Grading error reduces grower incentives to increase prune quality

Grading error reduces grower incentives to increase prune quality

Fig. 1. Dried Fruit Association prune grading system. Grading is important to ensure the production ofhlgh-quallty foods, but It Is usually done with error, distorting market signals and diminishing Incentives to produce hlgh-quallty products. Size is the main quality criterion for dried prunes and the crucial characteristic In determining prune value. We studied the economic effects oferrors I...

Grading Error in the California Prune Industry

Food demand in the U.S. is rather stable. As their incomes rise, most people do not consume more food; rather, they eat better, higher-quality foods. Thus, the quality dimension of the U.S. food industry has become increasingly important. The most successful growers and marketers have been those who are consistently able to provide high-quality products to consumers. Grading of farm commodities...

Asymmetric Grading Error and Adverse Selection: Lemons in the California Prune Industry

Grading systems are often introduced to address the classic adverse selection problem associated with asymmetric information about product quality. However, grades are rarely measured perfectly, and adverse selection outcomes may persist due to grading error. We study the effects of errors in grading, focusing on asymmetric grading errors-namely when low-quality product can erroneously be class...

Incentives for Truthful Peer Grading

Peer grading systems work well only if users have incentives to grade truthfully. An example of nontruthful grading, that we observed in classrooms, consists in students assigning the maximum grade to all submissions. With a naive grading scheme, such as averaging the assigned grades, all students would receive the maximum grade. In this paper, we develop three grading schemes that provide ince...

Do Financial Incentives Increase Doctors’ Willingness to Publish Research? – A Pilot Study of 21 Junior Doctors