Farmers' markets: consuming local rural produce

Marketing food directly from producers to consumers, so circumventing the ‘middlemen’ in the food supply chain, has many potential benefits. For consumers, direct marketing initiatives are providing people with locally grown, fresh, healthy and, in many cases, organic food at affordable prices. Through buying locally grown produce, consumers are giving their support to local producers as well as helping to revitalize rural economies. Producers benefit through retaining more of the value of their produce, which can help them survive through the current crisis in UK farming. There are also environmental benefits. Creating markets where people can buy produce from local farmers and growers reduces the distance that food travels between producers and consumers, which in turn decreases global environmental pollution. One direct marketing scheme – the farmers’ market – has proved to be particularly popular with local people, producers and the local councils, organizations and institutions who are involved in setting them up. This paper focuses on one such market, the Stour Valley Farmers' Market, which commenced trading on 20th June 1999. Customers who attended the first three of these monthly markets were interviewed to investigate the reasons for their attendance at the market, and their attitudes towards a number of food issues including organic and genetically modified food, local and seasonal food and concerns they may have over the way their food is produced. The research has shown that most customers visited the markets initially out of curiosity, although some attended specifically to buy healthy fresh foods. The vast majority of interviewees expressed a preference for food which is organically grown and free from genetic modification. Organic foods are generally perceived to be healthier and more flavoursome. When buying fresh foods, interviewees stated the importance of quality and freshness in their choice of produce.     

Surveillance of interpersonal violence in Kingston,Jamaica: an evaluation

Injuries are among the leading causes of death in Jamaica. Homicide rates have been sharply increasing since 1991. In 1997, the rate of homicide (45/100 000) in Jamaica was over five times the US rate in 1997 (7.9/100 000). In response to this problem and the alarming increase in non-fatal assaultive injuries, the Jamaican Ministry of Health together with the CDC established a Violence-Related Injury Surveillance System (VRISS) using patient registration data from Kingston Public Hospital. The VRISS was evaluated for usefulness, and for system attributes: system acceptability, simplicity, flexibility, sensitivity, and predictive value positive (PVP). System-identified cases were compared with clinical records and data from direct patient interviews. The surveillance system was flexible, acceptable to clinical staff and Ministry officials, and moderately sensitive, detecting 62% to 69% of violent injuries identified from clinical records and a patient survey. The system's predictive value positive was high, with 86% of potential cases confirmed as actual cases. Although adequate, system sensitivity was reduced by incomplete or no registration of patients during periods of staff shortage. In conclusion, despite some logistic shortcomings, the system appeared promising for collecting limited information on non-fatal interpersonal violent injuries. With modification and expansion, the system may be capable of collecting unintentional-injury data also.     

The Moderating Role of Confidence in Expectations and the Asymmetric Influence of Disconfirmation on Customer Satisfaction

This article examines the way in which confidence in expectations moderates the process of customer satisfaction formation, and whether positive disconfirmation and negative disconfirmation have asymmetric influences on satisfaction. Using structural equation analysis, the proposed model was tested with 256 Korean customers of family restaurants. The results indicate that confidence in expectations plays a significant role in the customer satisfaction formation process. The indirect effects of expectations via performance on customer satisfaction are stronger for customers with high confidence in expectations. The results also indicate that the influence of disconfirmation on customer satisfaction can be asymmetric. The asymmetric influence occurs especially when customers have high confidence in expectations.     

How Do Firm Characteristics Influence the Relationship between R&D and Firm Value?

This paper focuses on how a firm's characteristics affect the market valuation of its research and development (R&D) spending. We derive a valuation model based on the capital market arbitrage condition. Using the generalized method of moments and data from the Eurozone countries to estimate this model yields interesting results. Several firm characteristics (size, firm growth, and market share) positively affect the relationship between firm value and R&D spending, while others (free cash flow, dependence on external finance, labor intensity, and capital intensity) exert a negative effect. Therefore, we conclude that the effectiveness of R&D spending depends on firm characteristics.     

