XIII. Soziologie und Kultur,Politik und Geschichte

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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XIII. Soziologie und Kultur, Politik und Geschichte

     

The impact of 1992 on product liability in Europe

MNCs with plans for marketing within the EC after 1992 may want to prepare now for developments stemming from a directive calling for a tough stand on product liability within the European Community.     

The Effects of a Negative Travel Experience on Tourists' Decisional Behavior

This study examines the influence of a negative experience at a destination on tourists by identifying its effects on individuals' judgment. Empirical evidence of the tangible effects of a single travel experience on individuals' decision‐making is lacking. Prospect theory and negativity bias theory are introduced for theoretical support. The ratings of generally important criteria for destination selection and the evaluation of the destination on those criteria were collected before and after visitation. A mean comparison showed that the effects of a single travel experience are tangible and affect tourists' future decisional behavior intentions by contributing to shaping the individuals' destination selection criteria. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why do global long‐term scenarios for agriculture differ? An overview of the AgMIP Global Economic Model Intercomparison

Recent studies assessing plausible futures for agricultural markets and global food security have had contradictory outcomes. To advance our understanding of the sources of the differences, 10 global economic models that produce long‐term scenarios were asked to compare a reference scenario with alternate socioeconomic, climate change, and bioenergy scenarios using a common set of key drivers. Several key conclusions emerge from this exercise: First, for a comparison of scenario results to be meaningful, a careful analysis of the interpretation of the relevant model variables is essential. For instance, the use of “real world commodity prices” differs widely across models, and comparing the prices without accounting for their different meanings can lead to misleading results. Second, results suggest that, once some key assumptions are harmonized, the variability in general trends across models declines but remains important. For example, given the common assumptions of the reference scenario, models show average annual rates of changes of real global producer prices for agricultural products on average ranging between ?0.4% and +0.7% between the 2005 base year and 2050. This compares to an average decline of real agricultural prices of 4% p.a. between the 1960s and the 2000s. Several other common trends are shown, for example, relating to key global growth areas for agricultural production and consumption. Third, differences in basic model parameters such as income and price elasticities, sometimes hidden in the way market behavior is modeled, result in significant differences in the details. Fourth, the analysis shows that agro‐economic modelers aiming to inform the agricultural and development policy debate require better data and analysis on both economic behavior and biophysical drivers. More interdisciplinary modeling efforts are required to cross‐fertilize analyses at different scales.     

EU Food Safety Standards,Pesticide Use and Farm‐level Productivity: The Case of High‐value Crops in Kenya

This article provides an empirical analysis of the impact of European Union (EU) private food safety standards on pesticide use and farm‐level productivity among small‐scale vegetable producers in Kenya. We apply an extended three‐stage damage control production framework, accounting for multiple endogeneity problems, to farm‐level data collected from a random cross‐sectional sample of 539 small‐scale producers. Estimation results show that farmers producing vegetables for the domestic market use significantly lower quantities of pesticides than do export farmers. However, contrary to findings elsewhere, the econometric evidence here shows that both domestic and export‐oriented vegetable farmers in Kenya use pesticides at levels below the economic optimum. The results also show that the adoption of standards by export farmers does not have any significant impact on total pesticide use. However, adopter categories are distinguishable in terms of types of pesticide used, i.e. adopters use safer pesticides based on World Health Organization (WHO) classification. The third‐stage structural revenue model results demonstrate that adoption of standards has a positive and significant impact on revenue raised in vegetable production. Nevertheless, farmers producing for the export market are indistinguishable from those producing for the domestic farmers in terms of the total revenue earned from producing vegetables during the rainy season, on a ‘per acre’ basis. Although standards can potentially prevent resource‐poor smallholders from maintaining their position in the lucrative export markets, they can also result in positive changes in the production systems of those small‐scale farmers who adopt it, as shown by these results.     

Learning “who we are” by doing: Processes of co-constructing prosocial identities in community-based enterprises

This study investigates how members in community-based enterprises (CBEs) engage in processes of co-constructing their collective prosocial identities. Based on an inductive analysis of 27 organizations that were formed explicitly as communities and sought to build alternative forms of production and consumption through innovative ways to pool and recombine resources, we found that all of the CBEs engaged in distributed experimentation that lead to epiphany sense-making. These two approaches triggered and enacted collective processes of shifts in identity or identity persistence. We advance a processual model that identifies approaches for how members of CBEs either embrace epiphanies in identity shifts or limit and react to epiphanies in identity persistence.     

What makes entrepreneurship research interesting? Reflections on strategies to overcome the rigour–relevance gap

As entrepreneurship researchers compete to have their work published and universities strive to attract the best entrepreneurship scholars, it is appropriate to examine what makes entrepreneurship research interesting. Interesting studies are usually defined as well-crafted and well-written studies that challenge established knowledge, and produce new theories and findings. This paper examines entrepreneurship scholars’ views on the characteristics of interesting entrepreneurship research by means of a qualitative approach. Eight focus group interviews comprising junior and senior entrepreneurship scholars were conducted. A core finding is that interesting studies must be relevant to practice. However, the institutionalization of entrepreneurship as an academic field has favoured rigour at the cost of relevance, leading to scholars’ frustration with the rigour–relevance gap. In this paper, we analyse various dimensions of interestingness and reflect on strategies for overcoming the rigour–relevance gap, with particular focus on the creation of applicative knowledge.     

Foreign Capital Flows,Uncertainties of Exchange Rates and Central Bank Independence: Implications for Emerging Economies

Utilizing time series data for a panel of 22 emerging countries and applying Granger causality tests, this paper extends the relationship between central bank independence (CBI) and uncertainties of inflation by including the phenomena of exchange rates and foreign capital flows. There are two specific objectives of this investigation. The first objective is to see whether uncertainty of inflation induces volatility of exchange rates, and vice versa, under differing degrees of CBI. The second objective is to explore whether the dynamics of the former relationship influence foreign capital flows in turn and, if so, whether the extent of CBI plays any role in shaping that influence. The period of study spans the years 1968 through 2013. Conditional variances for inflation and exchange rates define proxies for uncertainties of inflation and exchange rates in the empirical analysis. Additionally, annual inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) provide measures for foreign capital flows in the analysis. Results of causality tests for high and low CBI country subgroups show interesting differences. For the high CBI countries, uncertainty of inflation and uncertainty of exchange rates do not share any causal relationship whatsoever between them. However, a weak link runs from FDI to uncertainties of inflation in the long run. This may be indicative of the disciplined monetary policy and tamed inflation in these countries. Contrastingly, for the low CBI countries, there is strong evidence of causal links running from uncertainties of inflation to uncertainties of exchange rates on the one hand and to FDI flows on the other. In addition, there is indication of a bi-directional causal link between FDI flows and exchange rates for these countries.     

Comprehension in risk elicitation experiments

Economic experiments are increasingly conducted with field populations for whom comprehension of instructions may be more difficult to achieve. We investigate how framing experimental instructions in a familiar context and incentivizing the experimental task may affect comprehension. Based on an experiment with 146 German farmers, we compare four different versions of a Holt-and-Laury multiple price list. We find that incentives have a small positive effect on comprehension, as measured by the probability of making inconsistent choices and subjects’ self-assessment. In the absence of incentives, framing negatively affects comprehension. Comprehension is enhanced for farmers who score high on a numeracy test. We conclude that contextual framing might confuse subjects, whereas incentives can help to facilitate comprehension of experimental instructions.