A Welfare Analysis on GM Crop Market Structures and Existing Regulations

Since their introduction in 1994, genetically modified (GM) crops have become a major sector of the agricultural industry in developing and developed countries. Despite this, many economic concerns have arisen regarding how governments regulate GM crops. These concerns have caused countries to ban GM crop usage, which has proven to be detrimental for national and international economies. This paper outlines the economic advantages of GM crop production and usage and surveys the current inefficiencies in the regulation of GM crops through a review on existing literature. It notes the increased farming efficiency, cost effectiveness, and rise in income for developing countries resulting from GM crop production and usage. It then considers why many of the listed potential benefits are unrealized, particularly due to the excessive market power given to GM seed producers, high barriers of entry into the GM market due to biosafety procedures, utility patents, and international trade asymmetries. Finally, the discussion section of the paper poses potential solutions by describing methods to efficiently regulate GM crops and suggesting possible areas of further research. The objective of this paper is to inform readers with minimal economic understanding of the potential economic benefits of GM crops and aid them in recognizing the optimal ways to regulate them.

Fertility and Child-Rearing

This chapter outlines the economic determinants of human fertility, and explores the demographic transition, and studies of child productivity. It offers an assessment of the costs of and returns from child production in Kala over the first 15 years of life, in terms of their costs and the contributions which they make to the family’s prosperity. Several aspects of child production are investigated, such as the opportunity cost of women’s time, children’s marriage and dowry costs, and the value of children’s labour. Risks to child-production include an understanding of survival rates for infants and children, sickness, and child-failure rates – as when a young man goes off on migration and does not return. The chapter concludes with a recognition of the limits to an economic understanding of high fertility, for example as shown by the political and religious importance of children, since children are not just economic assets but constitute “descendants”.

The periphery of vP in the theory of wh-in situ

This article outlines an implementation of Cable’s (2010) Grammar of Q that takes into account the role played by the periphery of vP, hitherto unexplored in this framework. Empirically, what I offer is a new example, in a new language family, of a known manifestation of wh-in situ: I indeed argue that Trevisan, a Northern Italian dialect, displays compulsory clause-internal focus movement of both wh-elements and contrastive foci. Theoretically, I use the Trevisan data to present a new, tweaked application of previously proposed approaches whereby wh-elements do not contribute to clause-typing and Q-particles are cross-linguistically needed in the computation of answer-seeking wh-questions. My claim is that wh-in situ languages are characterised not only by language-specific choices between projection and adjunction of Q and overt vs covert movement of Q, but also in terms of the loci where the features relevant to wh-questions, [q] and [focus], are checked: while some languages check both in C (‘feature bundling’), others make use of the clause-internal vP-periphery to check [focus] (‘feature scattering’). The theory developed in this article provides an innovative understanding of the mechanisms involved in Northern Italian wh-in situ: what it offers is a novel, economic understanding of the morphosyntax of this question-formation strategy that reduces all core properties to different combinations of the setting of simple, universal micro-parameters related to interrogative wh-movement.

4. What is the optimal level of enforcement?

‘What is the optimal level of enforcement?’ focuses on competition law enforcement. All competition jurisdictions acknowledge the central and crucial role of economic analysis in shaping competition prosecution. Greater economic understanding has improved the structure of competition law through legal presumptions and thresholds, enforcement guidelines, and a greater understanding of the gravity and consequences of anti-competitive activities. Indeed, there has been an ever-increasing ‘economization’ of antitrust, as more jurisdictions rely on economic analysis to determine whether intervention is needed. When markets work well, competition enforcers are better off adopting a ‘laissez-faire’ approach (leaving the market to take its own course). Distinguishing pro-competitive activities from anti-competitive activities poses a challenge.

