Available Sheep Cheese Supply Chain: Governance System of Channels in the Badia of Jordan

Based on field research in the Badia of Jordan and the first of its kind, this study specifically addresses the supply chain, marketing trends available to Badia farmers, the governance system that impact farmers, and the challenges facing them. Available cheese chains included Safeway and Civic Consumer Corporation chains as inaccessible by Badia farmers and wholesalers and Tal Arrimah (TA) Factory chains as accessible by Badia farmers. The data was elicited from archives, semistructured interviews, PRA (Participatory Rapid Appraisal), and survey with 118 participants carried out during the months of March–June 2007. The new trends have driven new organizational and institutional changes that led to the rise and use of contracts. Contracts varied in their attributes of delivery, prices, risk management, and provision of services such as credit and technical assistance. For the TA Factory, contracts remained unwritten and informal and did not set substantial requirements for technology upgrading and investment. The study recommends initiating written contracts for the benefit of the farmers as well as that of produce quality and standards.     

Financial integration and currency risk premium in CEECs: Evidence from the ICAPM

This paper aims to study the Central and Eastern European Countries' (CEECs) dynamics of financial integration in the euro area with the prospect of their integration into the European Monetary Union. Our empirical analysis is based, successively, on a MGARCH model with time-varying correlations, a state-space model and a Markov-switching model. The results show that financial integration (i) is not perfect but is increasing and (ii) is linked to currency stability. The growing financial integration in 2007–2009 seems to be rather the result of the shock propagated by the global crisis.     

The Union Pacific/Southern Pacific Railroads Merger: Effect of Trackage Rights on Rates

We investigate the impact of the 1996 UP/SP railroads merger on rail rates for potential 2-to-1 shippers. As part of its merger conditions, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) granted trackage rights to BNSF to preserve competition for these shippers. Using the STBs Carload Waybill Sample data for the Salt Lake City economic area, we found that the remedy was effective—BNSF provided more effective competition to UP in the post-merger era than SP did in the pre-merger era. The results, however, differed by commodity, direction of traffic, and shipper-type.     

The influence of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship factors in Egypt

The purpose of this article is to study the effect of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship factors, and determine which factors are the most important for the alumni to become entrepreneurs. A questionnaire had been developed and distributed online using Google Forms. Data were collected from 314 hospitality alumni. All the hypotheses have been supported, proving that the investigated demographic characteristics have a significant effect on entrepreneurship factors, particularly motivation, innovation and personal skills. The study’s sample was limited to alumni of faculties of tourism and hotels in governmental universities only. Policy-makers implication, practical implication, and social implication are discussed based on the results of this study. This is one of the first studies in Egypt to study the effect of demographic characteristics of hospitality alumni on entrepreneurship. Moreover, it provides significant findings that can enhance the overall status of entrepreneurship in Egypt’s hospitality industry.     

Modelling the asymmetric responses of price level to oil price changes in Qatar

This paper inspects the asymmetric effect of oil price on prices level in Qatar. To achieve that, we proceed by employing a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach on data during the period 1990Q1–2014Q4. The estimation results show evidences of an incomplete and asymmetric influence of oil price on price level in the long term. Moreover, we find that price responses to negative changes in oil price is greater than its response to positive changes. Given Qatar’s economic features, a decrease in oil price could cause lower imports and production prices and consequently a substantial influence on domestic prices level. However, the lower effect of positive oil price changes on consumer prices can be explained by the subsidies system, the consumption patterns, and the exchange rate regime.     

Projections of oil demand in road transportation sector on the basis of vehicle ownership projections,worldwide: 1972–2020

Oil demand in the road transportation section accounts for more than 50% of total world oil consumption amongst the whole sectors, including road, aviation, railway, waterways and international marine transportation. The high demand rate of oil makes this sector the main and major oil consumer in the world. The vehicle ownership or intensity of vehicles is one of the main factors which determines the development of oil demand in this major sector.Vehicle ownership (in 1000 population) is estimated using the nonlinear Gompertz model on the basis of pooled time series (1972–2020) and cross-sections data for 154 countries. Different saturation levels for the selected countries and over time horizon is calculated by adding specific demographic and geographic variables. Then, under two different scenarios – business as usual and policy scenario – we make projections of oil demand in the road transportation sector across 154 countries by using available data up to 2020.According to the results of the model, it is predicted that the number of world total vehicles will be approximately 1.5 times higher in 2020 than in 2008. Moreover, oil demand projections for road transportation over 2009–2020 show that under business as usual scenario, world oil demand will increase to 14,748 million barrel of oil equivalent until 2020 while under the policy scenario, which is based on the fuel efficiency improvement by 20% during a period of 10 years until 2020, world oil demand in the aforementioned sector will increase only to 11601 mboe until 2020.     

A signaling approach to soft budgets

A new explanation for soft budget constraints is given. Projects of an agent are often the more profitable, the more confident the agent is in the principal's competence and/or supports. Principals can signal support and/or competence through a soft budget constraint.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Productivity Spillovers: Firm-Level Evidence From Chilean Industrial Sector

Using firm-level panel data, this article examines whether spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) make a contribution to productivity growth in Chilean manufacturing firms. The main contribution of this work is to apply a methodology to estimate, in a consistent manner, the productivity impact of investment climate variables, such as FDI. With this aim, the spillover effects from FDI are analyzed using a stochastic frontier approach (SFA). Productivity growth is decomposed using a generalized Malmquist output-oriented index. The results show positive productivity spillovers from FDI; higher competition is associated with larger spillovers; and firms with high R&D effort gain more spillover benefits compared to those with less R&D effort.     

Financing of Firms,Labor Reallocation,and the Distributional Role of Monetary Policy*

We analyze monetary policy in a model with heterogeneous firms, where constrained firms finance operations through external financing and unconstrained firms use internal funds. We show that expansionary monetary policy increases the relative employment of constrained firms, while positive productivity shocks increase that of unconstrained firms. Our results agree with recent empirical findings, emphasizing the role of the monetary authority in reallocating resources across sectors with different financing capabilities. We also show that if the relative productivity of constrained firms is low, then expansionary monetary policy tilts resources towards less productive firms, which decreases the effectiveness of the policy in stimulating aggregate output.