Pesticide use among emerging farmers in South Africa: contributing factors and stakeholder perspectives

The commercial agricultural sector in South Africa has historically been dominated by large-scale operations run by white owners and managers. In redressing this imbalance, black farmers classified as ‘emerging’ are being encouraged to engage in high-input agricultural production in order to obtain ‘commercial’ status. Since existing practices in commercial agriculture rely heavily on pesticides, emerging farmers aspiring to become commercial are pressured to adopt and/or increase the use of pesticides. However, problems of access to land, finances, resources, skills and markets overshadow the health and safety of these farmers and their labour force that may be affected by exposure to pesticides. This paper presents the results of a policy study based on primary interview data with key stakeholders and secondary documentary review data, to illustrate how pesticides are used in an occupational health and safety vacuum because the focus of key institutions is rather on economic productivity.     

‘Doing-good’ and ‘doing-well’ in Chinese publicly listed firms

Recently, the presumed benefits of corporate social responsibility have become an important issue, especially for China where institutional settings are quite different from other parts of the world. Using an internationally accepted benchmark (OECD's Principles of Corporate Governance, OECD, 2004), this study constructs a corporate social responsibility (CSR) index to measure the quality of the corporate social responsibility practices of the 100 major Chinese listed firms during 2004–2007. This enables us to evaluate the progress of the corporate social responsibility practices of Chinese firms. The results show that Chinese companies have been making progress in their corporate social responsibility practices. The findings also show that market rewards Chinese firms for improving their corporate governance practices which implies ‘doing-good’ leads to ‘doing-well’ in the equity market in China. We also find that overseas-listed and more profitable Chinese firms have better improvement in CSR practice. This study has policy implications in pushing for further CSR initiatives in other emerging markets.     

Exploring ‘onward-journey’ ODI strategies in China's private sector businesses

Are the internationalization strategies of China's private businesses different from those of state-owned businesses? To date, little systematic empirical research addresses this question, despite the now well-established arguments that market and institutional imperfections influence the outward foreign direct investment (ODI) of China's state sector MNEs. Why is so little known about private sector foreign direct investment? One important reason is that private companies have gone to considerable lengths to conceal their activities by using offshore holding companies in tax havens. This paper, using a sample of offshore listed companies that are privately controlled, investigates what we dub ‘onward-journeying’ – foreign direct investment undertaken via tax havens. In doing so it further explores the ODI strategies of some of China's most successful private companies.     

Interlopers and disorderly brethren at the Stade Mart: commercial regulations and practices amongst the Merchant Adventurers of England in the late Elizabethan period

This article examines the role of merchant companies in structuring overseas trade in early modern Europe by considering the commerce of the Merchant Adventurers of England, the ‘regulated’ Company which monopolized the cloth export trade to Germany and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examines the Company's trade to its German ‘mart’ town of Stade at the close of the sixteenth century through a detailed case study of the trade of one particular merchant, John Quarles. Using correspondence between Quarles and his factors overseas, it considers how membership of this regulated trading company impacted on the practice of its members, both through its formal regulatory regime and the informal pressures that came with corporate affiliation. However, corporate privileges also created ‘shadow economies’ inhabited by the excluded, those castigated by companies as ‘interlopers’. The article considers the connections between interlopers and those ‘disorderly brethren’ of the company who were prepared to violate corporate regulations in pursuit of opportunities. It shows how the regulatory regimes of merchant companies were shaped by the changing practices of members and non‐members as they responded to the structural changes facing European trade in the early modern period.     

Who adopts crypto assets in Japan? Evidence from the 2019 financial literacy survey

The adoption of crypto assets has been of great concern to policymakers ever since Facebook announced its proposed cryptocurrency, Libra, in mid-2019. Behind this concern lies the possibility of widespread Libra adoption for day-to-day transactions, bringing with it a set of serious risks related to money laundering, illicit financing, and consumer and investor protection. This study first investigates the variables that distinguish Japanese crypto-asset owners from nonowners, then investigates the variables that distinguish the owners belonging to each group from the rest of the owners. The second investigation focuses on four groups: owners’ level of understanding of crypto assets, the profitability of their investment in crypto assets, their holdings of conventional risky financial assets, and their adoption of noncash payment methods. In addition to the usual demographic variables, financial literacy, financial behavior, conventional risky financial asset holdings, and use of noncash payment methods are also investigated. Both probit models and multinomial logit models are estimated and two results are obtained. First, 35 variables distinguish average Japanese crypto-asset owners from nonowners. Owners are more likely to be male, aged below 30 years, have higher pretax income, work in private or public companies, or be self-employed, and be graduate-school graduates compared with nonowners. Owners tend to have higher financial literacy from two perspectives: a measure of objective financial literacy and the experience of financial education at school, and lower financial literacy from three perspectives: the experience of financial education about money management by parents at home, experience of financial troubles, and knowledge about credit cards, than average nonowners. Regarding financial behavior, owners tend to be overconfident about their financial literacy, impatient, judge based on reputation in selecting financial products, lack self-control, and less risk-averse than nonowners. Owners tend to have experience investing in conventional risky financial assets and to use noncash payment methods. Second, 40–60% of variables that statistically significantly distinguish between the average owners and nonowners also differentiate the owners belonging to three of the four groups (excluded is the group that uses noncash payment methods) from the owners not belonging to the groups. These results suggest that policies for crypto-asset owners, if ever implemented, should not only consider the average owner's characteristics, but also owners’ heterogeneity.     