Economics and Feasibility of Legume Inclusion in Southeastern Perennial Grass-Based Systems

Perennial grass pastures provide the basis for beef production systems across the Southeast United States. One common management practice that is widely recommended among agronomists is interseeding cool-season legumes. Legumes can serve as a complementary resource for filling in production gaps, reducing supplemental feedstuffs, reducing the need for nitrogen fertilization, increasing the nutritional quality of forage available, increase biomass production, improve animal performance, and can reduce the toxic effects of endophyte-infected tall fescue through dilution. A simulated economic analysis was developed to further the economic understanding of the cost of implementation, the subsequent animal and forage performance benefits, and net returns from the inclusion of legumes over many research trials and years. Data from 15 peer-reviewed papers was used to simulate the economic benefits of implementing this production practice. Cost of production and revenue for each paper were calculated using the 10-year average from 2010 to 2019. This analysis provides users with a further understanding of the net returns, critical breakeven areas, and return on investment that is necessary in order to successfully implement the inclusion of cool-season legumes in perennial grass-based systems.

Transformation of Cinema Buildings and Spaces in Nicosia: Early-Mid 20th Century Heritage

Cinemas emerged as a new and genuine expression of culture at the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1920s cinema buildings became important for developing city life and especially as a social public space for entertainment. The period of great success of cinemas was inevitably destined to fade with the arrival of TV. However, this period left behind interesting architectural heritage. On the other hand, the “box of dreams”, the cinema industry, is a suggestive media contributing in defining other aspects of popular culture in a period of hectic changes and progress. The scope of this paper aims to investigate this specific building type, cinemas, within the context of modern heritage value in northern Cyprus. The purpose is to raise awareness on significance of cinema buildings thus to foster their protection and enhancement. The study also aims to investigate the historical relation of these buildings to their environments and neighborhoods as well as their transformed current situations. Some buildings were replaced with new ones, some were abandoned, and some others were converted into different uses. These transformed situations are results of changing economic, socio-cultural life styles and changing morphology of the cities. This paper aims also to stress the role of Cypriot architects and architecture in the international panorama within the Mediterranean area, in a peculiar multicultural context. Common features with other countries and local characteristics of the selected buildings are detected and analysed. Architectural qualities and solutions are studied to understand the reflections of the studied period. This study follows a qualitative research approach. The key discussions are made through investigating the cinema buildings and spaces in Nicosia, Northern Cyprus, as a case study method. This research investigates these buildings and spaces through historical archives, photographic surveys and producing maps for showing the location of these within the historic Walled City of Nicosia and its close surrounding. This stage provides significant data about their historic conditions and surroundings and comparisons with today’s current situations. In addition, interviews with local residents who used these cinemas in those periods are also carried out to support historical information and highlight the socio-cultural and economic understanding of those days.

The economics and accounting for COVID-19 wage subsidy and other government grants

Purpose This paper aims to examine the economic rationale for the COVID-19 wage subsidy and grants related to assets and the accounting for these wealth transfers under NZ IAS 20 Accounting for Government Grants and Disclosure of Government Assistance. The principal contribution is presenting an economics–accounting nexus for government assistance to firms during a pandemic and for the nation’s economic development. Design/methodology/approach This is a descriptive study that draws on the economic theory of regulation to understand the rationale for wealth transfers, then examining the accounting for the wealth transfers by analyzing the financial statements of NZX 50 companies that received the wage subsidy and SkyCity and Chorus that received substantial grants to develop and operate the New Zealand International Convention Centre and building a large part of New Zealand’s Ultra-Fast Broadband fiber optic network, respectively. Findings First, the 10 NZX 50 companies that received the government’s wage subsidy were justified to receive it from the legal, ethical and moral perspectives. However, some non-NZX 50 companies, while legally entitled to the wage subsidy, took advantage of the wealth transfer when they were profitable and paid dividends. This latter group of companies was not seen as behaving ethically and morally. Second, the government granted millions of dollars to SkyCity and Chorus for building critical infrastructures that are economically beneficial for the nation and that are unlikely to attract private investment, and these companies accounted for the grants related to assets in accordance with NZ IAS 20. Research limitations/implications The financial statement impacts of the wage subsidy are based on a subset of NZX 50 companies with available information at the time of writing. However, they do not compromise the external validity of the findings because the wage subsidy applies to all businesses. Similarly, the manner in which SkyCity and Chorus accounted for the grants related to assets would apply equally to any entity that is a recipient of such a grant. Originality/value This paper presents an economic understanding for the existence of government grants and how the accounting mirrors the economic rationale for the “grants related to income” and “grants related to assets.” This paper demonstrates the importance of the economics–accounting nexus.

