Producers' and Consumers' Expectations towards Geographical Indications - Empirical Evidence for Hessian Apple Wine

The number of products bearing a Geographical Indication (GI) has increased steadily in recent years. The EU Commission considers GIs as a useful tool in fostering simultaneously the production of high-quality food products as well as rural development in less-favoured regions. However, GIs are by no means a self runner. In order to be successful consumers have to value GIs. So far empirical evidence with respect to consumers' knowledge, expectations and WTP towards GI products is rather mixed and mainly focused on Mediterranean countries. The present paper addresses both sides of the market, i.e. producers' motivations to establish a GI and consumers' expectations towards GI products by representing results from a German case study, i.e. Hessian apple wine. In November 2008, an online-survey with 741 Hessian consumers was carried out. In the same month, an in-depth interview with one of the leading producers of Hessian apple wine, who was directly involved in the PGI application process, was conducted. The results indicate that the most important motivation to apply for a PGI is to secure the established reputation against misuse by competing producers in order to ensure the quality level of Hessian apple wine. Hessian consumers' awareness and knowledge about GIs is very limited. Moreover, it is found that the quality-dimension is not as important as the local-economy support dimension and perceived authenticity of the product.Geographical indications, German case study, cider, online survey, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Geographical Indications of Origin as a Tool of Product Differentiation: The Case of Coffee

An increasing interest in geographical indications of origin (GIs) as a tool of product differentiation can be observed in the so-called specialty coffee sector. Similar to the approach for wine in France and Italy, more and more coffee-producing countries try to establish appellations systems for coffee. Whereas some countries and regions such as Colombia or Jamaica have already legally protected GIs for coffee, most coffee GIs are still informal meaning that no legal protection has been obtained so far. But the recent acceptation of the term Café de Colombia as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in the EU and the Ethiopian Trademark Initiative document the increasing engagement of coffee-producing countries to achieve an appropriate legal protection for their GIs. From an economic point of view, data from US online retail stores indicate that single-origin coffees receive significant higher retail prices, with 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee being the most expensive ones. Furthermore, results from a hedonic pricing model based on internet auction data for single-origin coffees show that the country and the region of origin is already an important determinant of prices paid by importers and roasters.Geographical Indications of Origin, coffee, legal regulatory systems, price premium, hedonic pricing analysis, Marketing,

Protecting Geographical Indications: Lessons learned from the Economic Literature

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Geographical Indications of Origin as a Tool of Product Differentiation : The Case of Coffee

An increasing interest in geographical indications of origin (GIs) as a tool of product differentiation can be observed in the so-called specialty coffee sector. Similar to the approach for wine in France and Italy, more and more coffee-producing countries try to establish appellations systems for coffee. Whereas some countries and regions such as Colombia or Jamaica have already legally protected GIs for coffee, most coffee GIs are still informal meaning that no legal protection has been obtained so far. But the recent acceptation of the term Café de Colombia as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in the EU and the Ethiopian Trademark Initiative document the increasing engagement of coffee-producing countries to achieve an appropriate legal protection for their GIs. From an economic point of view, data from US online retail stores indicate that single-origin coffees receive significant higher retail prices, with 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee being the most expensive ones. Furthermore, results from a hedonic pricing model based on internet auction data for single-origin coffees show that the country and the region of origin is already an important determinant of prices paid by importers and roasters. --Geographical Indications of Origin,coffee,legal regulatory systems,price premium,hedonic pricing analysis

High resolution frequency analysis techniques with application to the redshift experiment

High resolution frequency analysis methods, with application to the gravitational probe redshift experiment, are discussed. For this experiment a resolution of .00001 Hz is required to measure a slowly varying, low frequency signal of approximately 1 Hz. Major building blocks include fast Fourier transform, discrete Fourier transform, Lagrange interpolation, golden section search, and adaptive matched filter technique. Accuracy, resolution, and computer effort of these methods are investigated, including test runs on an IBM 360/65 computer

