Academic literature on the topic 'Expected price'

ABSTRACT We examine how strategic trade affects expected returns in a large economy. In our model, both a monopolist (strategic) informed trader and uninformed traders consider the impact of their demands on prices. In contrast to settings with price-taking traders, private information never eliminates a priced risk, and can lead to higher risk premiums. Also unlike settings with price-taking informed traders, risk premiums decrease in response to an increase in liquidity-motivated trades in diversified portfolios. These differing effects arise because a privately informed strategic trader conceals her trades by taking small positions relative to the magnitude of noise trades. Although prices partially reveal her information and reduce uncertainty, a concomitant decrease in her risk absorption dominates and leads to higher risk premiums. Similar to settings with price-taking traders, private information affects expected returns only via factor loadings and risk premiums on existing payoff risks—it introduces no new priced risks, and factor loadings (betas) explain all cross-sectional differences in expected returns.

Investors' subjective capital gains expectations are a key element explaining stock price fluctuations. Survey measures of these expectations display excessive optimism (pessimism) at market peaks (troughs). We formally reject the hypothesis that this is compatible with rational expectations. We then incorporate subjective price beliefs with such properties into a standard asset-pricing model with rational agents (internal rationality). The model gives rise to boom-bust cycles that temporarily delink stock prices from fundamentals and quantitatively replicates many asset-pricing moments. In particular, it matches the observed strong positive correlation between the price dividend ratio and survey return expectations, which cannot be matched by rational expectations. (JEL D83, D84, G12, G14)

The authors report results from a controlled experiment designed to investigate the impact of a brand's price promotion frequency and the depth of promotional price discounts on the price consumers expect to pay for that brand. A key feature of the work is that expected prices elicited directly from respondents in the experiment are used in the analysis, as opposed to the latent or surrogate measures of expected prices used in previous studies. As hypothesized, both the promotion frequency and the depth of price discounts are found to have a significant impact on price expectations. Evidence also supports a region of relative price insensitivity around the expected price, such that only price changes outside that region have a significant impact on consumer brand choice. Further, the authors find that consumer expectations of both price and promotional activities should be considered in explaining consumer brand choice behavior. Specifically, the presence of a promotional deal when one is not expected or the absence of a promotional deal when one is expected may have a significant impact on consumer brand choice. Finally, as in the case of price expectations, consumer response to promotion expectations is found to be asymmetric in that losses loom larger than gains.

In this paper I examine the absolute and relative price efficiency of NBA options listed on Tradesports.com. I find that contracts within specific price bands are misvalued, but also demonstrate that this market is more efficient than is the market for NFL options. Specifically, I show that contracts priced around $25 win (expire at $100) at a rate less than expected, while those priced around $75 win at a rate greater than expected. The magnitudes of these deviations between prices and fundamental values are less than those in the NFL market. Also, while prior theoretical work predicts that low-priced contracts should be overpriced, I instead find that NBA contracts priced near $2.50 win more frequently than expected.I thank Rob Dougherty and Brijesh Patel for assistance with the NBA event data, and Leighton Vaughan Williams for meaningful suggestions throughout. Any errors are strictly my own.

Short-tem inflationary pressures have risen on a global scale in recent months and, given the source of the impulse is commodity markets, this dampens the prospects for growth in 2011 in most countries. Global food prices have been under pressure since July 2010, reflecting poor harvests in many parts of the world. Metals prices have also risen rapidly, while non-food agricultural price inflation accelerated towards the end of the year. We expect average food and other agricultural prices in 2011 to be more than 25 per cent higher than they were in 2010, while metals prices are expected to be more than 30 per cent above last year's average level, as shown in figure 1. The price of oil exhibited moderate inflation through September 2010, but rose sharply in the final quarter of the year. The rise in the price of oil may be a reflection of demand pressures from countries such as China and India, as well as the recovery in demand from advanced economies, while the weakness of the US dollar and an expected tightening of regulation following recent oil spills may also be adding to price pressures. The price of Brent crude currently stands at over $98 per barrel, roughly $19 per barrel higher than was priced into futures markets three months ago. Barrell, Delannoy and Holland discuss the macroeconomic implications of the recent rise in the oil price elsewhere in this Review. If sustained we expect this to reduce growth in the OECD by about ½ per cent this year. The impact on oil-intensive emerging economies such as China and India may be slightly greater, while oil exporters gain from the high price.

We consider fixed and asking price strategies in the context of selling an asset with Bernoullian updating of the seller’s subjective probability of sale at a given price. The determination of optimal fixed, asking and endogenous reservation prices is discussed under risk-neutrality and expected utility maximisation. With risk-neutrality, the optimal asking price exceeds the optimal fixed price when the expected gain is a strictly concave function. The seller’s choice between the fixed and the asking price strategies depends on several factors: the expected cost of haggling, price competition and the seller’s attitude towards risk.

This paper shows that consumers respond to prices for complex healthcare when they can easily assess out-of-pocket prices. Healthcare cost containment efforts increasingly incentivize price shopping despite a dearth of evidence that this steers consumers toward lower-priced care for major medical services. I show that consumers shift toward lower-priced hospitals in the highly simplified price information environment of insurance plans with tiered hospital networks. Consumers observe a single predictable, well-defined price that applies to a broad range of services within each of at most three hospital tiers. Within three years, expected partial-equilibrium savings reach 8–17 percent of baseline spending. (JEL G22, H75, I11, I13)

Expected prices and expected net returns from cropping activities are used to estimate soybean acreage response in the Northeast. Futures prices and lagged cash prices constitute proxies for price expectations. Expected net returns appear as good or better than expected prices for estimating acreage response. Short-run and long-run elasticities of soybean acreage with respect to expected net returns from soybeans are estimated as 0.5 and 1.6 for the northeast region. Soybean acreage appears less responsive to changes in expected net returns than to expected changes in prices.

