Measuring pesticide overuse and its determinants: Evidence from Vietnamese rice and fruit farms

Pesticides have long been important for the development of agricultural production. However, improper use of pesticides may result in inefficiency with respect to farm profitability, in addition to external effects of pesticide use on environmental and human health. This paper employs a production function that explicitly accounts for the role of damage abatement inputs (i.e. pesticides) in the production process, to examine the optimal use of pesticides. It then investigates determinants of pesticide overuse versus underuse and the intensity of overuse. The empirical application uses data on Vietnamese rice and fruit farms drawn from the 2016 Vietnamese Household Living Standards Survey. Results show about 95% of farmers overused pesticides for both rice and fruit farming systems. The Mekong Delta, also known as the ‘Rice Bowl’ of Vietnam, has higher levels of overuse on rice farms than two other regions. Overuse intensity is lower for female and poorer rice farmers while intensity is higher for those with more income and more family members. For fruit farms, younger farmers or those with more family members were more likely to overuse versus underuse pesticides.     

Urban Political Ecologies and Children's Geographies: Queering Urban Ecologies of Childhood

This article focuses on the material and discursive constructions of nature and children in the city. While dominant representations and idealizations of nature and childhood depend on the binary logic of the nature/culture and rural/urban divide, there is also a simplification and romanticization of nature in children's geographies and a lack of children and their spaces in urban political ecology. We argue that children and nature in cities need to be removed from a binary model of being and attended to in more nuanced ways in urban political ecology and children's geographies. In this regard, we suggest that both nature and children in cities need to be queered. We need to ask how the production of urban spaces (re)creates particular romantic and idealized relations with natures that reify the binaries between nature/culture, and male/female through a heteronormative framework. The purpose of this article is to bring the critical nature–society theories of urban political ecology into conversation with work in children's geographies that explores the ‘nature' of childhood, and in doing so queer the relationship between children and nature. Drawing on research on queer ecologies, and queered childhoods, we aim to provide a framework to rethink and queer both nature and children in cities.     

Exploring the firm and country determinants of the voluntary adoption of integrated reporting

Information used to manage the business and support the decision‐making of stakeholders is being subject to an evolution. In this context, traditional financial reporting is considered not sufficient anymore. This has translated into a sharp increase in the number of firms that have begun to adopt emerging reporting practices. This study aims to examine the influence that both firm‐ and country‐specific characteristics have on the voluntary uptaking of integrated reporting internationally. In order to do so, it analyses a sample of 71 international listed companies that have adopted this reporting form in 2016. The results show that firms are more likely to implement integrated reporting if they are located in countries with a higher level of corruption perception and a better risk rating and that are considered as relatively more collectivist and feminist and with a long‐term orientation. Legal system has resulted to be not significant. As for firms' characteristics, large size, profitability, market‐to‐book ratio, and the size of the board are found to be significant variables. Moreover, the results indicate that the adoption of integrated reporting is not influenced by a higher level of leverage, firm efficiency and board diversity and independence.     

A piecewise linear model of credit traps and credit cycles: a complete characterization

We reconsider a regime-switching model of credit frictions which has been proposed in a general framework by Matsuyama for the case of Cobb–Douglas production functions. This results in a piecewise linear map with two discontinuity points and all three branches having the same slope. We offer a complete characterization of the bifurcation structure in the parameter space, as well as of the attracting sets and related basins of attraction in the phase space. We also discuss parameter regions associated with overshooting, leapfrogging, poverty traps, reversal of fortune and growth miracle, as well as cycles with any kind of switching between the expansionary and contractionary phases.     

When age does not harm innovative behavior and perceptions of competence: Testing interdepartmental collaboration as a social buffer

Can older managers overcome stereotypes relating age to low competence? We integrate the literature on age and cognitive ability with research on innovation to explore whether—and if so, when—employees' age harms performance and promotability appraisals made by their supervisors. Multisource, time‐lag data from 305 project managers indicate that the negative stereotypes can be explained through decreased innovative behavior. However, older employees are not always seen as poorer performers with less potential to be promoted due to their reduced innovative behavior. Rather, interdepartmental collaboration moderates these effects. Specifically, older employees with low interdepartmental collaboration are less innovative and receive worse performance and promotability appraisals than younger employees, but the “age handicap” vanishes when older employees collaborate with members of other departments. Organizations should foster formal or informal collaboration among units to prevent negative consequences of an aging workforce.     

