Wheat in the world food economy: Increasing role in developing countries

Wheat is the oldest and most important of the cereal grains in world food supply. In the last two decades the role of wheat in the world food economy has increased substantially, especially in the developing world. This article describes and analyses the role of wheat and highlights and interprets changes that have occurred in the last two decades of rapid change. The authors analyse, in turn, trends in production, consumption, trade and prices with special emphasis on the developing countries.¹ Finally, the authors speculate on how these trends are likely to be effected by future events.     

University spin-off programmes: How can they support the NTBF creation?

University researchers create technological opportunities that give rise to NTBF. The commercialization process of these opportunities is very complex, thus requiring universities to have programmes to support it (USOP). In this research 37 Spanish programmes, and 20 spin offs created with the support of the Technological University of Catalonia’s USOP (Innova Programme), have been examined. The study describes the technological opportunity creation, recognition and exploitation processes, and classifies the factors that determine it. Finally, the study develops a four-action-line-model that contributes to better understand how the activities carried out by USOPs minimize the barriers for spin off creation.     

The role of customization,brand trust,and privacy concerns in advergaming

This study investigates the effects of advergame customization features and trust in the brand advertised in the advergame on players’ brand attitude and personal information disclosure. Moreover, we examine to what extent players’ privacy concerns moderate these effects. Drawing on self-determination theory and uncertainty reduction theory, we developed and tested a game with varying levels of customization features and brand trust. Results show that customization possibilities and brand trust may have a positive influence on advergame persuasion outcomes, but this influence is strongly conditioned by consumers’ privacy concerns. When privacy concerns are low, a game containing customization features leads to a more positive brand attitude. However, when privacy concerns are high, the effect becomes negative. Additionally, we find that different levels of privacy concerns do not affect players’ responses toward high trust brands, but toward low trust brands. For low trust brands, players with high privacy concerns show more negative game responses than players with low concerns. These findings set the boundaries for several theoretical and practical implications regarding advergame effectiveness.     

Exchange rate dynamics in integrated markets

This paper intends to formalize the behavior of exchange rate dynamics in integrated markets. The decomposition of the exchange rate behavior in different time frequencies suggests that both stochastic and fundamental processes as well as exogenous random shocks are present in the determination of the nominal exchange rate dynamics in integrated countries. A stochastic process within a potential well captures all the elements observed in the data. In addition, the mathematical solutions shed some light on the relationship between the stochastic process and the drift found in the literature. Finally, this model provides an alternative to the Standard Target Zone Stochastic Model thus far used to analyze the exchange rate dynamics in integrated markets.     

A comparison of nonresponse in mail,telephone, and face-to-face surveys

This article reports a meta-analysis of 45 studies that explicitly compare the response obtained using a mail, telephone or face-to-face survey. The data analysis uses a generalized hierarchical linear model. Sampling procedure (e.g., local convenience sample, random general sample), saliency of topic, and research organization (university, government versus market research) had an effect on the response. On the average, the face-to-face condition achieved the highest completion rate (70.3%), the telephone survey the next highest (67.2%), and the mail survey the lowest (61.3%). There is a significant interaction with the year of publication: The response to face-to-face and telephone surveys is going down in the period covered by this analysis (1947 to 1992), but the response to mail surveys is going up slightly. We attribute this to the large amount of research on nonresponse problems with mail surveys, and recommend more research and development in this direction for face-to-face and telephone methods.     

Two families of kurtosis measures

Two families of kurtosis measures are defined as K ₁(b)=E[ab ^−|z|] and K ₂(b)=E[a(1−|z|^b)] where z denotes the standardized variable and a is a normalizing constant chosen such that the kurtosis is equal to 3 for normal distributions. K ₂(b) is an extension of Stavig's robust kurtosis. As with Pearson's measure of kurtosis β₂=E[z ⁴], both measures are expected values of continuous functions of z that are even, convex or linear and strictly monotonic in ℜ⁻ and in ℜ⁺. In contrast to β₂, our proposed kurtosis measures give more importance to the central part of the distribution instead of the tails. Tests of normality based on these new measures are more sensitive with respect to the peak of the distribution. K ₁(b) and K ₂(b) satisfy Van Zwet's ordering and correlate highly with other kurtosis measures such as L-kurtosis and quantile kurtosis. RID="*" ID="*"  The authors thank the referees for their insightful comments that significantly improved the clarity of the article.     

Teaching ethics to marketing and logistics majors: A transformative learning experiment

Within the context of a transformative learning field experiment, the ethical ideologies of marketing majors, logistics majors, and nonbusiness majors were found to differ. Based on this finding, a field experiment was conducted to determine the effect (if any) that ethics instruction has on marketing and logistics majors versus nonbusiness majors. Students' knowledge of basic ethical principles and their ability to assess the application of these principles to ethical dilemmas were tested with a new assessment instrument. The major findings suggest (a) transformative learning ethic exercises have pedagogical potential and (b) dissimilar ethical predispositions between marketing and logistics majors versus nonbusiness majors confirms the need for customizing ethics pedagogy by college major.     

Reducing Missing Data in Surveys: An Overview of Methods

Although item nonresponse can never be totally prevented, it can be considerably reduced, and thereby provide the researcher with not only more useable data, but also with helpful auxiliary information for a better imputation and adjustment. To achieve this an optimal data collection design is necessary. The optimization of the questionnaire and survey design are the main tools a researcher has to reduce the number of missing data in any such survey. In this contribution a concise typology of missing data patterns and their sources of origin are presented. Based on this typology, the mechanisms responsible for missing data are identified, followed by a discussion on how item nonresponse can be prevented.     

The Family and the Dynamics of Personal Services

The birthplace of personal services, often seen as activities where peripheral jobs can be created, is the family. Home production is more and more tertiary, and deserves a better knowledge, as the shift between domestic, marketed, collective and associative services is important and reversible. The demographic and sociological evolution of the family, the increase of female working activity, the greater plurality of family types implies more diversified and less stanchrdised personal services. A kind of life cycle recourse to services can be observed and personal services of the future would be a patchwork of marketed, collective, associative and domestic services.