Fruit and Vegetable Consumers’ Behavior: Implications for Organized Retailers in Emerging Markets

The authors attempt to understand selected behaviors of fruit and vegetable consumers of mid-sized cities of a developing economy, which are important for any retailer to appreciate. The study was carried out in two mid-sized cities of the Orissa state of India with 100 respondents by using the specially developed questionnaire. Statistical tools were used to analyze the data. The study revealed that vegetables are consumed in greater quantity and purchased more frequently than fruits. Consumers attached more importance to credence attributes than to search and experience attributes while making their purchase decisions. Family income and consumers’ education were found to have significant influence on the consumers’ willingness to pay for graded and packaged products. Organized retailers can take cues from the findings of the study to decide about location, nature and quality of assortment, and their marketing strategies.     

医保改革面临挑战

当前,许多国家仍存在医疗服务可得性差、医疗成本高昂、公共卫生支出效率低下等问题,医保改革面临重大挑战。医保改革目标存在两难—既要改善人们的健康状况,又要控制支出成本,因而提高公共卫生支出效率是改善社会健康状况的最优选择。各国政府的干预形式和公共卫生支出水平因国别、时间等的不同而变化。财政状况较好的新兴经济体需在保证财政可持续的前提下扩大基本医保覆盖面;发达经济体则应注重提升公共卫生支出的效率并限制支出增长速度。     

Offshoring and Trade Balance in Developed and Emerging Economies

This paper analyzes the effects of off‐shore outsourcing for international trade, especially for the emerging and poor economies, in a two‐sector specific factor model, with a nontraded good being one of the sectors. The phenomenon of offshoring is modeled by incorporating the reduced use of domestic labor in the production function. This is regarded as a characteristic feature of offshoring in the literature. We find that increased offshoring leads to an increase in the relative price of the nontraded good. Given that this relative price can be interpreted as the real exchange rate, increased offshoring leads to exchange rate appreciation. This suggests that offshoring actually makes the goods and services from the emerging economies more competitive in the world market, and thus can be a contributory factor in the positive trade balance experienced by many emerging economies since early 2000s.     

A brand new world for nonprofits

Brands provide a number of benefits that can make them a powerful tool for the nonprofit sector. Among other things, they make it possible for organisations to convey a consistent overall positioning while tailoring offerings for multiple publics. They also facilitate the development of trust between the nonprofit and its constituencies, provide insulation from competitive pressures and raise the organisation's profile. Brands are not appropriate for all nonprofit organisations, however, and the decision to adopt a branding strategy is one that requires careful consideration. This paper explores the pros and cons of nonprofit branding, and describes the balancing act that managers face when deciding whether and how to adopt abrand. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Public spending, voracity, and Wagner's law in developing countries

An examination of the short- and long-term relation between government spending and output in 51 developing countries reveals evidence consistent with cyclical ratcheting and voracity reflected in a tendency for government spending to increase over time. The main components of government spending are procyclical in some 40% of countries. Output and government spending are cointegrated for at least one of the spending aggregates in 70% of countries, implying a long-term relationship between government spending and output consistent with Wagner's law. In contrast, prior studies have found only weak support for Wagner's law for developing countries, although somewhat stronger support for industrial countries.     

Privatization, Labor and Social Safety Nets

Privatization promotes economic efficiency and growth, thereby reinforcing macroeconomic adjustment. In the short run, however, it can lead to job losses and wage cuts for workers. This paper discusses these adverse impacts of privatization in terms of various methods of privatization and surveys the existing empirical evidence. It finds that public sales and auctions can have stronger negative effects on workers but maximize the government's revenue. Policymakers' options for mitigating the social impact of privatization are surveyed.     

A control rule for recruitment planning in engineering consultancy

The most valuable asset of a professional service firm is its people. Owing to the high labor turnover, staffing decision is very critical in its operations. We take engineering consultancy as a professional service and emphasize the importance of developing knowledge stock of skilled consultants in a planned manner for efficient productivity management. Our focus is management of knowledge-mix, which is the mix of consultants at different productivity levels. Our model is designed to determine the steady-state number of consultant-mix to meet demand at a desired service level. This is done through the use of control theory and chance constrained programming.      

Integration into a Global Production Network: Impacts on Labour in Tiruppur's Rural Hinterlands

External and internal development funds may be substitutes or complementary in financing development projects. We construct a welfare-maximizing model of a community, explicitly incorporating the decision-makers' choice between internal and external resources for development purposes. The model is estimated with Mauritian data, which include periods of rising foreign aid and substantial repayment. The computed values of substitution elasticity between the two sources of funds, derived from the social choice process, indicate that internal and external funds are complementary and therefore external funds do not seem to be fungible.