Returns to spending on agricultural extension: the case of the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program of Uganda†

The aim of this paper is to assess the direct and indirect impacts of the agricultural extension system of Uganda, the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) program, on household agricultural income. Data from two rounds of surveys of Ugandan rural farm‐households conducted in 2004 and 2007, as well as different program evaluation methods and model specifications, are used to estimate impacts and compute a rate of return. The direct and indirect impact of the program is estimated at 37–95% and 27–55% increase in per capita agricultural gross revenue between 2004 and 2007 for households participating directly and indirectly in the program, respectively, compared to nonparticipants. The rate of return on the program's expenditures is estimated at 8–49%. The program has been relatively more effective among male‐headed, larger, and asset‐poor households, as well as those taking up noncrop high‐value enterprises and living further away from financial services, all‐weather roads, and markets or located in the Eastern and Northern Regions. Policy implications of the results are drawn.     

Adverse workplace conditions, high-involvement work practices and labor turnover: Evidence from Danish linked employer-employee data

Using Danish linked employer-employee data, we find that: (i) exposing the worker to physical hazards leads to a 3 percentage point increase in the probability of voluntary turnover from the average rate of 18%; (ii) working in night shift results in an 11-percentage point hike; and (iii) having an unsupportive boss leads to a 6-percentage point jump. High involvement work practices are found to play a significant role in mitigating the adverse effects of workplace hazards. Finally, the worker under adverse workplace conditions is found to improve the 5-year odds of rectifying such workplace adversities by quitting the firm.     

Exploring the Interface Between Strategy-Making and Responsible Leadership

Theorists have long argued that a process of individualisation is inherent in conditions of late modernity. Whilst individualisation has been acknowledged in the business ethics literature, studies have often overlooked the processes by which individuals are given greater responsibility for ethical decision making and the personal and institutional effects of this responsibility. This article develops a notion of ‘ethical individualisation’ to help one understand and explore how and why ethical responsibility is being devolved to employees in the UK consulting industry. The article argues that an individualised ethics is incapable of preventing malpractice in the face of institutional conflicts of interest.     

The Confucian Roots of Business Kyosei

Kyosei, a traditional Japanese concept, has been applied to a variety subjects, from biology to business. It has more recently become synonymous with the concepts of corporate responsibility, ethical decision making, stakeholder maximization, and responsible reciprocity. The purpose of this paper is to trace kyosei's modern business application back to ancient Confucian thought. The ideals associated with Confucianism were instrumental in the creation of Japanese business codes of ethics during the early part of the seventeenth century. A short history of this period is presented to provide a contextual framework for understanding these codes. A specific code of ethics, called the shuchu kiyaku, is presented for the first time in English and shown to have direct roots in Confucian writings. Statements from modern company codes and from modern Japanese and American businessmen are presented to reflect the philosophy of business embodied in that ancient code of ethics.     

Book reviews

Natural hazards have become increasingly frequent in the Philippines, making the determination of risks associated with large-scale natural hazards and disasters in this area increasingly important. This study developed a method for estimating the risk of disasters from multiple hazards in this country at the province level. The locational probability and consequences of five natural hazards were analyzed over a 30-year period (1982–2011), and the disaster-risk potential of provinces was estimated based on the combined damage cost per capita from five hazards over that period. Information from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters Emergency Disasters Database (CRED-EMDAT) was used to analyze the areas and populations affected, damage costs, and frequency and duration of five hazards (i.e. meteorological, climatological, hydrological, geophysical, and biological). The estimated values were then presented spatially using a geographic information system. The results suggested that meteorological hazards were the most common hazards affecting most provinces in the Philippines, whereas hydrological hazards produced the most damage. Small island provinces and coastal zones were among the areas with the highest disaster-risk potential. This assessment can aid in decision making with regard to financing disaster prevention schemes and in planning for the increasing occurrences of natural hazard-related disasters.     

Assessing the performance of inflation targeting in East Asian economies

This paper examines the implementation and performance of inflation targeting (IT) in four East Asian emerging market economies: Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. It also examines monetary policy in Malaysia, a country that has not adopted IT. The study estimates policy reaction functions to test the links between the adoption of IT and use of a monetary policy rule. The impulse responses of prices to a monetary policy shock are also estimated to identify monetary policy impacts on prices. The findings on the monetary policies of the five economies can be summarised as follows. Korea has taken an inflation‐responsive and forward‐looking policy stance under inflation targeting, which has had an effect on the stability of prices. Indonesia and Thailand have conducted inflation‐responsive but backward‐looking policy stances, which have had no impact in terms of price stabilisation. The Philippines (which adopted IT but under a pegged exchange rate regime) and Malaysia have neither followed inflation‐responsive rules nor had policy impacts in terms of controlling inflation.     

Understanding Douglass North in game-theoretic language

By using game-theoretic language, this paper attempts to interpret the North's recent framework for institutional studies. Particularly relying on a foundational study of knowledge and culture in epistemic game theory, it clarifies three subtly different meanings of the beliefs used by North – behavioral, cultural, and elites’ subjective – in the evolutions of institutions. It also suggests the ways to respond to the North's call for interdisciplinary approach by applying analytical tools of strategic complementarities and linked games.     

Individual Stock Returns and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Japanese Data

The present paper uses Japanese firm‐level data to investigate the effects of monetary policy on stock. The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether monetary policy has heterogeneous effects on stock returns and whether such heterogeneity can be explained by existing theories of monetary transmission mechanisms. We find little evidence that the demand sides of the interest rate and balance sheet channels explain the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy. However, there is evidence that the supply sides of the interest rate and balance sheet channels, when measured by capital intensity, financial leverage and interest payment burden, can explain its heterogeneous effects.     

Markups,productivity and external market development of the service SMEs

During the last decade, economists and policy makers have extensively discussed what types of firms can exploit external markets by exporting and what happens to domestic firms if external competitors penetrate into the home market. Although both theoretical and empirical studies have been dedicated to these issues, few have been carried out for the service sector. Since the service sector accounts for the lion’s share of GDP, the lack of those studies indicates that a large part of the actual economy still remains veiled. Our study fills this gap. We examine whether or not the Melitz and Ottaviano (2008) model remains satisfied in the service sector, using data from Japanese SMEs. From our analysis, we confirm that larger market sizes are associated with higher productivity levels. On the other hand, firms with higher markups tend to develop their business in smaller markets, conditional of the simultaneity between production and consumption. These results reveal that further productivity growth in the service sector also requires markets to be larger and more integrated. In addition, the markup levels become lower in those markets.     

Testing homogeneity in a random intercept model using asymptotic, posterior predictive and plug-in p-values

In this paper three statistics and three discrepancy measures with which homogeneity in the random intercept model can be investigated will be evaluated. The first two can be used to test the homogeneity of level one residual variances across level two units and the third can be used to test whether effects should be fixed or random. Each statistic and discrepancy measure will be evaluated using asymptotic (if available), posterior predictive and plug in p -values. A simulation study will be used to investigate the frequency properties of these p -values. In the discussion it will be indicated how the results obtained for the random intercept model with one explanatory variable can be useful during the construction of general two level models.