Tracking Agricultural Economics Professionals

In 1998, a survey of the American Agricultural Economics Association was conducted by the Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics. The survey was the first in an ongoing tracking system, funded by the American Agricultural Economics Association Foundation, designed to track the progress of agricultural economics professionals over time, examine factors that influence their professional development, and investigate changes over time in the composition of the profession and issues influencing change. This study provides the background and objectives of the tracking system, the survey procedure, and basic demographics of the American Agricultural Economics Association and survey respondents.     

East meets West: the case of Polish expatriates in the UK

This paper attempts to redress the balance in research on expatriation by exploring the experiences of an under-researched group of expatriates in an under-researched destination. Although there has been an increase in research on the adjustment of expatriates, the focus of IHRM research has, to date, tended to view the expatriation process through a narrow lens, emphasising the role of managers from affluent ‘Western’ countries working in less affluent countries. The growing numbers of multinationals and therefore expatriates from other countries means that the research agenda must be broadened, in this case to the experience of Poles in the UK. By focusing on expatriates from a former socialist economy we highlight the differing motives and experience of adjustment that they face. We show how the economic and social benefits of this East–West transfer can be a powerful motivating factor and may override adjustment difficulties. Furthermore, the analysis of East to West European expatriate transfers, from less to more developed nations, contributes to and widens the range of parent and host countries studied within the realm of expatriate adjustment.     

Sustainability Development and the Quality of Assurance Reports: Empirical Evidence

There is a rising trend among companies to publish their sustainability or corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Assurance of these reports is a valuable voluntary tool to provide them with higher credibility. Nonetheless, the quality of assurance reports differs in practice and the objective of this paper is to provide evidence in this new area of research. Indeed, we are pioneers in developing an index to measure the quality of assurance reports. We choose the Spanish setting because it is the worldwide leading country as regards CSR reporting (KPMG, 2011; Sierra et al., 2012). We have found evidence on the determinants for CSR reporting posited by existing literature that have an impact on (a) the decision of companies to publish their CSR reports, (b) the decision to assure the CSR report or not and (c) the decision to hire the assurance services from an auditor or a consultant and the subsequent quality of the assurance report. Last but not least, our results from a sample of 161 CSR assurance reports evidence that assurance reports are of fairly acceptable quality, according to the index proposed. Furthermore, the value of the quality index is significantly higher if the assurance services are provided by an auditor (as opposed to a consultant) and if the CSR reporting company is larger. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Remembering Mancur Olson

Mancur Olson, professor of Economics at the University of Maryland-College Park, died February 19, 1998. He served the Southern Economic Association as a member of the Executive Committee in 1978-80, as President-Elect in 1980-81, and as President in 1981-82. Three of his colleagues, Wallace Oates, Joe Oppenheimer, and Thomas Schelling, contributed personal essays to a memorial symposium in Public Choice Studies (No. 31, 1998), a journal published in Japanese. The Editor thanks the Japan Public Choice Society for permission to publish these contributions in English for the benefit of our readers.     

Discrimination by Gender and Disability Status: Do Worker Perceptions Match Statistical Measures?

We explore whether perceptions of discrimination are related to ordinary statistical measures. The majority of disabled respondents report feeling some discrimination due to their disability, the majority of women feel some discrimination because of their gender, and a surprising number of men also report some discrimination. We do not find a strong link between perceptions of discrimination and measured discrimination perhaps because those who perceive discrimination feel that it occurs along other dimensions than pay. However, we do find a connection between whether a person feels his or her income is inadequate and measured discrimination for all groups studied.     

Transaction Costs of Environmental Policies and Returns to Scale: The Case of Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plans

Comprehensive nutrient management plans are being promoted to reduce excess nutrient applications on livestock farms to improve water quality. Development of these plans has been shown to exhibit increasing returns to scale but these costs did not include farmer time. Data from a farmer survey are used to characterize the magnitude and determinants of the transaction costs of comprehensive nutrient management plan development in the Midwest. The analyses confirm that the time spent by farmers exhibits increasing returns to scale. Ignoring the hours spent by farmers on plan development underestimates time requirements by approximately 10%.     

THE ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS OF PREFERRED STOCK RE-RATINGS

This paper examines the equity return behavior of firms whose preferred stock ratings have been changed by Standard and Poor's. The evidence indicates that the market anticipates the re-ratings by approximately 40 days for the complete sample. However, the downgrades for the utility subsample do not experience any downward drift before or after the re-rating. In general, these results support the previous findings of Pinches and Singleton (1978) and Weinstein (1977).