Does Managerial Behavior Determine Farm Technical Efficiency? A Case of Grape Production in an Economy in Transition

This study explores how farmers' managerial behavior in their production planning processes influences the economic performance of their farms, measured through input‐oriented and output‐oriented technical efficiency. A conceptual framework in which differences in managerial behavior were assumed to be due to bounded rationality was developed. The 3‐year means (2006–2008) from a panel data set on grape‐producing family farms in FYR Macedonia were analyzed. Technical efficiency was estimated with the nonparametric data envelopment analysis approach. The impact of farmers' managerial behavior was assessed in a second‐stage regression. The results suggest that bounded rationality in farmers' production planning decisions causes inefficiency. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of Management Practices on Persistent and Residual Technical Efficiency – a Study of Swedish pig Farming

Managerial capacity builds over the years and the accumulated knowledge/practice affect the outcome of the period that follows, with long‐run/permanent effects on inefficiency. Therefore, predictions of the influence of managerial capacity on the time‐varying inefficiency, regularly estimated as overall efficiency, may be biased. This study analyzed the influence of farm management practices on both the persistent and residual efficiency, and evaluated how conclusions drawn about the effect of management practices are assessed if overall efficiency, instead of permanent and residual efficiency, is evaluated. Farm‐accounting data of Swedish pig producers and information from a survey related to managerial practices were used. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymptotic behaviour of mean-quantile efficient portfolios

In this paper we investigate portfolio optimization in the Black–Scholes continuous-time setting under quantile based risk measures: value at risk, capital at risk and relative value at risk. We show that the optimization results are consistent with Merton’s two-fund separation theorem, i.e., that every optimal strategy is a weighted average of the bond and Merton’s portfolio. We present optimization results for constrained portfolios with respect to these risk measures, showing for instance that under value at risk, in better markets and during longer time horizons, it is optimal to invest less into the risky assets.This research was partially supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS) Network of Centres of Excellence.     

Evaluating urban residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in Belgrade (Serbia)

This study empirically examines the relationships among residents’ place image, various domains of tourism impacts, and residents’ support for tourism development in an Eastern European city, as well as the role of residents’ socio-demographic characteristics and place attachment. The direct, indirect, and moderating effects were investigated using structural equation modelling and the method suggested by Hayes and Preacher [2010. Estimating and testing indirect effects in simple mediation models when the constituent paths are nonlinear. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 45, 627–660]. The findings show that none of the tourism impacts mediate the relationship between place image and residents’ support for tourism development. Moreover, with respect to Belgrade, perceived economic impacts have the strongest effect on residents’ support, followed by perceived socio-cultural impacts. By assessing the respective contribution of the three tourism impacts simultaneously, the results highlight the weight residents assign to a city’s peculiarities, thus illustrating contextual influences such as post-communist and centrally planned economy legacies.     

Farmers' adoption of ecological practices: A systematic literature map

Understanding the factors associated with adoption of ecological farming practices is a well-established topic of interest to agricultural economists. As the transition to more sustainable agriculture has become a policy priority for the European Union, broad and balanced reviews of this literature are important. We develop a systematic map of quantitative observational studies which describes the ecological practice(s) adopted, the frequency of inclusion and significance of a range of independent variables, and how the dependent variable is measured. We also conduct a quality assessment. We find that while socio-demographic variables and farm structural variables are frequently included, they were insignificant more often than they were significant. For behavioural factors we find stronger evidence for the importance of cognitive or attitudinal variables compared to dispositional attitudinal variables. We also find a growing interest in social factors which will be valuable for researchers to explore further and reflect on the policy implications of our findings.     

Spatial ability through engineering graphics education

Spatial ability has been confirmed to be of particular importance for successful engineering graphics education and to be a component of human intelligence that can be improved through instruction and training. Consequently, the creation and communication by means of graphics demand careful development of spatial skills provided by the balanced curricula based on the research results in multi disciplinary area. The approach to engineering graphics education had been transformed to meet spatial skills improvement even before significant and fast changes arose from the development of computer technology enabling the engineer powerful tools and techniques. The correlation and interference between new technologies widely introduced in engineering graphics education and spatial ability/skills, have initiated new studies to establish the basis of holistic engineering graphics education. This paper presents the overview of some efforts and possible answers resulting from intensive research into spatial ability and skills and their implementation in the conception of graphics education in engineering environment.