This study examines how pioneer and follower pricing strategies affect the formation and evolution of reference price perceptions in new product categories. It contributes to our understanding of pricing new products by integrating two important research streams in the field of marketing - reference price theory and the theory of pioneer brand advantage. This is the first research to address reference price effects for radically new product categories. Prior research has focused solely on products in existing categories, typically in fast moving consumer goods categories. Using three experiments to causally establish the consequences of pioneer and follower pricing strategies on consumer perceptions, three critical research issues are addressed for the first time, consistent with calls for research in the literature: 1. Which reference price do consumers utilise in new product categories? 2. What is the role of consumer confidence in reference price for new product categories? 3. How do reference price perceptions form and evolve as a result of pioneer and follower pricing strategy? In the literature, a frequently cited issue is the fragmented operationalisation of reference price perceptions. With little theory to guide researchers in terms of which measures should be used, experiment 1 provides new theory, finding as hypothesised, that fair price perceptions as opposed to expected price perceptions are more likely to be evoked by consumers for new product categories. Experiment 1 also finds that using consumers' confidence in their reference price beliefs as an additional explanatory variable, does not improve over current reference price models. Overconfidence, a robust consumer behavioural phenomenon (Alba and Hutchinson 2000), might explain this result. Prior research has made several contributions to understanding reference price perceptions in established product categories. However, not much is known about how these reference price perceptions initially form and evolve. Experiments 2 and 3 address this gap by simulating an emerging market and examining the role of pioneership in shaping reference price perceptions. Experiment 2 found the pioneer, due to its perceptual prominence, is able to define the reference price and subsequently define perceptions of value. That is, the value consumers place on a product and their intentions to purchase the product are about the same whether the pioneer follows a penetration (initial low price) or skimming (initial high price) strategy. Experiment 3 extends experiment 2 by examining what happens in the emerging market when a follower brand enters. The follower enters at a large or small discount to the pioneer, and the pioneer completes its penetration or skimming strategy, converging to a 'regular' price. As predicted, the pioneer's initial price frames subsequent price and value perceptions, signifying the importance of the pioneer as a referent brand. Lower initial prices erode value perceptions, whereas higher initial prices substantiate value perceptions. The follower's pricing strategy does not have as much influence as the pioneer's pricing strategy. Other findings from experiment 3 related to reference price theory in general. Specifically, there was strong evidence of an averaging process when forming reference prices. This adds theory to the measurement debate about operationalising reference price as some past price such as last price paid or some average of past prices. Experiment 3 also provides a further measurement contribution by supporting the use of brand specific measures of reference price, rather than category based measures. More generally, because of the causal research design, this thesis provides strong evidence of the use of reference prices in consumer decision making: a key concern emphasised by one of the area's seminal articles (i.e., Kalyanaram and Winer 1995), which stresses the need to provide evidence that consumers actually use reference prices, and not just act as if they do.

This study examines how pioneer and follower pricing strategies affect the formation and evolution of reference price perceptions in new product categories. It contributes to our understanding of pricing new products by integrating two important research streams in the field of marketing - reference price theory and the theory of pioneer brand advantage. This is the first research to address reference price effects for radically new product categories. Prior research has focused solely on products in existing categories, typically in fast moving consumer goods categories. Using three experiments to causally establish the consequences of pioneer and follower pricing strategies on consumer perceptions, three critical research issues are addressed for the first time, consistent with calls for research in the literature: 1. Which reference price do consumers utilise in new product categories? 2. What is the role of consumer confidence in reference price for new product categories? 3. How do reference price perceptions form and evolve as a result of pioneer and follower pricing strategy? In the literature, a frequently cited issue is the fragmented operationalisation of reference price perceptions. With little theory to guide researchers in terms of which measures should be used, experiment 1 provides new theory, finding as hypothesised, that fair price perceptions as opposed to expected price perceptions are more likely to be evoked by consumers for new product categories. Experiment 1 also finds that using consumers' confidence in their reference price beliefs as an additional explanatory variable, does not improve over current reference price models. Overconfidence, a robust consumer behavioural phenomenon (Alba and Hutchinson 2000), might explain this result. Prior research has made several contributions to understanding reference price perceptions in established product categories. However, not much is known about how these reference price perceptions initially form and evolve. Experiments 2 and 3 address this gap by simulating an emerging market and examining the role of pioneership in shaping reference price perceptions. Experiment 2 found the pioneer, due to its perceptual prominence, is able to define the reference price and subsequently define perceptions of value. That is, the value consumers place on a product and their intentions to purchase the product are about the same whether the pioneer follows a penetration (initial low price) or skimming (initial high price) strategy. Experiment 3 extends experiment 2 by examining what happens in the emerging market when a follower brand enters. The follower enters at a large or small discount to the pioneer, and the pioneer completes its penetration or skimming strategy, converging to a 'regular' price. As predicted, the pioneer's initial price frames subsequent price and value perceptions, signifying the importance of the pioneer as a referent brand. Lower initial prices erode value perceptions, whereas higher initial prices substantiate value perceptions. The follower's pricing strategy does not have as much influence as the pioneer's pricing strategy. Other findings from experiment 3 related to reference price theory in general. Specifically, there was strong evidence of an averaging process when forming reference prices. This adds theory to the measurement debate about operationalising reference price as some past price such as last price paid or some average of past prices. Experiment 3 also provides a further measurement contribution by supporting the use of brand specific measures of reference price, rather than category based measures. More generally, because of the causal research design, this thesis provides strong evidence of the use of reference prices in consumer decision making: a key concern emphasised by one of the area's seminal articles (i.e., Kalyanaram and Winer 1995), which stresses the need to provide evidence that consumers actually use reference prices, and not just act as if they do.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith Business School
Griffith Business School
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This thesis explores the possibility of estimating the outcome of a flight ticket fare comparison search, also called flight meta search, before it has been performed, as being able to do thiscould be highly useful in improving the flight meta search technology used today. The algorithm explored in this thesis is a distance weighted k-nearest neighbour, where the distance metric is a linear equation with sixteen features of first degree extracted from the input of the search. It is found that while the approach may have potential, the distance metric used in this thesis isnot sufficient to capture the similarities needed, and the end algorithm performs only slightly better than random. At the end of this thesis a series of possible further improvements are presented, that could potentially help improve the performance of the algorithm to a level that would be more useful.

