Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge in the development of organic agriculture in Switzerland

The present study analyses transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge in the development of organic farming in Switzerland by using Fleck's theory of thought styles and thought collectives. Three different phases can be identified throughout the historical development. The initial phase lasting from the beginning of the 1920s to the early 1970s contains numerous characteristics of diverse well-established definitions and concepts of transdisciplinarity and represents a successful transdisciplinary process, which has not been perceived as such in the past and present scientific discussion. The second and third phases show an increasing segregation of thought collectives, caused by internal changes such as the establishment of specialised research institutions and external processes like agriculture policy and market development. These developments led to a decreasing degree of transdisciplinarity. We observe an ambiguous trend: the continuously growing and today well-established positive societal recognition of an initially rather little accepted newcomer movement is associated with the gradual loss of its very valuable forms of knowledge co-production and the related philosophical background. In order to maintain the various forms of transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge, one has to reflect not only their results or outcome but also the whole cooperation process, which has led to these results. The understanding of the historical development and characteristic features of knowledge co-production as presented in this study will help to reinforce transdisciplinary research in organic agriculture and research on transdisciplinarity in general.

Potential Economic Returns from Selling Beef in a Specified Value-Based Market

Three groups of steers--one theoretical group and two experimental groups—were evaluated for marketing cattle live, as boxed beef, and grade and yield when the live price was $71 to $73/cwt, grade and yield price $125/cwt for Choice yield grade 3 carcasses with $20/cwt discount for Select carcasses, and in a commodity-trim or close-trim boxed beef market. The results show that the value of highyielding steers can be significantly increased if sold in a close-trim boxed beef market. The close-trim premiums ranged from $5.06 per head for Select close-trim yield grade 4 carcasses to $87.18 per head for close-trim Choice yield grade 1 carcasses. A group of experimental steers averaging 82% Choice and 60% yield grades 1 and 2 returned an additional $104 in the close-trim boxed market compared with selling live for $73/cwt. Another group of experimental steers averaging 21% Choice, 18% Standard, and 93% yield grades 1 and 2 had $29 per head greater return than if the steers had been sold live for $71/cwt. These comparisons emphasize the importance of knowing how cattle will potentially grade before selecting an alternative marketing strategy. This prior knowledge is most important when the spread in price between Choice and Select is high. Producers need to learn more about their cattle to predict how the cattle may grade for a specified value-based market.

Career Crisis? Impacts of Financial Shock on the Entry-Level Labor Market: Evidence from Thailand

We utilize Thailand's the financial crisis in 1997 as a natural experiment which exogenously shifts labor demand. Convincing evidence from the Thailand Labor Force Survey support the hypothesis that both employment opportunities and wages shrunk for new entrants after the crisis. We find that workers who entered before the crisis experienced job losses and wage losses. But these losses were smaller than those of new entrants after the crisis. We also find that new entrants after the crisis experienced a 10% reduction in the overtime wages compared to new entrants before the crisis.

Is FTA/EPA effective for a developing country to attract FDI? : simulation analysis based on an extended knowledge-capital model

To prepare an answer to the question of how a developing country can attract FDI, this paper explored the factors and policies that may help bring FDI into a developing country by utilizing an extended version of the knowledge-capital model. With a special focus on the effects of FTAs/EPAs between market countries and developing countries, simulations with the model revealed the following: (1) Although FTA/EPA generally ends to increase FDI to a developing country, the possibility of improving welfare through increased demand for skilled and unskilled labor becomes higher as the size of the country declines; (2) Because the additional implementation of cost-saving policies to reduce firm-type/trade-link specific fixed costs ends to depreciate the price of skilled labor by saving its input, a developing country, which is extremely scarce in skilled labor, is better off avoiding the additional option; (3) If a country hopes to enjoy larger welfare gains with EPA, efforts to increase skilled labor in the country, such as investing in education, may be beneficial.

Knowledge Management and Leadership in the Higher Education: A First Approach

Today, it is more and more important to develop competences in the learning process of the university students (that is to say, to acquire knowledge but also skills, abilities, attitudes and values). This is because professional practice requires that the future graduates design and market products, defend the interests of their clients, be introduced in the Administration or, even, in the Politics. Universities must form professionals that become social and opinion leaders, consultants, advisory, entrepreneurs and, in short, people with capacity to solve problems. This paper offers a tool to evaluate the application for the professor of different styles of management in the process of the student’s learning. Its main contribution consists on advancing toward the setting in practice of a model that overcomes the limitations of the traditional practices based on the masterful class, and that it has been applied in Portugal and Spain.

