From Coffee Beans to Microchips: Export Diversification and Economic Growth in Costa Rica

During the early 1980s Costa Rica experienced its worst economic crisis since World War II, which led to the abandonment of the import substitution model of development adopted in the 1960s. This severe economic downturn also spurred the implementation of a series of new policies supporting foreign investment in high-value-added industries and the diversification of the nation’s exports. As a result, Costa Rica has diversified its economic activity, moved away from its historical dependence on agricultural exports, and gained new competitive advantages in the manufacturing sector. This study presents a straightforward generalization of the model proposed by Herzer and Nowak-Lehnmann’s (2006) to test the hypothesis that export diversification has influenced economic growth in Costa Rica via externalities of learning-by-exporting and learning-by-doing. To examine whether a long-run relationship exists between export diversification and economic growth, two types of statistical methodologies are used: the bounds test to cointegration within a distributed lag (ARDL) framework and the dynamic OLS (DOLS). Overall results sufficiently conclude that, at least in the Granger’s sense, there is no long-run causality between export diversification and economic growth in Costa Rica over the period of 1965 to 2006.International Relations/Trade,

Economic Performance of U.S. Multinational Agribusinesses: Foreign Direct Investment and Firm Strategy

This paper empirically assesses the sequential relationships among firm strategic factors, FDI activity, and economic performance for a sample of U.S.-based Multinational agribusinesses. The most important findings of this research is a positive direct effect of FDI on performance, the complementary effect between FDI and firm strategic factors (positive and significant interaction terms) on performance, and the positive effect of FDI on performance given some thresholds of firm strategic factors. Specifically, it provides insights about the direct effect of FDI on performance, as well as about the joint effect of firm size and FDI, marketing intensity and FDI, and capital intensity and FDI on performance. These findings provide evidence that FDI activity is an important factor for U.S. agribusiness financial strength.Economic performance, Foreign direct investment, Firm strategic factors, Agribusiness, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, F230, L250,

Assessment of the Impact of Viticulture Extension Programs in Virginia

The study discussed in this article assessed the impact of Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) on the Virginia wine grape industry. An online survey was developed and administered to members of the Virginia Vineyards Association. The results indicate that the resources and recommendations VCE and Virginia Tech have provided have been beneficial to Virginia grape growers, although growers who operate larger farms, produce wine commercially, or have higher levels of viticulture training are less likely to benefit from the relevant programs. Growers operating near where the programs are often delivered and those with higher levels of experience have benefited the most

Analysis of Media Agenda-Setting Effects on Consumer Confidence in the Safety of the U.S. Food System

Results from continuous tracking of consumer confidence and media coverage of food safety events over a 67 week period between May 2008 and August 2009 are reported. An ordered probit model is used to test the hypothesis that media coverage of food safety events affects consumer confidence in the safety of the U.S. food system. The results show that media coverage significantly and negatively affected consumer confidence in the safety of nation’s food supply during the sample period. Socioeconomic and demographic factors such as geographic region, use of media source, household size, age, ethnicity, education, and gender also had significant affects on consumer confidence in the safety of United States food supply.Food Safety, Consumer Confidence, Mass media, ordered probit, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Consumer Confidence in the Food System, Media Coverage and Stock Prices of Food Companies: A Regression Analysis

A series of recent and serious food safety incidents have generated a national debate over the significant costs that they impose on various stakeholders - consumers, industry, or the government. This paper examines the impact of media coverage of food safety and defense issues on consumer confidence in food safety, and measures the response of stock prices of food companies to changes in consumer confidence. Results show that, increases in media coverage have a negative impact on consumer confidence, and that decreases in the levels of consumer confidence on food safety have a negative impact on stock prices of food companies, in particular for the larger firms. These findings confirm that the financial performance of food the industry is negatively affected by category-specific food safety events, and the effects of media coverage on consumer confidence in the safety of the food system.Agribusiness, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

From Coffee Beans to Microchips: Export Diversification and Economic Growth in Costa Rica

During the early 1980s Costa Rica experienced its worst economic crisis since World War II, which led to the abandonment of the import substitution model of development adopted in the 1960s. This severe economic downturn also spurred the implementation of a series of new policies supporting foreign investment in high-value-added industries and the diversification of the nation’s exports. As a result, Costa Rica has diversified its economic activity, moved away from its historical dependence on agricultural exports, and gained new competitive advantages in the manufacturing sector. This study presents a straightforward generalization of the model proposed by Herzer and Nowak-Lehnmann’s (2006) to test the hypothesis that export diversification has influenced economic growth in Costa Rica via externalities of learning-by-exporting and learning-by-doing. To examine whether a long-run relationship exists between export diversification and economic growth, two types of statistical methodologies are used: the bounds test to cointegration within a distributed lag (ARDL) framework and the dynamic OLS (DOLS). Overall results sufficiently conclude that, at least in the Granger’s sense, there is no long-run causality between export diversification and economic growth in Costa Rica over the period of 1965 to 2006

The Virginia Wineries’ Websites: An Evaluation

This paper presents evaluation criteria that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Virginia wineries websites in the following four different dimensions: (1) general features of a website; (2) wine tourism; (3) marketing; and (4) educational. A total of 182 wineries are analyzed by researchers and the Cohen’s Kappa was computed as an inter-reliability test among raters. Using a dichotomous scale, researchers coded 1 if a particular feature was present in the website and 0 if the feature was not included or it simply failed to meet a minimum standard. Finally, the one-way ANOVA is used to test the hypothesis that wineries located in northern and central Virginia wine clusters will have, on average, higher scores in all four dimensions. The results reveal that the potential of a website has not been fully exploited by many Virginia wineries. Furthermore, the website of the wineries located in the wine clusters did not have higher scores than those scattered around the rest of the state

From Coffee Beans to Microchips: Export Diversification and Economic Growth in Costa Rica

In the wake of a severe economic crisis in the 1980s Costa Rica abandoned an import substitution model of development adopted in the 1960s and implemented policies supporting foreign investment and the diversification of its exports. This study presents an application of the model proposed by Herzer and Nowak-Lehnmann to test the hypothesis that export diversification has contributed to economic growth in Costa Rica via externalities of learningby- doing and learning-by-exporting over the period of 1965–2006. After using the autoregressive distributed lags and dynamic ordinary least squares models no long-run relationship was found between export diversification and growth