Inefficiency of manual weeding in rainfed rice systems affected by parasitic weeds

Manual weeding is the predominant weed control practice and the most labor‐consuming activity in smallholder, rainfed rice systems in sub‐Saharan Africa. This study investigates the technical inefficiency of weeding labor, other labor, and overall inputs, and identifies sources of technical inefficiency of weeding labor in the context of parasitic weed infestation. The analysis applies a two‐stage approach. First, a directional input distance function DEA approach was used to compute input‐specific technical inefficiencies. Second, sources of technical inefficiency of weeding labor were identified using a truncated bootstrap regression. Data from 406 randomly selected smallholder farmers from Benin (n = 215) and Côte d'Ivoire (n = 191) were used. The technical inefficiency of weeding labor was high in both countries (58% in Côte d'Ivoire and 69% in Benin). This implies that a substantial fraction of weeding labor could be saved without reducing rice productivity or increasing the use of other inputs. A decrease in the technical inefficiency of weeding labor with an increase in production scale was observed. In addition, weeding regime and education level were each associated to significant changes in the technical inefficiency of weeding labor.     

Social Power and Power Over Space: How the Bourgeoisie Reproduces itself in the City

Urban sociology has long ignored districts of wealth and privilege in cities because they harbor few ‘social problems’ and the class background of sociologists has not inclined them to venture there. In France after 1968, the continued attraction of Marxism and the sulfurous reputation of sociology conspired to make such investigation difficult. Pierre Bourdieu pioneered it with his landmark book on the bourgeoisie, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. This essay reports on two decades of research extending Bourdieu's model of social space to study the territories and strategies of the French high bourgeoisie and aristocracy. The dominant class lives in reserved upscale districts and this seclusion, resulting from the elective spatial aggregation of familial dynasties, is a fundamental characteristic of the group. Segregative isolation is strengthened by specific institutions, such as society balls and social clubs, entrusted with effecting class closure and perpetuation. But, in the greater Paris region, the best districts also attract businesses (corporate headquarters, luxury firms), and thus employment that prompts the established bourgeoisie to migrate westwards in an endless search for social exclusivity. In addition to their Paris homes, upper‐class dynasties possess family properties (a castle or a large manor house) in the provincial hinterland that serve as a basis for paternalistic forms of sociability, linking them to the local lower class via such institutions as riding to hounds. Spaces reserved by and for the high bourgeoisie are major vectors of social reproduction and, along with family and elite schools, help to train heirs suited to safeguarding and valorizing their inherited assets.     

Transfer of marketing knowledge to Catholic primary schools

While the role and importance of marketing have grown in nonprofit organizations, marketing knowledge in nonprofit education organizations, specifically primary schools, is sparse. This paper reports the research findings of an exploratory study designed to examine the transfer of marketing knowledge to Catholic primary schools. It identifies and explores what school leaders know about marketing, how they acquire that knowledge, and what factors contribute to or impede its development. Qualitative data gathered from Catholic school educational leaders reveal that while marketing is viewed in schools as an important management function, marketing knowledge is slow to transfer. Findings reveal that marketing knowledge is primarily developed unintentionally, as a result of trial and error, and that a lack of formal marketing training results in a heavy dependence on volunteers. Findings also indicate that school leaders have minimal autonomy under the Diocese, which, along with economic, cultural, and structural barriers, functions to limit marketing knowledge development. It was also found that, although cross‐sector cooperation is desired among educational leaders, it is not pursued, further limiting the transfer of marketing knowledge. Theoretical and managerial implications for resource‐strapped primary schools in competitive environments are discussed.     

Default-risky bond prices with jumps,liquidity risk and incomplete information

This paper provides a default-risky bond valuation model, which assumes that the issuer’s credit quality, modelled by the intensity of default, is driven by a continuous-time Markov chain. The model accounts for default and liquidity risk as well as incomplete information. A full-information semimartingale representation of a liquid defaultable bond price, which separates three different types of risks—default, interest-rate and credit-quality, is obtained. The illiquidity is modelled as exogenously specified stochastic reduction in the price of the bond, which adds more risks for the investors. A model of a market with partially informed investors, belonging to specific investor classes and having access to discrete information sets about credit quality, was specified. Valuations of defaultable bonds in this market were provided as well as price impacts of the new information releases.      

Arbitrage pricing of defaultable game options with applications to convertible bonds

This paper is the first in a series that we devote to studying the problems of valuation and hedging of defaultable game options in general, and convertible corporate bonds in particular. Here, we present mathematical foundations for our overall study. Specifically, we provide several results characterizing the arbitrage price of a defaultable game option in terms of relevant Dynkin games. In addition, we provide important results regarding price decomposition of defaultable options. These general results are then specified to the case of convertible bonds, yielding in particular a decomposition of convertible bonds in an optional and a bond component.     

Models of democracy in spatial investments

Governance regarding spatial investments meets or even creates institutional tensions that process management finds difficult to cope with. Traditional democracy is confronted with new ways of policy making. New practices include multi-level governance, public?–?private partnerships and citizen participation. Central government and parliamentary control have to adapt to such practices. This article studies institutional tensions in two cases of spatial investment, using representative and participatory democracy as models of political regime and policy implementation. The analysis also links governance to characteristics of space. The authors make recommendations to combine ‘representative’ and ‘participatory’ elements of governance in a way that reduces institutional tensions in processes of spatial investment.     

Linear and non-linear price decentralization

Compendious and thorough solutions to the existence of a linear price equilibrium problem, the second welfare theorem, and the limit theorem on the core are provided for exchange economies whose consumption sets are the positive cone of arbitrary ordered Fréchet spaces—dispensing entirely with the assumption that the vector ordering of the commodity space is a lattice. The motivation comes from economic applications showing the need to bring within the scope of equilibrium theory vector orderings that are not lattices, which arise in the typical model of portfolio trading with missing options. The assumptions are on the primitives of the model. They are bounds on the marginals of non-linear prices and for ω-proper economies they are both sufficient and necessary.     

The Role of a Firm’s Net Cash Payouts in Leland’s (1994) Model

We study the effects of introducing payouts on corporate debt and optimal capital structure in a structural credit risk model à la Leland (1994) . We find that increasing the payout parameter not only affects the endogenous bankruptcy level, which is decreased, but modifies the magnitude of a change on the endogenous failure level as a consequence of an increase in risk‐free rate, corporate tax rate, riskiness of the firm and coupon payments. This simple analytical framework is able to capture realistic insights about optimal leverage, spreads and default probabilities more in line with historical norms (if compared to Leland’s results) and closer to predictions obtained through more sophisticated models.