Nonclassical light from an incoherently pumped quantum dot in a microcavity

Semiconductor microcavities with artificial single-photon emitters have become one of the backbones of semiconductor quantum optics. In many cases however, technical and physical issues limit the study of optical fields to incoherently excited systems. We analyze the model of a two-level system in a single-mode cavity, where the former is incoherently driven. The specific structure of the applied master equation yields a recurrence relation for the steady-state values of correlations of the intracavity field and the emitter. We provide boundary conditions, that permit a systematical, easy to implement solution, which is numerically less demanding than standard methods. Different cavity systems from previous experiments are analyzed. The derived boundary conditions also allow us direct analytical statements about the overall quantum state and its higher order moments. With this we can give very good approximations for the full quantum state of the field and show, that for every physically reasonable set of system parameters, the state of the intracavity field is nonclassical.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Zur syntaktischen Struktur von 'freien Pradikativen' und 'Adverbialen der Art und Weise'

[I]n der folgenden Skizze [soll] argumentiert werden, dass eine Rückführung unterschiedlicher Lesarten auf unterschiedliche syntaktische Verhältnisse […] unangemessen ist. Vielmehr sol1 aufgezeigt werden, dass es sich um eine ausschließlich semantische Frage handelt, die syntaktische Struktur in jeder Hinsicht aber die immerselbe ist. […] Unser Gegenstandsbereich fasst somit Fälle zusammen, die unter anderen Gesichtspunkten differenziert werden. [...] Diese Gesichtspunkte, nach denen die Differenzierung erfolgt, sind semantischer Natur. Für unsere syntaktische Analyse nehmen wir in Anspruch, dass sie auf alle Adverbialstrukturen zutrifft, mit Ausnahme von Satzadverbialen und (den diesen strukturell gleichen) Adverbialsätzen. Gezeigt wird dies jedoch nur an Fallen wie oben, an Adjektiven in modaladverbialer Funktion. Diese Adjektive fassen wir im übrigen kategorial als das auf, was sie ihrer Form nach sind, nämlich unflektierte Adjektive

Geographical Indications of Origin as a Tool of Product Differentiation : The Case of Coffee

An increasing interest in geographical indications of origin (GIs) as a tool of product differentiation can be observed in the so-called specialty coffee sector. Similar to the approach for wine in France and Italy, more and more coffee-producing countries try to establish appellations systems for coffee. Whereas some countries and regions such as Colombia or Jamaica have already legally protected GIs for coffee, most coffee GIs are still informal meaning that no legal protection has been obtained so far. But the recent acceptation of the term Café de Colombia as a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in the EU and the Ethiopian Trademark Initiative document the increasing engagement of coffee-producing countries to achieve an appropriate legal protection for their GIs. From an economic point of view, data from US online retail stores indicate that single-origin coffees receive significant higher retail prices, with 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee being the most expensive ones. Furthermore, results from a hedonic pricing model based on internet auction data for single-origin coffees show that the country and the region of origin is already an important determinant of prices paid by importers and roasters

Selection Mapping Identifies Loci Underpinning Autumn Dormancy in Alfalfa (Medicago sativa).

Autumn dormancy in alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is associated with agronomically important traits including regrowth rate, maturity, and winter survival. Historical recurrent selection experiments have been able to manipulate the dormancy response. We hypothesized that artificial selection for dormancy phenotypes in these experiments had altered allele frequencies of dormancy-related genes. Here, we follow this hypothesis and analyze allele frequency changes using genome-wide polymorphisms in the pre- and postselection populations from one historical selection experiment. We screened the nondormant cultivar CUF 101 and populations developed by three cycles of recurrent phenotypic selection for taller and shorter plants in autumn with markers derived from genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS). We validated the robustness of our GBS-derived allele frequency estimates using an empirical approach. Our results suggest that selection mapping is a powerful means of identifying genomic regions associated with traits, and that it can be exploited to provide regions on which to focus further mapping and cloning projects

Natural conditions in agriculture and the regional distribution of EU producer support

The redistributive implications of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) have regained a strong interest in recent years since economic and social cohe-sion has become a major goal of European policy. The empirical evidence is surprisingly di-verse and ranges from a clearly positive to a clearly negative regional redistributive impact of the CAP. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are threefold. First, the interregional alloca-tion of EU producer support under the CAP is measured at the NUTS III-level in the period 1986-2002 for 26 regions of the German Bundesland Hesse. Second, the role of the measure-ment concept for the magnitude and distribution of the regional transfers is elaborated. Third, the interregional allocation of EU producer support is explained by natural conditions and farm structure variables within a quantitative analysis. A major result is that the interregional allocation of producer support is unequal, depends on the measure of protection used and is affected by a number of variables characterizing farm structure and natural conditions