The rapid integration of intermittent renewable energy sources (IRES) has caused a growing demand for power system flexibility on energy markets all over Europe. Being the only commercially proven large scale energy storage technology, pumped storage hydro power (PSHP) has by several studies been suggested as an efficient solution to miti­gate the impact of IRES. However, despite the perceived technical demand profit­ability remains as a major obstacle for PSHP development. In this study, a market requirement for PSHP profitability, defined in terms of price volatility, is pre­sented. Considering capital and operational expenditures as well as modelled potential price arbitrage revenues for a greenfield PSHP plant, it may be used as a tool for initial assessments of PSHP profitability in relation to market outlooks or modelled future prices. The results have further been used in a case study, where the price volatility required to motivate a restora­tion of the now decommissioned Swedish PSHP plant Juktan has been determined. The results show that the high capital expenditures characterising PSHP development do comprise in a high risk for developers; while feasibility depends on the sustainment of a highly volatile price climate during several decades, energy markets are often extremely uncertain.

Financial analysts produce investment reports containing two outputs: one recommendation and one target price. This study compared and contrasted the investment value of the two by employing recognised decision making theories. For this purpose 89.814 analyst reports, or 4.956 consensus reports, based on US data (S&P 500) was employed to form recommendation and target price portfolios with a holding period of 1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 months. The findings indicated a negative relationship between the two variables. Seeking to make profits, it therefore seems as if an investor should buy stocks with the most favourable recommendations but, surprisingly, also stocks with the least optimistic target prices. The explanation for the anomaly was primarily sought in the compatibility principle, preference reversals, configural weight theory or temporal distance theory and possibly in the analysts’ evasion of regret and protection of their reputation and employment.

In this paper dependence between credit default swap (CDS) values and stock price movements of the largest European banking groups is examined and effectiveness of the usage of CDS contracts as a tool to hedge exposure to the price movements of the underlying stock during the pre-crisis and crisis periods is assessed. The effectiveness is evaluated by comparing estimated Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) risk measures of portfolios consisting of stocks and CDS vis-à-vis portfolios consisting of only stocks. CDS are valued using mark-to-market approach. Marginal distributions of CDS value changes and stock returns are estimated using Kernel density estimate from historical time-series data of daily stock returns and CDS value changes. Dependence between marginal distributions is estimated using Gaussian, Gumbel and Student‟s t copulas. Random portfolio values are simulated using Monte Carlo Simulation from estimated copulas parameters and marginal distributions for daily, quarterly and yearly time horizons. VaR and ES with 90%, 95% and 99% confidence level are estimated from the simulated portfolio return distribution. The results show that there is a significant negative dependence between CDS values and stock prices during financial crisis while dependence is weak in the pre-crisis period. The main finding of the paper is that CDS added into the portfolio of stocks significantly reduces VaR and ES of a portfolio during the period of financial crisis while they... [to full text]
Šiame darbe tikrinama didţiausių Europos bankų grupių kredito rizikos apsikeitimo sandorių (CDS) ir akcijų kainų priklausomybė bei vertinamas CDS efektyvumas, jei jais draudţiamasi nuo akcijų kainų svyravimų prieš kriziniu ir kriziniu laikotarpiu. Efektyvumas yra įvertinamas lyginant apskaičiuotas rizikos vertes (VaR) ir tikėtinus vertės trūkumus (ES) dviejų portfelių: akcijų portfelio bei akcijų ir CDS portfelio. CDS vertinti yra naudojamas pagal rinką vertinimo būdas (mark-to-market approach). CDS verčių pasikeitimo ir akcijų grąţos ribiniai pasiskirstymai yra įvertinami, naudojant Kernel įvertinimą (Kernel Estimator) iš istorinių akcijų grąţų ir CDS verčių pokyčių duomenų. Priklausomybė tarp ribinių pasiskirstymų yra įvertinama naudojant Gauso, Gumbelio ir Studento t kopulas (copulas). Atsitiktinės portfelių vertės yra susimuliuojamos naudojant Monte Carlo simuliaciją, pritaikant kopulų parametrus bei kintamųjų ribinius pasiskirstymus vienos dienos, ketvirčio bei metų periodams. VaR ir ES su 90%, 95% ir 99% pasitikėjimo intervalais yra skaičiuojami iš susimuliuotų portfelio grąţų pasiskirstymo. Gauti rezultatai rodo, kad tarp akcijų kainų ir CDS verčių yra stipri priklausomybė krizės laikotarpiu, tuo tarpu prieš kriziniu laikotarpiu priklausomybė yra silpna. Pagrindinė darbo išvada yra ta, jog CDS įtraukti į akcijų portfelį reikšmingai sumaţina portfelio VaR ir ES kriziniu laikotarpiu, tačiau nesumaţina prieš kriziniu laikotarpiu. Portfelio rizika gali būti sumaţinta, jei... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

The aim of this master thesis is primarily to develop a methodological framework for a contracting authority receiving an abnormally low bid. The theoretical part of the thesis outlines the basic terms and definitions, analyzes a public tender from the perspective of a contracting authority and defines an extremely low bid price. The practical part of the thesis applies the methodological framework for dealing with an extremely low bid price on the case study, where on the set of selected areas of mechanical items indicates possible views above the limit costs of individual items costing unit prices of construction work.

AbstractSmallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa produce much of the food consumed across the continent, yet with expected population growth, they will need to double production by 2050. Smallholders could significantly intensify production with the adoption of modern agricultural technologies, but many farmers are unable to find buyers willing to purchase their outputs at profitable prices. Meanwhile, buyers and traders have demand for agricultural goods but face high costs in finding farmers who can consistently supply goods with certified quality. Similarly, there is a lack of investment in food processing infrastructure because processors cannot reliably obtain produce as inputs to operations. These market failures typically manifest in the form of two development challenges: (1) there is a misalignment in the supply of and demand for the agricultural goods produced by smallholder farmers, and (2) smallholder farmers are often at a price disadvantage when it comes to knowledge of prices of their commodities. This case study measures the effect of introducing digital trading and market platforms (including price alerts, mobile phone-based trading platforms, and commodity exchanges) in Ghana, through a series of randomized control trials and quasi-experimental studies. Technologies like mobile price alerts (from Esoko) and a mobile phone-based trading platform (Kudu) are found to increase yam prices by 5%, with benefits for smallholder farmers. This increase declines over time, but there are net benefits for farmers as a result of “bargaining spillover.” The potential impacts of a new commodity exchange in Ghana are also discussed, exploring how this technology can influence the decisions of smallholder farmers, incentivizing them to produce higher-quality products.