Developments in the Agricultural and Rural Capital Market of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 9, October 2011

The undeveloped rural capital market in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is constrained by an urban–rural development gap, with limited capacities for rural development and imperfections in the rural capital market. Among the most striking hindrances are the illegal status of a large share of agricultural buildings and other real estate in rural areas, particularly on the individual family farms that prevail in the country, and the insufficient knowledge and abilities of individual farmers in applying for credit. National, EU and other donor funds are being used to improve knowledge, skills and other human resources, and to address the illegal status of buildings and facilities. In recent years, government support for agricultural, rural and regional development has been introduced to promote good agricultural practices, production and economic activity in rural areas. The elimination of imperfections and improvements to the functioning of the capital market – making access to credit and funds easier, especially for small-scale family farms and for rural development – are seen as measures contributing to agriculture and more balanced rural and regional development.

Essays on Entrepreneurship and Founder Pre-entry Knowledge

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Systemic absorptive capacity: creating early-to-market returns through R&D alliances

For most complex emergent technologies, product-market success depends on efficient linkages between changing lead innovators within the R&D process. In this paper, our unit of analysis is a complex high technology product and the system of alliance linkages formed to progress a product through R&D milestones. We present a model and evidence for advancing our understanding of how achieving early-to-market returns depends on systemic absorptive capacity. This systemic absorptive capacity is the cumulative efficiency in the use of absorptive capacity to link changing lead innovators across successive milestones in R&D product development. We advance propositions of how systemic absorptive capacity can explain performance differences between rival product development systems competing for early-to-market returns with similar products through accelerating speed to market, cost and quality advantages. These explanations are contrasted with the conclusions of previous studies that have focused on absorptive capacity of single firms or single alliances in RD.

The effects of consumer knowledge on responses to event sponsorships

Research into consumer responses to event sponsorships has grown in recent years. However, the effects of consumer knowledge on sponsorship response have received little consideration. Consumers' event knowledge is examined to determine whether experts and novices differ in information processing of sponsorships and whether a sponsor's brand equity influences perceptions of sponsor-event fit. Six sponsors (three high equity/three low equity) were paired with six events. Results of hypothesis testing indicate that experts generate more total thoughts about a sponsor-event combination. Experts and novices do not differ in sponsor-event congruence for high-brand-equity sponsors, but event experts perceive less of a match between sponsor and event for low-brand-equity sponsors. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The market for preferences

Learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by which boundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes. We argue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a different mechanism, namely specialisation and the division of knowledge, which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy. We distinguish between high-level preferences and low-level preferences as nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems. We argue that agents, while sovereign in high-level preferences, may often find it expedient to acquire, in a pseudo-market, the low-level preferences in order to make good choices when purchasing complex commodities about which they have little or no experience. A market for preferences arises when environmental complexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agents to make use of other people's specialised knowledge and decision rules.

Industry-specific human capital, knowledge labour, and industry wage structure in Taiwan

This paper investigates the role of industry-specific human capital (ISHC) in determining industry wage structure. The model presented in this paper distinguishes between knowledge labour and physical labour. Knowledge labour is physical labour embodied with ISHC. It is postulated that more ISHC-intensive industries, such as high-tech industries, pay higher wages and the wage premiums increase with workers' experience. The hypothesis is tested using a merged sample of 1997 - 1999 manpower utilization survey data from a newly industrialized economy - Taiwan. The findings show support for the effect of ISHC.

Load profiling and data mining techniques in electricity deregulated market

This paper presents load profiles of electricity customers, using the knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) procedure, a data mining technique, to determine the load profiles for different types of customers. In this paper, the current load profiling methods are compared using data mining techniques, by analysing and evaluating these classification techniques. The objective of this study is to determine the best load profiling methods and data mining techniques to classify, detect and predict non-technical losses in the distribution sector, due to faulty metering and billing errors, as well as to gather knowledge on customer behaviour and preferences so as to gain a competitive advantage in the deregulated market. This paper focuses mainly on the comparative analysis of the classification techniques selected; a forthcoming paper will focus on the detection and prediction methods.