Does one size fit all? exploring the relationship between attitudes towards growth,gender, and business size

To help explain the typically smaller size of businesses headed by women, this study examines a relatively unexplored dimension on which male and female entrepreneurs are expected to differ: their attitudes towards growth. An increasing number of scholars believe that the growth of a venture is at least partially determined by the entrepreneur’s motivations and intentions, yet very few have investigated whether gender differences exist. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of data collected through personal interviews with 229 small business owners in the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada, provide novel insights into the factors affecting an entrepreneur’s growth decision and desired pace of expansion.     

Stabilisation of the monetary system

The devaluation of the British Pound and the most speculation in gold and the dollar have lead to a hectic activity on the part of the monetary authorities in the industrial countries of the West. It is unlikely that anybody should have regarded the splitting up of the gold market—necessary though it was as a counter-measure—as a panacea which would prove efficacious in the long run. At the meeting in Stockholm of the Club of Ten the attempt was therefore made to parry the diminshing importance of gold within the monetary system by a speedier activation of the Special Drawing Rights—“the paper gold”. This constituted without doubt a decisive step towards rationalising and stabilising the international monetary system.     

Governance, organizational capabilities, and restructuring in transition economies

This paper focuses on the links between governance, firm capabilities and restructuring following the large-scale privatization process in Central and Eastern European transition economies using an integrative approach. Restructuring in these countries has been motivated by political and institutional changes and less so by market forces. Accordingly, political processes have produced political solutions such as “give-away” privatizations to insiders. These privatizations, in contrast to divestitures to outside owners, have realized less substantive restructuring because non-market incentives, such as too much managerial equity ownership, have created managerial entrenchment. In addition, we propose a connection between governance and organizational learning suggesting that learning is inhibited by excessive managerial ownership and lack of board knowledge regarding its oversight function. Furthermore, this entrenchment and poor board functioning may be perpetuated in financial-industrial groups, which have emerged as substitutes for market intermediaries in emerging economies. Thus, we propose that outside ownership involvement and the development of organizational capabilities may facilitate restructuring in the Central and Eastern European context. Our theoretical arguments are supported by case study evidence from transition economies.     

Urban Sprawl and Farmland Prices

A theoretical model of farmland valuation is developed to explicitly account for three effects of urban sprawl: conversion of farmland to urban uses, effect on agricultural returns, and speculative effect as represented by farmland conversion risk. This model is estimated using county-level data in the continental United States. Evidence is found for all three effects of urban sprawl on farmland values. Counties more accessible to major urban centers have higher net agricultural returns. Subsidiary evidence supports that the latter effect may be attributed to survival of (or conversion to) high-valued agriculture around urban centers.     

TESTING OLIGOPOLISTIC AND OLIGOPSONISTIC BEHAVIOUR: AN APPLICATION TO THE US MEAT-PACKING INDUSTRY

This paper extends the conjectural approach in industrial organisation to the analysis of imperfections in output and factor markets. Starting from the specification of a production function, the econometric analysis is based on the formulation and estimation of a simultaneous-equation model consisting of a production function, first-order conditions associated with factor employment, and two conjectural elasticities to parameterise the industry's oligopoly and oligopsony equilibria. As an example, we provide an application to the US meat-packing industry. Our results suggest that the industry exercises market power in both the output (meat) market and the factor (live animal) market.     

Country of origin labeling for complex supply chains: the case for labeling the location of different supply chain links

We investigate the value of a country of origin label (COOL) that separately identifies the geographic location of different stages in a food product's supply chain. We estimate the willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) of U.S. consumers for a packaged cereal product where the key grain ingredient may be grown in one country and processed in a second country (multicountry supply chain) and compare it to equivalent products that have both stages located in a single country. We find consumer WTP for products with single‐country and multicountry supply chains are statistically different, meaning that simplifying a multicountry label by listing only the country where the ingredients are grown or only the country where the ingredients are processed can result in different consumer values. We also find that for countries with a poor quality reputation, consumers respond more negatively when that country has the “last touch” than when that country's involvement is limited to upstream supply chain links.     

Impacts of considering climate variability on investment decisions in Ethiopia

Extreme interannual variability of precipitation within Ethiopia is not uncommon, inducing droughts or floods and often creating serious repercussions on agricultural and nonagricultural commodities. A dynamic climate module is integrated into an economy‐wide model containing a detailed zonal level agricultural structure. This coupled climate‐economic model is used to evaluate the effects of climate variability on prospective irrigation and infrastructure investment strategies, and the ensuing country‐wide economy. The linkages between the dynamic climate module and the economic model are created by the introduction of a climate‐yield factor (CYF), defined at the crop level and varied across Ethiopian zones. Nine sets of variable climate (VC) data are processed by the coupled model, generating stochastic wet and dry shocks, producing an ensemble of potential economic prediction indicators. Analysis of gross domestic product and poverty rate reveal a significant overestimation of the country's future welfare under all investment strategies when climate variability is ignored. The coupled model ensemble is further utilized for risk assessment to guide Ethiopian policy and planning.     

Examining Organic Food Purchases and Preferences Within Jordan

Continuing economic development in Jordan provides potential food marketing opportunities as a new group of prospective value-added food product consumers emerges. The growing demand for high-value foods such as organically produced items also provides a new potential value-added market for Jordanian farmers. No studies to our knowledge have examined consumer preferences toward organic food items within Jordan. This study provides an initial attempt to fill this knowledge gap by examining the market for organic food items from a demand perspective in order to increase the knowledge available to Jordanian farmers, food processors, and retailers.