How to define and study farmers' management capacity: theory and use in agricultural economics

Textbooks and articles on farm management stress the importance of the management capacity of the farmer with respect to his farm results. However, explicit definitions together with an elaboration of this concept are hard to find. In this article, aspects of management capacity are grouped into: (1) personal aspects, consisting of fanner's drives and motivations, fanner's abilities and capabilities and his biographical facts such as age and education; and (2) aspects of the decision-making process, consisting of practices and procedures with respect to planning, implementation and control of decisions at the farm. Empirical studies on the role of management capacity in relation to farm results are reviewed. Frontier production functions are widely used in recent literature to estimate technical and economic efficiency of farms. However, in explaining differences in efficiency most studies do not go further than adding a biographical variabk (e.g., level of education). This study concludes that a next step would be to include aspects of the decision-making process. Longitudinal on-farm observations, which give possibilities for studying the dynamic aspects of the decision-making, are suggested to further analyze the concept of management capacity.     

Banking Products: You <Emphasis Type="Italic">Can</Emphasis> Take Them with You,So Why Don’t You?

Policymakers around the world call for more competition in the banking sector. One prerequisite to achieving this is customer mobility. Despite its policy relevance, surprisingly little is known about consumers’ bank switching behaviour. We show that the principal reasons to stay at one’s bank are a good bank-customer relationship, practical barriers, and the perception that there is not much benefit in switching. Moreover, we find that the reported propensity to switch varies across banking products. For the main current and savings accounts, this propensity is most strongly related to the bank-customer relationship, while for mortgage loans it is especially linked to switching experience. These findings have important implications for antitrust policy; they provide an argument against using a cluster-based legal standard for the analysis of competition and in favour of a disaggregated approach. Regarding the effectiveness of hypothetical policy initiatives to lower switching barriers, we find that the reported switching propensity with current accounts is higher in the case of account number portability, while more knowledge of the existing switching service has no significant effect. Lastly, scenario analysis shows that a policy of allowing new foreign banks to enter the savings market is less promising for enhancing mobility than a policy that increases the number of domestic players.     

Investment guarantees in unit-linked life insurance from the customer perspective

Interest rate guarantees are a typical contract feature in unit-linked-life insurance products. As the financial crisis of 2007/2008 has shown, these guarantees can be of substantial value for policyholders since they ensure that at least a minimum amount will be paid back even if the mutual fund value falls below a specific guaranteed level. However, from the insurance company’s view, these guarantees can be costly—especially in highly volatile markets—due to the required risk management measures which must be undertaken to secure the guarantees promised to the customers. Thus, the aim of this paper is to investigate whether customers really value these guarantees and if their willingness to pay (WTP) is sufficient to cover the guarantee costs. To elicit customer WTP, we use an online questionnaire and compare these results to the actual guarantee costs calculated with the Black and Scholes option pricing formula. One main finding is that even though most of the participants in the online questionnaire work in the financial industry, subjective prices are difficult to derive and are lower, on average, than the prices obtained using a financial pricing model. However, many participants are still willing to pay a substantially higher price.     

In love with the debit card but still married to cash

Using shopping diary survey data, we show that changing payment patterns is a challenging task; even when consumers have fallen in love with a new payment instrument, they find it hard to divorce from their old payment instrument. We find a discrepancy between how consumers prefer to pay and how they actually pay. Half of the consumers who prefer the debit card to cash don’t use the debit card to pay a majority of their point-of-sale transactions. Our regression results show that the habit of paying cash plays a significant role explaining the presence of a gap.     

The Diana Project: pioneering women studying pioneering women

The 2007 winner of the International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research is the Diana Project team (Candida Brush, Nancy Carter, Elizabeth Gatewood, Patricia Greene and Myra Hart). The Diana Project builds on the vast experience of the team in the field of entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship, business growth and venture capital in particular. The Diana Project has investigated the supply and demand side of growth capital for women entrepreneurs. The research contributes to entrepreneurship theory as well as to practice, filling a void in knowledge on growth-oriented women entrepreneurship. In this article we present and discuss the research contribution of the Diana Project, in the areas of entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurship and venture capital. We specifically discuss the value of researching a specific group of women entrepreneurs, those who want to grow their businesses, that very clearly demonstrates the positive potential of female entrepreneurship. The Diana Project has also moved research on women’s entrepreneurship forward since its framework does not treat women entrepreneurs as “other,” i.e., the project does not presuppose that women’s entrepreneurship is similar to or different from men’s entrepreneurship. It assumes that women’s entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and studies it from that point of view. Carin Holmquist is professor at Stockholm School of Economics and member of the Prize Committee for The International Award for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research. Sara Carter is professor at University of Strathclyde. Both have written extensively in several of the areas covered by the Diana Project. The prize is awarded by the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research (FSF) and the Swedish Board of Industrial and Technical Development (NUTEK). An important aim with this prize is to attract broader attention to this research field. A precondition for choosing the winner of the award is that the research for which the award has been granted is a significant contribution to the theory and empirical understanding of entrepreneurship and the importance of entrepreneurship, new firm formation and small businesses in economic development. Besides the honor, the prize consists of SEK 0.5 million (roughly USD 80,000). It has been awarded annually since 1996. More information about the prize and previous winners is available at .     