How do CEO emotions matter? Impact of CEO affective traits on strategic and performance conformity in the spanish banking industry

Research on how managers influence firm outcomes has generated promising explanations of differences in organizational strategies and performance within a given industry, but has largely ignored the role of emotions in shaping managers' strategic choices. This article analyzes the influence of the affective traits of CEOs—their long‐term tendency to experience positive or negative moods or emotions—on strategy and performance conformity in a sample of Spanish banks and savings banks. Our results show that managers' negative affective traits are related to more conformist strategies and more typical performance, whereas positive affective traits seem to promote outcomes that deviate from the central tendencies of the industry. Results also show that strategic conformity mediates the relationship between CEO negative affective traits and typical performance. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality as an autonomous body of knowledge. An in-depth survey on Italian higher education

The need of people skilled on quality topics is strongly increased in Italy, in the last 10 years, and new professional figures that are specialized in quality have been recently recognized by the Italian official classification of occupations. However, there seems to be a lack of empirical studies that analyse education about quality supplied by Italian universities and business schools. This paper shows the results of an exploratory survey on the education in quality offered by Italian universities. The research was conducted on a reasoned sample of Italian universities, selected on the basis of the number of students enrolled and the number of supplied degree courses, in the academic year 2005/2006. Thanks to the findings of the survey it is possible to know what (what subjects related to quality concepts and tools are taught), where (within which degree programs they are taught), and when (at which degree level they are taught) Italian higher education is devoted to quality.     

Transferring Ownership-specific Advantages to a Joint Venture in China

In 1994, a Sino-Italian joint venture was established in Foshan (China) to manufacture and sell motorcycles. The Italian parent company perceived important ownership-specific advantages in investing directly in China. These included its state-of-the-art production process, its marketing and distribution network, and its organizational and work concept. Indeed, it was intended to virtually ‘replicate’ these features of the parent company in China. This study explores problems experienced in attempting to reproduce these features of the parent company's European operation during the start-up phase of its Chinese affiliate. One problem was that core suppliers were reluctant to relocate part of their operations to China, making it difficult for the parent company to ‘replicate’ its production process abroad. There were also major difficulties in transferring the principles of its marketing and distribution network and its organization structure and work concept to China. While it is possible that many of these preliminary problems would be overcome and the parent company would realize its vision for its Chinese affiliate over time, this case-study not only highlights the complexity of harnessing ownership-specific advantages of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, but also raises important issues about the expansion of FDI from low technology to medium technology enterprises in the circumstances prevailing in China.     

Realizing smiles: Options pricing with realized volatility

We develop a discrete-time stochastic volatility option pricing model exploiting the information contained in the Realized Volatility (RV), which is used as a proxy of the unobservable log-return volatility. We model the RV dynamics by a simple and effective long-memory process, whose parameters can be easily estimated using historical data. Assuming an exponentially affine stochastic discount factor, we obtain a fully analytic change of measure. An empirical analysis of Standard and Poor's 500 index options illustrates that our model outperforms competing time-varying and stochastic volatility option pricing models.     

The law and economics of self-dealing

We present a new measure of legal protection of minority shareholders against expropriation by corporate insiders: the anti-self-dealing index. Assembled with the help of Lex Mundi law firms, the index is calculated for 72 countries based on legal rules prevailing in 2003, and focuses on private enforcement mechanisms, such as disclosure, approval, and litigation, that govern a specific self-dealing transaction. This theoretically grounded index predicts a variety of stock market outcomes, and generally works better than the previously introduced index of anti-director rights.     

School Attendance and Skill Premiums in France and the US: A General Equilibrium Approach*

We evaluate the effect of education policies, welfare programmes, technology and demographics on the differential evolution of the skill premium and on the rise in education investment in France and the US. We use a computable general equilibrium model with overlapping generations of individuals and endogenous education decisions. Human capital has two substitutable components ‐ experience and education ‐ both of which evolve endogenously over time. We use an original method to calibrate our model properly on the post‐war period and run counterfactual experiments to assess the relative contributions of the different exogenous variables. The expansionary French education policy boosted the supply of skills and kept the skill premium low. In contrast, increasing education costs in the US contributed to increased wage differentials by reducing the rise in educational attainment. Skill‐biased technical change is key to understanding rising school attendance and skill premiums in the US. It has a less important role and appears to be delayed in France.