Fish-Products Consumption Economics in North-West of Iran
In natural resource economics, we sometimes observe a situation in which producers and consumers have direct access to the factors of production or can use some consumable products with little or no transformation. These goods are commonly referred to as “gifts of nature”. A factor of production is considered a gift of nature when little effort is required to make it usable; thus one would expect the appearance of under-pricing, over-utilization and/or over-consumption. Fish products, the results of fish culture, to some extent have such characteristics in Iran, where it is the output of a joint production process. In this country, fish is being produced using our excess capacity in water resources, with some more organic residuals where these are used in the other joint enterprises of farming or horticulture. Moreover, fish products have many recognized biological and physiological advantages; thus scientists view them as good sources of protein for human consumption. Iran is in relative deficit of this type of nutritious, high-protein product. But unfortunately, some available estimates suggest that the Iranian consumer’s inclination toward the consumption of fish products is not very promising. To develop a workable policy design to help policy makers to persuade Iranian consumers to purchase fish, a field research project was planned and executed in Northwest Iran. Almost 500 fish consumers were interviewed; the data gathered on the economic aspects of fish-consumption model in this region are analyzed in this paper. It is revealed that the rate of consumption here is lower than both the average national level and the average global level. This norm of consumption is correlated to some sociocultural-behavioral-economic factors. Policy-makers could make use of this model to persuade consumers to make better use of this “gift of nature” within the target group.
Fish-Culture Production Economics in North-West of Iran
Whatever the quantity and the rate of water utilization is, economic principles indicate that there will always be other water utilization methods which might increase the efficiency of the use of this resource. Due to the geo-climatic position of Iran, this country finds itself in a water deficit situation as compared to per capita use rates observed in the rest of the world. The scarcity of water has always been a serious, at times disastrous, problem in Iran, and this problem will likely get worse in the future. Thus, the most rational possible water resource utilization will be a permanent preoccupation of the nation, and therefore the government. One still less examined method of rationalizing water utilization in Iran is the multidimensional utilization of water, where fish culture takes place jointly with other previously adopted agricultural enterprises. The main question considered in this article is that of water productivity, ie. how economically do we use water in fish culture activities? The results of statistical analyses of our field research, based on questionnaire completion of a significant sample of fish-farming enterprises, reveal the fact that Iran could still improve water utilization productivity rates in these enterprises. However, wide variation in water productivity is observed. On the base of some better-operated enterprises extension proposals and policy recommendations could be made.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.