scholarly journals Ownership structure and incentives to invest: dual-structured irrigation cooperatives in Australia

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRADLEY PLUNKETT ◽  
FABIO R. CHADDAD ◽  
MICHAEL L. COOK
Keyword(s):  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Irrigation System ◽  
Capital Formation ◽  
Investment Incentives ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Structure System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trade Offs

Abstract:In the past decade, Australia has begun to privatize its irrigation system. Two general models have emerged: a single and a dual ownership structure. This paper examines the trade-offs, costs and benefits, and the attendant efficiencies regarding costs of ownership. In particular, we examine member capital investment incentives and resultant risk-bearing costs related to capital formation. The paper concludes that the dual ownership structure system has significant economic advantages relative to its single-structured counterpart.

Capital Formation and Agricultural Growth in China

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hengyun Ma ◽  
Jikun Huang ◽  
Les Oxley
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Public Investment ◽  
Capital Formation ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Agricultural Growth ◽  
Tfp Growth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
Chinese Agriculture ◽  
Rural Wages

The paper considers the role and determinants of capital formation in Chinese agriculture and, in particular, the effects of capital formation on agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The results show that capital investment in agriculture by both government and farmers has risen significantly in the past two and a half decades, particularly in recent years. As China remains in the early stages of agricultural policy transition, its political economy would suggest that there will likely be more public investment in, and more subsidies to, agriculture in the coming years. Increased public investment in agriculture appears to have also induced increased farmers' capital formation in agriculture. Credit policy, the overall growth of farmer's income, rural wages, and comparative advantage of commodities are important factors that may facilitate farmers' investment in agriculture. The results also show that the successful growth of China's agriculture has been associated with its high TFP growth. Both public and private agricultural capital formations have played an important role in raising China's agricultural productivity. The TFP decomposition analyses show that technological change is a primary driver of the TFP growth in China's agriculture.

Accelerating Agricultural Growth—Is Irrigation Institutional Reform Necessary? (Distinguishedl Lecture)

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (4I) ◽  
pp. 399-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Mellor
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rates ◽  
Irrigation System ◽  
Institutional Reform ◽  
Residual Effect ◽  
Agricultural Growth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Economic Growth Rates

The right to the flow of income from water is vigorously pursued, protected, and fought over in any arid part of the world. Pakistan is of course no exception. Reform of irrigation institutions necessarily changes the rights to water, whether it be those of farmers, government, or government functionaries. Those perceived rights may be explicit and broadly accepted, or simply takings that are not even considered legitimate. Nevertheless they will be fought over. Pakistan has a long history of proposals for irrigation reform, little or none being implemented, except as isolated pilot projects. Thus, to propose major changes in irrigation institutions must be clearly shown to have major benefits to justify the hard battles that must be fought and the goodwill of those who might win those battles for reform. Proponents of irrigation institution reform have always argued the necessity of the reforms and the large gains to be achieved. Perhaps, however, those arguments have not been convincing. This paper will briefly outline the failed attempts at irrigation reform to provide an element of reality to the discussion. It will then proceed to make the case of the urgency of reform in a somewhat different manner to the past. Finally, current major reform proposals will be presented. This paper approaches justification of irrigation reform by focusing on the agricultural growth rate. It does so because that is the critical variable influencing poverty rates and is a significant determinant of over-all economic growth rates. The paper decomposes growth rates and suggests a residual effect of deterioration of the irrigation system that is large and calls for policy and institutional reform. The data are notional, suggesting the usefulness of the approach and paves the way for more detailed empirical analysis and enquiry for the future.

Mahmood Hasan Khan. Underdevelopment and Agrarian Structure in Pakistan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1981. pp.xviii+ 307.

1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ownership Patterns ◽  
Agrarian Structure

Students of the land ownership patterns in Pakistan have always been hampered by extreme lack of data, neither the 1960 census nor the 1972 census reveal anything about the actual ownership structure of land. Khan's book goes some distance in providing numbers on land ownership (for 1971 and 1976), and also documents methods and failures of land reform efforts over the past century in Pakistan, disaggregated to show efforts in this regard in both the provinces of Sind and Punjab. The book actually provides an overwhelming amount of data - some 87 pages of charts and tables document a book of under 200 pages of text.

Introduction to biometric measures for Games User Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lennart E. Nacke
Keyword(s):  
Physiological Data ◽  
Biometric Data ◽  
User Research ◽  
Academic Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Informed Decisions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Industry Professionals

This chapter presents the physiological metrics used in Games User Research (GUR). Aimed at GUR professionals in the games industry, it explains what methods are available to researchers to measure biometric data while subjects are engaged in play. It sets out when it is appropriate to use biometric measures in GUR projects, the kind of data generated, and the differing ways it can be analysed. The chapter also discusses the trade-offs required when interpreting physiological data, and will help games researchers to make informed decisions about which research questions can benefit from biometric methodologies. As the equipment needed to collect biometric data becomes more sophisticated as well as cheaper, physiological testing of players during a game’s development will become more common. At the same time, Games User Researchers will become more discriminating in its use. Where in the past professionals in the games industry have used biometric testing to generate quick, actionable feedback about player responses to elements of a game, and have been less concerned with the scientific robustness of their methodology, as GUR develops a new breed of games industry professionals are attempting to deploy good academic practice in their researches.

scholarly journals The costs of standardized apprenticeship curricula for training firms

