The Economic Value of Market Information for Farmers in Developing Economies

In developing countries, farmers lack information for making informed production, manufacturing/selling decisions to improve their earnings. To alleviate poverty, various non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and for‐profit companies have developed different ways to distribute information about market price, crop advisory and farming technique to farmers. We investigate a fundamental question: will information create economic value for farmers? We construct a stylized model in which farmers face an uncertain market price (demand) and must make production decisions before the market price is realized. Each farmer has an imprecise private signal and an imprecise public signal to estimate the actual market price. By examining the equilibrium outcomes associated with a Cournot competition game, we show that private signals do create value by improving farmers' welfare. However, this value deteriorates as the public signal becomes available (or more precise). In contrast, in the presence of private signals, the public signal does not always create value for the farmers. Nevertheless, both private and public signals will reduce price variation. We also consider two separate extensions that involve non‐identical private signal precisions and farmers' risk‐aversion, and we find that the same results continue to hold. More importantly, we find that the public signal can reduce welfare inequality when farmers have non‐identical private signal precisions. Also, risk‐aversion can dampen the value created by private or public information.     

不对称信息下“农超对接”供应链定价及合同设计

农超对接"模式有助于缩减农产品流通环节,缓解农户农产品"卖难"和消费者"买贵"同时存在的矛盾。本文针对由一个农户（或合作社）和一个超市组成的"农超对接"系统,考虑消费者对农产品质量偏好的异质性,且消费者偏好与农产品质量之间的不匹配成本为不对称信息,研究农产品供应链定价及合同设计问题。研究结果表明,在对称信息下,农产品总是不会滞销,农户通过"批发价格+一次性转移支付"的合同设计能够实现农产品供应链的完美协调;在不对称信息下,农户存在低批发价格合同、固定批发价格合同以及高批发价格合同等三种策略,在后两种策略下,农产品有可能滞销;不对称信息的存在总是会给农户造成损失,给超市带来额外信息租金,但不一定会造成消费者剩余或社会福利的损失;当农户选择高批发价格合同时,若满足一定条件,则超市与农户能够达成信息共享谈判而共同分享整个农产品供应链的利润。     

Aggregating Smallholder Farmers in Emerging Economies

The agricultural sector plays an important role in emerging economies even though most farmers are trapped in the poverty cycle owing to their smallholdings. Aggregating farmers through formal or informal cooperatives (coops) can enable them to: (i) reduce production cost; (ii) increase/stabilize process yield; (iii) increase brand awareness; (iv) eliminate unnecessary intermediaries; and (v) eliminate price uncertainty. To examine whether these effects will benefit the members of such aggregation when they compete with other individual farmers, we present separate models to capture the essence of these five effects. For each effect, we find that it is beneficial for a farmer to be part of the aggregation only when the size of the aggregation is below a certain threshold. Also, while certain effects are beneficial to the market as a whole, other effects are hurtful due to higher market price and/or lower production quantity.     

The experience effect and pricing for agricultural products

It has been found that for a wide range of industrial products the unit prices and costs decrease by a constant percentage when production volume doubles—this is called the experience effect. This unit price behaviour is also observed for certain classes of basic agricultural products. As international market competition increases, price behaviour differences among countries may lead farmers, their organizations and governments to better understand what are the causes of the differences so that they can maintain and improve their competitive position internationally.     

“农户+餐饮企业”有机农产品供应链模式构建研究

有机农产品具有巨大的消费市场，但是目前有机农产品的供应链模式相对单一，不能满足有机市场发展的需要。本文提出"农户+餐饮企业"的新模式，并与农户直销模式及农超合作的模式进行比较。结论表明这种新模式能够使得农户和餐饮企业共同受益，并建议政府采取措施促进市场形成多种模式并存的有机农产品供应链格局。     

Integration and Cospecialization of Emerging Complementary Technologies by Startups

