propagation network which has been modified to also learn sequences of actions or states given in a particular plan

Loop Corrections and Naturalness in a Chiral Effective Field Theory

The loop expansion is applied to a chiral effective hadronic lagrangian; with the techniques of Infrared Regularization, it is possible to separate out the short-range contributions and to write them as local products of fields that are already present in our lagrangian. (The appropriate field variables must be re-defined at each order in loops.) The corresponding parameters implicitly include short-range effects to all orders in the interaction, so these effects need not be calculated explicitly. The remaining (long-range) contributions that must be calculated are nonlocal and resemble those in conventional nuclear-structure calculations. Nonlinear isoscalar scalar $(\sigma)$ and vector $(\omega)$ meson interactions are included, which incorporate many-nucleon forces and nucleon substructure. Calculations are carried out at the two-loop level to illustrate these techniques at finite nuclear densities and to verify that the coupling parameters remain natural when fitted to the empirical properties of equilibrium nuclear matter. Contributions from the $\omega N$ tensor coupling are also discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Examining the Relationship Between Social Cohesion and Health in Kensington

This quantitative cross-sectional survey study was conducted in collaboration with the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) to improve our understanding of the role of social cohesion in the Somerset neighborhood. Its aims were to help guide future efforts to improve the health of this community by considering whether social factors might contribute to overall health. In previous studies, social cohesion has been hypothesized to be related to overall self-reported health. In this study we examined the nature and strength of this relationship in a low socio-economic status population in Kensington. We used linear regression to evaluate cross-sectional survey data collected from 328 neighborhood residents. Data was collected on health information, social cohesion, demographic factors, health behaviors, and financial stability. Variables that were significantly associated with self-reported health were included in a multiple regression model to examine the relationship between social cohesion and self-reported health. Our findings were that social cohesion and overall health were related. We also found that stress was significantly associated with social cohesion as well as overall health; while the reach of this study stops short of being able to identify the causality of these relationships, organizations such as NKCDC could combine the strength of the relationships with their expertise in the relevant population to better inform their future programming. This study also revealed a number of areas that could be worthy of future study, including the importance of collective efficacy in improving population health and the effect of social cohesion on people’s health over the course of a longitudinal study

Pressurant requirements for discharge of liquid methane from a 1.52-meter-(5-ft-) diameter spherical tank under both static and slosh conditions

Pressurized expulsion tests were conducted to determine the effect of various physical parameters on the pressurant gas (methane, helium, hydrogen, and nitrogen) requirements during the expulsion of liquid methane from a 1.52-meter-(5-ft-) diameter spherical tank and to compare results with those predicted by an analytical program. Also studied were the effects on methane, helium, and hydrogen pressurant requirements of various slosh excitation frequencies and amplitudes, both with and without slosh suppressing baffles in the tank. The experimental results when using gaseous methane, helium, and hydrogen show that the predictions of the analytical program agreed well with the actual pressurant requirements for static tank expulsions. The analytical program could not be used for gaseous nitrogen expulsions because of the large quantities of nitrogen which can dissolve in liquid methane. Under slosh conditions, a pronounced increase in gaseous methane requirements was observed relative to results obtained for the static tank expulsions. Slight decreases in the helium and hydrogen requirements were noted under similar test conditions

Monetary policy and the federal funds futures market

How well did the federal funds futures market anticipate recent monetary policy actions? The authors examine the predictive content of fed funds futures rates, which provide the Federal Open Market Committee with a clear reading of market expectations for policy, in the context of 1994 policy moves and analyze the fed funds futures market outlook in early 1995.Monetary policy ; Federal funds market (United States)

An introduction to currency boards

A look at the pros and cons of currency boards as an institution for providing monetary credibility in developing countries.Currency boards ; Money ; Monetary policy