The level of poverty in South Africa: Consideration of an experiential measure

Poverty is usually measured on a basis that is either subjective (respondent's perceptions) or objective (relating to some externally set standard). This article draws on an ‘experiential’ measure of poverty in which respondents with children report on whether or not they have had sufficient money to feed their children. Data from South Africa's 1994 October Household Survey showed that this and other measures revealed similar levels of poverty. However, the picture drawn of the social distribution of poverty suggests a higher incidence amongst those in squatter settlements and a lower incidence in rural areas.     

Risk,success, and failure: female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England

This article analyses female entrepreneurship in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Traditional views on female entrepreneurship in nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century England point towards a decline in the number and relevance of women as business owners in comparison to the eighteenth century, and their retreat into a ‘separate sphere’ away from the world of trade and production. Recent studies, however, have deeply challenged this view, suggesting that women still played an important role as entrepreneurs during industrialization and beyond. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain unanswered with regard to the features of female entrepreneurship during these phases of British history, and issues such as scale of operation, attitude to risk, credit structure, and managerial styles are still widely debated. Using original sources, this article provides a novel view on these issues, analysing female entrepreneurship from the perspective of bankruptcy. Analysing statistics on women's bankruptcy derived from Board of Trade reports, as well as a sample of archival cases, this article argues that overall female business owners traded in ways similar to their male counterparts in terms of business size, risk‐taking, and, eventually, success.     

科技金融发展、产权性质与战略性新兴产业融资效率——基于两阶段链式DEA模型

以2014—2017年中国A股市场1036家战略性新兴产业上市企业为研究对象,基于两阶段链式DEA分阶段研究其融资效率.在此基础上,利用固定效应面板数据模型,重点分析科技金融发展水平对于战略性新兴产业融资效率的影响.研究结果表明:科技金融发展对于战略性新兴产业融资效率、筹资效率和配置效率具有正向促进作用;科技金融发展对于小规模战略性新兴产业上市企业融资效率的提升作用更为明显;科技金融发展对于战略性新兴产业民营企业融资效率的提升更加有效.     

The beginnings of Nazi autarky policy: the ‘National Pulp Programme’ and the origin of regional staple fibre plants1

In 1934, the Nazi regime decided to expand German staple fibre capacities significantly. The planned expansion expressed by the ‘National Pulp Programme’ was not only motivated by the balance of payments crisis at this time, but also by long‐term autarky considerations. However, private companies and the Nazi regime disagreed on the size of the cellulose fibre markets and on how risks were to be shared. Therefore the Nazi regime considered the foundation of privately owned but actually state controlled new suppliers as a way of influencing the private companies to comply with its demands. However, as far as the established companies' willingness to invest was concerned, this strategy did not prove particularly successful. These companies were disposed to invest but only according to their long‐term expectations regarding the potential staple fibre market given normal conditions; that is, with no import restrictions on natural fibres. Surprisingly, not only the big, established companies but also the private shareholders of the regional plants—often comparatively small textile companies—were not forced by the state to fulfil the requirements of the Nazi regime. Therefore these results suggest that the still‐prevailing command economy thesis is not supported by the evidence.     

From philanthropy to a different way of doing business: strategies and challenges in integrating pro-poor approaches into tourism business

Pro-poor tourism means managing a tourism business so that it makes business sense for the operator and at the same time benefits the poor. Based on the Pro-Poor Tourism Pilot Programme conducted in southern Africa, this article argues that ‘mainstream’ commercial tourism can do much to embrace pro-poor approaches. In particular, the tourism sector needs to go further in shifting from philanthropic approaches to pro-poor approaches that entail doing business differently, with more committed changes to strategy and business structures. The pilot programme case studies reveal a range of potential business benefits companies can achieve through pro-poor approaches, such as enhanced social licence to operate and increased brand recognition. They also show that implementing a pro-poor approach depends on the company's context and circumstances. Such a shift entails a number of challenges and companies need to commit to making the necessary effort.     

