1,721,550 research outputs found
A Comparative Profitability Analysis of Organic and Conventional Farms in Emilia-Romagna and in Minnesota
No full textRecent discussion surrounding organic agriculture (also referred to as organic farming) has turned from just whether it represents a viable alternative to conventional agriculture to whether it would be adopted by a significant percentage of farmers. After a beginning phase in which the adoption was mainly due to an ethically based choice of the farmer, the success in the market and the increasing demand for organic products are increasing the number of farmers converting their farming system. Despite the continuing importance of non-economic factors and the uncertainty given by short-term and midterm fluctuations of prices, a decisive point is whether the conversion to organic farming may be worthwhile from an economic perspective. The aim of the paper is to compare the actual profitability of farms using organic production methods to those farms using conventional production methods. The analysis will be based on several data-sets, provided on the Italian side by Emilia-Romagna Region, Italian National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA), Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), and on the US side by the Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota
Valuing Social Benefits of Italian Organic Agriculture
No full textFollowing and expanding the work of Pretty et al. (2000, 2001) and Tegtmeier and Duffy (2004), we evaluate the social benefits of Italian organic agriculture respect to conventional one including both negative and positive externalities, that is, both external costs and benefits. External costs are grouped into two main categories: damage to natural capital (water, air, soil, and biodiversity and landscape) and damage to human health (pesticides, nitrate, and pathogens). For conservative purposes, external benefits are supposed not changing between farming systems. This analysis views agriculture as multifunctional, not just a producer of food, fiber, and energy. Since organic agriculture is not the dominate production system, we show that the cost for increasing and maintaining the surface area dedicated to organic farming cannot be afford without public support. This public support can be seen as a compensation for social benefits accruing to this agriculture
Organic Food: Consumers’ Choices and Farmers’ Opportunities
No full textThe book gives an overview of the organic sector, both in Italy and in the US, and to show how agricultural economists are performing analyses dealing with organic produce on different points in the supply chain. The book covers economic issues raised by organic farming, taking into account the consumer's needs but also the managerial and budget constraints experienced by the farmers. Farm management methodologies, as well as marketing analyses have been applied to specific research topics involving several industries in the agri-food sector. The papers strive to answer questions that have a managerial relevance: e.g. are the producers ready to adopt organic farming techniques, and are the consumers willing to pay a premium price for a certified organic produce
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
Investigating Preferences for Environment Friendly Production Practices. Taste segments for organic and integrated crop management potatoes in Italian households
No full textThis paper reports some preliminary results on a mixed logit random utility analysis of conjoint data from consumers’ preferences for agricultural products. The data were collected via a telematic sample representative of Italian households. The survey instrument was implemented via a computer supported system. A multivariate normal full correlation structure is imposed in the mixed logit estimation and the implications of such a taste structure are examined
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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