Why (not) cooperate? A cognitive model of farmers’ intention to join producer groups in Romania

After the breakdown of the communist regime in Romania, collective farms were replaced by a large number of small-scale private farms. Although cooperation seems to be a favourable choice for these smallholders, it did not develop as perhaps expected. This article explores the factors that determine the formation of the intention of Romanian vegetable farmers to join marketing cooperatives in the form of so called producer groups. Our theoretical framework refers to Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, which we model with a structural equation model. We identified as main intention drivers the expectation for better prices and easier access to capital. Perceived family support is another significant factor. The level of distrust is high. Although our trust variable is not significant as a predictor of the intention to cooperate in the model, we find qualitative indications that trust plays a role when the intention is translated into actual behaviour.     

Industrial design students’ perceptions towards a career in user experience field in Turkey

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The rapid growth of the user experience (UX) field has brought efforts to meet the increasing demand for specialists by welcoming...     

Entry to foreign markets and productivity: Evidence from a matched sample of Turkish manufacturing firms

We examine the effects of international trading activities of firms on creating productivity gains in Turkey by using a recent firm-level data set over the period 2003–2010. We establish treatment models and investigate the productivity improvements of firms through trade by using propensity score matching techniques together with difference-in-difference estimates. Three different groups of treatment are constructed: (1) firms that are involved only with import activities, (2) firms that are involved only with export activities and (3) firms that are involved with both export and import activities. The results of the study suggest that both exporting and importing have positive significant effects on total factor productivity (TFP) and labour productivity (LP) of firms. Importing is found to have a greater impact on productivity of firms compared to exporting. Further, two-way trade is found to have more significant effects than those of one-way trade on firm productivity. Finally, our results indicate that international trade has greater impact on LP rather than TFP of firms.     

Speculative attacks and currency crises: The Mexican experience

By using data from the Mexican economy, this paper estimates a speculative attack model of currency crises in order to identify the role of macroeconomic fundamentals and early warning signals of a potential currency crisis. A deterioration in fundamentals appears to generate high one-step-ahead probabilities for the observed regime changes during the sample period 1982–1994. Particularly, foreign reserve losses, expansionary output, monetary and fiscal policies, an increase in inflation differentials and the share of short-term foreign currency-indexed debt, and an appreciation of the real exchange rate appear to have contributed to the speculative pressures and the associated regime changes.     

The evolution of syndicated loan markets

This paper provides a historical perspective on the development of the global syndicated loan market, where $2.6 trillion worth of funds were raised in 2004. The emergence of the Eurodollar market in the 1960s, the balance of payments problems of non-oil-exporting emerging countries in the 1970s, the Latin American financial crises and the US merger wave of the 1980s, and finally the competitive financial environment and the emergence of the secondary loan market during the 1990s are reviewed. These have been the most influential financial developments that shaped the syndicated loan markets in the last few decades.