Exploring farmer perceptions of agricultural innovations for maize-legume intensification in the mid-hills region of Nepal

Maize-legume intercropping is a fundamental component of mixed farming systems in the mid-hills of Nepal. However, its productivity is constrained by several biophysical and social factors, and limited adoption of proven agricultural innovations. In this study, we assessed the productivity impact of a selection of relevant agricultural innovations and changes in the associated perceptions of farmers through a series of two-year participatory on-farm trials. The evaluated innovations resulted in higher yields as compared to farmers' current practices. The active involvement of farmers enlarged our understanding of underlying decision-making factors to adopt or non-adopt agricultural innovations. Additionally, the in-depth farmer engagement in our onfarm trials positively influenced farmer perceptions of the innovations and their interest to adopt the agricultural innovations. Yet, farmers final decisions to adopt some of the evaluated innovations were limited by a host of factors including labour scarcity, the availability of inputs, and by cultural preferences despite the increased yields. This was particularly true for low and medium resource-endowed farmers. This study shows the importance of active farmer participation and context-specific design of research and development projects aiming for local impact.     

Designing a fair,financially sustainable pay rate for owner-operator truck drivers. Modeling and case study

Owner operator truck drivers have been dealing with a long-standing problem: compensation per distance. Owner operators who get paid according to these criteria get a fixed payment per distance traveled regardless of how long it takes to actually cover the distance. This means that there are numerous situations that truck drivers are working; yet they might be unpaid because the truck is not moving. To compensate for the unfairness of the pay rate models, owner operators have continuously increased their working hours. In addition, many studies have confirmed that a fair payment is among the most important factors that truck drivers take into consideration when deciding to leave a company. Consequently, an unfair pay rate, along with the hard labor conditions truck drivers suffer from, inevitably leads to high turnover rates. For all these reasons, our study aims at developing a fair, financially sustainable pay rate for owner operators that will help companies ensure a stable and highly experienced workforce by making sure that owner operators can cover the real expenses of their working activity. Finally, in order to prove that our pay rate was of practical use, we test the model on one of the largest Spanish agro-food companies.     

Does private income support sustainable agroforestry in Spanish dehesa?

Oak woodland dehesa suffers from the aging of trees without a natural regeneration of young oaks coming in to replace them. Recent European Union (EU) policy reforms for rural development focus on supporting multifunctional agriculture that complies with the EU's environmental goals, such as mitigating biodiversity losses and climate change. Such reforms could result in government support for natural woodland regeneration practices in European agroforestry systems, which are recognized for providing valuable environmental services. Managing dehesa cork oak and holm oak woodlands to stimulate the growth of new oaks could be an efficient option for maintaining, and even increasing, the dehesa's current carbon stock and biodiversity. Here we develop and apply a new agroforestry accounting system based on the concept of Hicksian income to a dehesa in the Monfragüe area of western Spain, using primary microeconomic data from a large case study. Private total income and profitability rates are measured for individual goods and services, and for the entire dehesa in a steady state. Our application extends the EU system of accounts for agriculture and forestry by including private amenity consumption by landowners and the gain or loss in human-made and natural capital. We compare an actual typical unsustainable woodland management scenario with an ideal sustainable management scenario in which there is a continuous regeneration and recruitment of holm and cork oaks as predicted by silvicultural models. The results show that, given current land use policy incentives, allowing a slow depletion of oak trees is more profitable for a dehesa private landowner than maintaining the dehesa's trees. As a result many dehesa environmental services are gradually lost. This market failure requires new land use policies that induce private land owners to invest in the renewal of aging oak woodlands. To evaluate the impacts of this new policy, we show how private landowner income is affected when changes are made to achieve sustainable management of dehesa oaks. More research is needed in order to understand how the dehesa's landowner market income and private amenities trade-off can affect the owner's land use preferences and decisions.     

A Selective Review of the Economic Analysis of Animal Health Management

Economists and veterinarians use similar approaches to analyse animal health threats, but veterinarians are concerned primarily with providing practical guidelines to peers and/or policy‐makers, while economists focus more on understanding the benefits to society as a whole and often provide only general guidelines to policy‐makers and little specific direction to practicing veterinarians. Despite the benefits of working together, differences in perspective and analytical approach often cause economists and veterinarians to struggle in dialogue and to lose some of the mutual gains that could be achieved through collaboration. This article discusses the use of economics in animal health management, identifies several useful literature reviews, and analyses a number of recent studies to explore the advantages and disadvantages of different conceptual and methodological approaches.     

The Validity of Gibrat’s Law: Evidence from Ecuadorian Service SMEs

The objective of this research is to analyze the relationship between size and growth through the validation of Gibrat's law. A sample of 17,082 Ecuadorian companies in the service sector is used for the period 2010–2015. The estimation method used is that of quantile regression for panel data; the results suggest that small companies grow faster than their larger counterparts. The results show that the growth, measured through sales and employment, of SMEs in the service sector in Ecuador is not independent of firm size and therefore does not correspond to a random process.     

Analyzing the Techno-Economic Determinants for the Repowering of Wind Farms

The aim of this article is to identify the relative importance of technical and economic variables in the financial feasibility of repowering wind farm projects. A financial valuation model is developed. We carry out a sensitivity analysis with several variables considered to be key in the repowering decision. The most relevant technical variable is the increase in production efficiency and the most relevant economic variable is the capital expenditures in new equipment. Furthermore, the decision to repower critically depends upon the level of support being provided. The repowering project would not be feasible in the absence of support.     

Are Audit Firms' Compensation Policies Associated with Audit Quality?

We examine how compensation policies of audit firms are associated with audit quality. Specifically, we investigate the effects of the ratio of variable to fixed compensation and the size of the basis for profit sharing (i.e., whether partners share profits in a small or in a large profit pool). For our analyses, we use detailed mandatory disclosure of the compensation policies in German audit firms. We document that compensation policies vary considerably across audit firms. We find that profit sharing in a small profit pool and high variable compensation are two characteristics of auditor compensation associated with lower audit quality. We also find some evidence suggesting that audit quality may be most at risk in cases in which partners rely more heavily on variable compensation to divide a relatively small profit pool. In additional analyses, we find that these associations are more pronounced in medium-sized audit firms. We argue that this finding may result from these firms being too large for audit partners to directly monitor each other effectively, yet simultaneously too small to have sophisticated centralized monitoring systems in place. Finally, we find that integrating partner-specific, nonprofit-related performance metrics into the compensation structure mitigates the adverse effects of small profit pools and high variable compensation.     

“To love beer above all things”: An analysis of Brazilian craft beer subculture of consumption

In this article, we describe and analyze the Brazilian craft beer subculture of consumption. We observed that feelings play an important role inside this subculture and used a sociocultural approach to analyze it. Field notes from 9 months of fieldwork at beer festivals, craft beer meetings, and Collective Brassages and 40 interviews with consumers are used as data. “Drink less, drink better” is the subculture’s motto and shows commitment to enjoyment and responsibility as craft beer consumers reject mass-produced beer and antisocial behaviors usually associated with beer drinkers. We differentiated members of the craft beer subculture of consumption according to their commitment to subculture ethos, beer-specific knowledge, experience drinking and making beer, and emotional attachment to craft beer. Craft beer consumers experience different sentiments as their status inside the subculture increases and hard-core members show a religious fervor for the beer that is similar to consumer devotion.