An independent assessment of the unidimensionality,reliability, validity and factor structure of the LibQUAL+™ scale

This empirical study provides a thorough measurement analysis of the LibQUAL+? scale for measuring library service quality. In particular, the study assesses the unidimensionality of the scale, the scale's psychometric properties and its factor structure. Data were gathered using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to a sample of university library users: 189 in Canada and 374 in Mexico. Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the study confirms the assumption of unidimensionality in only two of the three current sub-dimensions of the scale. The results of this study also show that the LibQUAL+? scale consists of four dimensions. The remainder of the CFA results in the study provides strong support for the general reliability and validity of the four-dimensional structure.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes how fiscal policies and credit constraints can affect the impact of macroeconomic volatility on long-run growth. The model by Aghion et al. (2005) is extended by allowing for governmental fiscal policy over the business cycle. The analysis shows that in an economy facing credit constraints, an increase in volatility will result in lower mean growth, and all the more the less financially developed and the more procyclical the fiscal policy is. The main implication is that in countries with lower degrees of financial development, countercyclical fiscal policies are particularly important in reducing the negative consequences of adverse aggregate shocks on firms' long-run investments. An empirical analysis is finally conducted using different groups of countries that confirm the theoretical predictions.     

Clustering and visualization of earthquake data in a grid environment

We present a web client-server service WEB-IS, which we have developed for remote analysis and visualization of seismic data consisting of both small magnitude events and large earthquakes. We show that the problem-solving environment (PSE) intended for prediction of large magnitude earthquakes can be based on this WEB-IS idea. The clustering schemes, feature generation, feature extraction techniques and rendering algorithms form a computational framework of this environment. On the other hand, easy and fast access both to the seismic data distributed among distant computing resources and to computational and visualization resources can be realized in a GRID framework. We discuss the usefulness of NaradaBrokering (iNtegrated Asynchronous Real-time Adaptive Distributed Architecture) as a middleware, allowing for flexibility and high throughput for remote visualization of geophysical data. The WEB-IS functionality was tested both on synthetic and the actual earthquake catalogs. We consider the application of similar methodology for tsunami alerts.     

Pre-recession efficiencies and input allocation decisions of agricultural and critically insolvent banks

The late 2000s’ economic recession is considered the longest economic downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Declining real estate values ignited an increase in loan defaults and mortgage foreclosures that led to a surge of bank failures at a rate not experienced by the U.S. banking industry since the 1980s. A total of 509 bank failures were recorded by the FDIC from January 2007–December 2014, with nearly 60% of these failures occurring in 2009 and 2010. In contrast, there were only 24 bank failures in the U.S. during the 7-year period prior to 2007. This study analyzed certain components of operating decisions made by banks that either survived or became critically insolvent during the late 2000s financial crisis using an Input Distance Stochastic Frontier function to estimate the technical efficiency (TE) and allocative efficiency (AE) between agricultural banks and non-agricultural banks. This efficiency analysis was applied to a 7-year pre-recession period and is designed to final out any early warning signals that decrease the efficiency level of banks. Results suggest that survival banks were more technically efficient than critically insolvent banks, and banks’ tendency to utilize cheaper inputs were more likely to stand the economic crisis.     

Demand for Fresh Fruits in Scotland: Potential Implications from Brexit

The need to improve the quality of the diet of Scottish consumers has increased the interest and efforts to understand the determinants of fruit and vegetables, as they may help to prevent a range of diet-related health problems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the demand for fresh fruit in Scotland, with particular emphasis on the contribution of Mediterranean areas. A further motivation comes from depreciation of the GB Pound with respect to the Euro and the US Dollar following the UK’s decision to exit the European Union (Brexit). This is particularly important in the case of fruit because about 80% of the fruit consumed in the United Kingdom is of foreign origin and therefore depreciation of the currency may increase the price of imported fruit. The demand for fruit was modelled as a two-stage budget to include fruit origin. The results indicate that the demand for fresh fruit is sensitive to changes in prices and the pass-through of GBP depreciation may impact negatively on the Scottish demand for fruit and the country’s nutrition goals.     

Socioeconomic Effects of Reducing Household Carbon Footprints Through Meat Consumption Taxes

Beef and sheep products represent the largest emitters of greenhouse gases within the meat group. One way of encouraging Scottish households to substitute purchasing lower carbon footprint meat products such as chicken is through a carbon consumption tax. In this article, the effects of such a tax were studied using a dynamic per capita error correction version of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS). The data used in the analysis were from a Scottish household panel dataset for the years 2006–2011, which allowed disaggregation by three socioeconomic groups. The results suggest that the net application of meat taxes is likely to reduce demand for beef and sheep products irrespective of socioeconomic group. Application of all meat carbon consumption taxes has the potential to reduce household demand for meat products, resulting in a likely 10.5% reduction in Scottish meat emissions.     

Do technology and manufacturing strategy links enhance operational performance? Empirical research in the auto supplier sector

Although much of the literature on manufacturing strategy (MS) and technology studies the implementation and impact of these manufacturing programs in isolation, this paper goes further by assessing the joint implementation and effect of these two manufacturing programs on performance, even when some contextual factors are present. Thus, this paper investigates how plants from the auto supplier sector make use of some operations practices from manufacturing strategy (MS) and from both product and process technology, by testing the effectiveness of both sets of practices, with the ultimate goal of enhancing operational performance. The results suggest that there are only very minor differences between high and standard performers on the aggregated level for technology practices, which may be the reason why technology does not result in significant performance differences between the two plant types. On the other hand, on the aggregated levels, there are somewhat greater differences for MS practices than for technology in both plant types, leading to larger differences in performance. While this study provides a foundation for examining MS, technology and context within a single framework, it is only through further research that a full understanding of the relationship between them will be obtained.     

Organic farms' seasonal farm labour-sourcing strategies in the pre-‘Arizona’ mode of immigration control

This study analysed the strategies of the more labour-intensive organic farms in sourcing seasonal farmworkers for their operations. The study period (2002) captures the farm labour market conditions prior to enforcement of stricter ‘Arizona’ style of immigration controls. Farmers at that time usually would tend to exhaust the full potentials of family labour contributions before relying on off-farm labour sources. When off-farm workers were considered, the results establish the farms' dependence on foreign labourers for seasonal farm work, although farmers seemed to have already been more cautiously hiring these workers in areas with lower concentrations of undocumented workers. This study also confirmed that farmers generally used high wage offers (possibly directed to domestic workers with more employment options) to lure them into working in their farms. The results also emphasize the need for improvements in the H2A guest farmworker visa programme that did not offer significant remedy for seasonal farm labour hiring at that time.