Nigeria's food situation: Problems and prospects

The authors review the food situation in Nigeria and examine the problems and prospects of food grain production in the country. Suggestions are made on how to improve food supply, prominent among which are improved production practices for grains and the development of appropriate infrastructural support systems.     

Concentration Measurement Under Cross-ownership: The Case of the Spanish Electricity Sector

When major investors own shares in several firms in the same industry, the traditional approach to concentration measurement by the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index (HHI) fails to accurately reflect the level of competition in the market. To address this problem we derive a generalized HHI formula (GHHI) based on the investors degree of control over each firm. We test alternative definitions of this control with actual data from the Spanish electricity sector and show that recent decisions in this industry, particularly the failed merger between the largest firms, Endesa and Iberdrola, could have been affected had the GHHI been used by the competition agency.     

An empirical procedure for enhancing the impact of road investments

The importance of ‘needs based planning’ is increasingly being recognised by road authorities. Such planning entails allocation of resources to explicitly account for the requirements of the community well into the future. Accomplishing what the community requires of a road system, at least at a level desired by them and ensuring regional equity in meeting community requirements, are two issues that are at the fore-front of needs based planning. This paper demonstrates that, in order to achieve these planning objectives it is necessary to adopt a procedure that can identify road investment proposals with the maximum ability to cost-effectively generate what the community perceive as gain in value to them due to road investment. Using data collected for Western Australia, the paper illustrates that generating investment proposals by commonly used approaches—including conventional multi-criteria analysis—cannot satisfactorily address these issues.     

Capital structure decisions: old issues,new insights from high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises

Using panel data models and this study analyses the capital structure decisions of high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and non-high-tech SMEs. The results suggest that the capital structure decisions of high-tech SMEs are closer to what is predicted by the Pecking Order Theory. However, the results also suggest a modified version of the Pecking Order Theory for high-tech SMEs that have relied on venture capital. These firms prefer equity issues to debt, when internal finance is exhausted. The empirical evidence suggests that problems relating to information asymmetry as well as technological and market uncertainty influence the capital structure decisions of high-tech SMEs.     

A systematic review of risk management in innovation-oriented firms

Innovation and risk are inseparable. In fact, literature on innovation management often recommends that innovation-oriented firms must actively monitor, evaluate, analyze and treat future events in order to mitigate risks whenever possible. This approach is particularly important in emergent economies characterized by unstructured national innovation systems and constant economic and market instability. However, there has been no systematic effort to identify and categorize risks that potentially impact businesses based on innovation. Thus, we propose an interpretative framework of risk events with potential financial impact in innovation-oriented firms constructed and tested by means of a mixed studies review. The risk events were identified through a comprehensive systematic search and review of the published literature on risk and innovation. From the 115 works that were analyzed, it was possible to identify nine categories of risk events frequently associated with innovation-oriented businesses that may generate financial impacts. The proposed interpretative framework was tested in an empirical study with 13 innovation-oriented firms located in six Brazilian technological parks. Results from the empirical study suggest that managers found the proposed interpretative framework complete and comprehensive. Moreover, the empirical study signaled which risk events are more relevant for the Brazilian context. The proposed framework is a first necessary step for future development of ERM models applicable in innovation-intensive contexts.     

Tax on emissions or subsidy to renewables? Evaluating the effects on the economy and on the environment

We examine the relationship between the economy and the environment in a model where production uses nonpolluting renewable and polluting nonrenewable resources. There is policy intervention through a tax on emissions and a subsidy to renewables extraction/production. Results show that both instruments are able to decrease emissions intensity of output. However, when used together, the desired effect is higher. Empirically it is shown that the subsidy achieves higher renewables intensity and although present emissions per output are similar for both instruments, the subsidy achieves lower future levels.     

Deadlines and software: disentangling local government accounting reforms in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This paper shows how ongoing accounting reforms in Brazilian local governments were affected by a shift from a universal to a gradual implementation approach. Deadlines being postponed led to a decrease in local governments’ willingness to reform. This effect varied according whether the accountants involved depended on commercial software to operate a particular accounting policy. An important finding from this research was that software providers are to some extent setting the IPSAS implementation agenda in Brazil.