An assessment of the ex-post socio-economic impacts of global rinderpest eradication: Methodological issues and applications to rinderpest control programs in Chad and India

Rinderpest was once one of the world’s most feared diseases of livestock, responsible for the deaths of millions of livestock. However, rinderpest is just one of two diseases that has been successfully eradicated globally. A major gap in the history of rinderpest concerns the socio-economic impacts of its control and eradication. While much has been documented on the epidemiological, technical, and institutional lessons resulting from rinderpest control and prevention, very little has been written on the implications for society at local, national, regional and global levels. In this paper, we provide a more rigorous methodological approach to the estimation of the global impact of rinderpest eradication that highlights the different levels of impacts and benefits associated with different groups of stakeholders. Our methodology is applied to the cases of Chad and India.     

Operation Flood: Development and commercialization

Large integrated development programmes are notoriously difficult to evaluate. Moreover, when the programme extends in time over more than a decade and covers in space a country the size of India, then evaluation becomes nearly impossible. Operation Flood is one such large and long-term programme—a programme of dairy development all over India. The second phase of the programme began four years ago, and partially overlapped with the first phase which extended from 1970 to 1981. An important feature of the programme is its dependence on external resources.     

Access issues: Operational Support Systems and regulation

This article examines the regulatory issues surrounding Operational Support Systems (OSSs). Equal and non-discriminatory access to the incumbents’ OSSs, which perform a number of functions and are critical in market differentiation for operators, is a key element in enabling meaningful competition. This article assesses the regulation of access to OSSs in the US and the EU. It concludes that, as attention now turns to competition in access networks, resale and local loop unbundling, regulators have an important role to play in putting forward guidelines concerning minimum requirements for access to OSSs so as to enable real competition.     

Knowledge work in distributed environments: issues and illusions

Although Finland is one of the most advanced and competitive economies in the world, with a sophisticated technological infrastructure, only four per cent of Finnish wage earners regard themselves as doing telework, and a further four per cent had tried telework. Empirical evidence of telework is presented in this paper.     

Broadband speed and unemployment rates: Data and measurement issues

We examine the effects of broadband speed on county unemployment rates in the U.S. state of Tennessee. We merge the older National Broadband Map dataset and the newer FCC dataset in lengthening our broadband access data over the period 2011–2015. Extending the dataset improves the precision of the estimates. Our panel regressions control for potential selection bias and reverse causality and show that broadband speed matters: unemployment rates are about 0.26 percentage points lower in counties with high speeds compared to counties with low speeds. Ultra-high speed broadband also appears to reduce unemployment rates; however, we are unable to distinguish between the effects of high and ultra-high speed broadband. We document beneficial effects of the early adoption of high speed broadband on unemployment rates. Better quality broadband appears to have a disproportionately greater effect in rural areas.     

作业成本法与作业基础管理

信息是管理决策的基础和前提。面对瞬息万变的市场 ,准确及时的内部信息是企业家决策的命脉。改进企业信息发生机制 ,提供更加准确的决策信息是会计工作永恒的使命之一。因此 ,作为会计工作的实践者 ,主持人认为会计工作者要不断探索新的方法 ,为企业管理决策提供真实、及时的信息 ,从而为企业的生存和发展提供供可靠的基础支持。     

Performance measurement impacts on management and leadership: Perspectives of management and employees

The study focuses on the impacts of performance measurement (PM) on management and leadership—a research area that has not received much attention in the literature. The empirical part of the study is based on 24 interviews from eight case organizations applying the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Representatives of both management and employees were interviewed in each case organization. The study concludes that performance measurement can only support, not replace managers in leading people. The study shows that when operating with a performance measurement system (PMS), the increased interactivity between the management and the employees leads to higher performance.     

Research on asian cultures and management: Some epistemological issues

This paper highlights the major issues raised in the conference Culture and Management Styles in Southeast Asian countries and discusses the espistomological and methodological problems of doing comparative management research in general as well as in the region.The paper identifies the themes which emerged from the conference discussions as (1) the fundamental rationale for research and the apparent weakness in making it explicit, (2) the questions of epistomology as regards causation, and the (3) more mundane issues faced in conforming to standard research paradigms. These issues are discussed under the following headings: What is to be included, subjects' espoused theory or theory in use, idiographic versus nomothetic approaches, more universal variables, problems of defining culture. The implications and significance of different approaches and disciplines concerning these issues are considered, and guidelines for future research in the area are suggested.Professor Gordon S. Redding is with the Department of Management Studies, University of Hong Kong.     