Price presentation and consumers’ choice

Currently, regulatory authorities and consumers ask for more cost transparency with respect to financial product components. In life insurance, for instance, the premium for products should be split in its components: A premium for death benefits, the savings premium, the cost of an investment guarantee, and the administration costs. In this regard, it is important for insurance companies and regulators to know to what extent the way of presenting the prices of an offer affects consumer evaluation of the product. Based on a paper by Huber et al. (How do price presentation effects influence consumer choice? The case of life insurance products. Working paper, 2011) as presented at the annual meeting of Deutscher Verein für Versicherungswissenschaft in 2011, this article presents the effects of different forms of presenting the price of life insurance contract components and especially of investment guarantees on consumer evaluation of this product. This is done by means of an experimental study using a representative panel for Switzerland and by focusing on unit-linked life insurance products. The findings reveal that, contrary to consumer products, there is no effect of price bundling and price optic on consumer evaluation and purchase intention for life insurance products. However, there is a significant moderating effect of consumer experience with insurance products on this relationship.     

DRIVERS OF PAYMENT PATTERNS AT THE POINT OF SALE: STABLE OR NOT?

This research shows that it is key to have up‐to‐date information on payment behavior per type of point of sale (POS) and on how this behavior is driven by sociodemographic factors and perceived payment instrument attributes. Based on 2004 and 2014 data of the Netherlands, we find substantial shifts in the drivers of payment behavior. The sociodemographic factors behind the adoption of the credit card and debit card have changed, especially for the latter payment card. In addition, there are substantial shifts in the effects of sociodemographic factors and perceived relative payment attributes on which payment instrument consumers most often use. Shifts in payment behavior depend on the type of POS. Overall, we find that safety has become more important for payment behavior. The extent to which payment behavior depends on user‐friendliness and speed has somewhat decreased. (JEL C25, D12, E42)     

Industry characteristics and internationalization processes in small firms

The purpose of this study of small firms is to compare the process of internationalization in traditional manufacturing companies with corresponding processes in companies oriented toward innovation. Case studies were conducted in six small Nordic companies: three conventional and three innovative. The underlying concept of the conventional companies is strictly production oriented. Investment in engineering workshops and an effective organization for production constitute their most important strategy. In the innovative companies the production equipment is relatively easy to move, and over the years these companies have changed the location of production plants a number of times. The basic meaning of technology also differs in the two categories of industries. The conventional companies are based on an established technology that can be purchased through well-known market channels. In the innovative companies the process of developing new products or serving as intermediary between research organizations and end users demands close contact with people and organizations close to the technological core of the industry.The conventional companies are incorporated into a multidimensional industrial system of suppliers, competitors, and other companies, and the individual companies within these industries are constrained by the rules dictated by these networks. The innovative companies all have a concentrated product scope, which implies that it is relatively easy to achieve efficiency in various functions such as R&D, production, and marketing activities. This clear distinction between functions has been advantageous to the process of internationalization.The conventional companies have characteristics typical of family-controlled companies, i.e., the management team consists of a handful of people often closely associated with the owner family. The observation on the industry level that the game is governed by some very rigid rules is also evident on the management level, where the significant people are always kept within narrow limits. The individuals in the innovative companies have a very high level of education; they work in teams together with partners from other companies and/or organizations and they adhere to high professional demands.The results from these six case studies indicate that the internationalization process must be understood in the context of the industry, company, and people involved. International trade and cooperation will most certainly increase. Therefore it is important to observe that the conditions for industries and single companies are different. Conventional companies have a natural local concentration that ultimately implies different strategies from the innovative companies who have a global focus.     

Assessing the Impact of Enterprise Education in Three Leading Swedish Compulsory Schools

An impact assessment of enterprise education was conducted by studying a Swedish policy initiative. Eighty‐three students, 10–16 years old, were followed longitudinally for one semester in three schools deemed to be leaders in enterprise education. An innovative research methodology was used based on app‐based experience sampling, interviews, and a novel definition of enterprise education. Entrepreneurial dimensions in the three schools were rare, with few students developing entrepreneurial competencies. Swedish policy pressure for enterprise education has thus had a weak impact. Implications include novel pedagogical recommendations to enterprise educators and a call for more research employing the applied innovative research methodology.