Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Summer 2006

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Fall 2004

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Fall 2005

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Summer 2005

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Spring 2005

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Winter 2006

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Fresh News; The Farmers' Market Newsletter, Spring 2006

Newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship

Access, equity and social cohesion: evaluation of intersectoral strategies for people experiencing homelessness

Objective To understand and evaluate the work of intersectoral assistance on the insertion and the flow of people in situation of street with severe mental illness in public services of Mental Health. Method A case study developed from ten visits to a night shelter between March and April 2012. For data collection, the participant observation and semi-structured interviews were carried out with four sheltered individuals, as well as non-directive group interviews with five technicians of the social-assistance services. Results Were analyzed using Content Analysis and developing a Logic Model validated with the professionals involved. Conclusion The social assistance services are the main entry of this clientele in the public network of assistance services, and the Mental Health services have difficulty in responding to the specificities of the same clientele and in establishing intersectoral work.


OS DETERMINANTES DA POLÍTICA DE DISTRIBUIÇÃO DE DIVIDENDOS: O CASO DAS EMPRESAS NÃO FINANCEIRAS DO ÍNDICE PSI-20

No presente trabalho estudam-se os determinantes da política de dividendos. A temática dos dividendos até hoje abarca várias questões sem respostas. O objectivo aqui traçado foi o de estudar os determinantes dos dividendos distribuídos pelas empresas não financeiras que constituem o Índice PSI-20 (Portuguese Stock Index), em particular tentar identificar quais os factores que levam essas empresas a atribuírem dividendos, tendo em conta o que é sugerido pela literatura. Foi adoptado uma metodologia baseada no modelo de regressão linear multivariada estimado pelo método dos mínimos quadrados ordinários através da técnica de dados em painel, balanceados e com efeitos fixos. A amostra foi constituída por 12 empresas não financeiras do índice PSI-20 entre o período de 2002 e 2009. A política de dividendos foi medida pela variável dependente denominada de rácio de distribuição de dividendos. Ao testar quais as variáveis explicativas que têm um impacto significativo (positivo ou negativo) nesse rácio conforme os sinais observados na literatura, bem como, se os sectores de actividade em que se enquadram cada empresa podem condicionar a referida política, chegou-se às seguintes conclusões: o Market to Book ratio, o Debt to Equity ratio e o Size apresentam evidências de serem factores determinantes dos dividendos enquanto a Rendibilidade das Vendas, o Price to Earnings ratio, a Liquidez, o Float e o Beta não apresentaram evidências de serem determinantes da política de dividendos das empresas analisadas. Os resultados sugerem ainda que os sectores em que se enquadram cada empresa estudada podem ser vistos como sectores cujas empresas têm a tendência de pagar menos dividendos.

After the Ban: The Japanese Market for U.S. Beef, April 2007

In the months following the reopening of the Japanese market to imports of U.S. beef on July 26, 2006, Japanese importers were unable to procure adequate supplies. This paper discusses reasons for early supply shortages and some of the policy and trade issues that will affect demand for U.S. beef in the short to medium term. The paper also discusses current marketing efforts for domestic and imported beef, new marketing technologies, and general consumer trends. The information presented in this paper includes on-site observations and data from meetings with Japanese importers and retailers and industry experts during market research in Tokyo and Osaka in November 2006.

Financial protection of patients through compensation of providers: the impact of health equity funds in Cambodia

Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by giving NGOs responsibility for assessing eligibility and compensating providers for lost revenue. We use the geographic spread of HEFs in Cambodia to identify their impact on out-of-pocket (OOP) payments. Among households with some OOP payment, HEFs reduce the amount by 29%, on average. The effect is larger for households that are poorer, mainly use public health care and live closer to a district hospital. HEFs are more effective in reducing OOP payments when they are operated by a NGO, rather than the government, and when they operate in conjunction with the contracting of public health services. HEFs reduce households' health-related debt by around 25%, on average. There is no significant impact on non-medical consumption and health care utilisation

Attribution and reciprocity in a simulated labor market: An experimental investigation

While papers such as Akerlof and Yellen (1990) and Rabin (1993) argue that psychological considerations such as fairness and reciprocity are important in individual decision-making, there is little explicit empirical evidence of reciprocal altruism in economic environments. This paper tests whether attribution of volition in choosing a wage has a significant effect on subsequent costly effort provision. An experiment was conducted in which subjects are first randomly divided into groups of employers and employees. Wages were selected and employees asked to choose an effort level, where increased effort is costly to the employee, but highly beneficial to the employer. The wage-determination process was common knowledge and wages were chosen either by the employer or by an external process. There is evidence for both distributional concerns and reciprocal altruism. The slope of the effort/wage profile is clearly positive in all cases, but is significantly higher when wages are chosen by the employer, offering support for the hypothesis of reciprocity. There are implications for models of utility and a critique of some current models is presented.

Common law and civil law as pro-market adaptations

We argue that in the development of the Western legal system, cognitive departures are themain determinant of the optimal degree of judicial rule-making. Judicial discretion, seen here as the main distinguishing feature between both legal systems, is introduced in civil law jurisdictions to protect, rather than to limit, freedom of contract against potential judicial backlash. Such protection was unnecessary in common law countries, where free-market relations enjoyed safer judicial ground mainly due to their relatively gradual evolution, their reliance on practitioners as judges, and the earlier development of institutional checks and balances that supported private property rights. In our framework, differences in costs and benefits associated with self-interest and lack of information require a cognitive failure to be active.

Interbank market integration under asymmetric information

We argue that the main barrier to an integrated international interbankmarket is the existence of asymmetric information between differentcountries, which may prevail in spite of monetary integration or successfulcurrency pegging. In order to address this issue, we study the scope forinternational interbank market integration with unsecured lending whencross-country information is noisy. We find not only that an equilibriumwith integrated markets need not always exist, but also that when it does,the integrated equilibrium may coexist with one of interbank marketsegmentation. Therefore, market deregulation, per se, does not guaranteethe emergence of an integrated interbank market. The effect of a repo marketwhich, a priori, was supposed to improve efficiency happens to be morecomplex: it reduces interest rate spreads and improves upon the segmentationequilibrium, but\ it may destroy the unsecured integrated equilibrium, sincethe repo market will attract the best borrowers. The introduction of othertransnational institutional arrangements, such as multinational banking,correspondent banking and the existence of "too-big-to-fail" banks mayreduce cross country interest spreads and provide more insurance againstcountry wide liquidity shocks. Still, multinational banking, as theintroduction of repos, may threaten the integrated interbank marketequilibrium.

Market and institutional determinants in the regulation of conveyancers

Demand for law professionals in the conveyancing of property is decreasing because of market and institutional changes. On the market side, many transactions feature large, well-known parties and standardized transactions, which make professionals less effective or necessary for protecting the parties to private contracts. On the institutional side, public titling makes it possible to dispense with a broadening set of their former functions. Recording of deeds made professionals redundant as depositories of deeds and reduced demand for them to design title guarantees. Effective registration of rights increasingly substitutes professionals for detecting title conflicts with third parties and gathering their consent. Market changes undermine the information asymmetry rationale for regulating conveyancing, while institutional changes facilitate liberalizing not only conduct but also license regulations. These arguments are supported here by disentangling the logic of titling systems and presenting empirical evidence from the European and USA markets.