The Role of Attitudes and Objectives in Farmer Decision Making: Business and Environmentally-Oriented Behaviour in Scotland

Despite considerable effort to understand and represent decision making by farmers, there has been little attempt to integrate socio-economic, psychological and farming variables within a comprehensive framework. This paper attempts to do this in the context of two types of farming behaviour - business and environmental -for a sample of over 200 Scottish farmers. Using variables covering their attitudes, objectives and behaviours relevant to many aspects of farming, we proposed mediating variables models of business-oriented and environmentally-oriented farming behaviours. Structural equation modelling was used to test the adequacy of the proposed models. The results of the study emphasise the importance of psychological factors in the decision making of farmers.     

Historical presence of home economics in IJCS

This paper explored the Journal for evidence of articles focused on home economics. A content analysis of 17 articles revealed three dominant themes: (a) changing definitions of home economics; (b) preferred core and focus of the profession; and (c) evolving conceptualizations and dimensions of home economics. Most of these articles appeared during the first 3 years of the Journal's existence (late 70s). The focus on home economics declined markedly during the 80s and 90s. When the Journal removed the words home economics from its title in 2001, these articles virtually disappeared. The study did validate the rigour of earlier thinking about home economics as profiled in the Journal, and made this repository of intellectual contributions more visible and accessible to the field.     

Famine: a simple general equilibrium model

Agents in this model begin each period with an endowment offood, the sole commodity. Their utility is a function of currentconsumption, which has to exceed a specified minimum to ensuresurvival, and their endowment in the following period. Thereare three markets: those for labour, land, and food; there isno capital market. A famine can be triggered by a loss of endowmentwhich causes the food wage to fall below the survival minimum.The model is employed to compare the effects of public worksand food distribution as relief policies and shows the latterto be superior.     

The labor market and the distribution of landholdings in pre-Famine Ireland

The size distribution of landholdings varied widely in pre-Famine Ireland. Its determinants are of great interest given the catastrophe of the Great Famine. This paper divides holdings into labor-deficient and labor-surplus. The statistical analysis consists of fitting a lognormal distribution to the holding data and regressing the estimated parameters on the physical characteristics of the locality, such as land quality, and on the economic environment and in particular population density. Their influence operates through the labor market on the sides of both supply and demand. The model explains the inequality in the holding distribution better than the central tendency.     

Elections, Land and the Politics of Opposition in Matabeleland

In the run up to the elections of June 2000, President Robert Mugabe promised to deliver land to the people; he sought to rede?ne the rural areas as the moral heart of the nation, and used veterans from the liberation war to spear‐head occupations of largely white‐owned commercial farmland. ZANU‐PF's electoral campaign succeeded in large swathes of the countryside, but it was notably unsuccessful in Matabeleland. In rural (as well as urban) Matabeleland, ZANU‐PF experienced a massive, and largely unanticipated, electoral defeat. Here we explore the reasons behind rural Matabeleland's electoral results. Our discussion focuses on three districts of Matabeleland North (Nkayi, Lupane and Hwange), where we investigate the dynamics of particular land occupations, both major parties' electoral campaigns and local re?ections on the electoral outcome and the ongoing politics of land.We stress the importance of the legacies of ZAPU's nationalism, of post Independence state violence, of perceived economic neglect and the particular agrarian dynamics of this region.     

Framing consumer education conceptual innovations as consumer activism

This position paper developed the argument that creating innovative and forward‐thinking conceptual approaches to consumer education is a proactive process, the trademark of consumer activism. Assuming that (re)conceptualizing consumer education is a form of consumer activism, this article identified the conceptual contributions and intellectual innovations of 24 consumer education initiatives in North America (1962–2012). Using an historical analysis method, this study profiled consumer educators who tried to stay ahead of the curve by creating leading‐edge approaches to socializing people into their consumer role. In effect, they were expressing their personal and intellectual convictions about the potential and possibilities of consumer education as a means to promote change to protect and empower people in their consumer‐citizen role.     

Input–Output Analysis,Labour Scarcity and Relative Price Endogeneity: Aggregate Demand Disturbances in a ‘Flex-price’ Leontief System

In this paper, we introduce scarcity into a conventional demand-driven input–output system to produce a ‘flex-price’ Leontief model. We retain the fixed technical coefficients but allow changes in relative prices to reflect variations in the real wage. Because the consumption coefficients increase with the real wage, the aggregate labour demand curve is found to be upward sloping. This produces conventional results, as long as the labour supply curve is perfectly elastic (horizontal). However, once we introduce labour scarcity, in the form of an upward sloping labour supply function, we derive the seemingly paradoxical result that the output and employment effects of a demand expansion are greater here than in conventional input–output. Through simulation, this result is found to be strongly dependent on the assumption of export exogeneity.