A dyadic study of interpersonal information search

Although interpersonal word-of-mouth communication, by definition, takes place between two people, rarely has the phenomenon of word of mouth been studied using both members of the dyad. Building on the literature, this article offers a model of active interpersonal information search that is tested by using a method in which information seeker and source perceptions were obtained. Source characteristics were important determinants of interpersonal influence, but seeker characteristics also played an important role. Interestingly, it proved useful to distinguish between demographic and attitudinal homophily of seeker and source as the former was inversely and the latter directly related to interpersonal influence. Mary C. Gilly is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Management and associate dean of Graduate Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her Ph.D. is in marketing from the University of Houston. Her research interests include the unintended effects of marketing actions, such as the effects of advertising on employees. She also has interests in services marketing, such as customer service, including consumer complaint handling, and cross-cultural service encounters. Her work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Business Research, and other academic journals. John L. Graham is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. His Ph.D. is in marketing from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research interests regard international marketing, international business negotiations, and structural equations modeling. His work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, theJournal of International Business Studies, Management Science, and other academic journals. Mary Finley Wolfinbarger is an associate professor at California State University, Long Beach and is doing research on the topics of internal marketing and gift giving. She teaches Marketing Principles and Marketing Research. She received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of California, Irvine. Her work has appeared in theJournal of Marketing and other academic journals. Laura J. Yale came to Fort Lewis College in 1991. She holds degrees in Hotel, Restaurant, and Travel Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. She teaches a variety of courses in Marketing and Travel and Tourism Administration, including Marketing Research, International Marketing and Services. Her industry experience and most of her research interest are in the services sector, particularly the tourism industry. She is on sabbatical leave this academic year, writing an introductory textbook on the tourism industry. She will return to teaching in September 1998.     

Are the BRIC countries overtaking intermediate countries in the race for international R&D? The case of Spain

The emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as international locations for foreign direct investment in R&D is a sign that multinationals are relocating their technological activities to new territories. This trend may weaken the supremacy of the developed countries until now considered leaders in innovation, and may mean the loss of the competitive advantages enjoyed by the countries considered intermediate innovators. This paper examines the situation of Spain as a typical intermediate economy and compares it to its main competitors among the BRICs. Based on eight case studies of subsidiaries with R&D centres in Spain, we conclude that the policies adopted by certain emerging economies to develop their national innovation systems are proving effective and that these countries now pose a threat to intermediate economies. However, the BRICs still lag behind in terms of the security of their institutional framework; this situation leaves intermediate countries in an advantageous position.     

REGULATION STRATEGIES FOR THE PROVISION OF PATERNALISTIC GOODS

In this study, we analyze the regulation of markets for the provision of services whose costs are subsidized for paternalistic reasons. We model the choice of a benevolent regulator who wants to maximize consumer welfare in a setting where quality cannot be verified and the good provided is fully subsidized. The choice is thus made between two types of providers (profit maximizers and altruistic providers) and two frameworks (monopoly franchise and quality competition). Our analysis shows that in this environment the performance of mixed markets is always dominated by pure forms. Moreover, although making efficient providers compete for the market minimizes cost, the choice of quality competition with altruistic providers may be preferable from a welfare point of view whenever service quality is relevant and the productivity differential is not substantial.     

Recognizing the Best: The Productive and Counterproductive Effects of Relative Performance Recognition

I use a laboratory experiment to examine the productive and counterproductive effects of providing employees nonpecuniary recognition based on measures of relative performance. I find that, on average, recognition programs increase both productive efforts (those intended to increase one's own performance) and counterproductive efforts (those intended to decrease peer performance) in a setting where it is salient to employees that they can exert both productive and counterproductive efforts. Interestingly, I also find that these effects are moderated by the Dark Triad of personalities, a group of three personality traits. My study reveals that recognition programs mainly lead individuals who score lower on the Dark Triad to increase counterproductive efforts and those who score higher on the Dark Triad to increase productive efforts. These results contribute to the literature on relative performance information by demonstrating that recognition programs can have both productive and counterproductive effects. However, whether these programs produce mainly a productive or counterproductive effect depends on important personality characteristics of the employees.