The Quality of Smallholder Coffee in South Sumatra: The Production of Low-Quality Coffee as a Response to World Demand 1

Improving the quality of Indonesia's coffee exports has been a priority of government and the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters for some years. Efforts to achieve this objective have, however, been hampered by misconceptions about the reasons why coffee producers and traders at each point in the marketing network do not deliver a higher quality product. The research reported here shows that price premia for higher quality coffee are not large enough to encourage greater quality enhancement. The world market for low to medium grades, used in the production of instant coffee, is much larger than that for high-quality coffee, and this preference is transmitted in the form of low incentives to improve the product. Failure to understand this has led to government policies which at best do not solve the quality problem and at worst exacerbate it.     

Probable evolution of artificial-intelligence-based educational devices

The potential capabilities of artificial-intelligence-based educational devices are briefly described, and a technical forecast of an advanced instructional work station's attributes is presented. Forces driving implementation are delineated, and likely long-term consequences of adoption are assessed. The barriers that impede this evolution are discussed, and policy options are analyzed.     

SOCO's impact on individual sales performance: The integration of selling skills as a missing link

Conventional wisdom suggests that a customer orientation is a vital cornerstone upon which the success of salespeople is predicated in terms of serving their customers and prospects. However, at a pragmatic level, not all salespeople practice a customer-oriented philosophy in their day-to-day selling. In fact, decades of sales research provide largely inconclusive results with respect to individual salespersons' customer orientation and performance outcomes. We argue that for customer orientation to be a predictor of sales performance, specific selling skills must be present. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that without these requisite selling skills, salespeople are better off utilizing a sales orientation approach, as opposed to a customer orientation approach. More provocatively, this research shows that a “missing link” in the long standing body of research on the SOCO (sales orientation/customer orientation) perspective is that specific selling skills can impact sales performance directly as well as moderate the impact that both a “sales orientation” and a “customer orientation” ultimately have on sales performance.     

R&D subsidiary isolation in knowledge-intensive industries: evidence from Austria

We investigate R&D subsidiary isolation within Multinational Corporations (MNCs) competing in knowledge-intensive industries. For such MNCs, accessing knowledge and nurturing the innovative potential of R&D subsidiaries is vital for on-going competitiveness. This, according to conventional thinking, requires integration of the subsidiary within the host country as well as internally within the MNC. Recent studies have shown, however, that overseas subsidiaries can become isolated (i.e., losing requisite integration), even in high-technology sectors. We tackle this issue by focusing on organizational factors at corporate and subsidiary levels that have the potential to explain subsidiary isolation. We analyze a sample of 45 foreign-owned Austrian subsidiaries undertaking R&D in knowledge-intensive industries using a combination of questionnaire and secondary data. The results suggest that parent and subsidiary experience, the degree of early-stage research conducted by the subsidiary and the use of training and rotation practices by the subsidiary, all act to counter isolation. Interestingly, we find that proximity between parent and R&D subsidiary does not play a significant role in predicting isolation. We also show how these factors influence communication frequency between the R&D subsidiary and various actors within the internal and the external networks in different ways.     

Identifying significant characteristics of organic milk consumers: a CART analysis of an artefactual field experiment

The organic dairy category is one of the fastest growing categories of organic foods in the US. Organic milk consumers generally cite perceived health benefits and lower risk of food contamination, as well as perceived superior quality and environmental sustainability of organic farming methods, as the major motivations for preference of organic over conventional milk. While the attributes of organic milk that are valued by consumers are fairly well-known, more ambiguity exists regarding the demographic characteristics of the typical organic milk consumer. This research makes use of experimental data from 148 adult participants and use a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis, a nonparametric modelling approach, to identify how Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for organic milk varies with the demographic profile of experiment participants. The study finds that perceived taste of organic milk, concern for the risk of consuming conventional milk, being a primary shopper, and the quantity of milk consumed are the major factors that separate experiment participants into groups with high and low WTP for organic milk.     

Major league baseball’s Moneyball at age 15: a re-appraisal

In the 15 years since publication of the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game in 2003, major-league baseball (MLB) has seen the embrace of analytics by both fans and teams. Using 45 seasons of MLB data, since the introduction of the designated-hitter in the American League in 1973, the present study validates the central premise in Moneyball regarding the importance of certain performance metrics, such as on-base percentage (OBP). The terms in our empirical model are constructed such that our results permit a straightforward comparison of the relative contribution of each factor towards MLB teams’ success in winning games. We also provide evidence indicating that MLB teams have moved to align their payrolls with Moneyball analytics in the years following the book’s publication.     

ROY MODEL SORTING AND NONRANDOM SELECTION IN THE VALUATION OF A STATISTICAL LIFE*

Wage‐hedonics is used to recover the value of a statistical life (VSL) by exploiting the fact that workers choosing riskier occupations are compensated with a higher wage. Roy (Oxford Economic Papers 3 (1951), 135–46) suggests that observed wage distributions will be distorted if individuals choose jobs according to idiosyncratic returns. We describe how this type of sorting biases wage‐hedonic VSL estimates and implement two new estimation strategies that correct that bias. Using data from the Current Population Surveys, we recover VSL estimates that are three to four times larger than those based on the traditional techniques, statistically significant, and robust to a wide array of specifications.