imports and the supply of winter tomatoes an application of rational expectations a model of the florida tomato industry is formulated under the hypothesis that growers make production decisions as rational economic agents this assumption implies that anticipated mexican tomato imports as well as other economic variables are taken into account when the planting decision is made maximum likelihood estimation methods are used to solve the simultaneous equations model and the implications of the model s reduced form are analyzed the empirical findings are consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis that producers respond to market information in its entirety when making acreage decisions key vwords expectations imports mexico rational expectations supply response tomatoes florida produces about 90 of u s tomatoes harvested for fresh use during the november to mid june season since the cuban trade embargo of february 1962 mexico has become the major foreign supplier of fresh winter tomatoes the total fresh winter tomato market in the united states has been almost equally shared by florida and mexico in recent years the rivalry for this market reached the point in 1978 that florida growers charged that mexican producers were dumping their product on the u s market schmitz firch hillman many florida growers suggest that unless mexican tomato imports are limited the florida tomato industry will effectively disappear primary attention in this paper is focused on domestic tomato acreage allocations in light of the mexican influence on the winter tomato market the paper does not attempt to evaluate the welfare effects of mexican imports on the florida tomato industry in addition to the emphasis on acreage response the domestic quantity and price effects are also considered most efforts to explain acreage devoted to agricultural crops have utilized some variant of a cobweb model because the ultimate price of the crop cannot be ascertained until the completion of the production cycle nevertheless if the supply and demand framework is truly representative of the way the market works an alternative to lagged price for representing the anticipated price for the crop is the price prediction of the supply and demand model itself thus acreage would be dependent on the expected price of the crop and expected price would result from the solution of the supply and demand model for price on the basis of information available at planting time the underlying hypothesis is that producers are acting in accordance with the information available to them at planting time and in a way represented by the interaction in the supply and demand model viewed in this way planted acreage decisions would be based on such factors as anticipated mexican imports and their attendant effect on the price of tomatoes one distinction between this and the traditional cobweb framework is that in the latter case lagged imports may influence planted acreage via their effect on lagged prices but any impact expected imports might have on current price is ignored in the acreage

the translation of corporate governance changes across national cultures the case of germany contrasting systems of corporate governance persist internationally but are subject to regulatory and firm level institutional change such changes may be viewed as organisational innovations often imported from the usa in the face of different national cultures this paper analyses the implications of national culture for the translation of innovations and provides case study illustrations of regulatory and firm level governance changes experienced in germany these illustrations demonstrate that the diffusion of both kinds of change has been subject to substantial translation that is consistent with german national culture

a rational expectations model of agricultural supply this work suggests a dynamic linear rational expectations modeling strategy for using time series observations to study the impact of product prices on agricultural production and land allocation the farmer s decision consists of specifying each period the portion of his land to be devoted to the growing of alternative crops the dynamic element in the farmer s problem comes from the technology a quadratic production technology is used the farmer s optimal land allocation decision rules are derived as linear functions of past land allocations expectations of future product prices and other exogenous variables and they can be interpreted as an optimal crop rotation assuming rational expectations and the exogeneity of prices for a small open economy one obtains closed form linear regression equations representing decision rules and stochastic processes these are then estimated and tested using maximum likelihood methods and aggregate data from the egyptian agriculture

is ecommerce boundary less effects of individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance on internet shopping from publicly available data we identified two national culture dimensions individualism collectivism and uncertainty avoidance and their interaction that influences internet shopping rates across a wide spectrum of countries together these factors accounted for 14 of the explained variance on top of the combined variance of 63 explained by national income level educational level economic growth rate unemployment rate and crime rate in predicting internet shopping rates for countries lower in uncertainty avoidance individualist cultures show higher internet shopping rates than do collectivist cultures implications for national and internet firm level web design strategies are discussed

rational expectations in agricultural economics research and policy analysis despite recognition by agricultural economists that price expectations are important in agricultural decision making few changes in the way price expectations appear in economic models of agriculture have been made during the past two decades for example in the major proportion of existing supply response studies it has been assumed that price expectations are formed adaptively for an illustration of the extent that this assumption has been used see askari and cummings that is expected price is assumed to be a weighted average of past prices with the weights declining geometrically over time in other supply response studies it is assumed that a polynomial distributed lag on product prices provides an adequate representation of the system s dynamic structure see for example meilke zwart martin or fisher however as muth p 315 noted there is little evidence to suggest that the presumed relations bear a resemblance to the way the economy works although data on anticipations are collected in many ways only a few studies have tried to determine how individual decision makers actually form expectations heady and kaldor turnovsky and fisher and tanner katona in calling for more research of this kind also identifies some difficulties in studying the psychology of individuals learning processes until psychologists make more progress in this area economists who incorporate anticipations in their models will have to use another approach however there are few choices the popular adaptive expectations hypothesis is inadequate not because it implies that the forecast of a particular variable is a distributed lag of its own past values but because it implies that the distributed lag parameters are restricted in an ad hoc way in general assuming that price expectations are formed adaptively is ad hoc because the parameter restrictions in the distributed lag are not the result of an optimization process alternative formulations such as the assumption that expectations are naive or generated by some other simple autoregressive form are inadequate for similar reasons the rational expectations hypothesis

the imf s food financing facility much ado about nothing abstract in may 1981 the executive board of the international monetary fund imf announced its decision to extend compensatory financing assistance to members encountering balance of payments difficulties caused by increased cereal import costs at the time the food financing facility was welcomed as a significant step towards providing a more adequate level of world food security since its establishment only limited use has been made of the facility and the director general of the fao commented recently that it needs to be improved

assessing the impact on food security of alternative compensatory financing schemes a simulation approach with an application to india summary the international monetary fund s compensatory and contingency financing facility ccff provides temporary finance to a country suffering from a temporary shortfall in export receipts or a temporary overrun in cereal import costs the purpose of the present paper is to provide an assessment of the impact of the ccff on the food security of an individual country the focus of the analysis is upon possible interactions between the ccff and the domestic economic policies of a country we construct an illustrative two sector model of a food insecure country and estimate the model using data for india we then simulate the model to study the impact on food consumption of different versions of the ccff we also study the sensitivity of the model to varying assumptions about domestic food policies our results suggest considerable variation in the possible effectiveness of the ccff depending on the exact nature of the scheme and on the assumptions made about domestic food policies

a rational expectations model for the poultry sector in greece poultry meat production became systematic and business oriented from 1960 onwards especially during the period 1965 75 meat production showed a marked rise being increased nearly fivefold as a result of this increase in production greece has reached self sufficiency levels covering about 20 of total meat production compared to 7 in the early 1960s so far very little work has been done in analysing the rational expectations hypothesis in the context of a market model in this paper an attempt is made to examine the rational expectations hypothesis for the poultry meat sector within the framework of a simultaneous equations model that describes the factors affecting demand and supply as well as the link between farmers prices and consumers prices moreover in this study a rational expectations mechanism is integrated into the model and the hypothesis is tested it may be noted that poultry is a characteristic case of the operation of free market forces the structural equations of the model are e

security design with status concerns abstract this paper provides a status based explanation for convertible securities an entrepreneur with status concerns inducing risk taking decides how to finance the firm and how to dynamically manage it solving analytically for the optimal security we find that it is substantially similar to a convertible security our model can explain why convertible securities are mainly issued by start ups and small firms as we show that their salient characteristics higher volatility and dynamic flexibility accentuate incentives to issue convertible securities we also provide analytical results relevant to quantifying how status concerns affect credit risk an established factor behind security choice

