Religiosity,borrower gender and loan losses in microfinance institutions: a global evidence

We examine the impact of religious beliefs on loan repayments in 770 microfinance institutions (MFIs) across 65 countries over the period 2006–2018. We find robust evidence of a negative relationship between religiosity and loan losses in MFIs. We also find that the relationship between religiosity and loan losses is stronger for MFIs in Protestant-dominated countries than in Catholic-dominated countries. Moreover, religiosity improves the operational self-sufficiency of MFIs through a reduction in loan losses. We find that religiosity does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of women borrowers, but it reduces the loan size per borrower. Overall, our evidence suggests that although religiosity reduces loan losses through religiosity-induced lender-risk aversion, it does not improve the loan repayment behaviour of borrowers. We also use several approaches to evaluate our results to the effects of endogeneity.

     

López de Peñalver's Reflexiones : an economic and mathematical approach

Juan López de Peñalver was an engineer and mathematician who trained in Spain, Central Europe and Paris. His Reflexiones sobre la variación del precio del trigo (1812) contained three models of: (1) wages, wheat prices and mortality; (2) transport costs and location; and (3) constant relative prices, which were brought to an international readership in 1961. His complete works were published in 1992. An advocate of political arithmetic and mathematical economics, he was influenced by Canard, Condorcet and Steuart and the economic writings of Lavoisier and Lagrange; a considerable distance separated him from both Adam Smith and J.-B. Say.     

Changing compensation for top corporate executives

Salaries of a quarter of a million dollars or more are not rare in this country. Although-such salaries are criticized from many directions, this level of pay is justifiable when executives' functions are considered, and the level is bound to increase in the period ahead.     

Publication bias in entrepreneurship research: An examination of dominant relations to performance

Publication bias (PB) exists when the published literature is not representative of the population of studies. PB has largely been ignored or dismissed in entrepreneurship research as there is a general belief that only fields entrenched in dominant theoretical paradigms are capable of suffering from PB. We tested this presumption by re-analyzing the results of 15 systematic reviews (i.e., meta-analyses) of entrepreneurial antecedents and firm performance. Using three different tests, we found some degree of PB in all but three of these analyses. Our results belie the contention that entrepreneurship is immune to PB.     

A Comparative Study of Web-Based Technology Applications in Corporations

Due to the complexity of international trade and intense global competition, businesses today are facing challenges that were unthinkable a decade ago. To effectively respond to these challenges, companies continue to explore new ways to measure and extend value to their existing and new customer base. In the past, business practices have used expensive and time consuming tools to manage day-to-day operations. However, with technology advancing at a rapid speed, companies are forced to incorporate new technologies into their organizational decision processes to remain competitive and to maintain or expand market share. One technological tool that has become increasingly valuable to business firms is the internet. The evolution of the internet has resulted in numerous web-based tools that have proven to be flexible and data rich enhancements in a wide variety of business applications. This research examines how corporations utilize the internet in their internal and external business decision processes. The study highlights the benefits, similarities, and differences between SMEs and large firms with regard to the applications of these technologies.     

Consumer Attitudes toward and use of Advertising Content in a Small Daily Newspaper

Results of the study indicate that the advertising content of the newspaper in the present study is viewed as local news by its subscribers and consequently has the highest readership of any type of content in this paper. While it was assumed that the advertising content of this newspaper would be well-read, the magnitude of readership and reader-interest in advertising was surprising.

In regard to questions concerning the reader's attitude toward the amount of advertising carried by the newspaper under study, it was found that rather than feeling there was too much advertising in the paper, the majority felt that it was either “just right” or that they wanted more advertising in the future.

This article is based in part on a paper presented for the Advertising Division at the Association for Education in Journalism convention in Ottawa, Canada, August 16–20, 1975.     

Ranking farms with a composite indicator of sustainability

The assessment of sustainability at farm level has been growing in popularity over the last few years. This article contributes to this line of research by building up composite indicators for different facets—social, economic, environmental, and global—of farm sustainability using a methodological approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods, and assigns common weights to each individual sustainability indicator. This approach is applied to a database of 163 farms located in the Campos County, a region belonging to the dry lands of the Spanish Northern Plateau, using 12 individual indicators of sustainability. Our findings show that both economic and environmental composite sustainability indicators are positively correlated, but that this is not the case for the social indicator. We also check the influence of a set of variables on farm sustainability using bootstrapping statistical techniques, and showing that increasing farm size, membership in agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ medium and upper agricultural‐specific technical education, all exert a significant positive influence on sustainability. These results provide clues for policy makers that intend to design sustainability‐increasing structural agricultural policies.