AbstractThis chapter is the core theoretical chapter on predictive modeling, forecast evaluation and model selection. The main problem in actuarial modeling is to forecast and price future claims. For this, we build predictive models, and this chapter deals with assessing and ranking these predictive models. We therefore introduce the mean squared error of prediction (MSEP) and, more generally, the expected generalization loss (GL) to assess predictive models. This chapter is complemented by a more decision-theoretic approach to forecast evaluation, it discusses deviance losses, proper scoring, elicitability, forecast dominance, cross-validation, Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and we give an introduction to the bootstrap simulation method.

Value assessment is becoming more prominent in the United States, but challenges remain. First, should assessments include only impacts pertinent to payers or take a broader, “societal” perspective? Second, should quality adjusted life years (QALYs) be used to measure benefits? Critics complain that QALYs discriminate against people with health conditions and fail to capture aspects of health. Third, should assessments account for drug price reductions anticipated to accompany patent expirations? Prices do not always follow the expected pattern, but assuming they will not can lead to an overstatement of a drug’s true long-term cost. Fourth, how should data gaps be addressed? Outcome-based risk sharing agreements let payers and drug companies amend pricing decisions as additional data become available. Finally, who should conduct value assessments? Government agencies do so in many other countries, but that seems unlikely in the United States. For now, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a private organization, has stepped into this role.

This chapter investigates the relationship between stock pricing and behaviour of the stock market on one hand and micro and macroeconomic fundamentals in the Nigerian economy on the other from 1980-2009 using both primary and secondary data. Results from the primary survey indicate that the key drivers of share prices were neither broad macroeconomic indicators nor key indicators of the health of the firm. Prices were clearly shown to be much above levels that could have been determined by such indicators as posted profits of firms, amounts paid out as dividend and its regularity. Secondary data analysis equally show that the relationship between actual levels of the all share price index for the period of our analysis and during the financial crisis were not driven by “expected” variables. While its fundamental values are driven by monetary and relative price variables, actual values are driven by external sector variables and prices.

Abstract The chapter shows how forward/futures contracts can be used to manage risk by locking in future prices. The relation between forward/futures prices and expected future spot prices can be described by expectations, backwardation, or contango. Unlike forward contracts, futures contracts are not tailor-made and expose the hedger to basis risk. Cross-hedging is used when the asset underlying the futures contract differs from the asset whose price is being hedged, and entails estimating a hedge ratio to optimize the hedge. Rolling short-term contracts are used when long-term contracts are unavailable.

Rising oil prices, steel prices - as well as the stronger dollar certainly impacted the financial markets during the latter part of May 2016. So also, the expected announcement of higher interest rates in June 2016 by the Federal Reserve. As well as illustrating the impact of financial shocks for emerging economies, this chapter also illustrates the impact of financial shocks for smaller – as well as more advanced economies. Having highlighted through the entire volume, the macroeconomic consequences of the changes and fluctuations of commodity prices – as reflected through the recent global financial market volatilities. This chapter will also focus on the main channels through which commodities price fluctuations affect business cycles in EMEs.

Engineering optimization methods for new product development model consumer demand as a function of product attributes and price in order to identify designs that maximize expected profit. However, prior approaches have ignored the ability of competitors to react to a new product entrant; thus these methods can overestimate expected profit and select suboptimal designs that perform poorly in a competitive market. We propose an efficient approach to new product design accounting for competitor pricing reactions by imposing Nash and Stackelberg conditions as constraints, and we test the method on three product design case studies from the marketing and engineering design literature. We find that a Stackelberg leader strategy generates higher profit than a Nash strategy. Both strategies are superior to ignoring competitor reactions: In our case studies, ignoring price competition results in overestimation of profits by 12%–79%, and accounting for price competition increases realized profits by up to 3.4%. The efficiency, convergence stability, and ease of implementation of the proposed approach enables practical implementation for new product design problems in competitive markets.

Abstract Frequent rod failures still occur in Progressive Cavity Pumped (PCP) wells with high dog-leg severities although they are fitted with adequate rod centralization. This results in well downtime and production deferrals. Offshore workovers are expensive and significantly affect operating cost (OPEX) of the operator. This study sought to evaluate the potential benefits of Electrica l Submersible Progressive Cavity Pumps (ESPCP) as an economic alternative for highly deviated wells in the offshore field in Trinidad. In this theoretical study, a screening criterion was established and four (4) candidates, all produced by surface driven PCPs, were selected. Models of ESPCP systems were developed using industry standard Progressive Cavity Pump software, parameters from the original PCP models as well as actual field well tests and production data. An economic evaluation, which integrated oil price and production rate sensitivities, was conducted using field data, including field reservoir characteristics and past well performance. The ESPCP model results suggest a cumulative increase of 567 BOPD is expected for all four wells. Using an oil price of US $45 per barrel, the analysis was conducted on all wells targeted for ESPCP conversion. Assuming a P50 oil rate, sensitivities were run to establish the minimum oil price for the project to be economically feasible. The operator's project economic success criteria were :(1) pay-out period of <2 years and (2) NPV of > US $0.15 Million considering a ten (10) year project. An integrated sensitivity analysis was performed for the entire project with varying expected production increases and fluctuating global oil prices. The simulations identified that the project will be uneconomic at a global oil price of US $20/bbl. Assuming a project life of 10 years and based on the expected production increase, the project is massively profitable, yielding an expected NPV of US $9.3 Million at US $45 per barrel with expected pay-out times between 0.63-1.8 years with investment of US $4 Million. Additional benefits anticipated include, increased well uptime and the corresponding reduction in workover costs. Another opportunity that results from the conversion to ESPCP, is the possibility of lowering the pump in the wellbore, thereby increasing the well producing life and increasing the recoverable reserves. Installation of ESPCPs, in theory, can be an economic success in an area where surface driven PCP experiences repetitive rod failures, leading to production deferrals and workover. Additionally, lowering the pump in the wellbore may be possible, thereby increasing the well producing life and increasing recoverable reserves which would not have been possible using traditional artificial lift methods.

The levelized costs of delivered energy from the leading technologies for grid-scale energy storage are calculated using a model that considers likely number of cycles per year, application-specific expected lifetime, discount rate, duty cycle, and likely trends in the markets. The expected capital costs of the various options evaluated — pumped hydrostorage, underground pumped hydrostorage (UPHS), hydrogen fuel cells, carbon-lead-acid batteries, advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage (AA-CAES), lead-acid batteries, lithium-ion batteries, flywheels, sodium sulfur batteries, ultra capacitors, and superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) — are based on recent installation cost data to the extent possible. The marginal value of the delivered stored energy is analyzed using recent grid-energy prices from regions of high wind-energy penetration. Grid-scale energy storage is expected to lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions only in regions where the off-peak energy is very clean. These areas will be characterized by a high level of wind energy with cheap off-peak and peak prices. At the expected price differentials, the only conventional options expected to be commercially viable in most cases are hydro storage, especially via dam up-rating, and UPHS. The market value of energy storage for short periods of time (under a few hours) is expected to be minimal for grid-scale purposes. Only low-cost daily storage is easily justified both from an economic and environmental perspective.

Palm oil extraction generates a great amount of biomass residues; i.e. kernel pieces, fiber and fruit bunches. The last is the major quantity, but it has limited usage as an energetic source due to physical-chemical characteristics and high humidity. Biodiesel production requires methanol, which is mainly produced form natural gas in very large industrial plants, oscillating between 700×103 to 1400 x103 tons per year. This paper presents an economical and technical analysis for production of biometanol from oil palm biomass residues, considering the requirements for the year 2019 in Colombia, which are expected to be 92.5 x103 tons. Different technological approximations are considered and the different parts for the selected process are dimensioned, due to the small size of the plant required. The process simulation is carried out using ASPENPLUS™, giving a global efficiency around 48%, and a yield of 43% for the biomass used. The production simulation allows comparing with the international price for methanol, and the cutting point is U$ 152/Ton. This value is compared with the international price of crude oil and it was found that it is only superior when the oil price is under U$ 20. Due to the tendency for oil prices to increase, it is feasible, at least form the economical point of view, to develop a small scale biometanol plant.

Within the context of a profit making firm, the job of a design engineer is to choose design parameters and product attributes that maximize the expected utility of profit. To do this effectively, the engineer needs to have an estimate of the demand for the product as a function of its price and its attributes. The firm may conduct a survey to elicit consumer preferences for the product at a given price and would like to update their belief about demand given the survey data. The purpose of this paper is to present a Bayesian methodology for demand estimation that meets this need. The estimation process begins with a prior probability distribution of demand at a given price. Using Bayesian analysis, we show how to update demand for the product given various pieces of information such as market analysis, polls and a variety of other methods. We also discuss situations where consumers can demand multiple units of the product at the given price.

The cost of energy is an increasingly important issue in the world as renewable energy resources are growing in demand. Performance-based energy contracts are designed to keep the price of energy as low as possible while controlling the risk for both parties (i.e., the Buyer and the Seller). Price and risk are often balanced using complex Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). Since wind is not a constant supply source, to keep risk low, wind PPAs contain clauses that require the purchase and sale of energy to fall within reasonable limits. However, the existence of those limits also creates pressure on prices causing increases in the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). Depending on the variation in capacity factor (CF), the power generator (the Seller) may find that the limitations on power purchasing given by the utility (the Buyer) are not favorable and will result in higher costs of energy than predicted. Existing cost models do not take into account energy purchase limitations or variations in energy production when calculating an LCOE. A new cost model is developed to evaluate the price of electricity from wind energy under a PPA contract. This study develops a method that an energy Seller can use to negotiate delivery penalties within their PPA. This model has been tested on a controlled wind farm and with real wind farm data. The results show that LCOE depends on the limitations on energy purchase within a PPA contract as well as the expected performance characteristics associated with wind farms.

Energy security and greenhouse gas reductions are thought to be two of the most urgent priorities for sustaining and improving the human condition in the future. Few places pit the two goals so directly in opposition to one another as the Alberta oil sands. Here, Canadian natural gas is burned in massive quantities to extract oil from one of North America’s largest native sources of carbon-intensive heavy oil. This conflict need not continue, however; non-emitting nuclear energy can replace natural gas as a fuel source in an economical and more environmentally sound way. This would allow for the continued extraction of transportation fuels without greenhouse gas emissions, while freeing up the natural gas supply for hydrogen feedstock and other valuable applications. Bitumen production in Alberta has expanded dramatically in the past five years as the price of oil has risen to record levels. This paper explores the feasibility and economics of using nuclear energy to power future oil sands production and upgrading activities, and puts forth several nuclear energy application scenarios for providing steam and electricity to in-situ and surface mining operations. This review includes the Enhanced CANDU 6, the Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR) and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). Based on reasonable projections of available cost information, nuclear energy used for steam production is expected to be less expensive than steam produced by natural gas at current natural gas prices and under $7/MMBtu (CAD). For electricity production, nuclear becomes competitive with natural gas plants at natural gas prices of $10–13/MMBtu (CAD). Costs of constructing nuclear plants in Alberta are affected by higher local labor costs, which this paper took into account in making these estimates. Although more definitive analysis of construction costs and project economics will be required to confirm these findings, there appears to be sufficient merit in the potential economics to support further study. A single 500MWth PBMR reactor is able to supply high-pressure steam for a 40,000 to 60,000 bpd Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) plant, whereas the CANDU and ACR reactors are unable to produce sufficient steam pressures to be practical in that application. The CANDU, ACR and PBMR reactors have potential for supplying heat and electricity for surface mining operations. The primary environmental benefit of nuclear energy in this application is to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 3.1 million metric tons per year for each 100,000 barrel per day (bpd) bitumen production SAGD facility, or 2.0 million metric tons per year for the replacement of 700MWe of grid electricity with a nuclear power plant. Should carbon emissions be priced, the economic advantages of nuclear energy would be dramatically improved such that with a $50/ton CO2e at the releases expected for typical projects using natural gas, breakeven gas prices for nuclear drop to less than $3.50/MMBtu, well below the current natural gas price of $10/MMBtu for SADG steam production.

