An inter-temporal equilibrium model is developed for the purpose of optimizing the scheduling of production in Australian sugar mills. An application of this quadratic programming model is then discussed, and the procedures used to estimate coefficients are outlined. Two tentative conclusions are that mills tend to commence crushing before the optimal starting date and that in many cases they would have been unable to cover their marginal processing costs when producing No. 2 Pool sugar in recent seasons.
An activity analysis model is developed to determine the optimum period of production at a chain of sugarcane processing plants and the optimal regional transport network flows of cane and raw sugar. Explicit treatment is given to discrete variations in input quality which affect revenue at each plant location in each time period. Optimal solutions to three market configurations open to a multifacility monopolist-spatiotemporal quality competition, spatial quality competition, and pure competition-are obtained. Results suggest that, for given output, industry net revenues can be increased when explicit consideration is given to input quality variations relative to industry net revenues associated with treating inputs as homogeneous.The most general of interregional competition models should provide for simultaneous adjustments when price, space, time, and quality change. The development of spatial equilibrium models of either the activity analysis or standard equilibrium type generally proceed on the assumption that the price-space parameters involve only a single industry producing a single homogeneous product. Studies to determine an optimum quality mix of a single product for a firm or an industry producing a spectrum of qualities as a result of biological factors in the production process have been a neglected area of empirical demand and supply analysis. 1 Matsumoto and French have used the monopolistic framework provided by Waugh to determine the optimal price-quality distribution of brussel sprouts in a spaceless and timeless economic environment. While G. J. Ryland is a lecturer in economics at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, and J. W. B. Guise is a professor of economic statistics at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia.The authors thank the referees for comments on a previous draft and Steve Filan for computational assistance. With the usual caveat, any residual errors are the authors' responsibility.1 There are two basic approaches to the problem of incorporating quality variations over time of a single product in empirical demand analysis at the aggregate level which depend upon the importance of brand effects. The first approach used by Cowling and Rayner involves the specification of a lagged relationship by which consumers gradually adjust price changes over time to changes in quality over time in the context of analyzing the market share behavior of branded goods. In the absence of brand effects, all adjustments are assumed to occur instantaneously; this approach is used here. they recognized that locational and seasonal influences are important, their empirical analysis did not include spatial or temporal variation in quality which is typical of many agricultural products harvested seasonally.In this paper we abstract from final product demand considerations and consider a regulated industry producing a standard form of final product from raw material inputs which differ in quality over time and among plant locations. The objectives of this paper are to determine the net re...
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