We analyze the market entry problem faced by startups that must integrate their service or product with one or more complementary technologies. The problem is especially challenging when the complementary technologies have uncertain cost reduction potentials. The entrepreneurship literature suggests that startups should pursue focused strategies for various reasons, including bounded rationality and budget constraints, but generally overlooks startups entering markets with complementary technologies. The advice for mature firms investing in complementary technologies is often to diversify investment across multiple complements to manage technological uncertainty. Given competing guidance, we seek to extend the entrepreneurship literature by modeling startups' entry decisions for markets in which complementary technologies exhibit strong learning effects. We find that, consistent with the extant entrepreneurship literature, startups generally achieve higher expected returns by channeling their integration investment to only one complementary technology. However, the mechanisms driving our results differ significantly by hinging on nonlinear feedback effects that occur when firms concentrate integration investment in only one complementary technology. Interestingly, this focused strategy often does not yield the highest market share or the lowest likelihood of bankruptcy. We characterize the situations under which each finding holds and describe the implications of these findings for theory, practice, and policy.     

渠道模式、努力投入与生鲜农产品供应链运作效率研究

归纳总结我国生鲜农产品供应链三种主要渠道模式的特征和内涵,对比分析不同渠道模式下的生产努力投入、销售努力投入以及供应链效用水平。研究结果表明:(1)农户的风险规避偏好是影响其选择不同渠道模式的关键因素;(2)当农户的风险规避程度较低时,农户应该选择采用自产自销模式,此时的生产努力投入和销售努力投入也较其他模式下更高。而当农户的风险规避程度较高时,加入"农超对接"供应链不仅有利于增进农户效用,而且也能提高生产努力投入和销售努力投入;(3)相比于松散型"农超对接"模式,紧密型"农超对接"模式是一种更优的选择,能够同时提高农户和超市双方的效用水平。     

产出随机及贸易信用下农产品供应链农户决策与政府补偿价值

针对由单一公司和受资金约束单一农户组成的农产品供应链中融资难问题,考虑政府补偿公司预付货款损失及农产品产出随机性,分别构建了贸易信用下农户有、无破产风险的供应链博弈模型,并对比分析农户最优决策,最后探讨了政府补偿对社会福利及供应链的价值创造。研究表明,灾害年投入产出率越小,农户有破产风险的供应链决策模式对农户越有利;政府补偿策略不仅可化解公司预付货款损失风险和创造更多社会福利,还能激励农户制定更合理生产投入量,并提升供应链效率,且在一定条件下还可达到集中决策下最优期望利润水平,为供应链创造更多价值。     

Incentive for Peer‐to‐Peer Knowledge Sharing among Farmers in Developing Economies

This study examines the peer‐to‐Peer interactions among farmers when both knowledge learning and sharing are available. We construct a stylized model in which heterogeneous farmers are endowed with their initial production capabilities and can post questions in the platform for help. A representative expert regularly monitors the forum and provides answers to the farmers’ questions, but may be non‐responsive sometimes due to the limited capacity. A knowledgeable core user (farmer) can choose to be silent or responsive, and is allowed to strategically determine the informativeness of her answers. The farmers face the minimum quantity restriction for attracting the buyers, and must make production before the time of sales. We show that in equilibrium the core user never provides answers that are more informative than the expert's, irrespective of her ex ante knowledge level. Redesigning or restructuring the platform does not help eliminate this inefficient knowledge provision. We also find that hiring more staff to frequently monitor the forum turns out to be detrimental for the peer‐to‐peer interactions. Moreover, the competition on knowledge sharing between the platform expert and the core user features strategic complementarity sometimes but strategic substitution at other times. Third, charging for the platform usage may discourage uninformative answers, but it could also discourage the core user from sharing knowledge with other farmers.     

透明度与市场效率——基于信息不对称的适应性学习研究

通过拓展Pouget模型,考察了当所有投资者采用适应性学习(有限理性)规则更新信念时,订单信息的透明度增加如何影响市场的价格发现效率和福利配置效率.结果表明,透明度增加后,市场效率大幅降低,价格发现和福利配置都难以收敛到理性预期均衡.进一步剖析投资者的策略选择可以发现,透明度增加后,拥有信息优势的知情者倾向于提交对自己更加有利的订单,而放弃均衡的交易策略;非知情者为了规避由此带来的逆向选择风险,也会放弃均衡策略而倾向于提交更加保守的订单,最终导致市场效率大幅下降.     

