Reviewing, Reviewers and the Scientific Enterprise

Despite their critical importance to the scientific enterprise, reviewers receive no formal training and reviewing has become a skill that they pick up through trial and error. Additionally, because most reviewers do not receive any feedback on their performance, any bad reviewing habits become entrenched over time. This has contributed to significant and unnecessary anxiety about reviewing and to antagonistic encounters between reviewers and authors. This paper seeks to correct this situation by defining reviewers as co-creators of scholarship and the reviewing as a quality control process in the production of scientific scholarship. The paper provides three groups of activities aimed at creating the right mindset among reviewers to facilitate this co-creation and quality control perspective: relationships, commitment and honest decisions and recommendations.reviewers, reviewing, scientific enterprise, scholarship, co-creations, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Sensemaking, Entrepreneurship and Agricultural Value-Added Businesses

Agricultural producers have been experiencing significant income pressures, leading to a search for alternative sources of income. One of such is value-added agricultural businesses that allow the farmers to stay on the farm and undertake entrepreneurial ventures to improve their finances. How do farmers make sense of their environment as they consider their options for value-added business ventures? This paper presents a sensemaking model and links it to entrepreneurship decisions, allowing us to explain how producers may make such decisions.Agribusiness,

TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND THE WTO NEGOTIATIONS AFTER SEATTLE

Trade liberalization has been received around the world with mixed emotions. The completion of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in December 1993 brought conversations about international trade into the conversation of the general public in a significant way for the first time. What is most important, individuals against or concerned about increased global trade have successfully organized themselves into forces of recognition, taking the conversations about trade from the back rooms into the streets. This was manifest at the Third, or Seattle, Ministerial Conference which was aimed at ushering in the Next Round of Trade Negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 1999. During the volatile week in Seattle in December 1999, the focus of the media was primarily on the demonstrations and riots on the streets, with little or no coverage of the activities going on in the meetings at the Ministerial Conference. The WTO was unable to make a Ministerial Declaration to launch the next round of trade negotiations, leading some to think that any international trade liberalization effort has been derailed because of the demonstrations and riots. A number of questions emerge as a result of the events emanating from the Seattle Ministerial Conference, but three of these are of specific interest to this author: 1. What really happened at the Seattle Ministerial and why? 2. What are the implications of what happened to global trade negotiations in the future? 3. Why should Canada care? This paper addresses the above questions, looking at the issues leading up to the Ministerial, the structure of the Ministerial agenda and the positions tabled by various countries in an attempt to understand the outcome of the Seattle Ministerial. It also looks at the changes in the membership of the WTO and the negotiation processes and how these affect future global trade negotiations. We also assess the increasing importance of trade to Canada, arguing that there is an important role for Canada in the current negotiation to ensure its successful conclusion. The layout of the paper is as follows. The next section presents a brief summary of the built-in agenda that was agreed to at the end of the Uruguay Round, explaining the evolving nature of international trade rules and the changes that have occurred in international trade relations since the WTO came into force on January 1, 1995. The section following presents the agenda of the Seattle Ministerial, the positions on the critical subjects of negotiations including agriculture, implementation and rules, market access tabled by the various countries and condition that created for the ability of the Seattle Ministerial to achieve its objectives. The final section presents developments at the WTO since Seattle and what that means for Canada's agri-food industries.International Relations/Trade,

On the Development of an Ethical Demand Theory

As an increasing number of consumers shift to demand products on the basis on production practices, animal welfare protocols, human rights initiatives, it is becoming important that we develop new tools for evaluating the decision-making frameworks in the ethical products market place. This paper draws on the behavioral economics and the principal-agent literature to provide a framework for conducting such analyses.Demand and Price Analysis,

Opportunities for African Small Farmers in Ethical Foods Markets: An Entrepreneurial Perspective

Income growth in many countries is fuelling expansion of the ethical consumer segment and creating an unprecedented opportunity for small African farmers. The challenge is how to organize these farmers to seize the opportunities being offered by the emerging market. We argue in this paper that the development of entrepreneurial perspectives on small farmers’ realities could help alleviate the current economic challenges confronting them. We suggest increased engagement between researchers and academics with producers in entrepreneurial ventures to seize these opportunities. This is new model of economic development focuses on microeconomic solutions through entrepreneurial initiatives. We believe the agricultural economics profession’s ability to engage producers in this manner will not only increase its relevance but provide needed financial resources to grow education and research programs.Ethical Foods, Farmers, African, Markets, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Consumers and the Evolution of New Markets: The Case of the Ethical Foods

Changes in consumer preferences have frequently created new markets for new products. This paper explores the antecedents of the changes in consumer preferences and the factors influencing the evolution of niche markets into commodity markets and its speed. The results show that the more embedded characteristics products have and more consumption is driven by attitude, the longer products are able to maintain their uniqueness and the slower their evolution to commodities.Ethical consumers, New Markets, Consumer choice, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE U.S.-MEXICO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: ANALYSIS OF THE CONGRESSIONAL FAST TRACK VOTE

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the strategic forces shaping U.S.-Mexico trade relationships and the possibilities of extending the trade agreement to the rest of the Americas. The paper concludes that constituency interests, party loyalty, the proportion of a state's population of Hispanic origin, and the influence of textile-related employment in the state were significant explanatory factors in the Congressional Fast Track vote that occurred in May of 1991.Free trade agreement, Fast track, Textiles, Congressional voting, International Relations/Trade, Political Economy,

Continuing the Tradition: Employing Tested and Emerging Economic Tools in Framing Sustainability Challenges for a Global Economy

Economists have been successful in bringing their definitional and analytical tools to many of the problems that have confronted society over the past century and more, from Smith’s explanation of how nations produce wealth to Arrow’s explanation of the impossibility of social choice and Keynes’ general theory of money and interest. With the issue of sustainability, we draw on economic agents’ attempts at rational choice under uncertainty to understand the opportunities and challenges. We argue that employing system dynamic modeling approach to the problem could offer careful assessment of the soundness of sustainability strategies.Sustainability, Adaptive Management, System Dynamic Modeling, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Determinants of U.S. Textile and Apparel Trade

A gravity model using panel data is applied to determine factors affecting textiles and apparel trade flows into the United States. The study confirms that a nation's aggregate output and per unit productivity serve as important determinants of textiles and apparel trade into the U.S., and the exporting country's depreciating exchange rate as well as its lower prices relative to U.S. prices for textiles and apparel play an important role in determining textiles and apparel trade flows to the U.S. market. Since the WTO's multilateral trade restraining policies of the multi-fibre arrangement (MFA) is found to have slowed down imports, its abrogation in 2005 should lead to greater textiles and apparel imports to the U.S.brand equity, brand valuation, real options, food firms, growth option value, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,

How Much Did Speculation Contribute to Recent Food Price Inflation?

Recent increases in commodity prices have led to calls for the regulation of speculators. These calls have come from many reputable quarters including leading agricultural and food policy institutions such as International Food Policy Research Institute as well as different members of the U.S. Congress. They are based on an assumption that speculative activities are a primary or major source of the volatility in the markets and that controlling these activities through regulations would bring more stability to the market. The paper tests this hypothesis and assesses the contribution of speculative activities in the commodity markets over the past decade to price inflation. The paper argues that government regulatory policies to control speculation in commodity markets is a second best solution that would probably yield neutral or negative benefits to the very people the policy aims to protect.speculators, inflation, prices, ARIMA, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,