THE EFFECT OF CALIFORNIA WEATHER CONDITIONS ON PRICE PREMIA FOR ORGANICALLY GROWN VEGETABLES IN THE UNITED STATES

Organic vegetable producers typically earn a premium over conventional producers to cover the added costs of organic production. The premium can vary greatly, making organic vegetable farming riskier than conventional farming and causing potential financial problems for new organic farming enterprises. Further, organic vegetable production is geographically concentrated in California, and the variation in organic price premia depends upon regional production factors, especially weather conditions. This study examines the relationship between organic vegetable price premia and California weather conditions near organic vegetable farms. Analysis is based on a unique data set of daily prices from the Boston Terminal Wholesale Market and California weather data from the National Climate Data Center.Demand and Price Analysis,

The effect of functional roles on group efficiency

The usefulness of ‘roles’ as a pedagogical approach to support small group performance can be often read, however, their effect is rarely empirically assessed. Roles promote cohesion and responsibility and decrease so-called ‘process losses’ caused by coordination demands. In addition, roles can increase awareness of intra-group interaction. In this article, the effect of functional roles on group performance, efficiency and collaboration during computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) was investigated with questionnaires and quantitative content analysis of e-mail communication. A comparison of thirty-three questionnaire observations, distributed over ten groups in two research conditions: role (n = 5, N = 14) and non-role (n = 5, N = 19), revealed no main effect for performance (grade). A latent variable was interpreted as ‘perceived group efficiency’ (PGE). Multilevel modelling (MLM) yielded a positive marginal effect of PGE. Groups in the role condition appear to be more aware of their efficiency, compared to groups in the ‘non-role’ condition, regardless whether the group performs well or poor. Content analysis reveals that students in the role condition contribute more ‘task content’ focussed statements. This is, however, not as hypothesised due to the premise that roles decrease coordination and thus increase content focused statements; in fact, roles appear to stimulate coordination and simultaneously the amount of ‘task content’ focussed statements increases

Smoking Selectivity Among Mexican Immigrants to the United States Using Binational Data, 1999–2012

Mexican immigrants have lower smoking rates than US-born Mexicans, which some scholars attribute to health selection—that individuals who migrate are healthier and have better health behaviors than their non-migrant counterparts. Few studies have examined smoking selectivity using binational data and none have assessed whether selectivity remains constant over time. This study combined binational data from the US and Mexico to examine: 1) the extent to which recent Mexican immigrants (\u3c 10 years) in the US are selected with regard to cigarette smoking compared to non-migrants in Mexico, and 2) whether smoking selectivity varied between 2000 and 2012—a period of declining tobacco use in Mexico and the US. We combined repeated cross-sectional US data (n = 10.901) on adult (ages 20–64) Mexican immigrants and US-born Mexicans from the 1999/2000 and 2011/2012 National Health Interview Survey, and repeated cross-sectional Mexican data on non-migrants (n = 67.188) from the 2000 Encuesta Nacional de Salud and 2012 Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición. Multinomial logistic regressions, stratified by gender, predicted smoking status (current, former, never) by migration status. At both time points, we found lower overall smoking prevalence among recent US immigrants compared to non-migrants for both genders. Moreover, from the regression analyses, smoking selectivity remained constant between 2000 and 2012 among men, but increased among women. These findings suggest that Mexican immigrants are indeed selected on smoking compared to their non-migrating counterparts, but that selectivity is subject to smoking conditions in the sending countries and may not remain constant over time

The Role of Board in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Normative Compliance Perspective

Purpose: This paper focuses on the board’s influence on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among Public Liability Companies (PLCs). The paper uses normative compliance theory to develop the theoretical framework thereby advocating and complementing other theories CSR. Methodology: The paper adopts balanced random effect regression model to estimate the relationship between board characteristics (such as board composition, diversity and size on CSR, while controlling for firm size, sector and risk). This involved the use of balanced panel data of 174 PLCs from 2003 to 2009. The random effect estimator is used to test the specific effects of the board composition, board size and board diversity on CSR of PLCs in Nigeria. The data are obtained from Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) fact book from 2003 to 2009. Findings: The paper found that Non-executive directors (NEDs) and board size are positively significantly correlated with CSR, while the executive director was negative and significantly related with CSR. Originality: The testing of the theory in the context of Nigeria contributes to the body of knowledge on sub-Sahara Africa, particularly Nigeria which offers a developing country perspective. The paper explores the relationship between board characteristics and CSR thereby contributing to the governance processes of listed companies and how good governance should be encouraged by understanding the board dynamics. Study Contribution: The implication is that, for managers and corporations focusing on shareholder interest, must also acknowledge that the society wants companies to accommodate multiple stakeholders interest for them to compete and survive in the long run. Social Implication: The social implications for companies to understand that business and the society are interwoven. Also efforts should be made by the board and companies to be morally and socially responsible to the society. Limitations: The data employed for this paper is majorly limited to listed companies on the NSE and the study covers only firms and industrial sectors within a single country but do not cover country to country differences or factors. It nevertheless presents implications for understanding CSR challenges in developing markets and provides insights into how to structure the board of listed companies. Finally, we hope this paper encourages future studies on the board dynamics and social performance of companies

Is the Bandwagon Bias Effect Theory Driving Institutional Investors Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Practices?

This paper employs the bandwagon bias effect theory to explain the influence of institutional investors on CSR Practices. This study focuses on Nigeria and uses the bandwagon bias theory to explore how institutional investors are being influenced by peer and society pressure to go along with the crowd to conform to CSR industrial standards. Using the balanced panel data of 174 PLCs from 2003 to 2009, the study investigates the institutional investors influence on CSR. The findings indicate a significant manifestation of relationship between them, which implies that the bandwagon effect on firm’s CSR engagement exists

Postdischarge assessment after a heart failure hospitalization: the next step forward.

Heart failure (HF) is the most frequent cause of hospitalization for patients >65 years of age. Mortality during the initial hospitalization ranges from 6% to 7% in Europe to 3% to 4% in the United States, depending on the length of hospital stay. Poor outcomes have universally been shown after discharge, with 60- to 90-day mortality rates of 5% to 15% and hospital readmission rates of 30%. Whereas the prognosis of patients with chronic HF has improved in recent years, there has been no change in the high risk of death or rehospitalization after an HF hospitalization. In addition to the lack of new therapies, incomplete relief from fluid overload, insufficient patient education, lack of implementation of evidence-based therapies, and poor postdischarge follow-up planning are among the main causes of these poor outcomes. A better assessment of the patient at the time of discharge and in the following weeks seems therefore as mandatory. This article outlines the main components of such a program. These include the personnel who should be involved, i.e. HF specialists and cardiologists versus non-specialists, the variables which should be assessed, i.e. those related with congestion and fluid overload, the times when they should be assessed, as the phase at highest risk is immediately after discharge from hospital, and, finally, the aims of such programs. We retain that an improvement of post-discharge follow-up will be able to significantly improve patients’ outcomes with a rate of success comparable, if not greater, to that which can be achieved by new therapies

Designing fuzzy rule based classifier using self-organizing feature map for analysis of multispectral satellite images

We propose a novel scheme for designing fuzzy rule based classifier. An SOFM based method is used for generating a set of prototypes which is used to generate a set of fuzzy rules. Each rule represents a region in the feature space that we call the context of the rule. The rules are tuned with respect to their context. We justified that the reasoning scheme may be different in different context leading to context sensitive inferencing. To realize context sensitive inferencing we used a softmin operator with a tunable parameter. The proposed scheme is tested on several multispectral satellite image data sets and the performance is found to be much better than the results reported in the literature.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure