The organisation of urban agriculture in Cape Town,South Africa: A social capital perspective

This article explores urban agriculture in Cape Town and its organisational forms. Based on a literature review of peer-reviewed articles and grey literature, it examines the state of linkages among urban farmers and various supporting organisations of urban agriculture. Moreover, it examines the coordination of activities among key supporting organisations. By analysing the roles of state and non-state actors and linkages, the article discusses implications for the development of urban agriculture. This article suggests that a lack of effective coordination of initiatives among supporting actors presents a significant pitfall in the development of urban agriculture. Furthermore, the failure of farmers to self-organise is identified as equally detrimental. Therefore, it calls for improved synergies between state and non-state actors involved to ensure that the gains of urban agriculture are enhanced.     

The evolution of scale economies in US banking

Continued consolidation of the US banking industry and a general increase in the size of banks have prompted some policymakers to consider policies that discourage banks from getting larger, including explicit caps on bank size. However, limits on the size of banks could entail economic costs if they prevent banks from achieving economies of scale. This paper presents new estimates of returns to scale for US banks based on nonparametric, local‐linear estimation of bank cost, revenue, and profit functions. We report estimates for both 2006 and 2015 to compare returns to scale some 7 years after the financial crisis and 5 years after enactment of the Dodd–Frank Act with returns to scale before the crisis. We find that a high percentage of banks faced increasing returns to scale in cost in both years, including most of the 10 largest bank holding companies. Also, while returns to scale in revenue and profit vary more across banks, we find evidence that the largest four banks operate under increasing returns to scale.     

Changes in analysts’ stock recommendations following regulatory action against their brokerage

Review of Accounting Studies - Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We...     

Consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade: Implications for conservationists

This study investigates consumer engagement behaviors in the online wildlife trade, drawing implications for conservationists. The first study undertook a quantitative content analysis of 500 Facebook posts in wildlife trade lateral exchange markets to show how creative strategies, media type and persuasion tactics influence the number of likes and comments that posts receive. The second study then undertook a thematic discourse analysis to develop a rich understanding of the culture, beliefs and motivations that influence how consumers engage in the markets. Findings showed that an overwhelming majority of posts use a functional or informational strategy and that when posts use overt persuasion tactics the number of comments decrease. A conceptual model of how cultural factors may impact the success of marketing strategies is then proposed. These findings have implications for conservationists who seek to build engagement with wildlife trade consumers online.     

Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk,Territory and Technology

In this essay, we propose the notion of real existing ‘lived’ regionalism as a rejoinder to the normative and ideological debates around new regionalism. Regional forms have shown little convergence in this age of globalized regionalization. Instead of an ideational construct or set of predictable practices, we argue that regionalism is a contested product of discourses (talk), territorial relationships (territory) and technologies (material and of power). The concept of real existing regionalism confronts the tensions between the discursive constructions and normative interventions characterizing much current regionalist debate and the territorial politics and technologies reflecting, generating and directing new state spatial strategic choices. The essay demonstrates the utility of the real existing regionalism framework through an analysis of the greenbelt, transport planning and post‐ suburbanization in Southern Ontario. We argue that regulatory institutions capture the Toronto region in a mix of rhetorical and technological change that complies with neither preconceived notions of regionalization nor the pessimism of total regional dysfunctionality. Rather, the lived experience of regionalization illuminates the emergent assemblages, multiplicity of everyday flows and ongoing multiscalar negotiations of diverse communities that produce the real existing region.     

No‐arbitrage implies power‐law market impact and rough volatility

Market impact is the link between the volume of a (large) order and the price move during and after the execution of this order. We show that in a quite general framework, under no‐arbitrage assumption, the market impact function can only be of power‐law type. Furthermore, we prove this implies that the macroscopic price is diffusive with rough volatility, with a one‐to‐one correspondence between the exponent of the impact function and the Hurst parameter of the volatility. Hence, we simply explain the universal rough behavior of the volatility as a consequence of the no‐arbitrage property. From a mathematical viewpoint, our study relies, in particular, on new results about hyper‐rough stochastic Volterra equations.     

Measuring competition in spatial retail

We propose and estimate a spatially aggregated discrete-choice model with overlapping consumer choice sets and demographic-driven heterogeneity that varies by chain. Our approach avoids the need to define markets ex ante and captures rich substitution patterns, even in the absence of price data. An application to the US grocery industry illustrates the importance of location, format, and the spatial distribution of consumers in shaping the competitive environment. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find substantial cross-format competition between supercenters, clubs, and traditional grocers. Finally, we evaluate two representative mergers between supermarket chains to demonstrate how our estimates inform antitrust policy.     

Is There a Causal Effect of Working Part‐Time on Current and Future Wages?

In this paper, I study the causal effects of part‐time work on current and future wages. To estimate these effects, I use a random effects model with a wage equation capturing the employment history and a dynamic multinomial probit component for the choice of employment status. Exclusion restrictions from the institutional context are exploited to support identification. The results suggest that working part‐time with few hours has a large causal effect on current wages, but more extensive part‐time work does not reduce current wages. However, both types of part‐time work lead to negative long‐term wage effects.     

Two-stage DEA: <Emphasis Type="Italic">caveat emptor</Emphasis>

This paper examines the wide-spread practice where data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency estimates are regressed on some environmental variables in a second-stage analysis. In the literature, only two statistical models have been proposed in which second-stage regressions are well-defined and meaningful. In the model considered by Simar and Wilson (J Prod Anal 13:49–78, 2007), truncated regression provides consistent estimation in the second stage, where as in the model proposed by Banker and Natarajan (Oper Res 56: 48–58, 2008a), ordinary least squares (OLS) provides consistent estimation. This paper examines, compares, and contrasts the very different assumptions underlying these two models, and makes clear that second-stage OLS estimation is consistent only under very peculiar and unusual assumptions on the data-generating process that limit its applicability. In addition, we show that in either case, bootstrap methods provide the only feasible means for inference in the second stage. We also comment on ad hoc specifications of second-stage regression equations that ignore the part of the data-generating process that yields data used to obtain the initial DEA estimates.