Non-farm entrepreneurship in rural sub-Saharan Africa: New empirical evidence

We report on the prevalence and patterns of non-farm enterprises in six sub-Saharan African countries, and study their performance in terms of labor productivity, survival and exit, using the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study - Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). Rural households operate enterprises due to both push and pull factors and tend to do so predominantly in easy-to-enter activities, such as sales and trade, rather than in activities that require higher starting costs, such as transport services, or educational investment, such as professional services. Labor productivity differs widely: rural and female-headed enterprises, those located further away from population centers, and businesses that operate intermittently have lower levels of labor productivity compared to urban and male-owned enterprises, or enterprises that operate throughout the year. Finally, rural enterprises exit the market primarily due to a lack of profitability or finance, and due to idiosyncratic shocks.     

陈云在财经领域中的思想政治教育思想述论

陈云是我国社会主义经济建设的开创者和奠基人之一。陈云在经济领域中的杰出贡献,也与他高度重视思想政治工作是分不开的。陈云在财经领域中的思想政治教育思想主要表现在:经济建设中的勤俭节约,艰苦奋斗;克服经济工作中的事务主义倾向;整顿财经工作作风,严肃财经纪律;尊重经济客观规律,按照规律办事。在全面深化改革、扩大开放、一心一意谋发展、聚精会神搞建设的当下,重温陈云在财经领域中的思想政治教育思想具有重大意义。     

湖南省农村信贷现状及发展对策

根据对湖南省农村信贷现状的调查,进而对湖南农村信贷在发展中存在的问题进行了分析,并提出了完善湖南省农村信贷的发展对策.     

A multicriteria model for the assessment of rural development plans in Greece

In the last decades rural communities face the problems of ageing of population, high share of elder farmers and imbalanced distribution of farmers across age classes. The Rural Development Plans (RDPs) of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in European Union (EU) are the policy instruments that affect agriculture and the people living in rural areas. The RDP measure “Setting up Young Farmers” aims to fight the demographic problems of these areas. This study is an attempt to highlight the role and the impacts of RDPs and especially of the “Setting up Young Farmers” measure in the prefecture of Thessaloniki in Greece. To this end, a multicriteria mathematical programming model was implemented. This methodology was chosen using the Knowledge Brokerage Approach in the context of the LIAISE project, which proposes a set of support modules that are linked to the impact assessment process with a final goal to support future policies and design. The results showed that the “Setting up young farmers” measure achieved its goals to transfer land to young, trained farmers, to offset the set-up costs faced by young people when establishing themselves in farming.     

Alternative farming and collective goals: Towards a powerful relationships for future food policies

Based on the significant amount of literature on the concept of spatial, ecological, and social embeddedness in the Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) research, this study describes the main dynamics related to the involvement of non-conventional farmers in their collective ideas and actions.With a comparison between two European regions: Sardinia and the Community of Madrid, the paper identifies different styles of behaviour among organic producers, whether or not supervised by a control body, and highlights the differences and similarities regarding their ideas about how alternative agriculture has an impact on the environment as well as society. Eco-economies and ecopreneurship are also considered. The aim is to see if, and to what extent, these ideas have a collective character, going beyond the limits of the single farm to reach a regional scale and, thus, if there is a basis for the development of future food-related planning policies. Through the information provided by semi-structured interviews, farmers have been divided into categories according to their degree of embeddedness, described through the main themes that emerged during the interviews. Every farmer has been included in only one category according to his or her main preference, which does not imply the ab-sence of a positive attitude towards other categories.The study aims to contribute to the understanding of how AFN values and methods can boost the improvement of biodiversity and landscape conservation through collective actions which have the power to boost and develop rural initiative at a regional scale.     

(De)Politicization Dynamics in Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs): Lessons from a comparison between UK and Flemish PPP policy

This article analyses the (de)politicization dynamics in complex and technical matters like public–private partnerships, which is necessary given its social impact and budgetary consequences for the years and generations to come. The global financial crisis provides an excellent window of opportunity to present this argument, because PPP policy needs to reinvent itself. We argue that PPP policy needs to be (re)politicized at the broader societal and discursive levels, which means that their public nature is recognized and that policy alternatives are debated in the public forums. The ‘Private Finance Initiative’ reassessment process in the UK may serve as an example.     

