After the abolition of the milk quota in the European Union, milk price volatility is expected to increase because of the liberalized market conditions. At the same time, investment appraisal methods have not been updated to capture the increased uncertainty. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess the effect of changing price volatility due to quota abolition on investment decisions at the dairy farm level. To contribute to the objective and to approximate milk price volatility after the European milk quota abolition, the risk-adjusted discount rate for risk-averse dairy farmers is derived based on the milk price volatility of a milk price series from New Zealand. New Zealand dairy farmers have faced liberalized market conditions for more than 3 decades. Afterward, the risk-adjusted discount rate is applied to appraise milking technology investments for an average German dairy farmer. The results show that it is still more reasonable to invest in a parlor system than an automated milking system, although the net present value of the parlor system investment varies between €191,723 for risk-neutral dairy farmers and €100,094 for modestly risk-averse dairy farmers. For the automated milking system investment, the same calculations lead to €132,702 for risk-neutral dairy farmers and €31,635 for risk-averse dairy farmers. According to higher levels of milk price volatility after milk quota abolition, the reduction of the expected utility of the underlying investment decision for modest risk-averse dairy farmers is almost similar to a milk price decrease of 5% for risk-neutral dairy farmers. Therefore, the findings urge finance providers and extension services to consider the change of increasing milk price volatility after dairy quota abolition when giving dairy farmers financial advice. The risk-adjusted discount rate is a flexible tool to do so.

Largescale calculations of excitation energies in coupled cluster theory: The singlet excited states of benzene Reliable anisotropic dipole properties, and dispersion energy coefficients, for O2 evaluated using constrained dipole oscillator strength techniques Electronic double vacancies with one vacancy in the valence shell and one in the core play a role in several physical processes. Such core-valence double vacancies are theoretically analyzed and related to possible experiments. The corresponding wavefunctions and energies for CO, N 2 , and H 2 CO are computed using propagator and configuration interaction methods. The numerical results are analyzed in some detail and are compared to the corresponding single valence vacancies. The analysis is performed by breaking up the binding energy of the double vacancy into the most relevant components, such as hole-hole repulsion and relaxation contributions. It is shown that the double ionization potential is essentially given by single ionization quantities. In particular, we find a kind of ''Koopmans theorem'' for those dicationic states with an outer valence hole: the double ionization potential ͑shifted by the core ionization energy͒ is approximately given by the valence orbital energy of the core ionized state. As typical for double vacancies we encounter, in addition, an interesting singlet-triplet separation problem. Intensities for the production of the dicationic states by valence ionization out of a core ionized initial state are derived. The extent of valence hole localization in the dicationic states is analyzed by a two-hole population analysis. The analysis can be used to simulate the production of core-valence vacancies via Auger decay.

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The complete spectra of core-valence dicationic states, i.e., states with one vacancy in the core and one in the valence shell, of the molecules BF 3 , AlF 3 , BCl 3 , and AlCl 3 , are investigated by the Green's-function method. An analysis of the double-hole density in the corresponding correlated states shows that when the core hole is on a ligand ͑halogen͒ atom, the valence hole is also strongly localized, either on the same ligand or on a different ligand. As a result these states can be classified as either on-core or off-core site states. We discuss how the localization phenomena are at the origin of the chlorine KLV Auger spectra of BCl 3 and AlCl 3 and, in particular, how they provide a complete and conclusive interpretation of these spectra. Due to the intraatomic nature of the Auger process, the simulation of the chlorine and aluminum KLV Auger spectra is done by a simple convolution of the respective on-core site component of the computed two-hole density distribution. The ligand atom spectra contain almost no information about the molecular system, representing an indistinct self-image of the ligand atom itself, whereas the central atom spectra render a distinct foreign image of the molecular environment. ͓S1050-2947͑99͒07009-2͔