Integration into the South African core economy: household‐level covariates

In this analysis of household survey data, households' main income sources are used as indicators of integration into the South African core economy. The allocation of main income sources is studied as the outcome of households' demographic composition, geographic location and earners' characteristics. The emerging picture of household income generation is one that disputes the common perception of African households as raising their incomes from a multitude of sources. The majority of surveyed households rely to a large extent on a single source of income and a single income earner. Separate multinomial logit models are estimated for urban and non‐urban households where, in addition to the considerable association with non‐urban residence, prominent earner covariates of low‐integration income sources are female gender, old or young working age, and low levels of education. Both provincial location and within‐provincial, subregional locations display strong impacts. The study also finds associations between main income sources and households' demographic compositions that are compatible with findings both in studies on private transfer behaviour and in the growing literature on endogenous household formation in South Africa.     

‘The rules of the game’: London finance,Australia, and Canada,c.1900–14

It is often asserted that, between 1865 and 1914, economic dependence on British capital subjected settler societies to an unofficial imperialism wielded by the City of London. This article argues that both advocates and critics of such models, particularly in the recent controversy over ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, pay insufficient attention to the City itself. Using the Edwardian City's connections with Australia and Canada, it illustrates the range of financial intermediaries involved and explores their perceptions of political economy in these countries. It concludes that the City's influence (or ‘structural power’) was limited by its internal divisions and hazy conceptions of political economy.     

Interpreting business partnerships in late Victorian Britain†

This article gives the first large‐scale assessment of business partnerships in England and Wales using business records within the population census for 1881. It seeks to understand the variety of ways that ‘partnership’ was used: explicit partnership, ‘de facto’ partnership, ‘joint’ activity, and asset ownership together. The article confirms that partnerships were chiefly between two people. Complexity and transaction costs largely precluded larger size and squeezed the partnership into a ‘middle ground’ between the sole proprietor and the corporation. The main size contrast was between farms with small employee numbers, and larger non‐farm business partnerships. Generally differences in the gender of business owners have greater salience than sectors. Few female business partnerships employed more than four people (mean 3.4), while male partnerships ranged up to several thousand employees (mean 33.6), and 18.6 for mixed gender. While many women were involved in businesses, their opportunities remained restricted, and most were in partnership with male partners. Family structures were important, with three‐quarters of all identifiable partnerships having some form of family relationship, with a strong preponderance of single women in female‐only partnerships, married men in male‐only partnerships, and widows in mixed gender businesses.     

Extreme divorce: the managerial revolution in UK companies before 19141

We present the first broadly representative study for any early twentieth‐century economy of the extent to which quoted company ownership was already divorced from managerial control. In the 337 largest, independent, UK companies in the Investor's year book (those with £1 million or more quoted share capital in 1911), the generality of public shareholders were a narrower group than today, but directors personally owned only 3.4 per cent of the shares. This indicates a lower level of personal ownership (and board voting control) in the largest securities market of the early twentieth century than in any of the world's major securities markets toward the end of that century. Berle, Means, Gordon, and others subsequently quantified the US's later and (on this dimension) less advanced managerial ‘revolution’. Their evidence was widely misinterpreted: some erroneously concluded that the US pioneered this aspect of ‘modernity’ and that the ‘divorce’ of ownership from control, globally, was a new and continuing trend.     

The JSE socially responsible investment index and the state of sustainability reporting in South Africa

The JSE Limited (JSE) in South Africa is the first bourse in an emerging market to develop a sustainability index for its top 160 listed companies. This article provides an overview of the Index methodology and uses the first and second rounds of the Index to assess the state of sustainability reporting among participating companies. It describes general trends related to priority issues in companies' reports, the extent and manner of reporting, and which kinds of companies are emerging as leaders in reporting. More detailed patterns of reporting are considered with respect to the four key categories in the Index: corporate governance, society, economy and environment. The article also considers the role of the Index in terms of the nascent socially responsible investment (SRI) movement in South Africa. It argues that a number of challenges need to be met in order to enhance the impact of the Index and of SRI on corporate behaviour in South Africa and Africa.     

