A Case Study of China’s Commercial Pork Value Chain, August 2005

In China, with the cost of improved technology rising, surplus labor shrinking, and demand for food quality and safety increasing, it will be just a matter of time before the country’s hog production sector will be commercialized like that of developed countries. However, even if China’s cost of production converges to international levels, as shown in this case study, China may continue to retain some competitive advantage because of the labor-intensive nature of the marketing services involved in hog processing and meat distribution. The supply of variety meats offers the most promising market opportunity for foreign suppliers in China. The market may open further if the tariff rate for variety meats is reduced from 20% and harmonized with the pork muscle meat rate of 12%, and if the value-added tax of 13% is applied equally to both imported and domestic products. The fast-growing Western-style family restaurant and higher-end dining sector is another market opportunity for high-quality imported pork.

International Update November/December 2005

International News from the Iowa Department of Economic Development

Consumers’ Demand for Pork Quality: Applying Semantic Network Analysis, May 2006

Abstract Consideration of consumers’ demand for food quality entails several aspects. Quality itself is a complex and dynamic concept, and constantly evolving technical progress may cause changes in consumers’ judgment of quality. To improve our understanding of the factors influencing the demand for quality, food quality must be defined and measured from the consumer’s perspective (Cardello, 1995). The present analysis addresses the issue of food quality, focusing on pork—the food that respondents were concerned about. To gain insight into consumers’ demand, we analyzed their perception and evaluation and focused on their cognitive structures concerning pork quality. In order to more fully account for consumers’ concerns about the origin of pork, in 2004 we conducted a consumer survey of private households. The qualitative approach of concept mapping was used to uncover the cognitive structures. Network analysis was applied to interpret the results. In order to make recommendations to enterprises, we needed to know what kind of demand emerges from the given food quality schema. By establishing the importance and relative positions of the attributes, we find that the country of origin and butcher may be the two factors that have the biggest influence on consumers’ decisions about the purchase of pork.

Uniform Manual Real Property Acquisition and Relocation Assistance Section II - Chapter 111 Uniform Rules and Procedures April, 2006

The purpose of this chapter is to implement Iowa Code chapter 316 and sections 6B.42, 6B.45, 6B.54 and 6B.55, as required by the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-646, as amended by the Uniform Relocation Act Amendments of 1987, Title IV, Pub. L. No. 100-17 , Sec. 104, Pub. L. 105-117, and federal regulations adopted pursuant thereto.

Main Street Messenger, Winter 2006

News from the Iowa Downtown Resource Center, Main Street Iowa, and the Iowa Department of Economic Development Community Development Division.

Are Standards Always Protectionist?

We analyze the effects of a domestic standard that reduces an externality associated with the consumption of the good targeted by the standard, using a model in which foreign and domestic producers compete in the domestic good market. Producers can reduce expected damage associated with the externality by incurring a cost that varies by source of origin. Despite potential protectionism, the standard is useful in correcting the consumption externality in the domestic country. Protectionism occurs when the welfare-maximizing domestic standard is higher than the international standard maximizing welfare inclusive of foreign profits. The standard is actually anti-protectionist when foreign producers are much more efficient at addressing the externality than are domestic producers. Possible exclusion of domestic or foreign producers arises with large standards, which may alter the classification of a standard as protectionist or non-protectionist. The paper provides important implications for the estimation and use of tariff equivalents of nontariff barriers.

Productividad, competencia e innovación en la banca privada española (1900-1914)

This study investigates the productivity differences and its sourcesacross a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of theSpanish banking system (1900-1914). These years were characterised bymajor qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry includinga sharp increase in the size of the system, in the number of firms, andin its regional distribution. Employing DEA productivity analysis andthe Malmquist index, we discover that these changes were accompanied bya generalised increase in the efficiency of least productive banks. Also,we observe that the crisis of some regional banking groups, like theCatalan, can be linked with its low productivity levels. In consequence,in the light of our productivity evidence, we conclude that the increasein competition was beneficial for the system because helped to the successof the most efficient banks.

Stock returns, term structure, inflation and real activity: An international perspective

This paper analyses the empirical interdependences among assetreturns, real activity and inflation from a multicountry and internationalpoint of view. We find that nominal stock returns are significantly relatedto inflation only in the US, that the US term structure of interest ratespredicts both domestic and foreign inflation rates while foreign termstructures do not have this predictive power and that innovations in inflationand exchange rates induce insignificant responses of real and financialvariables. An interpretation of the dynamics and some policy implicationsof the results are provided.

