Factors affecting consumers’ intention towards purchasing halal food in South Africa: a structural equation modelling

This research study highlighted the factors that influence the intention of consumers to buy halal food products. In this study, the researchers have chosen to address the gap in the literature pertaining to non-South African consumers’ purchase intention. Non-South Africans are foreign people who reside in South Africa including immigrants, workers, and students. Through utilising the theory of planned behaviour, this study aims to determine the attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, and awareness of non-South African towards purchasing halal food products. This also attempts to identify the strongest factor that influences the purchasing intention of halal food by non-South African consumers. The sample of the study consisted of 230 non-South African consumers in Cape Town. Data were collected through self-administered questionnaires. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to identify the structural relationships among the constructs identified and to test the study hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant relationship between awareness and buying behaviour. Interestingly it found that only the attitude dimension of TPB had a significant relationship with purchase intention, whereas subjective norms and perceived behavioural control did not show a significant relationship with the consumer intention variable.     

Sociological Models Based on Fréchet Random Variables

Products of random variables are of both practical and theoretical significance to social scientists. This has increased the need to have available the widest possible range of statistical results on products of random variables. In this note, the distribution of the product XY is derived when X and Y are independent Fréchet random variables. Extensive tabulations of the associated percentage points are also given.     

One Share - One Vote: the Theory

The theoretical literature on security-voting structure canbe organized around three questions: What impact do nonvotingshares have on takeover outcomes? How does disproportional votingpower affect the incentives of blockholders? What are the repercussionsof mandating one share - one vote for firms' financing and ownershipchoices? Overall, the costs and benefits of separating cashflow and votes reflect the fundamental governance trade offbetween disempowering blockholders and empowering managers.It is therefore an open question whether mandating one share- one vote would improve the quality of corporate governance,notably in systems that so far relied on active owners.     

Effects of farm credit access on agricultural commercialization in Ghana: Empirical evidence from the northern Savannah ecological zone

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how farmers' access to credit affects agricultural commercialization in the northern Savannah ecological zone of Ghana. The study uses data from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,962 farm households. The study employs endogenous switching regression for ordered outcomes to account for endogeneity and self‐selection bias in the decision to access credit. The results from the estimations revealed that education, age, nonfarm business equipment, multiple crop production, and group membership are the variables influencing farmers' access to credit. Agricultural commercialization is determined by gender, age, marital status, household size, farm size, nonfarm business equipment, means of transport, group membership, assets index, multiple crop production, and location. In terms of causal effect, the results show that credit access stimulates higher commercialization. Thus policies that enhance farmers' access to credit are more likely to be successful in getting them to commercialize.     

Modelling the Ecological Comorbidity of Acute Respiratory Infection,Diarrhoea and Stunting among Children Under the Age of 5 Years in Somalia

The aim of this study was to assess spatial co‐occurrence of acute respiratory infections (ARI), diarrhoea and stunting among children of the age between 6 and 59 months in Somalia. Data were obtained from routine biannual nutrition surveys conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization 2007–2010. A Bayesian hierarchical geostatistical shared component model was fitted to the residual spatial components of the three health conditions. Risk maps of the common spatial effects at 1×1 km resolution were derived. The empirical correlations of the enumeration area proportion were 0.37, 0.63 and 0.66 for ARI and stunting, diarrhoea and stunting and ARI and diarrhoea, respectively. Spatially, the posterior residual effects ranged 0.03–20.98, 0.16–6.37 and 0.08–9.66 for shared component between ARI and stunting, diarrhoea and stunting and ARI and diarrhoea, respectively. The analysis showed clearly that the spatial shared component between ARI, diarrhoea and stunting was higher in the southern part of the country. Interventions aimed at controlling and mitigating the adverse effects of these three childhood health conditions should focus on their common putative risk factors, particularly in the South in Somalia.     

Dr. Martin Bronfenbrenner (1914-1997): Scholar, Critic, Cynic, and Comrade-in-Arms

ABSTRACT Professor Martin Bronfenbrenner's mark on the economics profession was significant and worth remembering. He touched the lives of many as a father, cousin, teacher, scholar, expert referee, colleague, and judge of important contemporary debates. Of special interest is his unique personality. He was a specialist in self-effacement, peppered with liberal shakes of cynicism and sarcasm. Despite all this, he managed to win the respect and hearts of individuals on several continents and across several generations. This essay brings a small but diverse part of the story together in one place.     

Modeling Mortality With Jumps: Applications to Mortality Securitization

In this article, we incorporate a jump process into the original Lee–Carter model, and use it to forecast mortality rates and analyze mortality securitization. We explore alternative models with transitory versus permanent jump effects and find that modeling mortality via transitory jump effects may be more appropriate in mortality securitization. We use the Swiss Re mortality bond in 2003 as an example to show how to apply our model together with the distortion measure approach to value mortality-linked securities. Pricing the Swiss Re mortality bond is challenging because the mortality index is correlated across countries and over time. Cox, Lin, and Wang (2006) employ the normalized multivariate exponential tilting to take into account correlations across countries, but the problem of correlation over time remains unsolved. We show in this article how to account for the correlations of the mortality index over time by simulating the mortality index and changing the measure on paths.     

Conceptualizing Destination Brand Equity Dimensions from a Consumer-Based Brand Equity Perspective

This study develops a conceptual framework for destination brand equity that goes beyond image by adapting and expanding a multidimensional consumer-based brand equity scale for application within a tourism context. The empirical results, based on a consumer survey in Malaysia (n?=?326) measuring the brand dimensions of Korea, identify the relational linkages between four principle brand equity dimensions (brand awareness, brand image, brand associations, and brand loyalty), and overall customer-based brand equity. The importance of brand image, associations, and awareness is confirmed, and the mediating role of brand loyalty in building destination brand equity is highlighted.     

Franchising in African markets: Motivations and challenges from a Sub‐Saharan African country perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore and understand the motivations and challenges of franchising in an African economy. While interest in franchising is increasing in African markets, there is a paucity of research on franchising from the perspective of local African firms participating in these international relationships. The motivations and challenges of franchising from the perspective of African businesses have not been largely investigated so far. Using in‐depth interviews, we allow motivations and challenges at play to emerge. Convenient and snowball sampling techniques were used for choosing the unit of analysis, which resulted in four respondent firms. A thematic approach was adopted for analyzing the data from the field. Support services, brand name, and franchisor's experience are identified to be the motivations for franchising. Financial assistance from the franchisor, demand, and competition also play a key role in an African firm's decision to franchise. Legal constraints and infrastructure constraints were the key challenges faced by franchisees in Ghana. The findings of this study may hold for franchisees in other African markets. However, contextual differences may be considered in the application of these findings.     

EXCHANGE RATE FUNDAMENTALS,FORECASTING, AND SPECULATION: BAYESIAN MODELS IN BLACK MARKETS

Although speculative activity is central to black markets for currency, the out‐of‐sample performance of structural models in those settings is unknown. We substantially update the literature on empirical determinants of black market rates and evaluate the out‐of‐sample performance of linear models and non‐parametric Bayesian treed Gaussian process (BTGP) models against the random walk benchmark. Fundamentals‐based models outperform the benchmark in out‐of‐sample prediction accuracy and trading rule profitability measures given future values of fundamentals. In simulated real‐time trading exercises, however, the BTGP achieves superior realized profitability, accuracy and market timing, while linear models do no better than a random walk. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.