The Determinants of Labour-time Allocation between Farm and Off-farm Work in Rural China: the Case of Liaoning Province

This article examines the determinants of the allocation process of labour time between farm and off-farm activities (OFAs) in north-east rural China during the late 1990s. The question is addressed by means of a dedicated fieldwork survey of 450 rural households in a clustering of nine villages in Xinmin County located in Liaoning Province. The econometric methodology consists of deploying a multinomial logit model to track the distribution of OFA employment opportunities. Our results reveal that market forces, rather than overt political connections, are assuming increasing significance, especially for those operating own-account enterprises (OAEs); that birthplace and location remain potent determinants of work destination and earnings capacity; and that being male and single motivates rural inhabitants to seek OFAs to a much greater extent than other household members. These findings have implications for those responsible for framing policy. In particular, a further round of liberalization to favour OFAs is suggested.     

保险消费者纠纷多元化解决机制研究

随着保险规模的不断扩大,保险纠纷也日益增多。我国在解决保险纠纷方面存在着诸多问题和挑战,如纠纷解决途径的单一、诉讼比重过大、仲裁方式利用率较低等。对此,应完善保险公司内部投诉和纠纷解决机制,建立监管机构对于大额纠纷的直接参与的处理机制,成立专业法庭、培养专业法官和律师,完善行业协会功能,使其成为保险纠纷解决的必要补充,加强保险文化建设等。     

家族企业股权结构的影响因素研究——以希望集团为例

股权结构是影响企业控制权的核心要素,与利益分配和风险分担相联系,成为股东分享公司控制权的依据.民营企业大多采用家族企业管理模式,股权高度集中在家族少数成员手中.本文通过研究希望集团的股权结构变革,并将这种变革与中国的公司治理背景与企业生命周期相结合发现,家文化、多元化经营战略与政治关联对我国家族企业股权结构的发展演变具...     

企业多元化经营的产业选择及其进入方式

当前 ,多元化战略已成为许多企业谋求成长的重要手段 ,企业多元化经营的好处在于分散经营风险 ,扩大市场权力和取得协同效应等 ,但是企业如果不考虑自身实力及外部环境 ,进行盲目的多元化 ,也很容易落入“多元化陷阱”,本文认为企业做好进入产业及其进入方式的选择 ,能在一定程度上降低多元化经营的风险。首先分析了产业选择的重要性 ,接着指出企业经营目标、业务关联性及所选产业的进入、退出壁垒都会影响产业选择 ,最后阐明兼并是比新建生产能力更好的进入方式。     

Farmer Initiatives and Livelihood Diversification: From the Collective to a Market Economy in Rural China

This paper explores how, despite relatively undifferentiated economic, cultural and land tenure conditions, some farmers in a rural area of Hebei Province, north-east China, have managed to devise innovative livelihood activities that provide them with better living standards than the majority of villagers. The research concludes that the dynamics of farmer innovations emerge from a variety of factors: the building of effective social networks and sources of information, 'enlightenment' deriving from small-group interactions, and the construction of trust relations, self-help and cooperation. These factors belong to the sphere of social resources rather than to those of natural, physical, human or financial assets. Hence it is social components that constitute the mobilizers of change in regard to farmers' livelihood development.     

Technical Efficiency among Peasant Farmers Participating in Natural Resource Management Programmes in Central America

This study examines the extent to which technical efficiency (TE) is related to activities promoted by two natural resource management programmes recently completed in Central America. Data for a total of 639 farms operating in the hillsides of El Salvador and Honduras are used to estimate a household‐level input‐oriented stochastic distance frontier simultaneously with a TE effects model. The main finding of this study is that improvements in TE are financially beneficial to farm households while also contributing to environmental sustainability. The results also reveal a positive association between productivity and output diversification, and a positive relationship between TE and off‐farm income, human capital and agricultural extension.     

我国企业多元化经营与降低企业风险研究——来自我国上市公司的经验证据

多元化经营在我国企业中已经越来越普遍,多元化能够降低企业风险吗?通过对经营与财务两方面的研究发现,多元化战略会降低企业收益的波动幅度,分散企业的经营风险;但同时,多元化战略会增大企业发生财务失败的可能性,增加企业的财务风险。因此,企业多元化经营的成功与否依赖于风险管理的有效性。     

Feasibility of conservation agriculture in the Amu Darya River Lowlands,Central Asia

Human-driven land degradation threatens economic and environmental sustainability of irrigated agricultural production such as in Central Asia. Many current challenges can be eased by implementing Conservation Agriculture (CA), with however unknown financial consequences under the predominating irrigated conditions. We applied the linear programming to compare costs and benefits of four CA production systems, which are cotton-based rotation systems including (i) cotton-cotton and (ii) cotton-wheat-maize rotations under conventional tillage (CT), as well as (iii) cotton-cover crop-cotton, and (iv) cotton-wheat-maize rotations with mulch cover (crop residue retaining) and both rotations under permanent-bed planting (PB) with minimum tillage. All systems were subjected to six levels of land quality and a series of crop pricing schemes. Data were extracted from empirical research on CA in Uzbekistan, complemented with data on input and output prices from surveys. The findings underpinned the financial advantages of more diversified cropping systems (cotton-wheat-maize) over the crop monoculture (cotton-cotton-based system). Crop cultivation on marginal land was unprofitable under CT. In contrast, crop production under PB could generate profits even on croplands with a lower productivity level considered. It is argued that PB with crop residue retaining and applied in cotton-wheat-maize rotation shows most promise for improving crop yields and income.     

Labor‐saving technologies and structural transformation in northern Ghana

Labor‐saving technologies played a fundamental role historically in the structural transformation of agrarian economies. We focus on an emerging labor‐saving trend in Ghana, use of motorized tricycles (MTs), which provide an affordable alternative to manually transferring crops from plots to homestead. A household survey collected in 2017 in northern Ghana is used to shed light on how the time savings made available by using MTs may be converted into activities that enhance agricultural productivity and/or diversify the household away from agriculture. Detailed information collected on the agricultural production and agro‐processing behavior of 1,400 households allows us to examine the above transformative channels. Ordinary least squares and instrumental variable regressions are applied to quantify the effect of MTs on related outcomes. We find households are able to diversify their farming activities into selling processed agricultural goods with the time savings provided through MT adoption. Policies aimed to foster the diffusion of MTs elsewhere in Ghana may expedite structural change and, hence, economic growth.     

Corporate diversification and the value of individual firms: A Bayesian approach

Research summary: Prior theory suggests that the performance effects of a firm's diversification strategy depend on a firm's individual resources and capabilities and the setting within which it is operating. However, prior tests of this theory have examined the average diversification‐performance relationship across all firms, instead of estimating the diversification‐performance relationship at the individual firm level. Efforts to estimate this average relationship are inconsistent with a central assumption of much of strategic management theory—that firms maximize value by choosing strategies that exploit their heterogeneous resources and individual situation. By adopting an approach that allows an evaluation of the diversification‐performance relationship for individual firms, this article shows that firms, both focused and diversified, tend to choose that diversification strategy—focus, related diversification, or unrelated diversification—that maximizes value. Managerial summary: Instead of a universal diversification discount or premium, this article shows that the effect of diversification on performance is heterogeneously distributed across firms and that firms tend to be rational in their diversification decisions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.