Organizing women for combat: The experience of the FARC in the Colombian war

The FARC, which used to be Colombia's main guerrilla force and is now in the midst of a peace process, was to a great extent a feminized group. This paper discusses why it recruited so many women, and why it recruited them as combatants. We suggest that only when the FARC adopted a highly hierarchical, self‐contained, and militaristic organizational blueprint did it get involved in the massive recruitment of women as combatants. We discuss the way in which organizational mechanisms and ideology interacted to produce such an outcome, and how this interaction marked both the organization and the trajectories of the women who joined it.     

Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri‐food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor‐owned firms for the period 2010–2012. Our findings show that agri‐food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor‐owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri‐food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor‐owned firms.     

Three decades of productivity change in French beef production: a Färe‐Primont index decomposition

The Färe‐Primont index is used to evaluate total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components for a sample of French suckler cow farms in grassland areas in 1985–2014. The results reveal an increase in TFP of 6.6 per cent over the whole observation period, with technological progress being the major source of productivity growth. Meanwhile, efficiency decreased. Farms experienced great technological progress from 1991 to 2000. From a methodological point of view, the comparison with results obtained with Malmquist indexes shows similar trends but different magnitudes, with the Malmquist index overestimating the TFP and technological changes compared to the Färe‐Primont index. In addition, the use of a sequential approach that restricts technological change to being positive or null allows for the precise calculation of technology changes, disregarding the effects of external conditions that are captured in efficiency changes. Finally, the estimation of full dimensional efficient facets (FDEFs) that guarantees the positivity of all shadow prices used to assess the mix efficiency component of TFP change is promising.     

Interaction between crop insurance and technology adoption decisions: The case of wheat farmers in Chile

This paper examines relationships between crop insurance and input technology decisions among Chilean wheat farmers. Using nationwide farm‐level data, a bivariate probit model is estimated. We investigate the extent to which the adoption of production input technologies is associated with farmers’ participation in the insurance program. We find that relationships between insurance and technology decisions are significant only for family farmers. In particular, there is a negative relationship between participation in the insurance program and the adoption of modern irrigation. Interpretations based on the role of input technologies on insurance adoption and adverse selection behaviours are discussed.     

The Conflicted State and Agrarian Transformation in Pink Tide Venezuela

Can radical political‐economic transformation be achieved by electoral regimes that have not thoroughly reconstructed the state? Contemporary Venezuela offers an optimal venue for examining this question. The Chavista movement did not replace the previous state: instead, its leaders attempted to reform existing state entities and establish new ones in pursuit of its transformation agenda. It has also used its oil wealth to support cooperatively‐oriented economic activity, without necessarily fundamentally altering the property structure. Thus, the social change‐oriented political economy exists alongside the traditional one. Focusing on agrarian transformation, we examine ethnographically how these factors have impacted the state's capacity to attain its goal of national food sovereignty. We find that the state's ability to accomplish this objective has been compromised by lack of agency‐level capacity, inter‐agency conflict and the persistence of the previously‐extant agrarian property structure. These dynamics have influenced the state to shift from its initial objective of food sovereignty to a policy of nationalist food security.     

Pricing a rural development program: uncertainty,indifference, and protest behaviors

This article presents an econometric approach to modeling uncertainty, unwillingness to pay, and protest behavior in contingent valuation studies. For that purpose, a mixture model with sample selection is developed for a multiple‐bounded uncertainty elicitation format. The proposed theoretical framework is applied to evaluate the social welfare impact of implementing a sustainable rural development program. Results show that a “naive” analytical approach that excludes protesters from the analysis would result in significantly higher willingness to pay estimates for those individuals who favor the implementation of the program and agree to reveal their true reservation prices.     

Can Marketing Help in Tackling Food Waste?: Proposals in Developed Countries

One third of food destined for human consumption is wasted globally, and much of the food waste that comes from high-income or developed countries is caused by poor marketing practices, consumer behavior, and consumption patterns. The present study focuses on developed countries to propose some marketing actions that could help in reducing food waste. A comprehensive analysis was carried out for each marketing variable, to provide a snapshot of actions and proposals that are being developed. Our study highlights the relevance of marketing in contributing to reduce food waste, through the removal of “Buy one, get one free” sales promotions, clarifying date labeling, or raising food waste awareness campaigns. The main contribution of this study is the proposal of marketing actions that help in tacking food waste.     

Thoughts,attitudes and profile of Brazilian consumers regarding food irradiation

This study aimed to examine the neophobia, knowledge, thoughts, and opinions related to food irradiation among consumers living in a small city in Brazil through the application of a behavioral and sociodemographic questionnaire. It was found that the 271 respondents had little knowledge about the process of food irradiation and had low intent to purchase irradiated food; several consumers associated irradiated food with radioactivity and cancer. Individuals with better knowledge about irradiation and those who are young, single, did not live with children, and had higher levels of education and higher monthly family incomes were more likely to buy irradiated foods than others. These results describe the profile of potential consumers of irradiated foods and the knowledge, thoughts and opinions of the residents of a small city relative to food irradiation. This data could assist industries that irradiate foods to adopt strategies that ensure greater acceptance of their products.     

Education and the empowerment of women in household decision‐making in Spain

It was analysed whether investment in the education of both women and men serves to empower wives resulting in more balanced household decisions being taken on matters related to consumption and financial management. They considered that household decision‐making could be made by mainly the wife, mainly the husband or the couple acting jointly. They then applied multinomial probit models to the Spanish Living Conditions Survey of 2010. Results show that, when controlling for demographic, family and labour market characteristics, the level of education of both the husband and wife has a positive effect in terms of a more egalitarian decision‐making process in relation to three areas of expenditure: daily shopping, expensive purchases of consumer durables and significant expenditure on children. However, only women's education has a positive effect on borrowing money and no effect of education is observed with regard to the use of savings. Results are less conclusive for households where decisions are taken primarily by the wife or husband, since men's education increases the role of husbands in the household making‐decision process whereas no effect of wives' education is observed.     

Institutional theory and global entrepreneurship: exploring differences between factor- versus innovation-driven countries

Using the lenses of institutional theory, this study examines several Entrepreneurial Factor Conditions (National Experts Survey database) while focusing on potential differences of several institutional dimensions between factor- (or production) and innovation-driven countries. This study therefore examines first the extent to which several Scott’s institutional variables (normative, regulative, and cultural-cognitive) differ according to the economic structure of countries participating in NES-GEM. Results indicate that the relevance of both regulative and cultural-cognitive dimensions differ between the group of countries driven by factor (or production) versus innovation, with a single exception, the normative dimension. Second, the study fine tunes the analysis and examines the extent to which the relevance of the aforementioned dimensions differs in two distinct institutional contexts (Portugal and Angola). Results show that the relevance of all institutional variables is different except one, the basic education and training. A possible explanation for these results may be associated to the lack of and fragility of several institutions and the absence of norms and regulations needed for a well-functioning economy, particularly in what concerns the factor (or production)-driven countries. In terms of originality, the study addresses an area of the GEM model that is under-researched.