Arc routing problems to restore connectivity of a road network

After a disaster, restoring accessibility in the affected area is critical for response operations. We study two arc routing problems for clearing blocked roads. The first problem minimizes the time to reconnect the road network, while the second maximizes the total benefit gained by reconnecting network components within a time limit. For each problem, we develop a mixed integer programming formulation and two versions of a heuristic algorithm. We conduct computational experiments on Istanbul data and instances adapted from the literature. The heuristics achieve near-optimal or optimal solutions quickly in most of the tested instances.     

Bundling attractions for rural tourism development

Tourism is often regarded as a viable solution to economic crisis, especially for remote areas without many development options. While many tourism destinations have strong cultural or heritage assets, not all destinations have primary attractions that can bring visitors to the region. Rather than developing special interest “themes”, rural areas that do not have enough of any one type of tourism resource to act as a primary draw may consider bundling different attraction types to increase visitation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of visitors to secondary heritage sites and explore the relationship between heritage tourism and alternative, non-heritage activities in rural areas. Findings revealed that motivation to visit small-scale heritage sites consisted of two dimensions: learning and recreation. The two motivational dimensions influenced visitors’ interest in different heritage attractions and likelihood of visiting heritage tourism “scenarios”. As for alternative activities, there was a cluster of “popular” activities that were enjoyed by both learning-oriented and recreation-oriented respondents, but recreation-oriented visitors were more interested in nature-based activities and sport-related activities than learning-oriented visitors. Findings can help rural communities improve secondary attractions and diversify their tourism product by bundling heritage attractions with non-heritage activities.     

European farmers and participatory rural appraisal: A systematic literature review on experiences to optimize rural development

Farmers are those who daily supervise and manage rural areas, but still their collaborations with those institutions entitled to decide the transformation of these territories are not managed properly. The experiences of participatory processes with the involvement of farmers are analyzed in many agricultural studies. A systematic review has allowed us to analyse experiences related to 35 participation paths aimed at rural regions’ development. The analysis has been made on the basis of 14 variables describing the path followed and its purpose, the agricultural holding involved and the areas surveyed.The work has the objectives to identify some strengths and weaknesses in the involvement of farmers in decision-making and the strengths and weaknesses of the processes themselves. The review has shown that too often in participatory processes farmers are considered only as a source of information to be used by researchers rather than as active participants in the choices for the protection, management and transformation of the rural territory. An effective participatory rural appraisal requires greater empowerment of farmers. In general, compared to the methods and tools used, farmers are wary of paths that are too complex and prefer the use of low-tech tools. This result can be attributed to the farmers’ demand of direct contact with the researchers to build trust and also to the average age of European farmers, which is pretty high.In participation contexts, it is not possible to establish standardized methods and tools, because each process should be tailored for the community that expresses it. Nevertheless, the work has highlighted the need to establish some minimum principles to avoid considering unsuccessful some participation paths which, in reality, have been only scarcely participated. In the work, these principles have been presented through the development of key questions, to which those who design the path for an effective engagement of agricultural stakeholder must respond: representativeness, empowerment, empirical knowledge, relationships, group type, numerosity and involvement stage.     

A phenomenological explication of guanxi in rural tourism management: A case study of a village in China

Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology in tourism studies as well as Heidegger's concept of being-in-the-world, this paper reveals how tourism can and should be done in a Chinese rural village. This research contributes a contextual interpretation of guanxi in Chinese rural tourism development through an empirical study of a traditional agricultural village in China that has been transformed through tourism development. The paper argues that for the Chinese indigenous residents who are the primary actors engaged in tourism, guanxi is, neither a Confucian political ideal nor an instrumental tool, but the specific manner in which they dwell in their place. It demonstrates how the tourist destination, landscape and managerial regulation have been modified and adapted in a guanxi way. The paper suggests that an emic understanding of guanxi and the roles it plays in tourism participants' daily life is warranted and can provide a more holistic picture of tourism development in rural China.