Agricultural Extension: Good Intentions and Hard Realities

What considerations lead policymakers to invest in agriculturalextension as a key public responsibility, and what factors andagency incentives explain differences in extension system performance?To help answer these questions, this article provides a frameworkoutlining farmers' demand for information, the public goodscharacter of extension services, and the organizational andpolitical attributes affecting the performance of extensionsystems. This conceptual framework is used to analyze severalextension modalities and their likely and actual effectiveness.The analysis highlights the efficiency gains that can come fromlocally decentralized delivery systems with incentive structuresbased on largely private provision, although in most poorercountries extension services will remain publicly funded.      

Have labour practices and human rights disclosures enhanced corporate accountability? The case of the GRI framework

This paper critically evaluates Transnational Corporations’ (TNCs) claimed adherence to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s ‘labour’ and ‘human rights’ reporting guidelines and examines how successful the GRI has been in enhancing comparability and transparency. We found limited evidence of TNCs discharging their accountability to their workforce and, rather, we found evidence to suggest that disclosure was motivated more by enhancing their legitimacy. TNCs failed to adhere to the guidelines, which meant that material information items were often missing, rendering comparability of information meaningless. Instead, TNCs reported large volumes of generic/anecdotal information without acknowledging the impediments they faced in practice.     

Forecast combinations under structural break uncertainty

This paper proposes two new weighting schemes that average forecasts based on different estimation windows in order to account for possible structural change. The first scheme weights the forecasts according to the values of reversed ordered CUSUM (ROC) test statistics, while the second weighting method simply assigns heavier weights to forecasts that use more recent information. Simulation results show that, when structural breaks are present, forecasts based on the first weighting scheme outperform those based on a procedure that simply uses ROC tests to choose and forecast from a single post-break estimation window. Combination forecasts based on our second weighting scheme outperform equally weighted combination forecasts. An empirical application based on a NAIRU Phillips curve model for the G7 countries illustrates these findings, and also shows that combination forecasts can outperform the random walk forecasting model.     

Life Expectancy in 2040: What Do Clinical Experts Expect?

We use expert clinical and public health opinion to estimate likely changes in the prevention and treatment of important disease conditions and how they will affect future life expectancy. Focus groups were held including clinical and public health faculty with expertise in the six leading causes of death in the United States. Mortality rates and life tables for 2040 were derived by sex and age. Life expectancy at age 20 and 65 was compared to figures published by the Social Security Administration and to estimates from the Lee-Carter method. There was agreement among all three approaches that life expectancy at age 20 will increase by approximately one year per decade for females and males between now and 2040. According to the clinical experts, 70% of the improvement in life expectancy will occur in cardiovascular disease and cancer, while in the last 30 years most of the improvement has occurred in cardiovascular disease. Expert opinion suggests that most of the increase in life expectancy will be attributable to the already achieved reduction in smoking rates, especially for women.     

A Study on Firms with Negative Book Value of Equity

This paper studies the puzzling negative book equity phenomenon among US public firms. Our evidence suggests that negative book equity firms exhibit heterogeneous characteristics. We show that a great portion of these firms, while operating at excessive capital structure with leverage ratio over 100%, are financially and operationally healthy. These healthy negative book equity firms increase their debt primarily motived by a need for funds to fulfill investment demand. We also find that the off‐balance sheet intangible assets and quality of intangible assets play an important role in determining the true debt capacity of these firms.     

Do Macroeconomic Structures and Policies Shape the Employment Intensity of Growth Differently for Women and Men?

Since all macroeconomic policies are enacted within a certain set of distributive relations and institutional structures, the employment intensity of growth is likely to vary for men and women depending on the nature and context of output growth. I examine the gendered nature of this growth-employment nexus by analyzing the differential impacts that macroeconomic policies and structures have on growth’s employment intensity by gender for eighty countries in the period from 1990 to 2012. Such an understanding is of particular relevance to policymakers concerned with the linkages between growth and human development, as the question of whether the benefits of economic growth are broadly shared is one that centers on the capacity of economies to generate high-quality employment. Although education levels and non-agricultural sectors are associated with more employment intensive growth for men and women, policies supporting reductions in non-wage care work, prioritizing public expenditures on education, and promoting secondary school enrollment for girls are especially linked with growth that is more employment intensive for women. The results I obtain here illuminate broad trends through a very wide lens and should be applied in conjunction with more intimate knowledge of how cultural, technological, legal, political, and economic activities uniquely affect one another in particular countries.