Selling Together: The Benefits of Cooperatives to Women Honey Producers in Ethiopia

Smallholder farmers in developing countries encounter multiple barriers in access to inputs and technology, which prevent them from reaping the benefits from market participation. Women farmers face additional constraints due to gender norms that further limit their engagement in productive activities. While collective action has been shown to improve access to markets and economic outcomes for farmers overall, the evidence on the effects of cooperative membership for women smallholders remains limited. We investigate empirically the economic benefits of collective action for women farmers in the honey sector in Ethiopia. Relying on a rich data set on women honey producers, both cooperative members and non‐members, we evaluate the effects of belonging to a cooperative on three outcome variables through coarsened exact matching and regression analysis. Our results indicate that cooperative membership significantly increases the market price and the production quantity and, while the average effect on the share of product marketed is statistically insignificant, significant differences emerge for women with given characteristics. These results are shown to be robust to a number of tests that address biases from selection on observables and unobservables. An analysis of the heterogeneous effects of household membership in multiple groups finds that membership of self‐help groups or farmer associations amplifies the positive outcomes from belonging to a formal cooperative. Finally, qualitative findings derived from the same communities indicate self‐reported improvements in agency and self‐esteem among women members, thus reinforcing the importance of the quantitative findings.     

Systemic lupus erythematosus and associated healthcare resource consumption in selected cities from the Russian Federation,Republic of Kazakhstan and Ukraine: the ESSENCE study

Objectives: To evaluate healthcare resource (HR) consumption associated with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) management in adult patients with active autoantibody positive disease in the Russian Federation, Republic of Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

Methods: The ESSENCE was a retrospective, observational study, and included data on patients’ clinical characteristics and SLE-related HR use (laboratory, biopsy, imaging tests, medications, visits to specialists, outpatient visits, hospitalizations) during 2010 from the 12 specialized rheumatologic centers.

Results: A total of 436 SLE patients were included in the analyses, with 232 patients being enrolled in Russia, 110 in Kazakhstan, and 94 in Ukraine. The mean age was 36–42 years and median SLE duration was 3–6.8 years across the countries. Extrapolation to total country population showed that, in 2010, visits to specialists (who assign treatment for organs involved/damaged by SLE) were the most frequently used HR (from 13,439 visits in Kazakhstan to 23,510 in Russia), followed by hospitalizations (from 2,950 in Kazakhstan to 6,267 in Russia) and outpatient visits (from 1,654 visits in Russia to 8,064 in Kazakhstan). Compared to chronic active patients (SLE persistent during last year), patients with relapsing-remitting SLE (at least one flare alternated by one remission per year) had a higher rate of visits to specialists (100% vs 60.8%, p?<?.001) and hospitalizations (98.9% vs 60.8%, p?<?.001). Compared to patients without flares, patients experiencing flares had a higher rate of unplanned visits to specialists (86.2% vs 6.3%, p?<?.001), were more often hospitalized (both ICU and non-ICU) (100.0% vs 50.0%, p?<?.001), and had a longer duration of ICU hospitalization (25.9 days vs 17.5 days, p?<?.001).

Conclusions: Specialist visits are the most frequently consumed SLE-related healthcare recourse in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. A relapsing-remitting SLE profile and the occurrence of flares significantly raise healthcare resource consumption.     

Market similarity and market selection: Implications for international marketing strategy

International market selection patterns for a sample of 954 new products suggest that firms exhibit a significant preference for markets similar to the home market. Preferences for similar markets decline as firms gain experience in a variety of markets, however. This pattern suggests the importance of uncertainty and information in global market selection and marketing mix management. Alternative means of gathering information about foreign markets permit and support very different approaches to global marketing activity. More fundamentally, a global perspective on the relationship between market conditions, marketing policies and programs, and consumer response can be developed systematically to improve global marketing performance.     

Convenient specification tests for logit and probit models

We propose several Lagrange multiplier tests of logit and probit models, which may be inexpen- sively computed by means of artificial linear regressions. These maybe used to test for various forms of model inadequacy, including the omission of specified variables and heteroskedasticity of known form. We perform a number of sampling experiments, in which we compare the small-sam- ple properties of these tests and of likelihood ratio tests. One of the LM tests turns out to have better small-sample properties than any of the others. We then investigate the power of the tests against local alternatives, and conduct a further series of sampling experiments to compare the power of various tests.     

A Case Study Approach to Comparing Weed Management Strategies under Alternative Farming Systems in Ontario

When research was initiated into comparing alternative method's of managing weeds in Ontario's major field cash crops, no field trial data existed. Twenty-five farmers were therefore surveyed for their production data on corn, beans and fall-seeded cereal grains, including weed management practices, input costs and wage rates, yields and product prices. Nine farmers were classified "conventional" because of their heavy dependence on synthetic herbicides, which were routinely broadcast on the three focus crops. Nine farmers were classified as "reduced input" if they placed reduce dependence on herbicides for at least one of the focus crops. Seven organic farmers placed zero reliance on herbicides, using instead substitutes such as crop rotations, smother crops, soil tillage and timeliness of field operations. Although organic farmers spent the most time and money on weed control, their overall direct costs of production were lowest for all three focus crops. Crop gross margins were highest on organic farms, partly because of lower production costs, but also because of higher product prices along with comparable crop yields. Linear programming model results for whole-farm analyses revealed highest net farm incomes on organic farms and lowest on conventional farms, in part due to lower overhead costs on organic farms, and in part due to greater enterprise diversification and to greater self-sufficiency in material inputs. These case study results need broader-scale testing to verify the conclusion that organic or reduced-input methods of weed management offer viable alternatives to conventional approaches.     

Employee shareholders in two privatised utilities

This article draws on a survey of over 400 employees in two privatised companies. It examines the relationship between the depth of share ownership and social class and prior political orientations, and suggests that employee attitudes are best understood as a function of these standard sociological factors.