Environmental Cross Compliance - Panacea or Placebo?

Environmental Cross Compliance is one policy by means by which government can seek to influence farmers so that they give greater weight to environmental goods in their decisions. The policy is evaluated from both a theoretical and pragmatic viewpoint and its strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The necessary conditions for the success of environmental cross compliance policies are identified and problems with its implementation are highlighted.Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management,

Corroding consensus-building: how self-centered public diplomacy is damaging diplomacy and what can be done about it

Public diplomacy (PD) is an activity which has become central to the analysis of modern diplomacy. Yet while there are common definitions of PD widely used internationally, practice between states has come to diverge more and more. There is disagreement in the academic literature about what should be included in PD activities, the actors, and boundaries. But there is little analysis of the effects of PD on mainstream diplomacy. This paper, written by a diplomat and sometime practitioner of PD, argues that PD is losing its connection with wider diplomacy which is based on reciprocity and consensus-building. The digital revolution has enabled PD self-promotion which diminishes the necessity for diplomatic partnering. Global rivalries are played out daily for global publics with little room for quiet reflection and compromise. Such self-centered PD has immersed itself in the confusing and divisive nature of online engagement. While the Internet has brought massive benefits and opportunities to both diplomacy and PD, the consensus-building part of true diplomatic engagement is receding. The activities of ISIS and Russia were just the first major collective challenges to diplomacy through new PD techniques. In the past, diplomacy has responded to crises and conflicts and rebuilt its options. Now PD’s chaotic and troubling evolution needs a new response. This should include partners in the non-state sector and the owners of technology platforms. The article takes a practitioner’s perspective and proposes a forum where state and non-state experts could discuss appropriate collective responses by diplomacy so it can reassert options available for consensus-building.Accepted manuscrip

On Seismic Imaging: Geodesics, Isochrons, and Fermat's Principle

Analytic expressions are derived for the isochrons in an inhomogeneous medium characterized by a linear velocity gradient and for an anisotropic medium characterized by an elliptical velocity dependence. The results were generated for a single surface source and five wellbore receivers over a dipping interface. The traveltime and reflection-point results appear to be sensitive to a given assumption of the velocity field. In complex geological areas the location of the planar reflector is tangent to the convex hull of isochrons and might not correspond to their intersection points since the two concepts need to coincide

Multi-object spectroscopy of the field surrounding PKS 2126-158: Discovery of a z=0.66 galaxy group

The high-redshift radio-loud quasar PKS 2126-158 is found to have a large number of red galaxies in close apparent proximity. We use the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South to obtain optical spectra for a large fraction of these sources. We show that there is a group of galaxies at $z\sim0.66$, coincident with a metal-line absorption system seen in the quasar's optical spectrum. The multiplexing capabilities of GMOS also allow us to measure redshifts of many foreground galaxies in the field surrounding the quasar. The galaxy group has five confirmed members, and a further four fainter galaxies are possibly associated. All confirmed members exhibit early-type galaxy spectra, a rare situation for a Mg II absorbing system. We discuss the relationship of this group to the absorbing gas, and the possibility of gravitational lensing of the quasar due to the intervening galaxies.Comment: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press. 10 pages, 8 figure

Host Galaxy Contribution to the Colours of `Red' Quasars

We describe an algorithm that measures self-consistently the relative galaxy contribution in a sample of radio-quasars from their optical spectra alone. This is based on a spectral fitting method which uses the size of the characteristic 4000\AA~ feature of elliptical galaxy SEDs. We apply this method to the Parkes Half-Jansky Flat Spectrum sample of Drinkwater et al. (1997) to determine whether emission from the host galaxy can significantly contribute to the very red optical-to-near-infrared colours observed. We find that at around $2\sigma$ confidence, most of the reddening in unresolved (mostly quasar-like) sources is unlikely to be due to contamination by a red stellar component.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for Publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Should Farmers Invest in Financial Assets as a Risk Management Strategy? Some Evidence from New Zealand

Off-farm investment as a risk management strategy is not widespread among New Zealand sheep and beef farmers. This study explores the potential for risk reduction by the diversification of farm asset portfolios to include financial investments such as industrial equities and government bonds of various types. Results show that the negative correlations between long-run rates of return on farm assets and financial investments could result in a significant reduction of risk if equities and bonds were included in farm investment portfolios. However, when combined with information about attitudes to risks, it does not seem likely that farmers would adopt such strategies purely in order to stabilise incomes. Deregulation of the New Zealand economy in the mid 1980's had little impact on farmers' optimal allocation of their assets.Agricultural Finance, Risk and Uncertainty,

Fixed Effects Bias in Panel Data Estimators

Since little is known about the degree of bias in estimated fixed effects in panel data models, we run Monte Carlo simulations on a range of different estimators. We find that Anderson-Hsiao IV, Kivietâs bias-corrected LSDV and GMM estimators all perform well in both short and long panels. However, OLS outperforms the other estimators when the following holds: the cross-section is small (N = 20), the time dimension is short (T = 5) and the coefficient on the lagged dependent variable is large (γ = 0.8).fixed effects, panel data, LSDV, dynamic model

Patent Examination Decisions and Strategic Trade Behavior

This paper examines whether strategic trade behavior can explain the fact that the US, Japanese and European Patent Offices – the USPTO, the JPO and the EPO – often make different decisions about whether to grant (or reject) a given patent application. We analyse this issue by considering whether examination decisions across the patent offices vary systematically by inventor nationality, patent quality and technology area using a matched sample of 33,305 non-PCT patent applications granted by the USPTO and subjected to examination decisions at the EPO and the JPO.