Modern industrial farming technologies for growing fruits, vegetables and grains have changed substantially in recent decades. In many locations such as Arizona, these industries are highly energy and water-intensive operations. As such, the sustainability of these operations is called into question. The economic, social and climate implications of energy use in agriculture are worth further discussion. Based on the idea of a sustainable energy budget, the production processes of various foods are analyzed which prove to be very energy inefficient. Various primary and secondary sources are used to evaluate a series of industrial production methods to produce food. The conclusions are presented in a series of calculations based on the direct fossil fuel inputs used in production. Fossil fuel based industrial agriculture raises numerous issues requiring more advanced analysis. The environmental, ecological and social justice issues of modern industrial agriculture require a reassessment form myriad perspectives: farm subsidies, consumer demand and preferences, engineering technologies and water policy.

Keywords: food and energy, food and water, agricultural inputs, food production. May 2009

09-09 July 2009

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The new president is proposing a new tax on carbon to be offset by an income tax credit of up to 80% of the incoming revenues from the government’s sale of the carbon credits. This type of dual program results in a very convoluted analysis from the consumer’s perspective and therefore distorts the policy implementation aspects of the program. The actual outcome of the policy is the opposite of the proposed political claim. From both a simple supply and demand analysis and a more advanced indifference curve assessment, the amount of income paid by the consumers for gasoline actually increases as the price increases to now buy the more limited gasoline. The policy, due to the limited number of available permits, does achieve the policy goal of reducing carbon emissions attributable to gasoline consumption. However, instead of protecting low income consumers, the gasoline producers are being provided with a wealth transfer!

JEL Codes: A22, D12

Keywords: carbon emissions, carbon permits, carbon and tax credits, Obama carbon policy

09-08 July 2009

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This paper describes how the authors created an on-line leadership course that retained as much of the rich, interactive nature of the face-to-face version as possible. The seven “best practice” design criteria offered by Chickering and Reisser (1993) are discussed as they relate to specific course design and instructional requirements for instructor orientation, course management organization and tool use, community building as well as the development of thematic modules and their associated assignments. Student comments provided by a case study of the on-line course (Griffin, 2007) are provided that support the efficacy of this approach.

09-07 May 2009

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A common approach to market segmentation based on visitor expenditures is to use the least-squares regression analysis to determine statistically significant variables upon which key market segments are identified for marketing purposes. This was done by Wang (2004) for survey data based on expenditures by Mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong. We use this same dataset to demonstrate the benefits of using the quantile regression analysis approach to better identify tourist spending patterns and market segments. The quantile regression measures tourist spending in different categories against a fixed range of dependent variable, which distinguished between lower, medium, and higher spenders. The results show that quantile regression is less susceptible to influence by outlier values and is better able to target finer tourist spending market segments.

Keywords: quantile regression, least-squared regression, Hong Kong, tourist expenditures

09-06 April 2009

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In an age where responsible organizations are going beyond regulatory compliance to instituting specific ethics plans, this model will help prepare students to recognize and evaluate issues related to social responsibility values. Business ethics often is taught through philosophy courses with potential reference to those courses or to industry codes in compartmentalized subject-specific case studies. This article proposes a decision-making model for use in business curriculum that focuses on making ethics decisions from a life-skill perspective. The step-by-step COVER model asks students to perform an analysis of facts, and to identify ethical issues, affected stakeholders and creative alternatives. It incorporates a number of different philosophical theories, encouraging students to look at each situation from a variety of perspectives and to recognize that different theories may point them to different alternatives. Students are led to evaluate the situation under all the theories incorporated, and justify their decision to take action.

09-05 March 2009

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