Pakistan's agricultural exports,determinants and its potential: an application of stochastic frontier gravity model

The most important and imperative objective of the developing nations is rapid economic growth and exports are generally considered as an engine for economic growth. Being an agro-based economy, agriculture exports play pivotal role not only in economic growth but also in socioeconomic uplifting. This study aims at evaluating main determinants of agricultural exports of Pakistan by applying stochastic frontier gravity model over the period of 1995–2014 for a sample of 63 countries. In addition, the study also analyzes whether there is any untapped export potential between Pakistan and the trading partners in agriculture sector. The results confirm the consistency of gravity model for agriculture exports of Pakistan. Likewise, the estimates also point out that bilateral exchange as well as tariff rates also effect agriculture exports. The study has also incorporated the effect of common border, common culture, colonial history and preferential trading agreements by including their respective dummies. The study confirms the significance of each factor, except common language, with their respective magnitude. Moreover, technical efficiency estimates reveal that Pakistan has great export potential with neighboring, Middle Eastern and European countries.     

Celebrity Endorsements in Advertisements and Consumer Perceptions: A Cross-Cultural Study

ABSTRACT

We studied consumer perceptions of celebrity endorsements from a cross-cultural perspective. In empirically examining consumer perception of celebrity endorsement, we used Hofstede's cultural dimensions to develop research propositions and examined these propositions through focus group discussions involving consumers from India and the United States. Findings indicated that specific differences and similarities exist in how consumers across India and the United States perceive celebrity endorsements. There is a positive, although moderate, impact of celebrity endorsements on attention and exposure of consumers. Implications for marketers as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Unexplained gaps and Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions

We analyze four methods to measure unexplained gaps in mean outcomes: three decompositions based on the seminal work of Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973) and an approach involving a seemingly naïve regression that includes a group indicator variable. Our analysis yields two principal findings. We show that the coefficient on a group indicator variable from an OLS regression is an attractive approach for obtaining a single measure of the unexplained gap. We also show that a commonly-used pooling decomposition systematically overstates the contribution of observable characteristics to mean outcome differences when compared to OLS regression, therefore understating unexplained differences. We then provide three empirical examples that explore the practical importance of our analytic results.     

Child Labour Use and Economic Growth: An Econometric Analysis

We present a simple dynamic theory of child labour, human capital formation, and economic growth that is consistent with some of the main features of child labour and economic development. The model supports a number of testable hypotheses, which we investigate econometrically in a systems approach. Using panel data from 64 countries in the period 1960–1980, the econometric results match the theory well. The incidence of child labour is negatively related to parental human capital and education quality, but is positively correlated with education cost. Further, countries with higher amounts of child labour tend to have lower stocks of human capital in the future. There is also a convergence phenomenon between the level and growth of human capital. The lower the current stock of human capital, the higher is current child‐labour use and the faster is the growth rate of human capital.     

Inspiring employees' ecological behaviors: The roles of corporate environmental strategy,biospheric values,and eco-centric leadership

The consequences of environmental degradation have steered organizations to promote pro-ecological behaviors among their employees, and achieving this effectively is paramount for business and environmental sustainability. Applying a multilevel integrated approach, this study investigates the impact of corporate environmental strategy, biospheric values, and eco-centric leadership on employees' ecological behaviors. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 289 employees from a cross section of industries in Bangladesh. The findings reveal the significant influences of environmental strategy and biospheric values on employees' ecological behaviors as well as the moderating role of eco-centric leadership. The study also provides some significant insights for formulating environmental strategy and inspiring employees' ecological behaviors in organizational contexts. Theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research directions have also been provided.     

An analysis of the sources of technical change in the agricultural sector of Iran

A differential structural equation system including latent variables was applied for analyzing the sources of technical change in the agricultural sector of Iran, 1971–2005. The findings indicated that international knowledge spillover, human capital, and internal research and development expenditures have a significant role in technical progress in the agricultural sector of Iran. The findings showed that international knowledge spillover has been a more effective factor on the technical progress related to internal R&D. The technical progress was found out to be Hicks-neutral.     

Does the quality of institutions enhance savings? The case of Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the last three decades, there has been increasing disparity in savings across regions and income groupings globally. In this paper, we investigate whether the quality of institutions explains the saving disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Utilizing comprehensive panel data and spanning the period 1980–2015, we estimate a savings model using the two-step instrumental variable generalized method of moment (2SIV-GMM) estimator. Our results show that the impact of institutions on savings behaviour differs across regions and income groupings, and in SSA, in aggregate. We find that the level and growth of per capita income and terms of trade enhance savings whereas government consumption expenditure, financial sector development and the elderly dependency rate are savings impeding. The findings are robust to alternative model specification and highlight the importance of institutions in influencing savings behaviour in SSA.     

Service Quality Expectations: Exploring the Importance of SERVQUAL Dimensions from Different Nonprofit Constituent Groups

Given the multiplicity of “customers” in the nonprofit sector, the need for nonprofits to ensure that quality service delivery matches customer expectations is difficult yet paramount. Nonprofit organizations serve several constituent groups: the service recipient, donor, volunteer, and general public at large. While each constituent group may not be perceived as a customer in the general sense, each group is making quality assessments that may affect performance evaluations, donations, volunteerism, and brand equity decisions. Hypothesis support was found, distinguishing between the importance of the different SERVQUAL dimensions and the perspective roles played within the nonprofit scenarios. Respondents playing the role of volunteer rated Empathy and Assurance highest and Tangibles lowest. Respondents playing the role of donor rated Reliability and Tangibles highest and Empathy lowest. Respondents playing the role of recipients rated Empathy and Responsiveness highest and Tangibles lowest. Finally, respondents playing the role of volunteer rated Assurance and Reliability highest and Tangibles lowest.     

Entry,growth, and survival: The new learning on firm selection and industry evolution

This paper tries to shed some light on the seeming paradox posed by the findings in the industrial organization literature that (1) the bulk of firms in an industry are not only very small, but also sufficiently small so that they are operating at a sub-optimal scale of output, and (2) entrepreneurs are apparently not deterred from starting new firms even in industries where scale economies play an important role. A dynamic view of the process of firm selection and industry evolution is that new firms typically start at a very smal scale of output. Because this level of output may be sub-optimal, the firm must grow in order to survive. The empirical evidence supports such a dynamic view of the evolutionary nature of industries. Viewed through a dynamic lens, the often-observed asymmetric size distribution of firms becomes more understandable. The persistence of an asymmetric firm-size distribution skewed towards small enterprises presumably reflects a continuing process of entry into industries and not necessarily the survival of such small and suboptimal enterprises over a long period of time.     

INCREASES IN WEALTH AMONG THE ELDERLY IN THE EARLY 1990s: HOW MUCH IS DUE TO SURVEY DESIGN?

The Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) study shows a large increase in reported total wealth between 1993 and 1995. Such an increase is not found in other U.S. household surveys around that period. This paper examines one source of this difference. We find that in AHEAD 1993 ownership rates of stocks, CDs, bonds, and checking and saving accounts were under-reported, resulting in under-measurement of wealth in 1993 and a substantial increase in wealth from 1993 to 1995. The explanation for the under-reporting is a combination of question sequence and wording in the AHEAD survey instrument.