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürg Schweri ◽  
Manuel Aepli ◽  
Andreas Kuhn
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Element ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Apprenticeship Training ◽  
Training Costs ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Training Content ◽  
Productive Process ◽  
Productive Output

AbstractStandardized curricula define the set of skills that must be trained within a training occupation and thus are a key regulatory element of apprenticeship systems. Although clear economic rationales support the usage of such curricula, they necessarily impose costs, especially on firms that train apprentices, but do not use the full set of skills in their productive process and/or train other skills that are not covered by the curriculum. In this paper, we identify the trade-offs involved in setting up training curricula and use data from the most recent survey on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training among Swiss firms to quantify the associated costs to training firms. On average, training firms state that they do not use 17% of the training content prescribed by the relevant curriculum, and 11% of the companies train additional skills not covered by the curriculum. We show that both kinds of misfit are associated with higher training costs and lower productive output from apprentices. This shows that the regulator imposes costs on firms in order to guarantee broad skills development for apprentices. It also cautions against overly broad curricula that may impose disproportionate costs on firms.

scholarly journals Between Market Failures and Justice Failures: Trade-Offs Between Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Blunden
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Private Firms ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Efficiency Losses ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Hybrid Theory ◽  
Market Failures Approach ◽  
Ethical Obligations

AbstractThe Market Failures Approach (MFA) is one of the leading theories in contemporary business ethics. It generates a list of ethical obligations for the managers of private firms that states that they should not create or exploit market failures because doing so reduces the efficiency of the economy. Recently the MFA has been criticised by Abraham Singer on the basis that it unjustifiably does not assign private managers obligations based on egalitarian values. Singer proposes an extension to the MFA, the Justice Failures Approach (JFA), in which managers have duties to alleviate political, social, and distributive inequalities in addition to having obligations to not exploit market failures. In this paper I describe the MFA and JFA and situate them relative to each other. I then highlight a threefold distinction between different types of obligations that can be given to private managers in order to argue that a hybrid theory of business ethics, which I call the MFA + , can be generated by arguing that managers have obligations based on efficiency and duties based on equality to the extent that these latter obligations do not lead to efficiency losses. This argument suggests a novel theoretical option in business ethics, elucidates the issues that are at stake between the MFA and the JFA, and clarifies the costs and benefits of each theory.

Tales of lizard tails: effects of tail autotomy on subsequent survival and growth of free-ranging hatchling Uta stansburiana

1997 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 542-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. H. Niewiarowski ◽  
J. D. Congdon ◽  
A. E. Dunham ◽  
L. J. Vitt ◽  
D. W. Tinkle
Keyword(s):  
Natural Populations ◽  
Reproductive Investment ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Growth And Survival ◽  
Large Sample ◽  
Uta Stansburiana ◽  
Tail Autotomy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Free Ranging

Potential costs and benefits of tail autotomy in lizards have been inferred almost exclusively from experimental study in semi-natural enclosures and from indirect comparative evidence from natural populations. We present complementary evidence of the costs of tail autotomy to the lizard Uta stansburiana from detailed demographic study of a natural population. On initial capture, we broke the tails of a large sample of free-ranging hatchlings (560) and left the tails of another large sample (455) intact, and then followed subsequent hatchling growth and survival over a 3-year period. Surprisingly, in 1 out of the 3 years of study, survival of female hatchlings with broken tails exceeded that of female hatchlings with intact tails. Furthermore, no effects of tail loss on survivorship were detected for male hatchlings. However, in 2 years when recaptures were very frequent (1961, 1962), growth rates of hatchlings with broken tails were significantly slower than those of their counterparts with intact tails. We discuss our results in the broader context of estimating the relative costs and benefits of tail autotomy in natural populations, and suggest that long-term demographic studies will provide the best opportunity to assess realized fitness costs and benefits with minimum bias. We also describe how experimentally induced tail autotomy can be used as a technique to complement experimental manipulation of reproductive investment in the study of life-history trade-offs.

Light Rail in Britain and France

2005 ◽  
Vol 1930 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. William Vigrass ◽  
Andrew K. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Light Rail ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Transit Systems ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transit Ridership ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
Street Railways ◽  
Heavy Rail

Great Britain and France have experienced a dramatic resurgence of light rail in the past two decades. Beginning in the early 1980s, following a 30-year abandonment of street railways in favor of motorbuses, cities in both countries developed new light rail transit systems as a response to declining transit ridership, faded downtowns in need of revitalization, and the high construction costs of heavy rail and metro. Britain and France have pursued greatly different approaches to the implementation of light rail. The purpose of this paper is to point out these differences and, through the use of case studies, draw conclusions as to the efficacy of each approach. A few cities in each country were studied with secondary sources. Commonality within each country was observed with great divergence between the two countries. In Britain, the requirements for light rail are onerous: a specific act of Parliament is needed for each new start. Each system must achieve full recovery of operating and maintenance costs and contribute toward capital investment while competing against unregulated buses. That some British systems have been built and successfully attract traffic is to the credit of their proponents. France has a more uniform approach published in government circulars. All French cities of substantial size must have a “versement transportes,” a 1% to 2% tax on salaries and wages dedicated to regulated and coordinated public transport. French new starts, which have no need to attain 100% cost recovery (the versement transportes covers operating losses), have been implemented in about half the time of those in Britain.

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