1,720,989 research outputs found
Policy Analysis Using a Business Simulation Game
No full textDespite numerous studies on farmers' responses to changing irrigation water policies, uncertainties remain about the potential of water pricing schemes and water quotas to reduce irrigation. Thus far, policy impact analysis is predominantly based upon rational choice models that assume behavioral assumptions, such as a perfectly rational profit-maximizing decision maker. Also, econometric techniques are applied which could lack internal validity due to uncontrolled field data. Furthermore, such techniques are not capable of identifying ill-designed policies prior to their implementation. With this in mind, we apply a business simulation game for ex ante policy impact analysis of irrigation water policies at the farm level. Our approach has the potential to reveal the policy-induced behavioral change of the participants in a controlled environment. To do so, we investigate how real farmers from Germany, in an economic experiment, respond to a water pricing scheme and a water quota intending to reduce irrigation. In the business simulation game, the participants manage a virtual cash-crop farm for which they make crop allocation and irrigation decisions during several production periods, while facing uncertain product prices and weather conditions. The results reveal that a water quota is able to reduce mean irrigation applications, while a water pricing scheme does not have an impact, even though both policies exhibit equal income effects for the farmers. However, both policies appear to increase the variation of irrigation applications. Compared to a perfectly rational profit-maximizing decision maker, the participants apply less irrigation on average, both when irrigation is not restricted and when a water pricing scheme applies. Moreover, the participants' risk attitude affects the irrigation decisions
Analysis of farmers' willingness to participate in pasture grazing programs: Results from a discrete choice experiment with German dairy farmers
No full textAnalysing the importance of glyphosate as part of agricultural strategies: A discrete choice experiment
No full textConsidering milk price volatility for investment decisions on the farm level after European milk quota abolition
No full textAfter the abolition of the milk quota in the European Union, milk price volatility is expected to increase because of the liberalized market conditions. At the same time, investment appraisal methods have not been updated to capture the increased uncertainty. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess the effect of changing price volatility due to quota abolition on investment decisions at the dairy farm level. To contribute to the objective and to approximate milk price volatility after the European milk quota abolition, the risk-adjusted discount rate for risk-averse dairy farmers is derived based on the milk price volatility of a milk price series from New Zealand. New Zealand dairy farmers have faced liberalized market conditions for more than 3 decades. Afterward, the risk-adjusted discount rate is applied to appraise milking technology investments for an average German dairy farmer. The results show that it is still more reasonable to invest in a parlor system than an automated milking system, although the net present value of the parlor system investment varies between €191,723 for risk-neutral dairy farmers and €100,094 for modestly risk-averse dairy farmers. For the automated milking system investment, the same calculations lead to €132,702 for risk-neutral dairy farmers and €31,635 for risk-averse dairy farmers. According to higher levels of milk price volatility after milk quota abolition, the reduction of the expected utility of the underlying investment decision for modest risk-averse dairy farmers is almost similar to a milk price decrease of 5% for risk-neutral dairy farmers. Therefore, the findings urge finance providers and extension services to consider the change of increasing milk price volatility after dairy quota abolition when giving dairy farmers financial advice. The risk-adjusted discount rate is a flexible tool to do so.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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