Targeting agricultural research based on potential impacts on poverty reduction: Strategic program priorities by agro-ecological zone in Nigeria

Growing concern for poverty in the face of declining agricultural research budgets has increasingly required formal priority setting of public agricultural research in developing countries to ensure that scarce research resources are allocated in ways that will have the greatest impact on the poor. This paper assessed the potential impacts of alternative commodity research programs on poverty reduction in three agro-ecological zones of Nigeria and identified strategic agricultural research priorities in the three zones. The paper discusses the poverty reduction-based priorities and their role in facilitating dialogue between research managers and policymakers aimed at sharpening the focus of agricultural research to achieve poverty reduction objectives in Nigeria.     

Determinants of the corporate decision to capitalize interest

Until 1974, firms could choose, within GAAP, to capitalize or expense interest costs associated with capital expenditures. The predominant practice had been to treat interest as a period expense. However, in 1974, the Securities and Exchange Commission imposed a moratorium on further adoption of interest capitalization by non-regulated firms. This study empirically examines economic factors potentially influencing firms' decisions to expense or capitalize interest prior to the SEC moratorium. We hypothesize that the choice may be affected by (1) the existence of management compensation agreements tied to reported earnings, (2) debt covenant constraints, and (3) the political costs (for some firms) of reporting higher earnings.When compared to the control group, our findings are that (1) the frequency of explicit management compensation packages was not greater for the interest capitalization group, (2) firms with financial ratios closer to likely debt agreement constraints (on dividends, interest coverage, and leverage) tended to elect interest capitalization, and (3) other than the largest firms in the ‘politically sensitive’ petroleum refining industry, the larger firms were more likely to capitalize interest.     

Preventing Customer Churn in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry: Is Mobile Money Usage the Missing Link?

The paper examines the influence of mobile money usage on customer continuance intention (CCI). The study conveniently sampled 507 mobile money users to test the research model using PLS-SEM. Satisfaction, trust and active usage of mobile money were found to influence CCI. Active usage of mobile money was also confirmed as a mediator in the relationship between satisfaction and trust, on customer continuance. The study thus validated a theoretical model of customer continuance intention as it relates to mobile money usage. It has also provided a new perspective on managing customer churn in an emerging market.     

Integrating partitioned prices via computational estimation

This paper introduces computational estimation to the literature on consumers’ numerical cognition. Computational estimation involves simplifying an arithmetic problem via mathematical procedures to produce an approximate answer. Employing calculation knowledge and approximation together, consumers are likely to use computational estimation as it is relatively accurate while saving cognitive effort compared to calculating values. Three studies applied to partitioned prices in the form of a base price and a percentage discount, demonstrate that when faced with this numeric integration task, the strategy consumers undertake is dependent on the characteristics of the numerals with discounts that are round or close to round being associated with greater use of computational estimation. Further, when employing computational estimation, consumers arrive at more accurate, and lower, price estimates in which they place more confidence than when using alternative an integration strategy. As a result, discounts that are near a round value are preferred to those that are not; a result that is dependent upon the use of computational estimation.     

Leveraging of Reputation through Umbrella Branding: The Implications for Market Structure

The Klein–Leffler model explains how fear of reputation loss can induce firms to produce high‐quality experience goods. This paper shows that reputation can be leveraged across products via umbrella branding, but only by a firm with a monopoly on at least one product. Such a firm may be able to capture a market by using umbrella branding to make high quality credible at a lower price than the incumbent competitive firms. If monopolists compete for this capture, consumers are left better off than if the market remained competitive, in some cases even though the price increases.     

高密度配线架选择指南

康普在去年推出新型超高密度配线架,可以在1U的机架空间内提供144个LC连接密度.对于某些用户来说,如此超高密度的好处多多,因为这些用户机房内的导向器几乎占据了机柜中所有的可用机架空间.     

Lost and found: Individual differences in propensity to process visual elements of persuasion

Visual processing style, defined as the relative propensity to engage in visual processing rather than verbal processing, is an individual difference variable that has been frequently investigated in the consumer psychology literature. Surprisingly, numerous studies have reported no relationship between visual processing style and viewer responses to visual elements of persuasion. We argue that this accumulation of null results is due to untenable historical theoretical assumptions that underlie the construct, along with methodological problems that are inevitably brought about by those theoretical assumptions. We reconceptualize visual processing style and test an alternative empirical operationalization of it. Using both new data and a reanalysis of data published in the Journal of Consumer Research, we find the old approach yields null results, but we find the new approach yields the expected results. The new approach reinstates the utility of incorporating propensity to engage in visual processing as an individual difference variable into consumer psychology models of visual persuasion, and it reinstates a powerful individual difference variable that can help push forward the investigation of the unique aspects of visual persuasion.     

Boardroom centrality and firm performance

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.     

Residents' perceptions of the environmental impacts of tourism in the Lake Bosomtwe Basin,Ghana

This study investigates residents' perceptions of tourism's physical impacts in the Lake Bosomtwe Basin in Ghana. Data were based on a resident survey conducted in the basin in January 2006. Residents perceived both positive and negative impacts of tourism development, but were more inclined to the positive side. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the district assemblies in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism should start managing the impacts, and also educate the local population on the dangers of underestimating the negative impacts of tourism on the environment.     

The relationship of perception of time and attributes of leisure in daily experiences

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between perceived passage of time (slowly versus quickly) and perceived freedom, enjoyment, interest and subjective meaning of leisure in daily experiences of married couples. Eleven college-age married couples participated in this study. Data were collected using experience sampling method that produced a total of 650 self-reports. Couples were signalled at random five times a day for one week. Using logistic regression results suggest that some leisure attributes are more relevant in influencing perception of passage of time in husbands' and wives' daily experiences.