Rural nonfarm employment and farming: household-level linkages

This article introduces the articles in Agricultural Economics , vol. 40 no. 2 (March 2009). First, we introduce their objectives in a brief review of existing literature on developing country trends in rural income diversification, in particular rural nonfarm employment (RNFE) and its impact on farm technology choice in crops and livestock, and thus on agricultural modernization and diversification. Then we preview the key points of the articles, which use distinctive primary datasets from Albania, Bulgaria, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Senegal, and Vietnam to document the impacts of RNFE and their implications for farm technology and farm activity.     

Volunteer tourists in the field: A question of balance?

This paper is based on a study of volunteering at a children’s refuge in Mexico. This study explored the relationship between volunteers, their volunteering experiences and the behaviour that resulted. The study findings revealed volunteers were provided with the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the every-day lives of the children at the children’s home. However the findings also demonstrated that the volunteering experience consisted of much more than just the work duties carried out there, as volunteers also undertook tourist activities. Living in shared accommodation in walking distance from the busy tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, the volunteers were faced with the difficult task of balancing commitment to their work duties at the children’s home with the lure of more hedonistic pursuits. This balancing act raises questions about the management of volunteer tourists.     

Inference of Dynamic Generalized Linear Models: On-Line Computation and Appraisal

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical discussion on real-time estimation of dynamic generalized linear models. We describe and contrast three estimation schemes, the first of which is based on conjugate analysis and linear Bayes methods, the second based on posterior mode estimation, and the third based on sequential Monte Carlo sampling methods, also known as particle filters. For the first scheme, we give a summary of inference components, such as prior/posterior and forecast densities, for the most common response distributions. Considering data of arrivals of tourists in Cyprus, we illustrate the Poisson model, providing a comparative analysis of the above three schemes.     

Profitability and Media Advertising in Greek Food Manufacturing Industries

The effect of advertising intensity in four media(television, radio, newspapers and magazines) on profitability is examined in this paper. Aprofitability model is tested using a unique 1993–1996panel data set of 350 Greek food manufacturing firms.Fixed effects results for the full model show thatonly television advertising increases profitabilitysignificantly. The results for eight major foodcategories estimated separately show importantdifferences between consumer and producer groups;television advertising effects on profitability arepositive and significant only in the consumerindustries where television advertising intensity ishigh. These findings show that television is the onlymedia where persuasive advertising exists in Greekfood manufacturing firms.     

Risk and (Re-)organization in Agriculture: The Economics of Back grounding Cattle in Saskatchewan

The beef system in western Canada is currently undergoing restructuring. To increase the number of animals a feedlot finishes, their portion of the production process is being narrowed to the final 136 kgof weight gain. This results in a stage of production known as backgrounding, where calves are grown before entering the feedlot. This paper explains the reorganization that is occurring in the context of transaction cost economics, which explains this evolution as a process in which the governance structure involved in contracting has minimized the transaction costs. New methods of marketing these backgrounded cattle are being developed, which may increase the profitability of these operations. This paper measures the impacts of five different marketing options on the backgrounding enterprise's risk and returns. Thirteen enterprises are modeled, using various levels of capital and labor intensities, live stock numbers, sizes of calves fed and average daily gains. These models are simulated from 1978 to 1994 using costs of production and prices of cattle. Profits per head calculations allow the comparison of the enterprise efficiencies. The marketing alternatives are then evaluated using mean-variance rule(E-V) and stochastic dominance methods of risk analysis.     

The scarring effects of unemployment,low pay and skills under-utilization in Australia compared

There is a substantial literature on the scarring effects of unemployment on future employment prospects and a smaller one on the scarring effects of low pay, but the possibility that skills mismatch, in the form of skills under-utilization, may have similar detrimental effects has not been considered before. We use the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel to investigate the dynamics of unemployment, low pay and skills under-utilization, including differences by gender and education. We show that, in addition to earlier evidence on wage penalties and reduced job satisfaction, skills under-utilization scars future employment prospects in a way similar to that of low pay.     

The use of negotiation strategies among recreational participants with different involvement levels: the case of recreational swimmers

This paper is aimed to segment recreational swimmers according to their involvement level, profile the involvement groups according to demographic variables, and further test the role of negotiation strategies in the development of swimming involvement. Two hundred and sixty (N?=?260) recreational swimmers participated in the study and completed Kyle et al.'s three-facet involvement scale and Alexandris et al.’s five-dimension leisure negotiation scale. The results of cluster analysis revealed three distinct involvement groups: high, medium and low involved recreational swimmers. The high involved group consisted mainly of females, middle-aged and married individuals; the medium involved group did not have a clear demographic profile, while the low involved group consisted mainly of males and young individuals. The three involvement groups had statistical significant scores in all the five negotiation strategy dimensions, with the high involved individuals having the highest scores and the low involved individuals having the lowest ones. These results provide empirical support for the negotiation proposition, which was developed by Jackson, Crawford, and Godbey. They further contribute to the existing leisure literature by showing how demographic segmentation can be used in combination with psychographic variables in order to profile groups of participants.     

Market Concentration and Multifaceted Productive Efficiency

Developing the analytical framework of the decision making process of a possible entrant, a reduced form system equations model is estimated in order to examine the market concentration – productive efficiency relationship in an endogeneity context. Technical and scale efficiency estimates are obtained from an inter-industry stochastic production frontier using a panel dataset regarding the seven most energy intensive manufacturing industries in Greece over the period 1980–96. Several new versions of the concentration – efficiency relationship, may be derived from the alternatives of the entrant considering the possible conduct character of incumbents’ technical efficiency and excess capacity, which is depicted on their scale efficiency, on market concentration.     

Evaluating currency crises: A Bayesian Markov switching approach

In this paper we examine the nature of a currency crisis. We do so by employing an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to analyse the Mexican crisis in 1994. Forecast evaluation was based on modern econometric techniques concerning the shape of forecaster’s loss function. We also extend the empirical framework suggested by Jeanne and Masson [Jeanne, O., Masson, P., 2000. Currency crises and Markov-switching regimes. Journal of International Economics 50, 327–350] to test for the hypothesis that the currency crisis was driven by sunspots. To this end we contribute to the existing literature by comparing Markov regime switching model with a time-varying transition probabilities with two alternative models. The first is a Markov regime switching model with constant transition probabilities. The second is a linear benchmark model. Empirical results show that the proxy for the probability of devaluation is an important factor explaining the nature of currency crisis. More concretely, when the expectation market pressure was used as a proxy of probability of devaluation, forecast evaluation supports the view that currency crisis was driven by market expectation unrelated to fundamentals. Alternatively, when interest rate differential is used as a proxy for probability of devaluation, currency crisis was due to predictable deterioration of fundamentals.