the role of risk taking in singapore abstract this study explores the differences between entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs in the city state of singapore with regard to the risks involved in the decision to become an entrepreneur the sample is composed of 30 chinese entrepreneurs and 44 singaporean managers and engineers employed by six multinational corporations whether or not entrepreneurs are more risk oriented than managers is not clear from this study but the data from this study demonstrate that entrepreneurs are able to give up job security and take specific kinds of risks related to launching a new venture because they have confidence that they will either succeed or be capable of carrying on a successful career whereas job security is a critical variable that holds non entrepreneurs to the status quo in singapore the potential loss of self respect and self image the fear of failure appears to be a force that drives chinese entrepreneurs in singapore to succeed although the research for this study began from the widely held premise that risk was a psychological attribute the research process revealed that risk is more productively seen as a decision making variable the research in this study like previous studies on entrepreneurs and risk also assumes that choice was the core of risk taking it is doubtful however that individuals have a generalized risk propensity for risk is highly contextual risk is most likely to be seen in specific kinds of entrepreneurial decisions such as the decision to become an entrepreneur the decision to grow a new venture through new product development international market entry or other strategic options and decisions related to control issues risk should be viewed as part of a complex multivariate process and attention needs to be given in the future to the study of risk identification risk assessment formulation of risk strategies and the management of risk risk is an inherent aspect of any opportunity and consequently is the darker side of the heart of entrepreneurship in a chinese entrepreneurial setting these factors and decisions are part of a complex social process

consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship there is a dearth of studies that 1 explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals 2 use appropriate multilevel research designs 3 consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors such as entry and post entry growth aspirations we combined global entrepreneurship monitor gem and global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe data from 42 countries for 2005 2008 to address these gaps using a multilevel design we found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship

crossvergence 10 years on impact and further potential the 1997 jibs paper by ralston holt terpstra and yu was instrumental in anchoring and extending the construct of crossvergence in cross cultural research ten years on the paper has lost none of its relevance and continues to offer important opportunities for further theory development and attendant empirical research scope for further work seems to exist especially in three areas the meaning of crossvergence national culture and economic ideology and processes of change

a partial adjustment model with rational expectations applied to the goat sector in greece in this paper an attempt is made to examine the rational expectations hypothesis for the goat meat sector in greece within the framework of a single equation method that describes the factors affecting demand and supply the structural equations of the model are estimated by applying the cochrane orcutt technique the calculated elasticities suggest that greek goat producers should pay more attention to milk rather than meat production statistical indications also confirm the effects of the chernobyl accident upon the goat sector moreover the forecasting ability of the model has been tested using simulation procedures which indicate a small deviation between theoretical and observed values finally some further implications concerning the goat sector are drawn from this analysis

fostering corporate entrepreneurship cross cultural comparisons of the importance of individualism versus collectivism this study reports on results of a cross cultural empirical investigation designed to assess the impact of individualism collectivism upon organizational entrepreneurship the findings indicate individualism collectivism is an important factor in understanding entrepreneurial behavior in the firm implications of these findings are discussed

the socio cultural environment for entrepreneurship a comparison between east asian and anglo saxon countries this study uses a theory of face to identify predictors of interest in entrepreneurship in six east asian and four anglo saxon countries at the cultural level social status of entrepreneurship and shame from business failure predict interest in entrepreneurship better in east asian than anglo countries at the individual level social status predicts interest in entrepreneurship in the entire sample

the impact of natural culture and economic ideology on managerial work values a study of the united states russia japan and china this study assesses the impact of economic ideology and national culture on the individual work values of managers in the united states russia japan and china the convergence divergence crossvergence cdc framework was used as theoretical framework for the study while the schwartz value survey svs was used to operationalize over investigation of managerial work values across these four countries the findings largely support the crossvergence prospective while also confirming the role of national culture implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence divergence crossvergence of values as well as for the feasibility of multidomestic or global strategies for a corporate culture

insulating countries against fluctuations in domestic production and exports an analysis of compensatory financing schemes abstract for several years the imf has operated a compensatory financing facility cff whose aim is to smooth out the effects of a shortfall in export receipts in a particular country in 1981 the facility was extended to cover imports of foodstuffs with the objective of reducing food insecurity the purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical analysis of the cff interpreted as an international scheme whose object is to stabilise some domestic policy target such as consumption by providing loans based on the value or volume of a country s exports or imports the paper shows that under certain assumptions the imf s cff for exports provides net gains to individual countries the extension of the scheme to include food imports could provide further gains but only if it is appropriately redesigned

