A critique of high-value supply chains as a means of modernising agriculture in China: The case of the beef industry

China has embarked on an agricultural modernisation program with far-reaching implications for rural development, food safety and trade. A major focus of China’s agricultural modernisation program has been to build high-value supply chains and large, modern agro-industrial enterprises. This paper provides a critique of these efforts in the case of the high-value beef supply chain. It finds that interventionist policies to fast-track the development of high-value supply chains have perverse outcomes and that a more incremental and facilitative approach to modernisation should be pursued based around the development of mid-value supply chains.     

Are school counselors an effective education input?

We exploit within-school variation in counselors and find that one additional counselor reduces student misbehavior and increases boys’ academic achievement by over one percentile point. These effects compare favorably with those of increased teacher quality and smaller class sizes.     

Optimal investment and pricing in the presence of defaults

We consider the optimal investment problem with random endowment in the presence of defaults. For an investor with constant absolute risk aversion, we identify the certainty equivalent, and compute prices for defaultable bonds and dynamic protection against default. This latter price is interpreted as the premium for a contingent credit default swap, and connects our work with earlier articles, where the investor is protected upon default. We consider a multiple risky asset model with a single default time, at which point each of the assets may jump in price. Investment opportunities are driven by a diffusion X taking values in an arbitrary region . We allow for stochastic volatility, correlation, and recovery; unbounded random endowments; and postdefault trading. We identify the certainty equivalent with a semilinear parabolic partial differential equation with quadratic growth in both function and gradient. Under minimal integrability assumptions, we show that the certainty equivalent is a classical solution. Numerical examples highlight the relationship between the factor process, market dynamics, utility‐based prices, and default insurance premium. In particular, we show that the holder of a defaultable bond has a strong incentive to short the underlying stock, even for very low default intensities.     

Environmental practices in the wine industry: An empirical application of the theory of reasoned action and stakeholder theory in the United States and New Zealand

Industry transformation related to environmental stewardship has received significant scholarly attention over the past decade. However, limited theoretical and empirical work examines the motivations for improving environmental performance in an industry in different countries. In this paper, we develop a set of hypotheses, based in the theory of reasoned action and stakeholder theory, regarding drivers of the adoption of environmental practices in the wine industries of New Zealand and the United States. We test our hypotheses using data from survey questionnaires collected in each country. Our findings suggest that subjective norms and internal stakeholder pressures are common drivers of the adoption of environmental practices in these two countries. However, managerial attitudes and external stakeholder pressures are not significant drivers. We also find that managerial attitudes and export dependence are stronger determinants of environmental practice adoption in New Zealand compared to the U.S.     

Business cycle asymmetry via occasionally binding international borrowing constraints

This paper illustrates how occasionally binding credit constraints can be quantitatively important to delivering business-cycle asymmetries. An empirical exercise suggests that countries display some business-cycles asymmetries, and an open-economy real business-cycle model is assessed where an international borrowing constraint binds occasionally. In the model, downward movements with a slack constraint are sharper and quicker than upward movements with a binding constraint, and this can deliver asymmetry over the business cycle. The model is calibrated to Canadian data and suggests that a necessary ingredient for asymmetry is a high initial level of foreign debt.     

Industry changes in technology and complementary assets and the creation of high-growth firms

This study uses employment data to examine why some industries host more new high-growth firms than others. Using a unique data base of 201 industries over a 15-year period, we find that increases in the proportion of employment of scientists and engineers in industries are positively associated with counts of fast-growing new firms; however, we do not detect a relationship between fluctuations in the proportion of employment in sales and production occupations and counts of fast-growing new firms. The findings suggest that technological innovation is an important determinant of entrepreneurial opportunity. Further, they suggest that private new firms are an important means of organizing commercial innovation and that new firms may be less constrained by complementary assets than has been previously understood.     

Digging the backyard: Mining and quarrying in the UK and their impact on future land use

The future demand for land for mining and quarrying will be affected by a large number of economic, technological, environmental and social issues within the UK. Global developments also have a role to play. Although mining and quarrying account for only 0.9 per cent of the land area of England, the impact of this activity is considerable. Minerals are essential to the economy, for energy, construction, infrastructure and manufacturing, while their extraction has effects on the environment and on public perception. This paper examines current scientific understanding of the context of mining and quarrying, with particular reference to its impact on land use, along with the spatial relationship between minerals – which can only be worked where they occur – and other forms of land use and designation in the ‘post-industrial’ landscape of Britain. Looking out to 2060 and beyond, developments which may influence demand for minerals include climate change mitigation and adaptation; energy, food and raw material security; and new construction, manufacturing, recycling and re-use technologies. Factors influencing the supply side include the structure and ownership of the mining and quarrying industry, new extraction, processing and environmental technologies, ecosystem service provision, societal attitudes and land access. Although prediction carries a high level of uncertainty, continuous development of the regulatory framework is, and will remain, a major and pervasive factor in the relationship between mining and quarrying and land use.