Teachers' remarks about their salaries in 1800 in the Helvetic Republic

For centuries, teachers have complained about their salaries. In the Stapfer inquiry of 1799, some teachers made remarks about financial issues, particularly their low incomes. This inquiry is the main source for the arguments presented here regarding teachers' low salary during this period of the Helvetic Republic. The disparity between the lowest and the highest income was huge in 1799. This fact invites investigations about the people who complained. The evidence indicates incoherence between the complaints regarding low salary and the real income that was earned by these teachers. However, in order for this thesis to be wholly understood, the salaries must be explained; at the time of the Stapfer inquiry, salaries were paid in different currencies, as wages in kind and using divergent measurements. The present article aims to determine who these teachers were and why they complained. The arguments presented by the teachers shed light on the topics of political appeals, the social status of teachers in 1800 and the professionalisation of teachers.

[Rapport sur l'agriculture, fait dans la séance du 16 vendémiaire an III, à la Convention nationale, au nom du Comité d'agriculture, par Pénière] ([Reprod.])

Collection : Les archives de la Révolution française ; 10.2.136

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, June 30, 2002

State Agency Audit Report

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, June 30, 2003

State Agency Audit Report

Report of Recommendation to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, June 30, 2004

State Audit Reports

Cooperatives and Contracting in Agriculture: The Case of West Liberty Foods, October 2005

The West Liberty Foods turkey cooperative was formed in 1996 to purchase the assets and assume operations of Louis Rich Foods (an investor-owned processing rm), which, at the time, announced the imminent shutdown of its West Liberty, Iowa, processing facility. We study the creation and performance of this �new generation� cooperative using eld interviews with grower members and company management. We describe changes, before and after the buyout, in the contractual apparatus used for procuring live turkeys, and in the communication requirements, work expectations, and nancial positions of growers. During the private ownership period, most of the inputs (except labor and facilities) were provided by the rm; there was substantial supervision of the growers' actions; growers faced little price and production risk; and growers' equity was due largely to ownership of land and other farm assets. Our interviews reveal that, after cooperative formation, growers were exposed to considerable additional risk; monitoring of growers by the rm was less intensive; grower time and effort commitments to turkey production increased substantially; and a signicant fraction of rm (cooperative) equity came from growers' willingness to leverage their farm and personal assets (and hence indirectly their existing relationships with local lenders). We argue that some of these changes are consistent with a nancial contract where asset pledging and its corollary risk generate higher work effort by growers and a reduction in agency rents. These economies likely compensate for an organizational deadweight loss traditionally associated with cooperative governance.

On the Segregation of Genetically Modified, Conventional, and Organic Products in European Agriculture: A Multi-market Equilibrium Analysis, October 2005

Evaluating the possible benefits of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops must address the issue of consumer resistance as well as the complex regulation that has ensued. In the European Union (EU) this regulation envisions the “co-existence” of GM food with conventional and quality-enhanced products, mandates the labelling and traceability of GM products, and allows only a stringent adventitious presence of GM content in other products. All these elements are brought together within a partial equilibrium model of the EU agricultural food sector. The model comprises conventional, GM and organic food. Demand is modelled in a novel fashion, whereby organic and conventional products are treated as horizontally differentiated but GM products are vertically differentiated (weakly inferior) relative to conventional ones. Supply accounts explicitly for the land constraint at the sector level and for the need for additional resources to produce organic food. Model calibration and simulation allow insights into the qualitative and quantitative effects of the large-scale introduction of GM products in the EU market. We find that the introduction of GM food reduces overall EU welfare, mostly because of the associated need for costly segregation of non-GM products, but the producers of quality-enhanced products actually benefit.