a cross section analysis of food insecurity in developing countries its magnitude and sources short term instability in food supplies continues to be a severe problem for many developing countries from the viewpoint of an individual country this problem arises primarily from fluctuations in domestic food production and in foreign exchange availability the present paper aims to establish the magnitude and seriousness of the problem in a sample of 50 food deficit countries it also aims to broaden the scope of discussion of the food security problem by taking into account the possibility that food insecurity may manifest itself in a country in a variety of ways which depend in part on the manner in which the domestic authorities respond to periodic shortfalls in food supplies

culture and congruence the fit between management practices and national culture the financial performance of european and asian work units of one multinational company is examined as a function of the congruence between management practices and national culture using hofstede s five national culture dimensions and analogous management practices we find that work unit financial performance is higher when management practices in the work unit are congruent with the national culture

budgetary and financial policy potency amid structural bottlenecks evidence from uganda abstract most policy analysts implicitly relax the assumption that structural bottlenecks distinctively exist in developing economies in this paper some bottlenecks are identified and modeled to augment a small model of uganda the baseline and augmented model variants are estimated and tested on aggregate data 1963 1985 and their results are compared the magnitudes and signs of the short run estimates and long run multipliers from the two variants show that bottlenecks constrain the potency of stabilization policy in general the hypothesized effects of structural elements are validated for the aggregate supply and foreign balance schedules of the economy while orthodox budgetary and financial policies are major players on the aggregate demand side it is proposed that policy makers in uganda should pay more attention to supply side issues especially with respect to the food and export sectors

social capital and loan repayment performance in northern vietnam this study analyses the effects of social capital on the loan repayment behavior of borrowers in vietnam in the context of agricultural economics an innovative data collection approach is used that originates from the field of sociology a personal network survey is carried out to measure the individual social capital of borrowers social capital variables are defined according to tie strength bonding bridging and social distance linking between the respondent and his her network member social capital has a significant and positive influence on the rescheduling of loans however we find no significant evidence for an effect of social capital on late payment of principal or interest

cultural influences on national rates of innovation abstract the purpose of this research was to examine the effect of the cultural values of individualism power distance uncertainty avoidance and masculinity on national rates of innovation in 33 countries in 1975 and 1980 the study found that rates of innovation are most closely associated with the cultural value of uncertainty acceptance but that lack of power distance and individualism also are related to high rates of innovation this research suggests that nations may differ in their rates of innovation because of the cultural values of their citizens these findings have important implications for managers and policy makers first culture matters countries may not be able to increase their rates of innovation simply by increasing the amount of money spent on research and development or industrial infrastructure they also may need to change the values of their citizens to those that encourage innovative activity this concept in turn suggests that national rates of innovation are driven by more fundamental forces than economic conditions and that societal change may be necessary to make less innovative societies more innovative second the values associated with high national rates of innovation are those that many scholars have long argued are important at the firm level an acceptance of uncertainty appears to be necessary probably because innovation requires a tolerance for risk and change individualism seems to be important perhaps because of its association with autonomy independence and freedom lack of power distance appears important perhaps reflecting the role that tolerance of change in the social order and distribution of power play in the innovation process third the study indicates that the strength of the relationship between innovation and two cultural values individualism and lack of power distance were stronger in 1975 than in 1980 suggesting perhaps that these values are becoming less important in spurring the innovation process this finding supports the anecdotal evidence that many collectivist and hierarchical asian nations are becoming more innovative fourth this study shows that per capita income is a more important economic variable than industrial structure in determining national rates of innovation this finding confirms previous work that has shown that as nations become wealthier they become more innovative the reason may be that wealthier countries have more demand for innovations both because innovations are often laborsaving and because wealthier nations have greater demand for new and differentiated consumer goods

face and favor the chinese power game western research on interpersonal behavior patterns and rules of exchange needs to move beyond the assumption of isolated individuals socialized to make rational decisions on the basis of self inte