Labour market impacts of occupational licensing and delicensing: New evidence from China

We examined the recent occupational regulation changes in China and their labour market impacts. Using data from the China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey from 2014 to 2018, we found an earning premium of approximately 10 per cent, as well as more employment-based benefits, for those with an occupational license compared to those without one. Licensed workers reported higher skill-job task match than unlicensed workers. Our data cover the period of occupational regulation reform in China, when 70 per cent of occupations previously licensed or certified were deregulated. Over this period, the licensing status remained associated with positive earning and employment benefits premiums, and better skill-job task match at the labour market level. However, delicensing led to a distributional shift in the earning dispersion, especially at the bottom of the earning distribution; earning premiums rose sharply for the 10th to 30th percentiles. Workers directly affected by the licensing reform reported a significant decrease in employment benefits and in subjective job quality measures (i.e. skill-job task match and voice at work) after delicensing, relative to never-licensed workers. We suggest that non-wage compensation is lost in the short term because the signal of competency is no longer valued by employers after delicensing.     

Switching costs in the US seed industry: Technology adoption and welfare impacts

We evaluate the role of brand and technology switching costs in the US soybean seed industry using a unique dataset of actual seed purchases by about 28,000 farmers from 1996 to 2016. Using a random coefficients logit model of demand, we estimate brand and technology switching costs, characterize the distributions of buyers’ willingness to pay for seed brands and the glyphosate tolerance (GT) trait, and assess the implications of brand and technology switching costs for farmers’ welfare, technology adoption, firm profits, and firm market shares. We find that farmers are willing to pay large premiums for brand labels, and even larger premiums for the GT trait, although there is considerable heterogeneity in these values. Switching costs play an important role in the soybean seed industry. Eliminating these costs would significantly increase buyers’ welfare, reduce seed prices and firm profits, decrease adoption of the GT trait, and impact industry consolidation by expanding smaller firms’ market shares.     

Common waters and private lands: Distributional impacts of floodplain aquaculture in Bangladesh

Aquaculture continues to diversify and develop rapidly in Bangladesh. A major change has taken place in parts of Bangladesh due to the growth of floodplain aquaculture (FPA) projects. FPA involves the enclosure by the landholders of parts of the floodplain through the creation of embankments and sluice gates. The enclosed water body is stocked with fish seed and the benefits are distributed amongst those who own land in the impounded area. This study has found that FPA tends to exclude a large number of poor households and adversely affects them through the attenuation of their common property rights over the floodplains, besides skewing the distribution of benefits amongst those who directly benefit from it. They have been further marginalised in project institutions that are captured by rural elites. This paper suggests a more precautionary approach to the growth of the FPA and compensation to, or inclusion of the losers.     

Viewpoint: Climate impacts on agriculture: Searching for keys under the streetlight

This paper provides a critical assessment of the literature estimating the consequences of climate impacts in agriculture and the food system. This literature focuses overwhelmingly on the impact of elevated CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, higher temperatures and changing precipitation on staple crop yields. While critically important for food security, we argue that researchers have gravitated to measuring impacts ‘under the streetlight’ where data and models are plentiful. We argue that prior work has largely neglected the vast majority of potential economic impacts of climate change on agriculture. A broader view must extend the impacts analysis to inputs beyond land, including the consequences of climate change for labor productivity, as well as for purchased intermediate inputs. Largely overlooked is the impact of climate change on the rate of total factor productivity growth and the potential for more rapid depreciation of the underlying knowledge capital underpinning this key driver of agricultural output growth. This broader view must also focus more attention on non-staple crops, which, while less important from a caloric point of view, are critically important in redressing current micronutrient deficiencies in many diets around the world. The paper closes with numerical simulations that demonstrate the extent to which limited input and output coverage of climate impacts can lead to considerable underestimation of the consequences for food security and economic welfare. Of particular significance is the finding that humans in the humid tropics are likely more vulnerable to heat stress than are many of the well-adapted crops, such as rice. By omitting the impact of heat stress on humans, most studies of climate impacts greatly understate the welfare losses in the world’s poorest economies.     

