DETERMINANTS OF PESTICIDE REGISTRATION FOR FOOD CROPS

An examination of intertemporal, crop-specific pesticide registration data to assess claims that EPA requirements discourage registration of safer pesticides, especially for minor crops. Results show that the likelihood of registration is increasing in crop market value and decreasing in pesticide safety, but these biases diminished between 1991 and 1995.Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

The Tactical and Strategic Value of Commodity Futures

Historically, commodity futures have had excess returns similar to those of equities. But what should we expect in the future? The usual risk factors are unable to explain the time-series variation in excess returns. In addition, our evidence suggests that commodity futures are an inconsistent, if not tenuous, hedge against unexpected inflation. Further, the historically high average returns to a commodity futures portfolio are largely driven by the choice of weighting schemes. Indeed, an equally weighted long-only portfolio of commodity futures returns has approximately a zero excess return over the past 25 years. Our portfolio analysis suggests that the a long-only strategic allocation to commodities as a general asset class is a bet on the future term structure of commodity prices, in general, and on specific portfolio weighting schemes, in particular. In contrast, we provide evidence that there are distinct benefits to an asset allocation overlay that tactically allocates using commodity futures exposures. We examine three trading strategies that use both momentum and the term structure of futures prices. We find that the tactical strategies provide higher average returns and lower risk than a long-only commodity futures exposure.

Construction of spherical cubature formulas using lattices

We construct cubature formulas on spheres supported by homothetic images of shells in some Euclidian lattices. Our analysis of these cubature formulas uses results from the theory of modular forms. Examples are worked out on the sphere of dimension n-1 for n=4, 8, 12, 14, 16, 20, 23, and 24, and the sizes of the cubature formulas we obtain are compared with the lower bounds given by Linear Programming

Generalized time-invariant overtaking

We present a new version of the overtaking criterion, which we call generalized time-invariant overtaking. The generalized time-invariant overtaking criterion (on the space of infinite utility streams) is defined by extending proliferating sequences of complete and transitive binary relations defined on finite dimensional spaces. The paper presents a general approach that can be specialized to at least two, extensively researched examples, the utilitarian and the leximin orderings on a finite dimensional Euclidean space.intergenerational justice, utilitarianism, leximin

Generalized time-invariant overtaking

We present a new version of the overtaking criterion, which we call generalized time invariant overtaking. The generalized time-invariant overtaking criterion (on the space of infinite utility streams) is defined by extending proliferating sequences of complete and transitive binary relations defined on finite dimensional spaces. The paper presents a general approach that can be specialized to at least two, extensively researched examples, the utilitarian and the leximin orderings on a finite dimensional Euclidean space.intergenerational justice, utilitarianism, leximin.

Generalized time-invariant overtaking

We present a new version of the overtaking criterion, which we call generalized time-invariant overtaking. The generalized time-invariant overtaking criterion (on the space of infinite utility streams) is defined by extending proliferating sequences of complete and transitive binary relations defined on finite dimensional spaces. The paper presents a general approach that can be specialized to at least two, extensively researched examples, the utilitarian and the leximin orderings on a finite dimensional Euclidean spaceintergenerationa justice; utilitarianism, leximin

Generalized time-invariant overtaking

We present a new version of the overtaking criterion, which we call generalized time-invariant overtaking. The generalized time-invariant overtaking criterion (on the space of infinite utility streams) is defined by extending proliferating sequences of complete and transitive binary relations defined on finite dimensional spaces. The paper presents a general approach that can be specialized to at least two, extensively researched examples, the utilitarian and the leximin orderings on a finite dimensional Euclidean space.Intergenerational justice; Utilitarianism; Leximin