But not all oil producers have big reserves.

One reason is that more countries are big oil producers now, so the nations suffering from the price drop account for a larger share of the global economy.

These included developing additional domestic sources (such as those on Alaska's North Slope), resuming extraction at sites that had been shut down because of cost inefficiency, capping the price that domestic producers could charge for oil, and beginning to import oil from a greater diversity of nations.

Producers of agricultural goods and raw materials.

As a result, violations of the law and abuses of the intent of the law have lessened the financial rewards of authors, artists and producers.

Last summer, Massachusetts grass-fed beef advocate John Smith launched Big Picture Beef, a network of small grass-fed beef farms in New England and New York that is projected to bring to market 2,500 head of cattle from 125 producers this year.

From the governments' point of view, a primary goal of laws requiring extended producer responsibility is to transfer both the cost and the physical responsibility of waste management from the government and tax-payers back to the producers.

Governments' incentive to require producers to take responsibility for the packaging they produce is usually based on money.

If producers are required to take back packaging they use to sell their products, would they reduce the packaging in the first place?

Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

The responsibility of e-waste treatment should be extended from governments to producers.

But senior medical figures want to stop fast-food outlets opening near schools, restrict advertising of products high in fat, salt or sugar, and limit sponsorship of sports events by fast-food producers such as McDonald's.

So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge.

The key to reforming higher education, concludes Mr. Menand, is to alter the way in which "the producers of knowledge are produced."