What drives agrifood firms to register for an Environmental Management System?

This paper examines empirically which factors determine voluntaryadoption of Environmental Management System (EMS) certification(ISO 14001 or EMAS) by agrifood industries. A discrete-choicemodel of EMS certification is applied to a sample of 1,000 Frenchagrifood firms. The findings suggest that management-relatedfactors drive certification more strongly than economic incentivesand provides a new perspective on Porter's theory of the doublebenefit of certification.     

The economic and strategic motives for antidumping filings

The Economic and Strategic Motives for Antidumping Filings. — This paper looks at worldwide antidumping activity during the last two decades. We examine the motives for AD filings by countries in an attempt to identify whether economic or strategic concerns are driving the recent upsurge in AD use. We begin by providing a comprehensive overview of the data on cases initiated in the 1980–1998 period. We then use nonparametric methods to identify motivations for the use of antidumping and find considerable support for strategic motivations. This suggests that the rise in AD activity cannot be solely explained by an increase in unfair trading practices.     

Impacts of risk aversion on whole-farm management in Syria

This article reports on a study of the impact of risk on farm management practices in northern Syria, focusing particularly on how these are affected by risk aversion and farm size. The study is based on production data from an eight-year field trial and on prices from market surveys. A large linear programming model is built, representing the eight years as observations from a discrete probability distribution. Risk aversion is modelled by inclusion of a utility function with constant relative risk aversion, represented using the DEMP/UEP approach.     

What Austrian Economics Can Teach Historians

Austrian economics is a valuable resource for historians. Scholars informed by Austrian insights can make better sense of historical phenomena, and can provide far better insight into economic history, than those who lack this background. It is impossible to understand events such as the Great Depression with the assistance of no theory at all, so it is essential that the historian adopt the correct one. Sound theory also prevents the historian from falling into a wide array of fallacies—about the stimulative effects of public works projects or the economic benefits of war, for instance—that have insinuated their way into so much scholarly and popular writing.