The new agricultural economics research unit

IF New Zealand is to provide higher living standards for an increasing population it will have to speed up its rate of exporting. Obviously increased exports must come mainly from the agricultural industry. With a 2% per annum population increase, and to provide a 2% per annum increase in living standards, we will probably have to increase our export income by somewhere around £15 million per annum. The farming industry has the potential to provide greater exports. A recent conference of the Institute of Agricultural Science estimated that the application of known methods of production on all our farms would lead to an increase of 80% in production above the present level. This is a reflection of the great advances which have been made in New Zealand in scientific research where, in some fields, we lead the world. However, setting potential targets is only the first step. In order to turn an 80% potential into a 4% per annum rate of growth, we will need constructive economic policies to encourage increased exports. This means an expanded economic research programme to supplement the vigorous scientific research mentioned above. The present article describes the programme of economic research which has now been put in train at the Agricultural Economics Research Unit recently established at Lincoln College

Aspects of productivity and economic growth in New Zealand 1926-1964

Our purpose in this paper is to survey present knowledge with respect to long term changes in productivity in New Zealand, especially in so far as this is related to economic growth. All the data at present available, for both post- and pre-war periods, bearing on this question, have been gathered together and, in some cases, new estimates have been made, with the aim of exploring the data to see what can be discovered about long term growth trends in New Zealand

Three-Body Capture of Irregular Satellites: Application to Jupiter

We investigate a new theory of the origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets: capture of one member of a ~100-km binary asteroid after tidal disruption. The energy loss from disruption is sufficient for capture, but it cannot deliver the bodies directly to the observed orbits of the irregular satellites. Instead, the long-lived capture orbits subsequently evolve inward due to interactions with a tenuous circumplanetary gas disk. We focus on the capture by Jupiter, which, due to its large mass, provides the most stringent test of our model. We investigate the possible fates of disrupted bodies, the differences between prograde and retrograde captures, and the effects of Callisto on captured objects. We make an impulse approximation and discuss how it allows us to generalize capture results from equal-mass binaries to binaries with arbitrary mass ratios. We find that at Jupiter, binaries offer an increase of a factor of ~10 in the capture rate of 100-km objects as compared to single bodies, for objects separated by tens of radii that approach the planet on relatively low-energy trajectories. These bodies are at risk of collision with Callisto, but may be preserved by gas drag if their pericenters are raised quickly enough. We conclude that our mechanism is as capable of producing large irregular satellites as previous suggestions, and it avoids several problems faced by alternative models.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, submitted to Icaru

Economic implications of increased wool production

Reprinted from Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Vol. 24, 1964.The paper analyses the implications of a national annual increase by New Zealand producers of 5% in the production of wool compared with the present long-term rate of increase of 3%. This, it is estimated, would change the rate of world wool production increase from about 2.2% p.a. to 2.6% p.a. and this, it is felt, could be readily absorbed without change in wool price provided the world production of synthetic fibres does not increase at more than about 10% p.a. Over the past 10 years the rate of increase in world synthetics has slowed markedly from 60% p.a. to about 25% p.a. in the last five years. Provided adequate volume and price competition are provided by wool on world markets, the annual rate of expansion of synthetics may well fall to 10% p.a., but if it fell to only 15%, it is estimated that this would cause a wool price decline of only 1/4 d. per lb per annum. It is further estimated that, to preserve stability of lamb prices in the U.K., the rate of increase of lamb exports will have to be confined to 1 % p.a. at most. These factors, together with the increasing demand for mutton by eastern countries, imply, amongst other things, the need for a rapid increase in wool production and a change in the growth pattern of New Zealand primary production so that less reliance is placed on increased lamb production and more on wool and mutton

The structure of wool and wool textile production, trade and consumption 1958-69

This paper is a revision and updating of the Agricultural Economics Research Unit Research report no. 55.In this paper we have set out, in the form of charts and tables, the results of an attempt to measure the disposition of wool produced by the major producing and consuming countries in the post-war period. Our aim is to present a picture of the structure of the world wool market, by tracing through the major flows of wool from the point of raw production to its final use in the form of wool type textiles measured in clean fibre content, and to identify the growing points of world demand for wool. The paper is mainly descriptive and no attempt is made at analysis, though the data presented was assembled in the course of an analysis of factors affecting wool prices. In such an analysis we would be concerned, as with the analysis of prices of other agricultural products, with the interaction of supply and demand. But unlike other New Zealand export products, for example meat, in which we confine our attention to one particular type of meat in a few particular countries, we focus on wool because of the infinite possibilities of substitution possible between different grades and types. And we have to take as our market the world as a whole, since nearly every country in the world consumes wool in greater or smaller quantities, if only in the form of small quantities of imported wool textiles

Productivity and income of New Zealand agriculture 1921-67

Supplement to Research report (Lincoln College (University of Canterbury). Agricultural Economics Research Unit) ; no. 59. Data revised back to 1962/63 in same series / by S.M. Hadfield.This discussion paper updates the data on income and productivity for the New Zealand agricultural sector for the period 1921-1967 in the AERU research report titled: Productivity and income of New Zealand agriculture, 1921-67

Price formation in the raw wool market

Econometric analysis of the demand for raw wool at auction published by other authors has been mainly confined to an analysis of the determinants of the consumption of raw wool. However the purchaser of raw wool at auction must hold his purchases either in transit or in store for some months before either reselling or consuming wool in his own mills. Thus the conventional analysis of the determinants of the demand for wool for consumption is not directly relevant when considering the short run demand for wool at auction. As a result, models based on the conventional analysis do not adequately explain fluctuations in prices paid at auction in primary markets. An earlier attempt by Philpott to explain such fluctuations used annual data. Based on this earlier work we develop in this paper two models of quarterly demand for raw wool at auction and we test these models against quarterly data for the period 1952 to the first quarter of 1967

Supply function equilibria in transportation networks

Abstract Transport constraints limit competition and arbitrageurs' possibilities of exploiting price di¤erences between commodities in neighbouring markets.We analyze a transportation network where oligopoly producers compete with supply functions under uncertain demand, as in wholesale electricity markets. For networks with a radial structure, we show that symmetric supply function equilibria (SFE) can be determined from an exogenous market integration function. Existence of such equilibria (SFE) is ensured if demand shocks are su¢ ciently evenly distributed. The market integration function simpli…es to a constant for uniform multi-dimensional nodal demand shocks, and then we can explicitly solve for SFE

Neurogenin3 phosphorylation controls reprogramming efficiency of pancreatic ductal organoids into endocrine cells

β-cell replacement has been proposed as an effective treatment for some forms of diabetes, and in vitro methods for β-cell generation are being extensively explored. A potential source of β-cells comes from fate conversion of exocrine pancreatic cells into the endocrine lineage, by overexpression of three regulators of pancreatic endocrine formation and β-cell identity, Ngn3, Pdx1 and MafA. Pancreatic ductal organoid cultures have recently been developed that can be expanded indefinitely, while maintaining the potential to differentiate into the endocrine lineage. Here, using mouse pancreatic ductal organoids, we see that co-expression of Ngn3, Pdx1 and MafA are required and sufficient to generate cells that express insulin and resemble β-cells transcriptome-wide. Efficiency of β-like cell generation can be significantly enhanced by preventing phosphorylation of Ngn3 protein and further augmented by conditions promoting differentiation. Taken together, our new findings underline the potential of ductal organoid cultures as a source material for generation of β-like cells and demonstrate that post-translational regulation of reprogramming factors can be exploited to enhance β-cell generation