Design optimization under uncertainty is notoriously difficult when the objective function is expensive to evaluate. State-of-the-art techniques, e.g., stochastic optimization or sampling average approximation, fail to learn exploitable patterns from collected data and, as a result, they tend to require an excessive number of objective function evaluations. There is a need for techniques that alleviate the high cost of information acquisition and select sequential simulations in an optimal way. In the field of deterministic single-objective unconstrained global optimization, the Bayesian global optimization (BGO) approach has been relatively successful in addressing the information acquisition problem. BGO builds a probabilistic surrogate of the expensive objective function and uses it to define an information acquisition function (IAF) whose role is to quantify the merit of making new objective evaluations. Specifically, BGO iterates between making the observations with the largest expected IAF and rebuilding the probabilistic surrogate, until a convergence criterion is met. In this work, we extend the expected improvement (EI) IAF to the case of design optimization under uncertainty. This involves a reformulation of the EI policy that is able to filter out parametric and measurement uncertainties. We by-pass the curse of dimensionality, since the method does not require learning the response surface as a function of the stochastic parameters. To increase the robustness of our approach in the low sample regime, we employ a fully Bayesian interpretation of Gaussian processes by constructing a particle approximation of the posterior of its hyperparameters using adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo. An addendum of our approach is that it can quantify the epistemic uncertainty on the location of the optimum and the optimal value as induced by the limited number of objective evaluations used in obtaining it. We verify and validate our approach by solving two synthetic optimization problems under uncertainty. We demonstrate our approach by solving a challenging engineering problem: the oil-well-placement problem with uncertainties in the permeability field and the oil price time series.

