Other Commodities (other + commodity)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


FASHIONS AND FUNDAMENTALISMS IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE YEMEN: Chador Barbie and Islamic Socks

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2007
ANNE MENELEY
This article examines the complex relationships between changing forms of commodity production and consumption and changing styles of religiosity in Zabid, the Republic of Yemen. I examine a couple of prominent logics of veiling in Fin-de-Siècle Yemen: Some reformist women add "Islamic socks" and gloves to their already fully modest garb, while other women don chadors that decorate these garments with embroidery, making them into items of fashionable consumption and adornment. Other commodities, like a Chador Barbie that I found in Yemen's suq, are used to think through changing practices of consumption, adornment, and women's sociability in Zabid. [source]


Bonus of rebate?: the impact of income framing on spending and saving

JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DECISION MAKING, Issue 3 2006
Nicholas Epley
Abstract All income increases a person's absolute wealth, but consumption decisions may be based more heavily on perceived changes in wealth. Change is computed by comparing a current state with a former state, and we predicted that people would be more likely to spend income framed as a gain from a current wealth state than income framed as a return to a prior state. Four experiments confirmed this prediction on people's memory for spending of a government tax rebate (Experiment 1), on unobtrusive self-report measures of spending an unexpected windfall (Experiments 2 and 3), and on actual spending on items for sale in a laboratory experiment (Experiment 4). These results can be explained, at least in part, by the reference points implied in the framing of income (follow-ups to Experiments 1 and 4). Discussion focuses on implications for the consumption of other commodities, assessments of risk, and government tax policies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Spatial integration at multiple scales: rice markets in Madagascar

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2009
Christine Moser
Market integration; Prices; Rice Abstract The dramatic increase in the price of rice and other commodities over the past year has generated new interest in how these markets work and how they can be improved. This article uses an exceptionally rich data set to test the extent to which markets in Madagascar are integrated across space at different scales of analysis and to explain some of the factors that limit spatial arbitrage and price equalization within a single country. We use rice price data across four quarters of 2000,2001 along with data on transportation costs and infrastructure availability for nearly 1,400 communes in Madagascar to examine the extent of market integration at three different spatial scales,subregional, regional, and national,and to determine whether non-integration is due to high transfer costs or lack of competition. The results indicate that markets are fairly well integrated at the subregional level and that factors such as high crime rates, remoteness, and lack of information are among the factors limiting competition. [source]


Effects of gamma irradiation on the life stages of yellow flower thrips, Frankliniella schultzei (Trybom) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae)

ANNALS OF APPLIED BIOLOGY, Issue 3 2001
JULIANA A YALEMAR
Summary Irradiation at a minimum absorbed dose of 250 Grays (Gy) has been approved by the USDA as a quarantine treatment for certain fruits in Hawaii to control four species of tephritid fruit flies. Subsequent research must determine whether this dose is sufficient to control other quarantine pests, such as mealybugs, thrips, mites, beetles, moths, and scale insects, on other commodities with export potential that are approved for irradiation treatment for fruit flies. This study demonstrated that irradiation at 250 Gy caused non-emergence of eggs and pupae, failure of larval development, and sterility of adults of yellow flower thrips, Frankliniella schultzei (Trybom). Adults were the most resistant stage tested, with 100% mortality at 57, 36 and 30 days post-treatment for the 250, 350 and 400 Gy treatments, respectively. Untreated adults survived up to 66 days. After receiving an irradiation dose of 250 Gy, no one- to two-day old eggs hatched successfully, while 3,4-day old eggs hatched but did not develop beyond the larval stage. Of the controls, 96.0% of 1,2-day old eggs and 75.9% of the 3,4-day old eggs hatched and survived through pupation. No first or second instar larvae treated with a target dose of 250 Gy were able to pupate. When pupae were irradiated at 250 Gy, 37% emerged as adults and all were sterile compared to 88.3% emergence of controls. [source]


A Transaction Cost Primer on Farm Organization

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2000
Douglas W. Allen
Agricultural economists, with their knowledge of farming, are well positioned to take advantage of the fertile ground of economic organization. The transaction cost paradigm is particularly useful in addressing such questions and is outlined in this paper. The overriding theme in the transaction cost approach is that patterns of ownership and contracts are chosen to mitigate transaction costs, which result from attempts to establish and maintain property rights. In agriculture, transaction costs are heavily influenced by Mother Nature. Nature's uncertainty, via weather and pests, leads to moral hazard and seasonal forces impose constraints on production cycles that are not often found in the production of most other commodities. Applications in land contracts, asset control, and business organization are discussed. [source]


Indirect Taxes on International Aviation,

FISCAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2007
Michael Keen
There has recently been much discussion of the possible use of internationally coordinated indirect taxes, or equivalent charges, on international aviation, whether as a source of finance for development or as part of a response to heightened concerns with climate change. This paper considers the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidate instruments of this kind. It argues that, on both policy and administration grounds, the case for increasing indirect taxes on international aviation is strong: the indirect tax burden on international aviation is very low, yet aviation contributes significantly to border-crossing environmental damage, is just as proper an object of taxation as any other commodity, and incipient tax competition is likely to result in these taxes being set at inefficiently low levels. But the form(s) in which such taxes are levied matters: a tax on aviation fuel would address the key border-crossing externalities most directly; a tax on final ticket values would have greater revenue potential, and perhaps some distributional advantage; departure/arrival taxes face the least legal obstacles, but are much blunter instruments. Optimal policy, it is shown, typically requires deploying both a fuel tax and a ticket tax, and the paper explores, both in principle and by simulation, the key considerations and trade-offs involved in designing a suitable indirect tax regime for international aviation. [source]