In-home computing and information services: A twenty-year analysis of the technology and its impacts

This article examines the evolution of in-home computing over a period of 20 years, 1980–2000. Although its development in the past five years has not occured in the precise manner predicted, there are many signals which promise its future growth in different directions. In order to capture these various possibilities realistically, what is needed is an assessment of in-home computing not as an expression of a single product within a single technology but as an outcome of the fusion of computing, communication and information technologies developing over a period of time. The impact of such a multifaceted development extends to the economic, social, politial and psychological spheres.     

Unfolding the impacts of transaction-specific investments: Moderation by out-of-the-channel-loop perceptions and achievement orientations

When distribution channel partners make specific investments, tailored to a particular supplier, it could prompt either opportunism or beneficial (e.g., extra-role) behaviors. The impact of the investment in turn may depend on whether the channel partner perceives that it is being left out of the channel loop by the supplier, as well as that partner's achievement orientation. This study considers a sample of 155 IT professional service firms and finds that their knowledge-intensive, transaction-specific investments (TSIs) encourage distinct behavioral intentions. If they perceive that the supplier is leaving them out of the channel loop, the effects of the TSIs get amplified in relation to opportunistic and extra-role behavioral intentions. Furthermore, the firms' achievement orientation moderates these influences. Suppliers thus should attend closely to achievement-oriented partners to ensure they do not perceive that they have been left out of the channel loop.     

The impacts of CGIAR research: A review of recent evidence

We review evidence on the impacts of CGIAR research published since 2000 in order to provide insight into how successfully the CGIAR Centers have been in pursuing the System’s core missions. Our review suggests that CGIAR research contributions in crop genetic improvement, pest management, natural resources management, and policy research have, in the aggregate, yielded strongly positive impacts relative to investment, and appear likely to continue doing so. Crop genetic improvement research stands out as having had the most profound documented positive impacts. Substantial evidence exists that other research areas within the CGIAR have had large beneficial impacts although often locally and nationally rather than internationally. However, the “right-time, right-place” nature of successful policy research and the relatively limited geographic scale of much natural resource management research often limits the overall scale of impacts of these programmatic thrusts vis-à-vis genetic improvement research. We conclude that given the evidence available, the CGIAR’s portfolio of research allocations has become overly skewed toward natural resource management and policy research over time. Hence, restoring somewhat the share of resources allocated to crop genetic improvement is warranted. In addition, the CGIAR needs to prioritize impact assessment of resource management and policy research to deepen its understanding of the social and environmental impacts of its work.     

Value as capital-in-use: Unpacking the temporal impacts and managerial implications for organisational value

Value is a widely researched and much debated topic, but one still characterised by conceptual deficiencies. While multiple competing value perspectives exists in the current literature, they provide limited insights in terms of temporal impacts and implications for organisational value creation. To address this gap, this conceptual article develops the notion of value as capital-in-use, which complements extant value literature by providing a capital-oriented perspective and conceptualisation of the nature, characteristics, and dimensions of value. We develop the concept by reviewing four categories of capital (physical, financial, knowledge, and social), and unpacking their dimensions in terms of locus, latency, temporality and convertibility, to distinguish the implications they each hold as potential sources of organisational value. Variations in the properties of the four categories of capital have management implications that are typically poorly recognised, especially in terms of costs and risk associated with latent or perishable capital. This paper contributes to current value theory by establishing its relationship to capital, and extending coverage of the temporal dimension of value.     

Organizational impacts of office automation

The author discusses the results of a research project carried out by Bell Canada to assess the organizational impacts of office automation technology. The project consisted of a detailed survey of the reactions of users of the NLS system developed by the Stanford Research Institute. The article includes an examination of the primary and secondary impacts of altered work modes and altered work hours and locations, and detailed attention is given to the question of the ‘portable office’.