Strategic and Functional Orientation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises in Professional Services: An Analysis of Public Accountancy

This study examines how SMEs in public accountancy remain competitive, promote and deliver their services. The association among strategic planning, functional diversification (services and markets), methods of promotion and delivery is also examined. These SMEs face considerable difficulty in overcoming both in-house and external barriers in accessing clients requiring non-traditional services (e.g. management consulting), and clients involved in international business (broadly defined). The results show that the proactive, functionally diversified, and/or internationally oriented firms outperform the reactive, functionally concentrated, and local market oriented firms. The competitive advantage for the former categories is based on flexible specialisation such as customisation of services for specific groups of clients, speed of delivery collaboration with other producer service firms, and specialised skills. These firms utilise informal networks to promote their services with minimal investments in sponsorships or media selling. Face-to-face interaction with clients continues to be the preferred mode of service delivery despite the increased adaptation of local area networks and other modes of internationally technology by the proactive, functionally diversified or internationally oriented firms.     

Boys' versus Girls' Schooling in Nepal: Does It Vary by the Extent of Mothers' Autonomy?

This paper hypothesises that resource allocation affecting the decisions relating to sons' versus daughters' schooling in Nepalese households is dependent on the extent of the mother's autonomy. Here, we posit that women's autonomy is a relative concept as a woman has degrees of decision-making power within her household. The results indicate that daughters' education is more likely to benefit when mothers solely make the decisions, but when decisions are made jointly with her spouse then the decisions are more likely to be in favour of sons' education. Our results indicate a marked gender difference in parental decisions over children's education, in the direction posited above, and less than 10% of mothers in the sample have complete autonomy over such decision-making. These results are important for policy-makers wishing to decrease gender bias in children's educational outcomes.     

The research university,entrepreneurship and regional development: Research propositions and current evidence

The objective of this paper is to set a framework for examining the conditions under which a research university becomes more than a latent asset [Power, D., and A. Malmberg. 2008. The contribution of universities to innovation and economic development: In what sense a regional problem? Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1, no. 2: 233–46.] in regional economies. The framework is comprised of four propositions used to identify drivers of change, evidence of change and evidence of impact. As an exemplar, we examine the University of Oxford's growing engagement in its local region. This paper shows that the convergence between the interests of the university and the local high-tech economy is particularly associated with broader technological trends and with the University's capacity to draw on national funding programmes designed to stimulate ‘third-stream’ activities, including entrepreneurship courses and regional networking activities.     

An empirical analysis of migration in information-intensive work in the United States

The purpose of this study is threefold: to analyse the metropolitan origin and destination patterns of movers in information-intensive work, to examine the demographic and work characteristics of movers, and to determine the odds of an intermetropolitan move as opposed to an intrametropolitan move based on demographic and work characteristics. In this study, two industry categories (high technology manufacturing and advanced producer services) and one occupation category (engineers) are used as surrogates of information-intensive work. A much larger portion of moves are usually intrametropolitan as opposed to intermetropolitan. The data for the analysis were collected from Public Use Micro Sample data files of the 1990 US census. The findings show the dominance of large metropolitan areas as major origins and destinations; however, the importance of existing and emerging high tech agglomerations cannot be ignored. Selected findings of the determinants of migration show that males, whites, advanced degree holders, never-married persons are more likely to move compared to females, nonwhites, college degree holders and/or married persons. Findings also show the importance of producer services in the geographic mobility of females. However, in general, more female movers are in technical occupations and more male movers are executives and professionals. The research findings also show variations in terms of demographic and work characteristics across information-intensive work and metropolitan move categories despite the similarities in origin and destination patterns.     

Productivity and financial support in academic bioscience

Despite widespread awareness that scientific record and grant funding reinforce one another, empirical models of scientific production normally consider laboratory inputs to be exogenous. The present article employs a cross-section of academic bioscientists to examine the mutual relationship between research output and financial support. Information's nonrival character is such that scientific output and funding success cannot be expressed in strictly supply-and-demand terms. We find the typical bioscience laboratory to operate in a range of decreasing returns to scale and to over-invest in laboratory equipment and materials. Publication and funding success strongly reinforce one another, explaining the right-skewed success distributions often observed in science.     

Economic development and the role of agricultural technology

In earlier debates on economic development, the agricultural sector's role was somewhat controversial. While dualistic models highlighted the importance of agriculture, the mainstream literature placed a greater emphasis on the creation of a modern industrial sector. Soon agriculture disappeared from the mainstream development literature to re‐emerge recently with a variety of multiple‐sector growth models emphasizing the key role of agriculture and specifically technology in agriculture. This article is an empirical cross‐country analysis of agricultural technology's role in economic development. Specifically, the hypothesis being tested is whether improvements in agricultural technology have a significant impact on long‐run economic growth. The results indicate that agricultural modernization has a positive effect on both measures of economic growth and human development.     

Son Preference,Autonomy and Maternal Health in Rural India

The primary objective of this paper is to identify factors that affect maternal health in rural India. This is important given the high maternal and infant mortality rates in India, particularly rural India. The paper will focus particularly on whether and how the culture and practice of son preference (which is well documented in South Asia) has had an impact on maternal health. Assuming parents do not have access to knowledge about the sex of their unborn child, this paper examines whether a pregnant mother's maternal care (prior to giving birth) is affected by the presence of son(s) from earlier pregnancies. Additionally, the paper will analyze the impact of mothers' autonomy on their maternal health. The results show that existence of sons reduces the likelihood of receiving maternal care for successive pregnancies. Maternal autonomy, especially the mother's education, increases the likelihood of receiving maternal care. The results have meaningful policy implications.     

EXAMINING THE LINK BETWEEN JAPAN'S DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION OF FEMALES

Abstract.   This paper studies the role of education of females in Japan's development process. It analyses the pre-war years (1888 to 1940) as well as the five decades following the war and Japan's rise to economic power (1947 to 1990). This paper finds that Japan's pre-war growth was fuelled primarily by agricultural growth and primary education (of males in particular). The story is different in the post-war period, however. Capital accumulation, secondary and tertiary education of females, and tertiary education for males seem to provide the driving forces of growth.     

Agricultural technology and child labor: evidence from India

Child labor continues to be a major problem in developing countries, particularly in agricultural countries. The latest ILO global report points out that nine out of every ten child laborers is involved in the agricultural sector. The focus of this article is on the rural sector in India, a country where child labor continues to be prevalent. A number of factors have been found to significantly influence the extent of child labor. This article will focus on the type of technology utilized in the agricultural sector. Technology is divided into two types: biochemical and mechanical. The empirical results indicate that biochemical technology has both positive and negative effects on child labor. However, mechanical technology is found to have a statistically significant and negative impact on child labor.     

Farmland cash rents and the dollar

We explore whether the U.S. exchange rate could have an influence on cash rental rates for farmland in five U.S. cornbelt states. We find that farmland cash rents have a fairly strong, positive correlation with the U.S. dollar, in terms of its real value relative to major agricultural trading partners. One explanation for the correlation is that a strong dollar lowers the price of key inputs and thus has purchasing power effects. A strong dollar may therefore be associated with higher net returns, and the payment of higher cash rents by farmers. We find support for this hypothesis through a series of econometric models.