We explore the changes in central government administration due to European Union (EU) membership and its consequences for policy outcomes and economic efficiency in Finland and Sweden. Both countries became members of the EU in 1995. Upon joining the union, member states are expected to adopt common legislation and are encouraged to develop similar rule-making procedures. The actual implementation of EU directives varies considerably between member states, however. This is also the case for Finland and Sweden. Despite the two Nordic countries for historical reasons having had similar government systems, upon becoming members of the EU, they started to diverge. Using a model of delegation and comparing the more centralized Finnish system with the decentralized institutional setup in Sweden, we show that the Swedish approach leads to a stricter than optimal environmental policy, which in turn makes EU policy non-optimal from a global point of view, ceteris paribus. We also provide empirical support for our findings in the form of some example cases. We focus on environmental policy since this is an area that has been high on the EU agenda.

When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess.

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of research on tolerance-induced costs in Germany. Through a literature research already existing approaches for the determination of costs related to tolerances during the specification of technical components are pointed out and possible approaches for the reduction of these costs are presented. In addition, the actuality of these approaches will be considered. One question that is supposed to be answered here is to what state of standard for the specification of components these approaches can be assigned to. On the other hand, it should be clarified whether the existing approaches are applicable to the currently valid standard system of the Geometrical Product Specification (GPS).

Can the economic efficiency of the specifications selected for tolerancing be determined in a technical drawing during the product development process in accordance with GPS on the basis of the current state of research?

The Great Plains is the most important wheat producing region in the United States. Dwindling returns and changes in government farm programs have reduced wheat acreage, raising concerns over its future viability. Small farms and marginal areas are particularly vulnerable, including the western Great Plains (WGP). To assess the technical and economic viability of wheat farms, the efficiency of 141 wheat farms in the WGP was estimated. Results found substantial inefficiency among all producer types. The largest source of inefficiency was input use among smaller farms. The smaller farms were the most scale efficient, reducing concerns over their future viability.

This paper summarises the evidence from recent research relating to the British Planning system's impact on the supply of development. Planning serves important economic and social purposes but it is essential to distinguish between restricting development relative to demand in particular places to provide public goods and mitigate market failure in other ways, including ensuring the future ability of cities to expand and maintain a supply of public goods and infrastructure; and an absolute restriction on supply, raising prices of housing and other urban development generally. Evidence is presented that there are at least four separate mechanisms, inbuilt into the British system, which result in a systematic undersupply of land and space for both residential and commercial purposes and that these have had important effects on both our housing market and the wider economy and on welfare more widely defined.

The growth rate of poultry meat production is not sufficient to satisfy the per capita meat requirement in Bangladesh. Therefore ways to improve the efficiency of the existing production technologies must be investigated if these demands are to be met. This review examines ways this could be achieved. The technical, allocative and economic efficiency of poultry meat production based on farm level survey data was estimated using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. The study used 100 commercial poultry farms in Bangladesh for the calendar year of 2007. The results demonstrated that there is substantial technical, allocative and economic inefficiency in poultry production in Bangladesh. Under the constant return to scale (CRS) specification, technical, allocative and economic efficiencies were 88, 70 and 72% respectively, whereas under the variable returns to scale (VRS) specification those efficiencies were 89, 73, 66% respectively. Thus, the results indicate that efficiencies varied substantially across the sample farms. In order to attempt to explain some of these variations, the efficiency scores were regressed based on farm specific variables such as the farmer's age, education, experience, total landholdings, poultry farm size and level of training using a Tobit regression framework. The estimated DEA model identified that there is great potential for increasing poultry farm efficiency using the existing level of inputs and resources more efficiently. Specifically it showed that the level of education and training the farmer receives are two of the most important factors contributing to the variations in efficiency seen during this study. These research findings are valuable to policy makers and extension workers in order to guide policies towards increasing efficiency.

Draft animal power (DAP) has been identified as an environmentally friendly technology that is based on renewable energy and encompasses integration of livestock and crop production systems. Draft animal technology provides farmers with a possibility to cheaply access and use manure from the draft animals and farm power needed to apply renewable practices for land intensification. Compared to motorized mechanization, DAP is viewed as an appropriate and affordable technology especially for small-scale farmers in developing countries who cannot afford the expensive fuel-powered tractor mechanization. However, it is apparent that there is no consensus among researchers on how it affects crop yields, profit and production efficiency when applied in farm operations. This study addressed the question of whether using DAP increases economic efficiency of smallholder maize producers in central Kenya. Results of the study are derived from a sample of 80 farmers, 57% of whom used draft animals while 43% used hand hoes in carrying farm operations. In the study area, draft animals are almost exclusively used for land preparation and planting, with very few farmers applying them in the consecutive operations such as weeding. A profit function was estimated to test the hypothesis of equal economic efficiency between ‘DAP’ and ‘hoe’ farms. The results showed that farmers who used DAP obtained higher yields and operated at a higher economic efficiency compared to those who used hand hoes. The analysis underscores the viability of DAP in increasing profitability of small-scale farms; however, other aspects of the technology, such as affordability of the whole DAP package, availability of appropriate implements and skills of using the technology, must be taken into account when promoting adoption of DAP technology.

Objectives: The overall objective of this article was to review the theoretical and conceptual dimensions of how the implementation of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) is likely to affect treatment costs.

Methods: An important limitation of the extant literature on the cost effects of CPGs is that the main focus has been on clinical adaptation. We submit that the process innovation aspects of CPGs require changes in both clinical and organizational dimensions. We identify five organizational factors that are likely to affect the relationship between CPGs and total treatment costs: implementation, coordination, learning, human resources, and information. We review the literature supporting each of these factors.

Results: The net organizational effects of CPGs on costs depends on whether the cost-reducing properties of coordination, learning, and human resource management offset potential cost increases due to implementation and information management.

Conclusions: Studies of the cost effects of clinical practice guidelines should attempt to measure, to the extent possible, the effects of each of these clinical and organizational factors.

Seasonal growth of juvenile oysters (Crassostrea gigas) kept in an intensive upwelling system was studied from 1984 to 1986 in 60 to 90-day growth experiments. Saline ground water was used to produce Skeletonema costatum which was injected as food into the water supplying the upwelling system. Oyster density, water flow, phytoplankton concentration, temperature and frequency of food addition were controlled. Oyster growth was analysed with multidimensional contingency tables and correspondence analysis. The factors, in order of decreasing influence on growth, were temperature, food concentration and oyster density. A rearing strategy was deduced from the growth analysis for summer and winter. In summer, the density of 120,000 oysters/m2, the flow rate of 1 liter/d/oyster and the food concentration of 0.5 × 109 phytoplankton cells/litre gave the most interesting results. The oysters grew from 0.014 g to 2.2 g after 60 days. In winter, the heat exchanger was necessary to increase the temperature from the 5 °C naturally observed to the 11 °C required for valuable growth. Oyster density and food concentration were the same as in summer. For a flow rate equal to 3 liter/day/oyster, oysters grew from 0.01 g to 0.5 g within 100 days. The cost and profit computations were derived from these strategies. It was concluded that this type of nursery would be profitable in spring, summer, and autumn but not in winter due to the high cost of heating the water.