Policy impact assessment in developing countries using Social Accounting Matrices: The Kenya SAM 2014

This paper describes the structure and estimation of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Kenya for the year 2014. Among its specificities, this SAM includes a very high disaggregation of the agri‐food sector and accounts for the double role of households as producers and consumers. Accounting for these characteristics is crucial to provide robust socioeconomic analysis in the context of developing countries. Indeed, this type of database is valuable to perform ex‐ante evaluations of economic policies with various economic models and techniques. In this paper, we present an application with a linear multiplier analysis (backward linkages and value chain decomposition). The results show the capacity of the primary sector in Kenya to generate value added and employment, with this growth distributed more intensely in rural households whose main livelihood is semi‐subsistence agriculture.     

Financial Statement Comparability and Idiosyncratic Return Volatility

This study examines the association between financial statement comparability and idiosyncratic return volatility (IRV). A greater degree of comparability lowers information acquisition costs, reduces the uncertainties associated with performance evaluation, and increases the overall quantity and quality of information available to corporate outsiders, which, in turn, helps investors to understand and evaluate the cash flow and performance of firms more accurately. Therefore, we hypothesize a negative association between financial statement comparability and IRV. Using a large US sample from 1981 to 2013, we show that financial statement comparability is associated with lower level of IRV significantly. We also find this association to be more pronounced in a poor information environment. This study contributes to the emerging research that stresses the benefits of financial statement comparability.     

Online grocery shopping: the impact of shopping frequency on perceived risk

Online grocery shopping has enjoyed strong growth and it is predicted this channel will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years. While online shopping has attracted an abundance of research interest, examinations of online grocery shopping behaviour are only now emerging. Shopping online for groceries differs considerably from general online shopping due to the perishability and variability of the product, and frequency of the shopping activity. Two salient gaps underpin this research into online grocery shopping. This study responds to calls to investigate the online shoppers’ experience in the context of online purchasing frequency. Second, this study examines the mediating effect of perceived risk between trust and online repurchase intention of groceries. An online survey was employed to collect data from shoppers who were recruited from a multi-channel grocery e-retailer’s database. The online survey, comprising 16 reflective validated scale items, was sent to 555 frequent and infrequent online grocery shoppers. Results find that while customer satisfaction predicts trust for both infrequent and frequent online grocery shoppers, perceived risk fully mediates the effect of trust on repurchase intentions for infrequent online grocery shoppers. Furthermore, path analysis reveals that the developed behavioural model is variant across both groups of shoppers. Theoretically, we provide a deeper understanding of the online customer experience, while gaining insight into two shopper segments identified as being important to grocery e-retailers. For managers, this study tests an online customer behavioural model with actual purchasing behaviour and identifies the continued presence of perceived risk in grocery e-retailing, regardless of purchase frequency or experience.     

Institutional development,financial deepening and economic growth: Evidence from China

There have been profound changes in both political and economic institutions in China over the last 20 years. Moreover, the pace of transition has led to variation across the country in the level of development. In this paper, we use panel data for the Chinese provinces to study the role of legal institutions, financial deepening and political pluralism on growth rates. The most important institutional developments for a transition economy are the emergence and legalization of the market economy, the establishment of secure property rights, the growth of a private sector, the development of financial sector institutions and markets, and the liberalization of political institutions. We develop measures of these phenomena, which are used as explanatory variables in regression models to explain provincial GDP growth rates. Our evidence suggests that the development of financial markets, legal environment, awareness of property rights and political pluralism are associated with stronger growth.     

Is money an omitted variable in the production function? Some further results

In recent years, numerous studies have emphasized the role of real balances in the production function in terms of money being useful: as an intermediate good; as liquid reserves for investment; and also serving as a link between aggregate supply and the nominal interest rate. In this paper we report new Canadian empirical evidence regarding the important role of money in the production process of aggregate manufacturing industries based on a flexible translog cost function approach. In general, our results support the hypothesis that money is an important factor in the production function and that there are potential supply side effects of a change in the interest rate.     

Climate Smart Agriculture? Assessing the Adaptation Implications in Zambia

We examine a set of potentially climate smart agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotation and legume intercropping, combined with the use of improved seeds and inorganic fertiliser, for their effects on maize yields in Zambia. We use panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys merged with a novel set of climatic variables based on geo‐referenced historical rainfall and temperature data to explore the changing effects of these practices with climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts on maize yields, and also on the exhibition of very low yields and yield shortfalls from average levels, as indicators of resilience, while controlling for household characteristics. We find that minimum soil disturbance and crop rotation have no significant impact on these yield outcomes, but that legume intercropping significantly increases yields and reduces the probability of low yields even under critical weather stress during the growing season. We also find that the average positive impacts of modern input use (seeds and fertilisers) are significantly conditioned by climatic variables. Timely access to fertiliser emerges as one of the most robust determinants of yields and their resilience. These results have policy implications for targeted interventions to improve the productivity and the resilience of smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the face of climate change.