Banking credit worthiness: Evaluating the complex relationships

In developing economies agriculture and farming play crucial roles for economic sustainable development. Farmer credit risk evaluation is an important issue when determining financial support to farmers, improving agricultural supply chain performance, and ensuring profitability of financial institutions. Credit risk evaluation, or creditworthiness, is not a trivial exercise due to various complexities. Honoring complexity is necessary to effectively evaluate and predict farmer creditworthiness. A methodology using fuzzy rough-set theory and fuzzy C-means clustering is used to evaluate and investigate the complex relationships between farmer characteristics, competitive environmental factors, and farmer credit level. The methodology is detailed using actual bank data from 2044 farmers within China. This empirical methodology generates decision rules that provide insight to more complex relationships than can be found through standard econometric multivariate approaches. A rule-based methodological outcome can be used to predict the creditworthiness of farmers and to aid in agricultural loan decision making. Prediction accuracy of the rule-base was 81.16%. A central finding is that education and skills related characteristics are important for determining farmer credit-worthiness. Other implications are presented along with study limitations and future research directions.     

寡头发电商投资阈值与容量选择模型及其分析

发电容量投资不足或过剩都将带来巨大经济与社会损失.论文针对不确定需求下的电力市场,在分析了容量约束下的寡头发电商竞价策略基础上,运用实物期权和博弈论思想,构建了寡头发电投资阈值与容量选择模型,并通过数值仿真给出了投资商的投资阈值与最优投资容量,分析结果表明:1)随投资商数量的增加,投资阈值下降,但最优的投资容量也随之下降;若需求不确定性增大,投资阈值与最优容量则随之增大;2)就整个电力市场而言,在发电商数量比较少时,电力市场效率较低,但电力供给充裕;而在发电商数量较多时,市场效率较高,但电力供给却较为紧张.     

Differential Pricing for Information Sharing Under Competition

We consider a two‐echelon supply chain with a manufacturer supplying to multiple downstream retailers engaged in differentiated Cournot competition. Each retailer has private information about uncertain demand. The manufacturer is the Stackelberg leader who sets the contract terms with the retailers, and benefits from retailers sharing their private information. When all retailers are given the same wholesale price, truthful information sharing is not an equilibrium outcome. We propose two variants of differential pricing mechanisms that induce truthful information sharing by all retailers. The first variant rewards a retailer for providing optimistic information and achieves truthful information sharing as a unique equilibrium. The differential pricing mechanism is optimal in the class of linear‐price, incentive‐compatible, direct mechanisms. The second variant, which incorporates provision for a fixed payment in addition to wholesale prices, preserves all the equilibrium properties of the first variant and additionally “nearly coordinates” the supply chain. Our analysis of differential pricing with a fixed payment provides interesting observations regarding the relationship between product substitutability, number of retailers, information precision, and market power. As products become closer substitutes and/or number of retailers increase, the manufacturer's market power increases, enabling her to extract a larger fraction of the supply chain surplus.     

Farmers’ Risk‐Based Decision Making Under Pervasive Uncertainty: Cognitive Thresholds and Hazy Hedging

Researchers in judgment and decision making have long debunked the idea that we are economically rational optimizers. However, problematic assumptions of rationality remain common in studies of agricultural economics and climate change adaptation, especially those that involve quantitative models. Recent movement toward more complex agent‐based modeling provides an opportunity to reconsider the empirical basis for farmer decision making. Here, we reconceptualize farmer decision making from the ground up, using an in situ mental models approach to analyze weather and climate risk management. We assess how large‐scale commercial grain farmers in South Africa (n = 90) coordinate decisions about weather, climate variability, and climate change with those around other environmental, agronomic, economic, political, and personal risks that they manage every day. Contrary to common simplifying assumptions, we show that these farmers tend to satisfice rather than optimize as they face intractable and multifaceted uncertainty; they make imperfect use of limited information; they are differently averse to different risks; they make decisions on multiple time horizons; they are cautious in responding to changing conditions; and their diverse risk perceptions contribute to important differences in individual behaviors. We find that they use two important nonoptimizing strategies, which we call cognitive thresholds and hazy hedging, to make practical decisions under pervasive uncertainty. These strategies, evident in farmers' simultaneous use of conservation agriculture and livestock to manage weather risks, are the messy in situ performance of naturalistic decision‐making techniques. These results may inform continued research on such behavioral tendencies in narrower lab‐ and modeling‐based studies.     