1.1 Macroeconomic summary Economic recovery has consistently outperformed the technical staff’s expectations following a steep decline in activity in the second quarter of 2020. At the same time, total and core inflation rates have fallen and remain at low levels, suggesting that a significant element of the reactivation of Colombia’s economy has been related to recovery in potential GDP. This would support the technical staff’s diagnosis of weak aggregate demand and ample excess capacity. The most recently available data on 2020 growth suggests a contraction in economic activity of 6.8%, lower than estimates from January’s Monetary Policy Report (-7.2%). High-frequency indicators suggest that economic performance was significantly more dynamic than expected in January, despite mobility restrictions and quarantine measures. This has also come amid declines in total and core inflation, the latter of which was below January projections if controlling for certain relative price changes. This suggests that the unexpected strength of recent growth contains elements of demand, and that excess capacity, while significant, could be lower than previously estimated. Nevertheless, uncertainty over the measurement of excess capacity continues to be unusually high and marked both by variations in the way different economic sectors and spending components have been affected by the pandemic, and by uneven price behavior. The size of excess capacity, and in particular the evolution of the pandemic in forthcoming quarters, constitute substantial risks to the macroeconomic forecast presented in this report. Despite the unexpected strength of the recovery, the technical staff continues to project ample excess capacity that is expected to remain on the forecast horizon, alongside core inflation that will likely remain below the target. Domestic demand remains below 2019 levels amid unusually significant uncertainty over the size of excess capacity in the economy. High national unemployment (14.6% for February 2021) reflects a loose labor market, while observed total and core inflation continue to be below 2%. Inflationary pressures from the exchange rate are expected to continue to be low, with relatively little pass-through on inflation. This would be compatible with a negative output gap. Excess productive capacity and the expectation of core inflation below the 3% target on the forecast horizon provide a basis for an expansive monetary policy posture. The technical staff’s assessment of certain shocks and their expected effects on the economy, as well as the presence of several sources of uncertainty and related assumptions about their potential macroeconomic impacts, remain a feature of this report. The coronavirus pandemic, in particular, continues to affect the public health environment, and the reopening of Colombia’s economy remains incomplete. The technical staff’s assessment is that the COVID-19 shock has affected both aggregate demand and supply, but that the impact on demand has been deeper and more persistent. Given this persistence, the central forecast accounts for a gradual tightening of the output gap in the absence of new waves of contagion, and as vaccination campaigns progress. The central forecast continues to include an expected increase of total and core inflation rates in the second quarter of 2021, alongside the lapse of the temporary price relief measures put in place in 2020. Additional COVID-19 outbreaks (of uncertain duration and intensity) represent a significant risk factor that could affect these projections. Additionally, the forecast continues to include an upward trend in sovereign risk premiums, reflected by higher levels of public debt that in the wake of the pandemic are likely to persist on the forecast horizon, even in the context of a fiscal adjustment. At the same time, the projection accounts for the shortterm effects on private domestic demand from a fiscal adjustment along the lines of the one currently being proposed by the national government. This would be compatible with a gradual recovery of private domestic demand in 2022. The size and characteristics of the fiscal adjustment that is ultimately implemented, as well as the corresponding market response, represent another source of forecast uncertainty. Newly available information offers evidence of the potential for significant changes to the macroeconomic scenario, though without altering the general diagnosis described above. The most recent data on inflation, growth, fiscal policy, and international financial conditions suggests a more dynamic economy than previously expected. However, a third wave of the pandemic has delayed the re-opening of Colombia’s economy and brought with it a deceleration in economic activity. Detailed descriptions of these considerations and subsequent changes to the macroeconomic forecast are presented below. The expected annual decline in GDP (-0.3%) in the first quarter of 2021 appears to have been less pronounced than projected in January (-4.8%). Partial closures in January to address a second wave of COVID-19 appear to have had a less significant negative impact on the economy than previously estimated. This is reflected in figures related to mobility, energy demand, industry and retail sales, foreign trade, commercial transactions from selected banks, and the national statistics agency’s (DANE) economic tracking indicator (ISE). Output is now expected to have declined annually in the first quarter by 0.3%. Private consumption likely continued to recover, registering levels somewhat above those from the previous year, while public consumption likely increased significantly. While a recovery in investment in both housing and in other buildings and structures is expected, overall investment levels in this case likely continued to be low, and gross fixed capital formation is expected to continue to show significant annual declines. Imports likely recovered to again outpace exports, though both are expected to register significant annual declines. Economic activity that outpaced projections, an increase in oil prices and other export products, and an expected increase in public spending this year account for the upward revision to the 2021 growth forecast (from 4.6% with a range between 2% and 6% in January, to 6.0% with a range between 3% and 7% in April). As a result, the output gap is expected to be smaller and to tighten more rapidly than projected in the previous report, though it is still expected to remain in negative territory on the forecast horizon. Wide forecast intervals reflect the fact that the future evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic remains a significant source of uncertainty on these projections. The delay in the recovery of economic activity as a result of the resurgence of COVID-19 in the first quarter appears to have been less significant than projected in the January report. The central forecast scenario expects this improved performance to continue in 2021 alongside increased consumer and business confidence. Low real interest rates and an active credit supply would also support this dynamic, and the overall conditions would be expected to spur a recovery in consumption and investment. Increased growth in public spending and public works based on the national government’s spending plan (Plan Financiero del Gobierno) are other factors to consider. Additionally, an expected recovery in global demand and higher projected prices for oil and coffee would further contribute to improved external revenues and would favor investment, in particular in the oil sector. Given the above, the technical staff’s 2021 growth forecast has been revised upward from 4.6% in January (range from 2% to 6%) to 6.0% in April (range from 3% to 7%). These projections account for the potential for the third wave of COVID-19 to have a larger and more persistent effect on the economy than the previous wave, while also supposing that there will not be any additional significant waves of the pandemic and that mobility restrictions will be relaxed as a result. Economic growth in 2022 is expected to be 3%, with a range between 1% and 5%. This figure would be lower than projected in the January report (3.6% with a range between 2% and 6%), due to a higher base of comparison given the upward revision to expected GDP in 2021. This forecast also takes into account the likely effects on private demand of a fiscal adjustment of the size currently being proposed by the national government, and which would come into effect in 2022. Excess in productive capacity is now expected to be lower than estimated in January but continues to be significant and affected by high levels of uncertainty, as reflected in the wide forecast intervals. The possibility of new waves of the virus (of uncertain intensity and duration) represents a significant downward risk to projected GDP growth, and is signaled by the lower limits of the ranges provided in this report. Inflation (1.51%) and inflation excluding food and regulated items (0.94%) declined in March compared to December, continuing below the 3% target. The decline in inflation in this period was below projections, explained in large part by unanticipated increases in the costs of certain foods (3.92%) and regulated items (1.52%). An increase in international food and shipping prices, increased foreign demand for beef, and specific upward pressures on perishable food supplies appear to explain a lower-than-expected deceleration in the consumer price index (CPI) for foods. An unexpected increase in regulated items prices came amid unanticipated increases in international fuel prices, on some utilities rates, and for regulated education prices. The decline in annual inflation excluding food and regulated items between December and March was in line with projections from January, though this included downward pressure from a significant reduction in telecommunications rates due to the imminent entry of a new operator. When controlling for the effects of this relative price change, inflation excluding food and regulated items exceeds levels forecast in the previous report. Within this indicator of core inflation, the CPI for goods (1.05%) accelerated due to a reversion of the effects of the VAT-free day in November, which was largely accounted for in February, and possibly by the transmission of a recent depreciation of the peso on domestic prices for certain items (electric and household appliances). For their part, services prices decelerated and showed the lowest rate of annual growth (0.89%) among the large consumer baskets in the CPI. Within the services basket, the annual change in rental prices continued to decline, while those services that continue to experience the most significant restrictions on returning to normal operations (tourism, cinemas, nightlife, etc.) continued to register significant price declines. As previously mentioned, telephone rates also fell significantly due to increased competition in the market. Total inflation is expected to continue to be affected by ample excesses in productive capacity for the remainder of 2021 and 2022, though less so than projected in January. As a result, convergence to the inflation target is now expected to be somewhat faster than estimated in the previous report, assuming the absence of significant additional outbreaks of COVID-19. The technical staff’s year-end inflation projections for 2021 and 2022 have increased, suggesting figures around 3% due largely to variation in food and regulated items prices. The projection for inflation excluding food and regulated items also increased, but remains below 3%. Price relief measures on indirect taxes implemented in 2020 are expected to lapse in the second quarter of 2021, generating a one-off effect on prices and temporarily affecting inflation excluding food and regulated items. However, indexation to low levels of past inflation, weak demand, and ample excess productive capacity are expected to keep core inflation below the target, near 2.3% at the end of 2021 (previously 2.1%). The reversion in 2021 of the effects of some price relief measures on utility rates from 2020 should lead to an increase in the CPI for regulated items in the second half of this year. Annual price changes are now expected to be higher than estimated in the January report due to an increased expected path for fuel prices and unanticipated increases in regulated education prices. The projection for the CPI for foods has increased compared to the previous report, taking into account certain factors that were not anticipated in January (a less favorable agricultural cycle, increased pressure from international prices, and transport costs). Given the above, year-end annual inflation for 2021 and 2022 is now expected to be 3% and 2.8%, respectively, which would be above projections from January (2.3% and 2,7%). For its part, expected inflation based on analyst surveys suggests year-end inflation in 2021 and 2022 of 2.8% and 3.1%, respectively. There remains significant uncertainty surrounding the inflation forecasts included in this report due to several factors: 1) the evolution of the pandemic; 2) the difficulty in evaluating the size and persistence of excess productive capacity; 3) the timing and manner in which price relief measures will lapse; and 4) the future behavior of food prices. Projected 2021 growth in foreign demand (4.4% to 5.2%) and the supposed average oil price (USD 53 to USD 61 per Brent benchmark barrel) were both revised upward. An increase in long-term international interest rates has been reflected in a depreciation of the peso and could result in relatively tighter external financial conditions for emerging market economies, including Colombia. Average growth among Colombia’s trade partners was greater than expected in the fourth quarter of 2020. This, together with a sizable fiscal stimulus approved in the United States and the onset of a massive global vaccination campaign, largely explains the projected increase in foreign demand growth in 2021. The resilience of the goods market in the face of global crisis and an expected normalization in international trade are additional factors. These considerations and the expected continuation of a gradual reduction of mobility restrictions abroad suggest that Colombia’s trade partners could grow on average by 5.2% in 2021 and around 3.4% in 2022. The improved prospects for global economic growth have led to an increase in current and expected oil prices. Production interruptions due to a heavy winter, reduced inventories, and increased supply restrictions instituted by producing countries have also contributed to the increase. Meanwhile, market forecasts and recent Federal Reserve pronouncements suggest that the benchmark interest rate in the U.S. will remain stable for the next two years. Nevertheless, a significant increase in public spending in the country has fostered expectations for greater growth and inflation, as well as increased uncertainty over the moment in which a normalization of monetary policy might begin. This has been reflected in an increase in long-term interest rates. In this context, emerging market economies in the region, including Colombia, have registered increases in sovereign risk premiums and long-term domestic interest rates, and a depreciation of local currencies against the dollar. Recent outbreaks of COVID-19 in several of these economies; limits on vaccine supply and the slow pace of immunization campaigns in some countries; a significant increase in public debt; and tensions between the United States and China, among other factors, all add to a high level of uncertainty surrounding interest rate spreads, external financing conditions, and the future performance of risk premiums. The impact that this environment could have on the exchange rate and on domestic financing conditions represent risks to the macroeconomic and monetary policy forecasts. Domestic financial conditions continue to favor recovery in economic activity. The transmission of reductions to the policy interest rate on credit rates has been significant. The banking portfolio continues to recover amid circumstances that have affected both the supply and demand for loans, and in which some credit risks have materialized. Preferential and ordinary commercial interest rates have fallen to a similar degree as the benchmark interest rate. As is generally the case, this transmission has come at a slower pace for consumer credit rates, and has been further delayed in the case of mortgage rates. Commercial credit levels stabilized above pre-pandemic levels in March, following an increase resulting from significant liquidity requirements for businesses in the second quarter of 2020. The consumer credit portfolio continued to recover and has now surpassed February 2020 levels, though overall growth in the portfolio remains low. At the same time, portfolio projections and default indicators have increased, and credit establishment earnings have come down. Despite this, credit disbursements continue to recover and solvency indicators remain well above regulatory minimums. 1.2 Monetary policy decision In its meetings in March and April the BDBR left the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1.75%.

