Policy instruments for sustainable land management: the case of highland smallholders in Ethiopia

Degradation of land continues to pose a threat to future food production potential in many developing economies. Various approaches, mainly based on command‐and‐control policies, have been tried (with limited success) in the past to encourage adoption of erosion‐control practices by farm households. High transactions costs and negative distributional impacts on the welfare of the poor limit the usefulness of standards and taxes for soil and water conservation. One innovative approach is the use of interlinked contracts which create positive incentives for land conservation. This study analyses the social efficiency of such policies for erosion‐control in the Ethiopian highlands using a non‐separable farm household model. Incentive contracts linked with conservation seem to be promising approaches for sustainable resource use in poor rural economies. This may suggest that conservation programs should give greater consideration to better fine‐tuning and mix of policies that help achieve both economic and environmental objectives.     

Is the cardholder an efficient alarm system to detect credit card incidents?

There is a growing tendency in credit card industry to increase the contribution of the smallest players, the cardholders, in the detection of card incidents. This article examines whether cardholders are efficient at detecting/communicating incidents of theft, loss or fraudulent use of their cards. The analysis focuses on whether they demonstrate enough speed of response to support a risk control subsystem by the issuer. The research follows a completely new approach showing how the issue can be handled by applying the concept of elasticity, a notion just recently exported from economics to the field of statistics by linking it with the reverse hazard rate. The issue is focused on the analysis of the characteristics of the elasticity function of the random variable that measures the delay of cardholders in reporting incidents. This study is illustrated with an application to a real data set of 1069 incidents.     

Readers of Macunaíma and Martin Fierro are like two ships passing in the night: Bad for business

This is an exploratory study about the knowledge of Brazilian managers about Argentina and vice versa. Expressing a deeper knowledge of the partner's culture corresponds to greater familiarity, which facilitates the construction of the confidence necessary to do business. We analyzed the academic literature on familiarity and trust, and suggest that the interrelationships of these countries' economies could be enhanced by encouraging greater familiarity among business actors in the countries. The empirical data comes from surveys of MBA students from both countries, carried out in 2008, 2014, and 2015. The results suggest a significant lack of knowledge of the other and a relative stability of expressions of distrust over time, in the case of Brazilians. We conclude that it is advisable to encourage a greater intercultural understanding among business executives of both nations because this could accelerate mutually beneficial business and empower the executives' careers in the region. We also suggest that the demand for this type of intercultural skills should arise at corporations because the demand by executives is not sufficiently informed as to garner the necessary change and because the pay‐as‐you‐go income model of business schools responds to clients' needs rather than to what should be done.     

Zwischenbilanz: Krisengewinner und -verlierer

Die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise hat sich seit 2008 entfaltet. Seitdem gibt es verschiedene Versuche, ihre Folgen durch Rettungsschirme, Konjunkturprogramme und gesetzliche Regelungen in den Griff zu bekommen. Immer dringender stellt sich auch angesichts des jüngst vorgestellten Sparprogramms der Bundesregierung die Frage, wer tats?chlich von diesen Ma?nahmen profi tiert, wer sie bezahlen muss und ob die Verursacher der Krise angemessen an den Kosten der Schadensregulierung beteiligt werden.     

Carbon sequestration and farm income in West Africa: Identifying best management practices for smallholder agricultural systems in northern Ghana

The interest in agricultural soils as global storage of carbon has increased in recent years, along with the prospect of farmers' participation in payment schemes under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto protocol. Thus, a better understanding of agricultural practices that can increase soil carbon and enhance the livelihoods of farmers is necessary, particularly in smallholder farming systems of West Africa. This study evaluates different crop management strategies both by their capacity to sequester carbon in agricultural soils and by their contribution to household income. A case study in Wa, Upper West Region of Ghana is used to test 48 different cropping strategies by means of a crop simulation model and a household-level multiple-criteria optimisation model. Each cropping strategy is evaluated after a 20-year simulation period by its capacity to accrue carbon in the soil, by its economic performance at the plot-level, and by its contribution to the farm income with and without carbon payments. A set of best management practices that concomitantly increase soil carbon and farm income are identified and classified by their cost of investment.     

Workplace bullying in the context of organisational change: the significance of pluralism

The presence of depersonalised bullying during organisational change, highlighted through empirical research on lay‐off procedures in India's information technology sector, underscores the rhetoric of unitarist human resource management and reinforces the importance of union action and co‐worker mobilisation. The findings support the emergent view that collectivisation is the only solution to workplace bullying.     

Can food-for-work encourage agricultural production?

Food-for-work (FFW) is the most widely used type of public works program in Ethiopia through which a high share of the food aid is distributed. This paper assesses the impacts of FFW in Tigray, a chronically food insecure region in Ethiopia, in terms of relieving liquidity constraints and thereby improving input use in agriculture. A Heckman selection model on the adoption and intensity of fertilizer use demonstrated that FFW positively influenced the decision to adopt fertilizer and there was no evidence of disincentive effect.