Subsistence agriculture and technological options

This is a modified version of a paper presented to the ‘Seminario Internacional sobre Tecnología para el Pequeño Agricultor’, held under the auspices of the IICA-lnstituto Interamericano de Ciências Agrícolas da OEA, Asuncion, Paraguay, 2–6 May 1977. The author wishes to thank Denisard C.O. Alves and Fernando B. Homem de Mello for their constructive comments.     

Sectoral shifts, diversification and regional unemployment: evidence from local labour systems in Italy

Using Local Labour Systems (LLSs) data, this work aims at assessing the effects of sectoral shifts and industry specialization patterns on regional unemployment in Italy over the years 2004–2008. Italy represents an interesting case study because of the high degree of spatial heterogeneity in local labour market performance and the well-known North–South divide. Furthermore, the presence of strongly specialized LLSs (Industrial Districts, IDs) allows us to test whether IDs perform better than highly diversified urban areas thanks to the effect of agglomeration economies, or viceversa. Building on a semiparametric spatial auto-regressive framework, our empirical investigation documents that sectoral shifts and the degree of specialization exert a negative role on unemployment dynamics. By contrast, highly diversified areas turn out to be characterized by better labour market performances.     

MIND THE GAP: UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE NEW EU REGIONS

Abstract.  The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on optimal speed of transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neo-classical tradition. In the typical neo-classical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Pre-figuring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, foreign direct investment and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment. The evidence of the empirical literature on supply side factors suggests that wage flexibility in Central and Eastern Europe is not lower than in other EU countries, while labour mobility seems to reinforce rather than change the spatial pattern of unemployment.     

The impact of faking on Cronbach’s alpha for dichotomous and ordered rating scores

In many psychological inventories (i.e., personnel selection surveys and diagnostic tests) the collected samples often include fraudulent records. This confronts the researcher with the crucial problem of biases yielded by the usage of standard statistical models. In this paper we applied a recent probabilistic perturbation procedure, called sample generation by replacement (SGR)—(Lombardi and Pastore, Multivar. Behav. Res 47:519–546, 2012), to study the sensitivity of Cronbach’s alpha index to fake perturbations in dichotomous and ordered data, respectively. We used SGR to perform two distinct SGR simulation studies involving two sample size conditions, three item set sizes, and twenty levels of faking perturbations. Moreover, in the second SGR simulation study we also evaluated an additional factor, type of faking model, to study sample reliability under different modulations of graded faking (uniform faking, average faking, slight faking, and extreme faking). To simulate these more complex faking models we proposed a novel extension of the SGR perturbation procedure based on a discrete version of the generalized beta density distribution. We also applied the new procedure to real behavioral data on emotional instability.     

Brazilian agricultural research: Export vs nutrition

Agricultural research in poor countries tends to be considerably more efficient for export crops than for local food crops. Dr Pastore presents a tentative theoretical explanation of this differential development of agricultural research systems in the same country and uses Brazil as a case study. The well developed research for key export products — coffee, sugar and cotton — and the underdeveloped research on the food crops — rice, beans and maize — are discussed. Dr Pastore suggests that, if the problems of malnutrition are to be overcome, research on export products should be largely privately financed while that on food crops should be entirely and heavily financed by the government.     

Contractual networks: an organizational model to reduce the competitive disadvantage of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe’s less developed regions. A survey in southern Italy

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Limitations faced by southern Italy’s small enterprises due to their dimensions may be overcome by cooperation strategies and network...     

When does transition increase the gender wage gap?

In the context of underlying stability in female participation rates, the gender wagegap, measured by the log of monthly wages, more than doubled in Belarus from 1996 to 2006. In this respect, the country has experienced a variant of the transition which occurred in the former Soviet Union where relative female wages fell by more than female participation. We have used the Machado and Mata (2005) analysis of the gender gap distribution. This reveals that the effect of coefficients on observed characteristics in widening the gap was increasing over time, especially in the lower and middle deciles of the wage distribution. At the same time, the effect of the characteristics themselves in reducing the gap was shrinking. The decomposition of changes in the gap over time, based on Juhn et al. (1991) , confirms that the contraction of women’s relative wages has been caused both by a deterioration in the observed characteristics of female workers and by the associated remuneration. Changes in the residual wage distribution tend to slightly reduce the gap rather than, as is the case elsewhere, to increase it. The analysis carried out in line with Neuman and Oaxaca (2004) suggests that the increased gap was not caused by sample selection. Instead, two observed factors are found to be mainly responsible for the results: hours of work have increased for men more than for women and women have experienced segregation in low‐wage industries.     

Decision Modelling: An Objective Approach to Moral Reasoning

All agree that moral issues are difficult issues mired in philosophical, political, social, and spiritual values. It's no wonder that the process of calculating moral positions has been likened to ``eating broth with a fork.'' While insuring moral behavior is difficult, teaching moral reasoning, a noble act, is even more difficult – especially when confronted by students who, by nature or discipline, are essentially objectivists dependant upon a need to structure what most will agree defies structure. This paper suggests one way the use of decision modeling may reach to moral objectivists in a classroom setting.     

Formal and informal learning in the workplace: a research review

The radical economic, social and cultural changes experienced by the labour market within recent decades have helped to highlight the central role played by the learning process in individual career development and organizational success. In such fast‐moving working contexts, skills and competencies rapidly become outdated and need to be continuously implemented and empowered as a strategic factor for global competitiveness. Traditional models of learning both inside and outside of the workplace have become unable to explain the complexity of such a process, weaving between and overlapping formal and informal components. Starting with this premise, the aim of the present paper was to analyse the role of knowledge and experience as important learning frames, which allow the acquisition and development of competencies in the workplace. A human resource development perspective was adopted, aimed at reconciling both the organizational and individual stances implied in the process. The methodology of achieving this was to review the most recent literature on workplace learning, with a special focus on its formal and informal dimensions.