Gliricidia sepium Carbon Inputs and Soil Carbon Pools in a Costa Rican Alley Cropping System

Alternative land management practices, including agroforestry, help to maintain levels of soil organic matter (SOM) and can facilitate soil carbon (C) sequestration for mitigating atmospheric CO₂ emissions. This study quantified C inputs and determined the changes of the soil C pool in a 19-year-old Gliricidia sepium alley cropping system, studied at two fertiliser levels (tree prunings only [? N], and tree prunings plus chicken manure [+ N]), and was compared to a sole crop system. Carbon input from tree prunings ranged from 455 to 457 g C m^{? 2} y^{? 1}, whereas C inputs from crop residues were similar between alley- and sole crops ranging from 121 to 159 g C m^{? 2}y^{? 1}. The soil organic C (SOC) pool in the alley crop was 16–23% higher than the sole crop. In the 19th year of alley farming, SOC was significantly higher (p < 0.05) in the alley crop (3.2%) compared to the sole crop (2.4%), and was also greater compared to that at the time of establishment of the agroforestry system (2.8%). Gross SOC turnover to a 20-cm depth ranged from 12 to 14 years in the + N and ?N alley crops compared to 49 and 50 years in the + N and ?N treatments for the sole crops. Residue stabilisation efficiency in the alley crops was 39% and 55% in + N and ?N treatments respectively.     

Scenarios of the organic food market in Europe

Scenario analysis is a qualitative tool for strategic policy analysis that enables researchers and policymakers to support decision making, and a systemic analysis of the main determinants of a business or sector. In this study, a scenario analysis is developed regarding the future development of the market of organic food products in Europe. The scenario follows a participatory approach, exploiting potential interactions among the relevant driving forces, as selected by experts. Network analysis is used to identify the roles of driving forces in the different scenarios, and the results are discussed in comparison with the main findings from existing scenarios on the future development of the organic sector.     

The Earned Income Tax Credit: Targeting the poor but crowding out wealth

This paper quantifies the individual, aggregate and welfare effects of the US Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). In particular, we analyze the labour supply and saving responses to changes in tax credit generosity and their implications for prices and welfare. Our results show that the EITC is a subsidy on labour income and a tax on savings. An increase in EITC generosity raises labour force participation, reduces savings for many and provides insurance to working poor households. The EITC reduces earnings inequality but increases the skill premium and wealth inequality. A 10% increase in tax credit generosity increases welfare by 0.31% and benefits the majority of the population.     

Innovation and HRM: Absences and politics

This article analyses the role of HRM practices in the implementation of an innovative cross-functional approach to new product development (concurrent engineering, CE) in Eurotech Industries. Contrary to CE methodology stipulations, and despite supportive conditions, HRM received scant attention in the implementation process. Organizational power and politics were clearly involved in this situation, and this article explores how their play created such HRM ‘absences’. The article builds on a four-dimensional view of power in order to provide a deeper understanding of the embedded, interdependent and political nature of HRM practice and innovation.     

Produktbegleitende Dienstleistungen international vermarkten

Immer mehr Industrieunternehmen m?chten ihre produktbegleitenden Dienstleistungen auch international anbieten. Was müssen sie beachten, damit die Vermarktung im Ausland gelingt? Eine empirische Studie analysiert die Erfolgsfaktoren und gibt Handlungsempfehlungen, wie Unternehmen die Internationalisierung von produktbegleitenden Dienstleistungen vorantreiben k?nnen.     

The influence of external reference price strategies in a nonprofit arts organization's “pay‐what‐you‐want” setting

Nonprofit arts organizations face conflicting objectives to balance—or more specifically, to create—artistic and educational value and to generate financial income from various sources. Pay‐what‐you‐want (PWYW), a participative pricing mechanism where services have no fixed price and customers actively decide what to pay, is a novel pricing mechanism and is of high interest for organizations and researchers alike. Based on the concepts of loss aversion and gain, this study presents a field experiment to test the effects of different PWYW pricing strategies on the amount of money paid by visitors of a German photo biennial. Explicitly, the provisions of minimum, maximum, and suggested external reference prices are compared to a setting with no external reference prices. We test the derived hypotheses, discuss the results, and provide implications for future research, as well as for the management of nonprofit arts organizations.     

Innovation and productivity in agricultural firms: evidence from a country-wide farm-level innovation survey

ABSTRACT

The literature on the links between innovation and productivity at the firm level in agriculture is almost nonexistent. In this paper, we analyze the factors behind the innovation effort of farms and the impact that innovation effort has on farm’s productivity, exploiting a unique farm-level agricultural innovation survey carried out in Uruguay. The results indicate that farm size, cooperation with other agents to perform R&D, the education of the owner of the farm, the participation of foreign capital and the existence of links with other organizations, in particular scientific, horizontal and vertical ones, are positively correlated with innovation effort. Public and private financial support are not clearly linked with innovation effort. The innovation effort has a positive effect on farm’s productivity. Some heterogeneities across industries in agriculture are found.     

Policies Supporting Organic Food and Farming in the EU: Assessment and Development by Stakeholders in 11 European Countries

There is no single ‘best way’ of policy development. Bottom-up approaches to policy design and a broad debate among stakeholders facilitate policy learning and innovation. A novel approach of a bottom-up policy design process involving stakeholders is introduced. The first results obtained by implementing this methodology are presented. The outcomes of a large international effort for a development of policies for organic food and farming, which took place in Maj 2004 in Europe, are analyzed: the synthesized results from 11 European countries (AT, CH, CZ, DE, DK, EE, GB, HU, IT, PL, SI) on the current situation of policies related to the organic food market in Europe are highlighted and policy recommendations for the development of the organic food and farming sector are formulated. Specifically, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of policies related to the organic food market are identified and policy instruments used to address these aspects are developed.     

IMPACT OF FINANCIAL INCLUSION IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF REVIEWS

Financial inclusion programmes seek to increase access to financial services such as credit, savings, insurance and money transfers. Despite a wealth of systematic review evidence, the impacts of financial inclusion are inconclusive. Hence, the first systematic review of systematic reviews was undertaken to synthesize the impacts of financial inclusion interventions on economic, social, gender and behavioural outcomes. Thirty-two systematic reviews were identified. The headline finding is that impacts are more likely to be positive than negative, but the effects vary, and appear not to be transformative in scope or scale, as they largely occur in the early stages of the causal chain. The effects of financial services on core economic and social poverty indicators are small and inconsistent. There is no evidence for meaningful behaviour-change outcomes. The effects on women's empowerment appear generally positive, but they depend upon programme features that are often peripheral to the financial service, and cultural and geographical context. Accessing savings opportunities has small but more consistently positive effects for poor people, and bears fewer downside risks for clients than credit. The inconsistent quality of the primary evidence base that formed the basis of their syntheses raises concerns about the reliability of the overall findings.