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The Ministry of Agriculture has been considering a new proposal for imposing tariffs on a number of imported food commodities, including corn. This paper aims at addressing the following questions: (1) Is there a strong reason for the government to impose import tariff on corn? (2) If so, then what level of tariff is needed? (3) what are the determinants for defining an optimum tariff? The analytical results indicate that corn farming in Indonesia is profitable and able to compete with imported corns, as its normal profit ranges from 29 to 35 percent of the total costs. Hence, there is no strong reason for the government to implement import tariff. A tariff is needed only if the world market price drops well below the cost of production, and exchange rate of Rupiah appreciates significantly. Having considered the likely world price fluctuation and exchange rate appreciation, the analysis shows that an import tariff of 5-10 percent is more than enough to guarantee a reasonable farmer's profit of around 30 percent. Key words : corn, import tariff, comparative advantage, competitive advantage ABSTRAKDepartemen Pertanian sedang mempertimbangkan pemberlakuan tarif impor untuk beberapa komoditas pertanian, termasuk jagung. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk menjawab pertanyaan berikut: (1) perlukah pemberlakuan tarif impor jagung pada saat ini?, (2) kalau ya, berapa tingkat tarif impor yang harus dikenakan?, (3) faktor-faktor utama apa saja yang perlu diperhitungkan dalam menentukan tingkat tarif impor?. Hasil analisis memperlihatkan bahwa usahatani jagung masih menguntungkan dan mampu bersaing dengan jagung impor. Pada kondisi saat ini, usahatani jagung mampu memberikan keuntungan bersih pada kisaran 29-35 persen, dan mampu bersaing dengan jagung impor. Dengan demikian, tidak ada alasan yang kuat bagi pemerintah untuk memberlakukan tarif impor jagung pada saat ini. Tarif impor diperlukan bilamana nilai tukar rupiah menguat secara nyata dan/atau harga jagung di pasar dunia menurun drastis sampai dibawah biaya produksi. Dengan mempertimbangkan kemungkinan kisaran gejolak harga dan nilai tukar yang akan terjadi, penerapan tarif impor 5-10 persen dipandang sudah cukup untuk menjamin keuntungan yang layak (30 persen) bagi usahatani jagung.

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Information technology can be used in profit or non-profit activities. The concept of crowdsourcing has been widely used in fundraising in the form of money, better known as crowdfunding. In general, most people has secondhand items that are still good to use by others. On the other hand, there are also many people who need those items but cannot afford to buy them. A Website application with the Crowdsourcing concept can be used to bring together donors with recipients of donations in the form of goods.This study conducted data collection to assess the needs of application through questionnaires and analyzed the data using descriptive statistical analysis and Chi Square independence tests, and then developed a website-based application untukmu.com.  This study examined the relationship between age, type of work and intention to donate and the type of goods needed. The Chi Square independence test showed that there is no relationship between age and type of work to the intention to donate.  The descriptive statistics analysis showed that the majority (82%) of the types of goods usually donated by the donors are clothing. The results of the analysis provides input for the development of the application Untukmu.com. In the last stage, the study evaluated the level of satisfaction of the users (i.e. the donors) based on the level of ease of using the application and the time needed to master the application. The analysis showed that there is no relationship between the ease of use of the application and the donors satisfaction,  but there is relationship between time needed to master the application to the user satisfaction. Untukmu.com application has a good usability level since users have no difficulty in using this application and are satisfied with the features available in the application.

Partial Least Squares (PLS) method was developed in 1960 by Herman Wold. The method particularly suits with construct a regression model when the number of independent variables is many and highly collinear. The PLS can be combined with other methods, one of which is a Continuous Wavelet Transformation (CWT). By considering that the presence of outliers can lead to a less reliable model, and this kind of transformation may be required at a stage of pre-processing, the data is free of noise or outliers. Based on the previous study, Kendari hotel room occupancy rate was affected by the outlier, and it had a low value of R2. Therefore, this research aimed to obtain a good model by combining the PLS method and CWT transformation using the Mexican Hats them other wavelet of CWT. The research concludes that merging the PLS and the Mexican Hat transformation has resulted in a better model compared to the model that combined the PLS and the Haar wavelet transformation as shown in the previous study. The research shows that by changing the mother of the wavelet, the value of R2 can be improved significantly. The result provides information on how to increase the value of R2. The other advantage is the information for hotel managements to notice the age of the hotel, the maximum rates, the facilities, and the number of rooms to increase the number of visitors.