Given the importance of climate change and the increase of its severity under extreme weather events, we analyze the main drivers of high food prices in Colombia between 1985 and 2020 focusing on extreme weather shocks like a strong El Ni˜no.We estimate a non-stationary extreme value model for Colombian food prices. Our findings suggest that perishable foods are more exposed to extreme weather conditions in comparison to processed foods. In fact, an extremely low precipitation level explains only high prices in perishable foods. The risk of high perishable food prices is significantly larger for low rainfall levels (dry seasons) compared to high precipitation levels (rainy seasons). This risk gradually results in higher perishable food prices. It is non linear and is also significantly larger than the risk related to changes in the US dollar-Colombian peso exchange rate and fuel prices. Those covariates also explain high prices for both perishable and processed foods. Finally, we find that the events associated with the strongest El Ni˜no in 1988 and 2016 are expected to reoccur once every 50 years.

In recent years, nontraditional workforce training programs have proliferated inside and outside of traditional postsecondary institutions. A subset of these programs, bootcamps, advertise high job placement rates and have been hailed by policymakers as key to training skilled workers. However, few formal data exist on the number, types, prices, location, or other descriptive details of program offerings. We fill this void by studying the universe of bootcamp programs offered as of June 30, 2017. In this report, we discuss the attributes of the 1,010 technology-related programs offered in the United States, Canada, and online. We find more diversity among bootcamp providers and programs than would be expected from public discourse. This primarily relates to the mode of delivery (online vs. in person), intensity (part time/full time), cost, and program types. Based on the data we collected, we present a classification structure for bootcamps focused on five distinct program types.

Economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean was stronger than expected in 2021 but waned at the start of 2022. High commodity prices due to the war between Russia and Ukraine will provide a boost to exporters, while imposing significant costs on commodity importers and pushing up inflation across countries. The ongoing conflict, together with policy normalization in advanced economies, carries significant risks for the region. Volatility in financial markets could depress investment and bring down growth further. Policymakers need to take urgent measures to boost inclusive growth. As minor fixes are unlikely to result in notable benefits, governments should consider more fundamental resets of policy frameworks. This report analyzes growth prospects, monetary policy, and external and financial sectors. The recommendations stress the need for a new architecture for both fiscal and labor market policies. Policymakers should seize the window of opportunity provided by the COVID-19 crisis and global security concerns to improve the outlook for the region.

The overall theme of this project was to increase the speed of analysis for monitoring pesticide residues in food. Traditionally, analytical methods for multiple pesticides are time-consuming, expensive, laborious, wasteful, and ineffective to meet critical needs related to food safety. Faster and better methods were needed to provide more cost-effective detection of chemical contaminants, and thus provide a variety of benefits to agriculture. This overarching goal to speed and improve pesticide analysis was successfully accomplished even beyond what was originally proposed by the investigators in 1998. At that time, the main objectives of this project were: 1) to further develop a direct sample introduction (DSI) device that enables fast sampling and introduction of blended-only agricultural products for analysis by gas chromatography (GC); 2) to evaluate, establish, and further develop the method of simultaneous pulsed flame photometric detector (PFPD) and mass spectrometry (MS) detection for enhanced pesticide identification capabilities; and 3) to develop a new and novel MS pesticide analysis method, based on the use of supersonic molecular beams (SMB) for sampling and ionization. The first and third objectives were successfully accomplished as proposed, and the feasibility of the second objective was already demonstrated. The capabilities of the GC/SMB-MS approach alone were so useful for pesticide analysis that the simultaneous use of a PFPD was considered superfluous. Instead, the PFPD was investigated in combination with an electron-capture detector for low-cost, simultaneous analysis of organophosphorus and organochlorine pesticides in fatty foods. Three important, novel research projects not originally described in the proposal were also accomplished: 1) development of the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method for pesticides in foods; 2) development and optimization of a method using low-pressure (LP) GC/MS to speed pesticide residue analysis; and 3) innovative application of analyte protectants to improve the GC analysis of important problematic pesticides. All of the accomplishments from this project are expected to have strong impact to the analytical community and implications to agriculture and food safety. For one, an automated DSI approach has become commercially available in combination with GC/MS for the analysis of pesticide residues. Meanwhile, the PFPD has become the selective detector of choice for the analysis of organophosphorus pesticides. Great strides were made in SMB-MS through the manufacture of a prototype "Supersonic GC/MS" instrument, which displayed many advantages over commercial GC/MS instruments. Most notably, the QuEChERS method is already being disseminated to routine monitoring labs and has shown great promise to improve pesticide analytical capabilities and increase lab productivity. The implications of these developments to agriculture will be to increase the percentage of food monitored and the scope of residues detected in the food, which will serve to improve food safety. Developed and developing countries alike will be able to use these methods to lower costs and improve results, thus imported/exported food products will have better quality without affecting price or availability. This will help increase trade between nations and mitigate certain disputes over residue levels in imported foods. The improved enforcement of permissible residue levels provided by these methods will have the effect to promote good agricultural practices among previously obstinate farmers who felt no repercussions from illegal or harmful practices. Furthermore, the methods developed can be used in the field to analyze samples quickly and effectively, or to screen for high levels of dangerous chemicals that may intentionally or accidentally appear in the food supply.