The creation of big business in the Swedish brewing industry during the aftermath of the Second World War

Abstract

Before the First World War, the Swedish brewing industry was organised into cartels that fixed prices and established distribution areas. During the inter-war years, the major combines in the three biggest cities strengthened their position, since they controlled the market in the most populated areas. Because of the agreements within the brewing cartel Bryggeriidkareförbundet, there was hardly any competition among the breweries and the only way to expand the business was to buy cartel-associated smaller breweries in the fixed ‘natural distribution area’. When the cartel ceased to exist in the mid 1950s, the agreements among AB Stockholms Bryggerier in Stockholm (StB), AB Pripp & Lyckholm in Göteborg (P&L) and AB Malmö Förenade Bryggerier in Malmö (MfB) were informally maintained. They managed to expand in their old distribution areas and beyond, but there was no interference in each other's home market.

This article examines why and how these agreements finally came to an end and the effects of the increased competition. The so-called ‘beer war’ between StB and P&L during the early sixties paved the way for negotiations, which in the end led to a merger of the breweries and a new big combine – Pripps – was created. We take up questions related to the formation of the company, its market expansion, the diversification and other organisational strategies. Pripps's monopolistic position on the Swedish market and the institutional pressure that followed started a process leading in the end to a reorganisation and a holding company, PRIBO, was formed in the early 1970s. A few years later the majority of PRIBO's brewing division (Pripps) was bought by the Swedish state and the rest of PRIBO was sold to one of the upcoming holding companies in Sweden during that time – Beijer Invest.     

Partnership building as an approach to addressing corporate social responsibility in the agriculture sector in Malawi

A key factor in improving Malawi's trade and economic growth will be how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) provides a platform for stakeholders to come together to manage Malawi's supply and value chains so as to also improve livelihoods, in particular in the agriculture sector, the most prominent in the country. This article analyses what motivates businesses in the Malawian agriculture sector to implement CSR, and how companies and other stakeholders give shape and substance to their partnerships. It examines three case studies that reflect the types of CSR partnerships that have emerged within the sector. These highlight the transition from issue-specific partnerships to ones established to address the underlying business case for CSR to promote competitive advantage and innovation in companies' core business strategies. The article concludes that the new models of partnership emerging in Malawi are indicative of the next generation of partnership development in Africa and elsewhere.     

Of markets,might and mullahs: a case for equity,pluralism and tolerance in development

This paper tries to confront the ‘puzzlement’ of the development profession regarding the ‘best’ alternative strategies aimed at increasing employment, reducing poverty and promoting equity at the same time as fostering economic growth — and the ‘advocacy’ role that should or should not be played by that profession. The author argues that the issue lies in achieving a workable ‘meaning’ of development and then moving on to the moral ‘questions’ of value judgments and to the specific ‘problems’ that can be dealt with by science and social science. He suggests that a possible meaning of development is ‘to create more options for more people’ — ‘to achieve that the greatest number of people have the greatest number of options.’ He discusses the need for improving ‘life chances’ and considers the development policies which may or may not assist in this process. He tries to tie together conceptually the ideas of power and social change, consensus and conflict. Also in this context, the roles of participation, organization and mobilization are explored, especially their impact on different political systems. The analysis concludes with a plea for social, cultural and political pluralism — and thus, a commitment to tolerance. The author argues that these goals should be addressed by the development community without the hesitation sometimes attached to ‘protection of expertise’.     

Road construction and small enterprise development: The experience of the N4 Maputo corridor

The problems and support needs of small road contracting enterprises and of the prospects for entrepreneurship and enterprise growth in the South African road construction sector is the focus of this investigation. This study examines the building of the N4 toll road which is the anchor project for the Maputo Development Corridor. It draws on a wide range of source material, including existing secondary sources, primary project documentation relating to the N4 anchor project, a set of interviews with key individuals and business associations involved with implementation of the project, and a questionnaire survey that was administered to 30 emerging contractors that had successfully secured contracts for work on the Maputo Development Corridor. Overall, the article investigates the progress and workings of South Africa's targeted procurement approach towards stimulating small contractors in road construction.     

What sort of financial sector should Indonesia have?

At the time of the 1997 Asian crisis, Indonesia's financial sector had serious weaknesses. This made it vulnerable to the key element of the crisis: massive reversal of foreign capital flows. Despite huge expenditures on restructuring, many of these weaknesses remain and the current strategy does not seem likely to overcome them. The alternative strategy explored here advocates the creation of ‘savings banks’, holding government bonds as their principal asset. With these safe assets, deposits in such institutions would be secure, even in the event of a major economic crisis. With this safe ‘core’, the rest of the financial system could develop on conventional lines (allowing removal of the current blanket guarantee, and making it more feasible to close banks without this causing a run on the system as a whole). The inherent risk to the taxpayer of another expensive bail-out would be greatly diminished.