Turnover in U.S. Agricultural Labor Markets

Agricultural workers move in and out of agriculture frequently. Migration between types of jobs takes relatively little time. Legal female workers tend to stay out of the U.S. labor market longer once they stop being employed and their access to jobs outside of agriculture is more limited than that of their male counterparts. Predictions made when the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed that granting people amnesty would induce most of them to leave agriculture were incorrect.     

Exclusive versus inclusive devolution in forest management: Insights from forest land allocation in Vietnam's Central Highlands

The devolution of forest management is high on the agenda in international forest policy. Devolution is generally conceived as a policy that aims to include a more diverse set of actors in forest management. One of the most problematic outcomes of devolution policies, therefore, is their tendency to exclude the claims of some local actors. This paper examines the exclusionary effects of devolutions in settings characterized by overlapping state and customary regulations and links these effects to exclusive notions of property and governance contained in particular devolution policies. The paper draws on insights gained in a pilot initiative of forest devolution in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Forest land allocation, as the initiative is called in Vietnam, took an exclusive approach to devolution by assigning ownership-type rights on forest to local actors, obliging those to protect the forest against encroachment by other actors, and centering governance in the state. In this particular case, exclusive devolution failed to diminish the gap between state and customary regulations, created conflicts among local actors, and contributed to forest loss. The unintended outcomes of exclusive devolution suggest the need for an inclusive approach to devolution that accommodates diverse kinds of overlapping claims made by multiple actors. The key elements of inclusive devolution are proprietary but not ownership rights granted to individual users and nested governance relations involving state and customary actors.     

All in the Mind: Citizen Satisfaction and Financial Performance in the Victorian Local Government System

While a significant body of literature exists on local government efficiency, much less is known about its effectiveness, especially financial performance and resident satisfaction. To address this gap in the empirical literature, the present paper uses system‐wide official annual data on resident satisfaction in the Victorian state local government system in Australia to investigate the relationship between annual net operating results and overall citizen satisfaction. In addition, in order to garner a deeper understanding of this relationship, we evaluated the assumption in the ‘near‐to‐zero balance’ public accounting literature that local residents prefer an insignificant annual balance in operating performance compared to substantial annual losses or surpluses. We found that there is a significant negative association between overall satisfaction and its components and financial performance for Victorian local government as a whole. However, this association is largely restricted to rural councils with surpluses. By contrast, we find no relationship between satisfaction and near‐to‐zero balances. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for both the public accounting literature and local government policymaking.     

Family-based treatment for obesity in tweens: a three-year longitudinal follow-up study

Children's increasing obesity worldwide is creating negative health and socioeconomic drawbacks. To find the determinants of obesity, this research looked at the influence of (1) media usage; (2) advertising messages/brand recognition; and (3) communication or lack of communication between parents and their children on obesity and food-related Purchase Influence Attempts (PIAs) of tweens. A 3-year longitudinal follow-up study was conducted with 68 families whose children were either obese or at risk of becoming obese. The subjects were divided into the following four groups: (1) media amount was controlled; (2) brand recognition was controlled; (3) communication channel of family members was controlled; and (4) all three conditions were controlled. Our results showed significant weight-loss and reduction in PIAs in all groups except in group 2 (brand recognition controlled). This work shows the importance of changing habits using behavioural treatment and the importance of communication among family members on obesity prevention.     

The role of accountability in determining the relationship between financial reporting quality and the performance of public organizations: Evidence from Vietnam

Drawing on the new public management and agency theory, this study examines the mediating role of accountability in the relationship between financial-reporting quality and the performance of public organizations. The research model and hypotheses tested with a survey of 177 responses obtained from accountants and managers working in the public sector in Vietnam. Our analysis shows that accountability has a mediating role on the relationship between financial-reporting quality and performance, with significant implications for public organizations seeking to improve both their financial-reporting quality and their organizational performance with better designed systems of accountability.     

Does Conservation Agriculture Change Labour Requirements? Evidence of Sustainable Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa

Population growth, increasing wealth and changing diets require agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa to intensify to meet future food demand and ensure food security in the region. Conservation agriculture can increase yields in the long run and reduce the negative environmental impacts of intensive farming. In changing the mix of resources used and how they are managed, the adoption of conservation agriculture can have a direct impact on farm labour. We study the relationship between conservation agriculture and labour input requirements as observed in five Sub-Saharan African countries. We focus on the amount of work required and the source of the work employed (household or hired, by gender, by children and by production stage). We apply multinomial endogenous switching regression models on a panel of household and farm data from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. We find that conservation agriculture increases farms’ labour input requirements. Higher demand is driven by more work during the harvesting and threshing stages. Increases in labour requirements are usually met by household labour, not paid work. The workload change is also higher for women than for men, and, in certain cases, is met by children.     

Economic uncertainty,ownership structure and small and medium enterprises performance

This paper investigates the effect of economic uncertainty on the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) over the period 2007–2016. This paper also examines the effects of ownership structure on the relation between Economic Uncertainty and firm performance. We find that an increase in economic uncertainty is negatively associated with the performance of SMEs. Our results also reveal that increased economic uncertainty is associated with a lower performance level for state-owned SMEs, whereas foreign-owned SMEs can better mitigate the negative impact of on their performance than domestic-owned firms.     

Has Reality Television Come of Age as a Promotional Platform? Modeling the Endorsement Effectiveness of Celebreality and Reality Stars

Reality television programming (RTVP) was once simply an innovative entertainment phenomenon. But RTVP also has recently evolved into a mainstream promotional platform. Two new forms of celebrities arose during this progression: “reality” and “celebreality” stars. This study, which is grounded in connectedness theory, addresses an unresolved issue related to the use of celebrity endorsers, that is, how endorsers’ status as reality or celebreality stars influences viewers’ perceptions of, beliefs about, and purchase intentions toward products they endorse. These relationships were examined through SEM, as were the effects of viewers’ connectedness to RTVP stars and their perceptions regarding whether RTVPs are authentic. Four primary findings emerged. The observation that reality impacted viewer connectedness and that connectedness and authenticity impacted viewers’ purchase intentions (endorsement effectiveness) revealed various practical and theoretical contributions, as did the observation that endorsers’ celebreality or reality star status moderated each of these relationships.     

Brand personality appeal,brand relationship quality and WOM transmission: a study of consumer markets in Vietnam

This study investigates the impact of brand personality appeal on both brand relationship quality and word-of-mouth (WOM) transmission in Vietnam. It also examines the role of consumer attitudes towards advertising and public relations on brand personality appeal as well as brand relationship quality. An empirical test with a sample of 477 consumers by means of structural equation modelling reveals that brand personality appeal has a positive impact on both brand relationship quality and WOM transmission and that brand relationship quality has a positive effect on WOM transmission. Furthermore, attitudes towards public relations have positive impacts on both brand personality appeal and brand relationship quality. Finally, attitudes towards advertising have a positive impact on brand personality appeal but not on brand relationship quality.     

Second Mover Advantage and Entry Timing

We describe a model of entry timing assuming that a second mover can benefit from observing the experience of a first mover. We focus on how market attractiveness characteristics such as size and cost affect the time until first entry. The effects depend on whether the number of participants is exogenous or endogenous. In the former case, a more attractive market leads to earlier entry. In the latter case, it leads to later entry. Treating the number of firms as an integer, free entry leads to non‐monotone, but testable, effects of market attractiveness on entry timing.