Money in Search Equilibrium,in Competitive Equilibrium,and in Competitive Search Equilibrium

We compare three market structures for monetary economies: bargaining (search equilibrium); price taking (competitive equilibrium); and price posting (competitive search equilibrium). We also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry. We study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure. Under bargaining, trade and entry are both inefficient, and inflation implies first‐order welfare losses. Under price taking, the Friedman rule solves the first inefficiency but not the second, and inflation may actually improve welfare. Under posting, the Friedman rule yields the first best, and inflation implies second‐order welfare losses.     

JOB MARKET SIGNALING OF RELATIVE POSITION,OR BECKER MARRIED TO SPENCE

This paper considers a matching model of the labor market where workers, who have private information on their quality, signal to firms that also differ in quality. Signals allow assortative matching in which the highest‐quality workers send the highest signals and are hired by the best firms. Matching is considered both when wages are rigid (nontransferable utility) and when they are fully flexible (transferable utility). In both cases, equilibrium strategies and payoffs depend on the distributions of worker and firm types. This is in contrast to separating equilibria of the standard model, which do not respond to changes in supply or demand. With sticky wages, despite incomplete information, equilibrium investment in education by low‐ability workers can be inefficiently low, and this distortion can become worse in a more competitive environment. In contrast, with flexible wages, greater competition improves efficiency.     

政府奖惩下闭环供应链中需求预测信息分享研究

考虑政府奖惩机制,在制造商直接回收的闭环供应链中,当市场不确定且制造商和零售商都能预测需求时,为研究零售商的需求预测信息分享问题,本文构建一个Stackelberg博弈模型,分别求得零售商信息分享和不分享情形下的均衡结果,探讨了需求预测信息精度对供应链成员利润及信息分享价值的影响,并研究了供应链均衡的信息分享策略。研究发现,需求预测精度的提高在大多数情形下会使供应链成员都受益。当制造商回收效率较高时,自愿分享需求信息是一个均衡;当制造商回收效率较低时,信息不分享是一个均衡;当制造商回收效率处于中等水平时,通过设计一个讨价还价机制,可以促使信息分享是一个均衡。此外,政府奖惩力度也会影响均衡的信息分享策略。     

光滑暧昧模型下的不透明交易和管制措施研究

本文假定透明交易者对额外投资机会回报率的标准差(方差,投资风险)存在暧昧,这种认知暧昧性抑制了透明交易者的投资行为,会导致风险资产溢价过高及社会福利损失.透明交易者是暧昧厌恶的投资者,其投资决策依据光滑暧昧厌恶模型,需求函数呈现连续且光滑的特征.而不透明交易者,通过支付一定的信息获取成本获得私有信息而具有信息优势,他们是标准的风险厌恶的投资者.通过构建理性预期均衡,本文的研究发现:初始资产严格为正的透明交易者将获得严格为正的超额收益;提高信息获取成本将减少不透明交易者的比例,从而增加风险资产溢价,降低福利水平,因而不是一项好的管制措施;而旨在提高市场透明度降低交易者暧昧性的举措总有利于提高福利水平.     

基于创新导向的风险投资领域公共政策

风险投资对促进创新活动具有重要作用,然而风险投资的健康发展需要政府公共政策的干预。为此从公共政策、风险投资与创新三者之间的关系入手,从创新的需求和供给角度建立模型,分别研究了创新产品市场和风险投资市场,并运用均衡分析方法研究了整个市场的均衡状态,根据社会效用最大化目标,分析政府最优公共政策组合及其对社会福利的影响。因此,这种最优政策工具组合可供政府制定相关政策时参考。