COMMON OBJECTIONS TO MISES’ THOUGHT (II). Individualism and particular aspects of his economic vision

In this article, some of the most common objections to Misesian thought will be assessed from a Catholic theological perspective. Beginning with an analysis of the most frequent criticisms advanced against his rationalism, it will proceed to examine those directed against Mises’ conception of liberty and individualism. Finally, a review and evaluation of some of the most relevant objections to his economic understanding will be presented. Dwelling into the, more o less conscious, depths of all the philosophical, cultural, psychological or, even, religious assumptions of Mises’ vast thought, in order to fully tease out his ontological or moral foundations, would probably be not only beyond the reach of the present article but of any one single article, and hence is not attempted. Its scope is much more modest. It pretends to analyze these objections from a praxeological perspective, limiting itself to bring into better focus the possible incompatibility or incongruity, if these indeed exists, of Mises’ thought with freedom and reason. Keywords: Mises, theology, objections, freedom, reason. JEL Classification: A13, B53, P16, P16, Z12, Z13. Resumen: Este artículo se propone examinar algunas de las objeciones más comunes al pensamiento miseano desde una perspectiva teológica católica. Se iniciará con un análisis de las críticas más frecuentes sobre su racionalismo, para, luego, analizar las dirigidas contra su concepción de la libertad y del individualismo, respectivamente. Se abordarán ulteriormente las críticas más relevantes que han sido dirigidas contra la moralidad de algunos aspectos de su visión económica. En las siguientes páginas, no se pretende descender hasta las profundidades, más o menos conscientes, de todos los presupuestos filosóficos, culturales, psicológicos o, incluso, religiosos del pensamiento miseano, tamizando, de esta manera, completamente sus fundamentos ontológicos o morales. Su alcance es mucho más modesto. Pretende un análisis de estas objeciones desde una perspectiva praxeológica, limitándose a señalar la posible incompatibilidad o incongruencia, si es que existen, del pensamiento miseano con la libertad y la razón. Palabras claves: Mises, teología, críticas, libertad, razón. Clasificación JEL: A13, B53, P16, P16, Z12, Z13.

The Conditions of the Global Digital Working Class: The Continuing Relevance of Friedrich Engels to Theorising Platform Labour

This paper examines the conditions of the global digital class of platform labourers by drawing on the theoretical paradigm proposed by Engels in his pioneering contribution, The Conditions of the Working Class in England (CWC). Using a host of empirical sources – surveys, oral narrations, medical and legal journals, and journalistic accounts – the paper develops a political-economic understanding of the working conditions of contemporary crowdworkers while paying close attention to the national and gendered disparities within them. Following Engels’s dialectical mode of presentation in the CWC, the paper proposes a framework that contextualizes the lived experiences of crowdworkers in relation to: 1) the technological infrastructure of platforms, 2) emerging contractual and managerial modes of exploitation, 3) the gendered and racial articulation of labour extraction via Engels’s notion of inter-worker competition, and 4) the macro dynamics of “surplus population” that push workers into precarious employment. The paper argues that the four qualitative attributes of capitalist labour identified in the CWC have experienced quantitative transformation under digital capitalism and at the core remain fundamental to a theoretical appreciation of the impact of digital capital on the lived experiences of the global digital working-class.