Stabilization versus insurance: Welfare effects of procyclical taxation under incomplete markets

We construct and calibrate a general equilibrium business cycle model with unemployment and precautionary saving. We compute the cost of business cycles and locate the optimum in a set of simple cyclical fiscal policies. Our economy exhibits productivity shocks, giving firms an incentive to hire more when productivity is high. However, business cycles make workers' income riskier, both by increasing the unconditional probability of unusuallylong unemployment spells, and by making wages more variable, and therefore they decrease social welfare by around one-fourth or one-third of 1% of consumption. Optimal fiscal policy offsets the cycle, holding unemployment benefits constant but varying the tax rate procyclically to smooth hiring. By running a deficit of 4% to 5% of output in recessions, the government eliminates half the variation in the unemployment rate, most of the variation in workers'aggregate consumption, and most of the welfare cost of business cycles.

Wealth, financial intermediation and growth

This paper presents empirical support for the existence of wealth effects in the contribution of financial intermediation to economic growth, and offers a theoretical explanation for these effects. Using GMM dynamic panel data techniques applied to study the growth-promoting effects of financial intermediation, we show that the exogenous contribution of financial development on economic growth has different effects for different levels of income per capita. We find that this contribution is generally increasing with thelevel of income per capita of the economy, up to a relatively high level of income. This contribution is consistently lower for poor countries; and for some low levels of income per capita it can be negative. We provide a model to account for these wealth effects. The model is a overlapping generations growth model where financial intermediaries implement liquidity risk sharing among depositors. We show that at early stages of economic development, a bank can increase welfare of its depositors only at the cost of lowering investment and growth. However, once the economy has crossed certain wealth threshold, the liquidity role of banks becomes unambiguously growth enhancing. As wealth increases, banks offer improving liquidity insurance, and higher growth; however, for high levels of wealth, growth generated byfinancial intermediation declines as the economy attains the optimal level of consumption risk sharing.

Rain and the democratic window of opportunity

According to the economic approach to politicaltransitions, transitory negative economic shocks can open a windowof opportunity for democratic improvement. Testing the theoryrequires a source of transitory shocks to the aggregate economy. Weuse rainfall shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries and find thatnegative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement indemocratic institutions. Instrumental variables estimates indicate thatfollowing a transitory negative income shock of 1 percent,democracy scores improve by 0.9 percentage points and theprobability of a democratic transition increases by 1.3 percentagepoints.

Rediseño de una línea de ensamblaje de contactores eléctricos aplicando principios y técnicas de producción ajustada

El presente documento describe un caso real de una línea de ensamblaje de minicontactores eléctricos. En su situación inicial, la línea no alcanzaba los requerimientos de los clientes en cuanto a flexibilidad y capacidad, lo que se manifestaba en retrasos en los plazos de entrega a clientes. A partir del análisis basado en principios de producción ajustada y de la aplicación de técnicas lean, se rediseñó la línea de modo que se resolvieran los problemas iniciales. Adicionalmente, la línea vio incrementada su productividad, redujo la superficie ocupada, incorporó un sistema de aprovisionamiento cíclico, mejoró la ergonomía y redujo el inventario en cursonecesario para su funcionamiento.

Administrative Transition Planning Notebook, November 15, 2006

Seven Years ofInnovation, Technological Advances, Enhanced Service & Fluid Commerce in the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division.

Chemodiversity and molecular plasticity: recognition processes as explored by property spaces.

In the last few years, a need to account for molecular flexibility in drug-design methodologies has emerged, even if the dynamic behavior of molecular properties is seldom made explicit. For a flexible molecule, it is indeed possible to compute different values for a given conformation-dependent property and the ensemble of such values defines a property space that can be used to describe its molecular variability; a most representative case is the lipophilicity space. In this review, a number of applications of lipophilicity space and other property spaces are presented, showing that this concept can be fruitfully exploited: to investigate the constraints exerted by media of different levels of structural organization, to examine processes of molecular recognition and binding at an atomic level, to derive informative descriptors to be included in quantitative structure--activity relationships and to analyze protein simulations extracting the relevant information. Much molecular information is neglected in the descriptors used by medicinal chemists, while the concept of property space can fill this gap by accounting for the often-disregarded dynamic behavior of both small ligands and biomacromolecules. Property space also introduces some innovative concepts such as molecular sensitivity and plasticity, which appear best suited to explore the ability of a molecule to adapt itself to the environment variously modulating its property and conformational profiles. Globally, such concepts can enhance our understanding of biological phenomena providing fruitful descriptors in drug-design and pharmaceutical sciences.