Direct intervention or indirect support? The effects of cooperative control measures on farmers’ implementation of quality and safety standards

In recent years, labor-intensive agricultural products from developing countries have exhibited inferior performance in international trade due to quality and safety incidents, among which pesticide residue is a major issue. Aiming to improve food quality and safety in the context of cooperatives, we introduced three categories of control measures: outcome control, process control and social control. Based on the Pre-Harvest Interval Standard (PHIS), we selected three indices, farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance to PHIS and relative distance to PHIS, to evaluate appropriateness of pesticides use, reduction of pesticide residue and safety improvements of agricultural products. By using random sampling survey data, we empirically analyzed the marginal effects of control measures and their combinations on food quality and safety standards. The empirical results show that implementing process control, namely, unified production standards or supply of unified agricultural inputs, can comprehensively improve farmers’ implementation rate of PHIS, absolute distance and relative distance to PHIS respectively by 34.9%, 3.2 days and 46.0% on average. While the effects of outcome control (safety inspection) and social control (bonus-penalty incentive or training) are restricted to other measures. Therefore, we suggest cooperatives should take farmers’ features, implementation conditions and the effects of control measures into consideration in order to make a sustainable management plan for improving food quality and safety and enhancing competitiveness in international markets.     

Club convergence and drivers of digitalization across Indian states

Disparity in the level of digitalization is a crucial driver of economic inequality in an economy. Although a pocket of its population is still bereft of the benefits of digitalization, India currently has the second highest number of internet subscribers in the world despite the nation's late adoption of digital technology. An accurate assessment of the current state of digitalization in the country is required for devising effective initiatives towards building a Digital India and bridging the nation's internal digital divide. Considering 17 major Indian states and 21 variables for 10 years, we constructed a composite index of digitalization with the help of Principal Component Method (PCM). This paper identifies factors responsible for the digitalization divide across states. In the second part of the analysis, the study confirms, with the help of club convergence test, the absence of overall convergence towards digitalization and the existence of the non-convergent group. This paper also shows that the non-convergent group of states are at the bottom of the ranking table which indicates the need for greater attention to initiatives to bridge the digital divide.     

行业内不对称地位的外资企业与内资企业的动态博弈及启示

外商直接投资企业在我国一些行业内处于强势地位,这对内资企业提出了严峻的挑战。本文从行业的层面将处于强弱不对称地位的外商直接投资企业与内资企业放在一个相互作用的系统中,采用动态博弈的方法定量研究在我国一些行业的外资企业与内资企业所处地位的不对称性对双方得益的影响,并由此得出结论与启示。     

Tourism in British Columbia Metropolitan and Camping Visitors

Two issues common to tourism planning are investigated in the context of a current planning proposal between the British Columbia and Canadian governments. These issue are the problem of spatial imbalance in travel patterns and the place of camping in market development strategies. Through the use of multiple regression two group discriminatory analysis, several characteristic of metropolitan and campers visitor to British Columbia are differentiated. The dominant tourist position of British Columbia's two metropolitan centers is shown to be a function of their relative location and the availability of familiar visits. The campers proved to be independent travellers: independent of familial ties and metropolitan locations. Some implications and planning strategies for the integration of these two groups into the travel industry development objectives for the province of British Columbia are suggested.     

Regulatory inertia versus ICT dynamics: The case of product innovations

This article conjectures that the legacy industry-specific regulation that has governed the telecommunications sector for a long time is in basic conflict with the dynamics and product innovations that characterize the modern information and communications technology (ICT) sector. Reasons for the failure of legacy regulation to promote product innovations are explained and proposals for alternatives, such as deregulation and regulatory reform are discussed. Both regulation and competition policy are more difficult for ICT than for other sectors. Therefore both, regulation and competition policy may need reforms in order to deal with new problems. The most drastic and most realistic alternative to legacy-type regulation remains deregulation and a move to competition policy. Symmetric regulation, smart regulation, quasi-Coasean approaches and subsidies all have some limited applicability to specific situations, but are all associated with complications that have to be resolved, while competition policy is a comprehensive alternative. Last-mile access and gatekeeper access are analyzed as two main areas of legacy regulation, which are in danger of being exported to other ICT areas. Such exports may negatively affect the dynamics of the ICT industry. Rather than being exported, legacy regulations should be reduced in order to enhance product innovations.     

