The meanings of forest governance in Esmeraldas,Ecuador

Participatory forestry has become the most accepted way of exploiting timber resources in tropical rain forests. This paper shows the links between participatory forestry, sustainable forest management and the continuing objective of reconciling conservation with commercial development in the province of Esmeraldas, one of the poorest and most rapidly deforested regions of South America. I describe and contextualize the evolving logging programme of a leading Ecuadorian wood-processing group to show that the decentralization of the development process, the recognition of local communities as legal entities in the management of natural resources, and the active involvement of profit-oriented firms in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation all contribute to the emergence of new alliances between the Ecuadorian government, the logging companies, conservation and human rights organizations, and local Black and indigenous communities. My central argument is that devolution in this context leads to conflictive interpretations of regulation. I end with a discussion of the multi-scalar nature of “forest governance”, and highlight the contribution it makes to our understanding of control, regulation and management in new contexts of privatization and decentralization.     

Sensory Experiences and Expectations of Italian and German Organic Consumers

We explore sensory experiences and expectations of Italian and German organic consumers when purchasing and eating organic food. Ten focus group interviews were performed and the results were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Outcomes indicated that although sensory attributes are not the main purchase drivers, flavor and odor are the most important in driving consumers' choice. Findings also suggested that training consumers' sensory abilities offers new market opportunities to organic marketers. From a marketing perspective, Italian consumers seem to equally appreciate nonsubjective as well as subjective marketing information about organic products, whereas in Germany non subjective aspects appear to be predominant.     

Socio‐demographical antecedents of responsible consumerism propensity

The paper analyses consumers’ propensity for socially and environmentally friendly products through socio‐demographic indicators. Although the topic has been object of a wide literature, most of the previous studies suffered from methodological or sampling limitations. Hence, the present work addresses such limitations and proposes a study based on a wide heterogeneous sample of 5098 consumers, observed in their real settings. Results show the most responsible consumers are older, well‐educated and wealthy, while gender is not a significant antecedent. The in‐depth analysis of findings thus confirms the usefulness of socio‐demographic variables to understand and determine the profile of responsible consumers. However, the study denies that the propensity to buy responsible products relates to the different sensitiveness of men and women, whereas it underlines that age, education and wealth have a positive relationship. Moreover, the analysis identifies four different profiles of consumer based on the different levels of propensity towards responsible products, which confirms the influence of the socio‐demographic variables. This also allows identifying relevant indications on consumers’ decision making, useful to draw indications on possible effective marketing strategies for responsible products.     

The shrinking mining city: urban dynamics and contested territory

Shrinking mining cities — once prosperous settlements servicing a mining site or a system of mining sites — are characterized by long-term population and/or economic decline. Many of these towns experience periods of growth and shrinkage, mirroring the ebbs and flows of international mineral markets which determine the fortunes of the dominant mining corporation upon which each of these towns heavily depends. This dependence on one main industry produces a parallel development in the fluctuations of both workforce and population. Thus, the strategies of the main company in these towns can, to a great extent, determine future developments and have a great impact on urban management plans. Climate conditions, knowledge, education and health services, as well as transportation links, are important factors that have impacted on lifestyles in mining cities, but it is the parallel development with the private sector operators (often a single corporation) that constitutes the distinctive feature of these cities and that ultimately defines their shrinkage. This article discusses shrinking mining cities in capitalist economies, the factors underpinning their development, and some of the planning and community challenges faced by these cities in Australia, Canada, Japan and Mexico.     

Multi‐Criteria Analysis of Input Use in Agriculture

In this paper we present a methodology for the analysis of input use in the agricultural sector. The novelty of the theoretical model described here is that it has been developed considering a multi‐criteria environment. Thus, the optimal input use condition is determined by evaluating “multi‐attribute utility” and “multi‐attribute marginal utility”. We show how the approach adopted in this paper is a generalisation of the single‐attribute expected utility theory. The theoretical model developed is thereafter implemented in an empirical application that studies water for irrigation use as a particular case. The results show how multi‐attribute utility functions elicited for a sample of 52 irrigators explain differences in irrigation water use in relatively homogeneous agricultural systems, albeit exhibiting dissimilar partial utility functions for water use. We conclude that these differences come from the dissimilar weights that farmers attach to each attribute in the aggregate utility function.     

Bursting the dot.com "Bubble': A Case Study in Investor Behaviour

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter considered innovation to be the driving force of economic growth and argued that innovations were also the main cause of cyclical fluctuations in the economy, an idea now well established in the economic literature. In this paper, the authors attempt to gain insights into the behaviour exhibited by investors before and after the market correction of the newly established Internet sector--a technology with revolutionary potential--in the Spring of 2000 by structuring their analysis around the psychological themes of heuristic-driven bias, frame dependence, and inefficient prices. Linear regression models are constructed using data collected on publicly traded Internet companies, market performance both before and after the collapse of the Internet sector stock prices in an attempt to assess whether or not market returns were correlated with certain specific measures of corporate internet performance. Finally, the authors draw inferences relating to the psychology of investor behaviour during this period based upon their empirical analysis, and conclude by summarizing the managerial implications of their findings.     

Incentives,income sharing,and institutional innovation in the yugoslav self-managed firm

The incentive properties of income-sharing arrangements are analyzed for situations in which workers are allowed to form group or coalition decisions on effort. Both the feasibility and enforceability of such decisions are shown to depend on a variety of organizational characteristics, including the degree of worker participation and the size and divisionalization of the firm. Finally, the recent decentralization of Yugoslav firms is shown to enhance the incentive effects of income sharing.     

Promoting entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe

The past decade has seen a revival of entrepreneurship in the modern industrial economies, characterized by a wave of enterprise restructuring and of new developments in business and technology. In this paper, we argue that market transitions of the post-socialist economies of Eastern Europe cannot be successful without similar entrepreneurial restructuring. To address the massive structural distortions that still plague the post-reform economies, the governments of the region must promote entrepreneurship through policies that: (1) make use of all possible sources of entrepreneurship, including in particular the former state and social sectors; and (2) establish a macroeconomic environment and property-rights framework conducive to entrepreneurship. A successful promotion strategy will need to operate on several fronts, by: (1) redirecting entrepreneurial activities into legal, productive activities, (2) increasing the supply and effectiveness of entrepreneurs, (3) developing markets for complementary inputs, and (4) increasing the demand for entrepreneurship. An unsuccessful approach, we argue, will be one that regards the pre-reform small private sector as the only source of entrepreneurship, and as the only arena for its productive use.Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers Professor of Economics and Business Administration University of California at Berkeley (on leave)Visiting Professor University of California at Berkeley Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana (on leave) Advisor to the Government of Slovenia on real sector restructuring, 1992–93