DO U.S. MARKETING ORDERS HAVE MUCH MARKET POWER? AN EXAMINATION OF THE ALMOND BOARD OF CALIFORNIA

This paper tests the conventional wisdom that U.S. marketing orders act as profit-maximizing cartels. The paper analyzes the marketing order for U.S. almonds in both the domestic and export markets. Such a case study is relevant to all U.S. marketing orders because the size and scope of the U.S. almond industry on the world market, and the legal authority of the almond marketing order makes it a likely prospect for exhibiting true cartel behavior. The authors find that the market power exerted by the Almond Board of California's reserve setting is significantly less than would be expected from a profit-maximizing cartel.Marketing,

Minimal surfaces in circle bundles over Riemann surfaces

For a compact 3-manifold $M$ which is a circle bundle over a compact Riemann surface $\Sigma$ with even Euler number $e(M)$, and with a Riemannian metric compatible with the bundle projection, there exists a compact minimal surface $S$ in $M$. $S$ is embedded and is a section of the restriction of the bundle to the complement of a finite number of points in $\Sigma$.Comment: 8 pages, no figures. Revised versio

Import demand of Bananas in the European Union

The EU banana market has been of enormous interest for researchers for a long time, especially after the import policy unification brought by the Common Market Organization for Bananas (CMOB) in 1993. Empirical evidence suggests that the CMOB and its subsequent modifications have been highly distorting. However, the quantifications made of those distortions by different authors vary a lot, not only in magnitude but also in direction. The reason is that for each evaluation, a different system of demand equations has been estimated. However, besides the different models used, there is one common denominator to all models. They do not incorporate the general restrictions (homogeneity, symmetry and adding up) necessary to make the demand estimations consistent with economic theory. In this paper we estimate the almost ideal demand system (AIDS) to calculate more reliable elasticities to facilitate future welfare analysis of the EU banana market. The inverse almost ideal demand system (IAIDS) was also estimated under the alternative assumption that import prices adjust to quantities instead to quantities adjusting to price variations as it has usually assumed. However, the results are not reported because due to the upcoming import policy and its subsequent quota elimination, quantities will not longer be predetermined. Preliminary results show that demand elasticities are different depending on the region of origin of the imported bananas. Latin American bananas are substitutes of bananas from preferred suppliers and complements of others while imports from the ACP are substitutes of all regions. EU bananas behave similar to Latin American in the sense that they are substitutes of all by other suppliers. Preliminary welfare analysis of the proposed policy shows that both Latin American producers and EU consumers of Latin American bananas will lost from the quota elimination and increase in the tariff level.International Relations/Trade,

Versatile module for experiments with focussing neutron guides

We report the development of a versatile module that permits fast and reliable use of focussing neutron guides under varying scattering angles. A simple procedure for setting up the module and neutron guides is illustrated by typical intensity patterns to highlight operational aspects as well as typical parasitic artefacts. Combining a high-precision alignment table with separate housings for the neutron guides on kinematic mounts, the change-over between neutron guides with different focussing characteristics requires no readjustments of the experimental set-up. Exploiting substantial gain factors, we demonstrate the performance of this versatile neutron scattering module in a study of the effects of uniaxial stress on the domain populations in the transverse spin density wave phase of single crystal Cr

Mapping deuterated methanol toward L1544: I. Deuterium fraction and comparison with modeling

The study of deuteration in pre-stellar cores is important to understand the physical and chemical initial conditions in the process of star formation. In particular, observations toward pre-stellar cores of methanol and deuterated methanol, solely formed on the surface of dust grains, may provide useful insights on surface processes at low temperatures. Here we analyze maps of CO, methanol, formaldehyde and their deuterated isotopologues toward a well-known pre-stellar core. This study allows us to test current gas-dust chemical models. Single-dish observations of CH$_3$OH, CH$_2$DOH, H$_2$CO, H$_2\,^{13}$CO, HDCO, D$_2$CO and C$^{17}$O toward the prototypical pre-stellar core L1544 were performed at the IRAM 30 m telescope. We analyze their column densities, distributions, and compare these observations with gas-grain chemical models. The maximum deuterium fraction derived for methanol is [CH$_2$DOH]/[CH$_3$OH] $\sim$ 0.08$\pm$0.02, while the measured deuterium fractions of formaldehyde at the dust peak are [HDCO]/[H$_2$CO] $\sim$ 0.03$\pm$0.02, [D$_2$CO]/[H$_2$CO] $\sim$ 0.04$\pm$0.03 and [D$_2$CO]/[HDCO] $\sim$ 1.2$\pm$0.3. Observations differ significantly from the predictions of models, finding discrepancies between a factor of 10 and a factor of 100 in most cases. It is clear though that to efficiently produce methanol on the surface of dust grains, quantum tunneling diffusion of H atoms must be switched on. It also appears that the currently adopted reactive desorption efficiency of methanol is overestimated and/or that abstraction reactions play an important role. More laboratory work is needed to shed light on the chemistry of methanol, an important precursor of complex organic molecules in space.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

A cross-linguistic database of phonetic transcription systems

Contrary to what non-practitioners might expect, the systems of phonetic notation used by linguists are highly idiosyncratic. Not only do various linguistic subfields disagree on the specific symbols they use to denote the speech sounds of languages, but also in large databases of sound inventories considerable variation can be found. Inspired by recent efforts to link cross-linguistic data with help of reference catalogues (Glottolog, Concepticon) across different resources, we present initial efforts to link different phonetic notation systems to a catalogue of speech sounds. This is achieved with the help of a database accompanied by a software framework that uses a limited but easily extendable set of non-binary feature values to allow for quick and convenient registration of different transcription systems, while at the same time linking to additional datasets with restricted inventories. Linking different transcription systems enables us to conveniently translate between different phonetic transcription systems, while linking sounds to databases allows users quick access to various kinds of metadata, including feature values, statistics on phoneme inventories, and information on prosody and sound classes. In order to prove the feasibility of this enterprise, we supplement an initial version of our cross-linguistic database of phonetic transcription systems (CLTS), which currently registers five transcription systems and links to fifteen datasets, as well as a web application, which permits users to conveniently test the power of the automatic translation across transcription systems

Uniaxial pressure dependence of magnetic order in MnSi

We report comprehensive small angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements complemented by ac susceptibility data of the helical order, conical phase and skyrmion lattice phase (SLP) in MnSi under uniaxial pressures. For all crystallographic orientations uniaxial pressure favours the phase for which a spatial modulation of the magnetization is closest to the pressure axis. Uniaxial pressures as low as 1kbar applied perpendicular to the magnetic field axis enhance the skyrmion lattice phase substantially, whereas the skyrmion lattice phase is suppressed for pressure parallel to the field. Taken together we present quantitative microscopic information how strain couples to magnetic order in the chiral magnet MnSi.Comment: 23 pages, includes supplemen