Technology‐push,market‐demand and the missing safety‐pull: a case study of American Airlines Flight 587

Through a critical case study of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, this paper draws upon ‘the Social Shaping of Technology’ (SST) approach to offer a reconceptualisation of the technology‐push and market‐demand model for High‐Reliably Organisations (HROs), providing support for a third factor, called here a ‘safety‐pull’. A safety‐pull is defined as organisationally supported reflexivity in which technology innovators and frontline operators collaborate to consider the potential implications of adopting new technologies in HROs and the complex ways this change may impact human operators' work performance, often in risky and unanticipated ways. In contrast to accidents occurring solely as the result of individual operator error, analysing the safety‐pull provides a way to tease out the wide range of factors that can contribute to HRO failures and offers a new SST perspective through which to examine high‐risk operations.     

Lumpy Investment and Corporate Tax Policy

In the presence of both convex and nonconvex capital adjustment costs in a dynamic general equilibrium model, corporate tax policy generates both intensive and extensive margin effects via the channel of marginal Q. Its impact is determined largely by the strength of the extensive margin effect, which, in turn, depends on the cross‐sectional distribution of firms. Depending on the initial distribution of firms, the economy displays asymmetric responses to tax changes. Moreover, an anticipated increase in the future investment tax credit reduces investment and adjustment rate initially.     

Measuring systemic risk-adjusted liquidity (SRL)—A model approach

Little progress has been made so far in addressing—in a comprehensive way—the negative externalities caused by excessive maturity transformation and the implications for effective liquidity regulation of banks. The SRL model combines option pricing theory with market information and balance sheet data to generate probabilistic measure of systemic liquidity risk. It enhances price-based liquidity regulation by linking a bank’s maturity mismatch impacting the stability of its funding with those characteristics of other banks, subject to individual changes in risk profiles and common changes in market conditions impacting funding and market liquidity risk. This approach can then be used (i) to quantify an individual institution’s time-varying contribution to expected losses from system-wide liquidity shortfalls and (ii) to price insurance premia that provide incentives for banks to internalize the social cost of their individual funding decisions.     

Making sense of complex data using interactive data visualization

An important role for accountants today is to provide decision support to senior management by assisting them in the analysis of large, complex data sets. Interactive data visualization (IDV) facilitates this process by allowing users to navigate, select, and display data via an easy-to-use interface often used as a component of data analytics. Given the increasing popularity of IDV as a tool for making sense of complex data, it is important that accountants become familiar with and learn how to use this technology. This case provides a hands-on opportunity to organize complex accounting data to create IDVs for decision makers to use. Further, the case enables students to understand the potential impact of IDVs on preparers and users of accounting information. Students will assume the role of a division controller in a hypothetical company and create an IDV to assist the chief executive officer (CEO) in decision making.     

An assessment of the psychometric properties of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS10) with a U.S. public accounting sample

Utilizing a convenience sample of 305 professional staff from seven public accounting firms, this study examined: a) the factor structure of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS10; Cohen & Williamson, 1988); b) the invariance of its factor structure; c) the scale's reliability; and, d) its convergent and divergent validity. Our analyses support a structure with two primary factors, (General Distress and Ability-to-Cope), which load on a single second order factor, Perceived Stress, regardless of gender. Spearman–Brown reliability coefficients, item-total correlations, and coefficient alphas each supported the reliability of the items loading on the full scale as well as on each of the two primary factors. Collectively, these findings provide compelling evidence in support of the PSS10 as a perceived stress measure for accounting professionals. However, more research is warranted to investigate the efficacy of a reduced six-item version of the instrument.