Productivity,credit, risk,and the demand for weather index insurance in smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia

The article explores the relationship between fertilizer use and the demand for weather index insurance (WII) among smallholder farmers in Ethiopia. We examine whether fertilizer use is profitable under current smallholder production conditions, whether risk‐related factors affect fertilizer use, and we estimate the returns to inputs in the agricultural production function in the absence of insurance. We then study how these primitives of agricultural production functions relate to insurance demand. The study compares a survey‐based estimate of willingness to pay with actual uptake for the weather insurance, finding the stated and actual demand to be almost completely uncorrelated. While those with high marginal returns to inputs say they would purchase insurance, only those with low marginal returns actually do, consistent with the stated purpose of the product as input insurance. Insurance demand proves to be highly responsive to the existence and amount of randomly allocated insurance vouchers.     

Applying conjoint analysis in economic evaluations: an application to menorrhagia

The increased demand for health care, coupled with limited resources, means that decisions have to be made concerning the allocation of scarce health care resources. This paper considers how conjoint analysis (CA) can be used to aid this decision making process. It is shown how the technique can be used to estimate marginal rates of substitution between attributes, willingness to pay (WTP) if cost is included as an attribute and overall utility scores for different ways of providing a service. The technique is applied to consider women's preferences for two surgical procedures in the treatment of menorrhagia: hysterectomy and conservative surgery. The results suggest conservative surgery is preferred to hysterectomy, as indicated by higher utility scores for the former and a marginal WTP of 7593 to have conservative surgery rather than hysterectomy. The internal validity of CA was also shown. It is concluded that CA is a potentially useful instrument for policy makers. However, numerous methodological issues need addressing before the technique becomes an established instrument within economic evaluations.     

Primary and secondary pest management in agriculture: balancing pesticides and natural enemies in potato production

Natural enemies (NEs) provide an important ecosystem service by preying on variety of pests in agricultural crop production systems. Current management practices of both primary and secondary pests in agricultural production principally rely on the use of pesticides with associated negative social and environmental consequences/externalities. Excessive use of pesticides against primary pets can remove NEs from the agro‐ecosystem and amplify susceptibility of the system to outbreaks of secondary pests. The combined effect of NEs on primary and secondary pests has received limited attention. This study uses an intraseasonal bioeconomic model to explicitly take into account biological interactions among primary pests, secondary pests, and NEs assuming decision makers’ profit maximizing behavior. The model explicitly captures the opportunity cost of injury to NE in terms of both primary and secondary pest suppression by NE. The results show that in the context of the green peach aphid (primary pest) and two‐spotted spider mite (secondary pest) in potato production, inclusion of NE into pest mitigation strategy can increase returns by 2%.     

Motivations,experiences and perceived impacts of visitation at a Catholic monastery in New Zealand

This paper explores visitors' motivations and experiences for visiting the Tyburn monastery and retreat centre in the north island of New Zealand, and the perspectives of the nuns on the impacts of the visits. Using a qualitative research approach, the paper presents the findings of semi-structured interviews with 22 visitors and 3 nuns at the monastery; all Catholic in denomination. Findings of the research elicited three key experiential themes which were: “religious experience”, “personal experience” and “social experience”, although the overriding experience was religious. Findings also revealed that all visitors were welcome and were not treated as a burden by the nuns; in contrast to the more negative perspectives that are argued in some previous religious tourism studies. These findings thereby contribute potential knowledge of how a contemporary Catholic cloistered monastery is efficiently and uniquely managed through the Benedictine rule that is followed, which lays out principles of governing or administrating and hospitality, and which protects the devotional experience for its visitors.     

Differential mortality in Rural Bangladesh

Discrete regression methods are used to analyse sample survey data from two villages in two different regions of Bangladesh. No significant mortality differentials by socio-economic class are found.     

From frozen continent to tourism hotspot? Five decades of Antarctic tourism development and management,and a glimpse into the future

Representing the main commercial activity on the Antarctic continent, Antarctic tourism is increasingly thrust into the limelight as both benefactor and detractor to the environmental and political integrity of Antarctica. In view of its unprecedented growth, questions arise about the limitations of future tourism development in Antarctica. This paper assesses Antarctic tourism development over the last five decades and evaluates its current and future status from the viewpoints of Antarctic tourism stakeholders. This assessment is informed by interviews with Antarctic tourism stakeholders and a Delphi study undertaken in 2007. The authors found that Antarctic tourism stakeholders are concerned about the increasing scale and diversification of Antarctic tourism and generally subscribe to a conservation imperative when expressing their hopes for the future use of Antarctica and the development of Antarctic tourism. In conclusion, the rapid development of Antarctic tourism requires structural, institutional and legislative changes if Antarctic tourism regulation is to remain successful.     

Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF): A Neglected Aspect of Farm Tourism in New Zealand

Despite the importance of farm tourism to many rural communities in New Zealand, there has been no attention given to the contribution of the Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) venture to farm tourism in New Zealand. While the primary objective of the venture is organic farming, the facilitation of tourism experiences on the farm remains an additional concern among WWOOF hosts. This paper is based on a postal survey of 67 WWOOF hosts located in four main regions of New Zealand's South Island. The study sought to understand the management of WWOOF farms in relation to their role in providing tourism opportunities, to determine the reasons for becoming a WWOOF host, to provide a demographic profile of hosts and evaluate the environmental values and attitudes held by hosts. The study findings highlighted that WWOOF hosting has over recent years provided an increasing contribution to farm tourism in New Zealand. The study also provided some evidence to suggest that the motivations and experiences of WWOOF hosts were notably different from that of other farm tourism hosts. In particular, environmental ethic and shared knowledge of organic practices were considered essential.     

Numeraire choice in agricultural supply analysis

Should the choice of numeraire price for modelling profit functions be arbitrary, or is more careful study needed? Here, the choice of numeraire is examined using tests for models specification and out-of-sample predictive accuracy based on the crop and livestock data obtained from Iowa. The results of this study indicate that, for this data set and functional form, it does indeed make a difference which numeraire you choose. This is in contrast to previous studies which, in general, indicated that the choice of numeraire equation is arbitrary or, more commonly, offered no justification for the netput chosen.     

Educational mobility in Canada: results from the 2001 general social survey

This research examines mobility in the Canadian educational system and how it has evolved over the last 50 years of the twentieth century. Mixtures of ordered probability models which control for unobserved heterogeneity are estimated for both male and female respondents for two age groups: those between age 25 and 49 and those aged 50 or older in 2001. The main result is that educational attainments depend significantly less on family background variables for the younger cohorts. This is a qualitatively different result from what Canadian sociologists have found. They argue that there is little mobility in the Canadian educational system which has remained much as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. The data used in the analysis comes from the 2001 general social survey.