Suchergebnisse

Constitutive feature of organic farming is to carry out sustainable agricultural activity in accordance with the requirements of the soil, plants and animals. The systematic increase in the potential of the organic farms in Poland should be considered as positive and desired direction of agriculture development, due to the numerous environmental, economic and social benefits, as well as compliance with the future model of agriculture, based on renewable resources and environmental friendly and social development of rural areas. The purpose of this article is to provide socio-economic structural changes in organic holdings between 2005 and 2010 against the background of individual agricultural holdings population.

In contrast to the literature which analyzes government size using contingent factors, this article proposes that socioeconomic traditions, such as trust and state–business relations (SBR), complement the explanations of government size in an economy. Using 29 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1995 to 2008, this study shows that a high level of trust is negatively related to government expenditure, whereas tight SBRs are positively related to it even under the decreasing trend of government expenditure. We suggest that attention should be paid to the societal contexts of an economy in addition to its contingent factors, when analyzing changes in political economic activities.

This article examines fundamental questions of monetary policy in the context of challenges to the national security of Russia in connection with the imposition of economic sanctions by the US and the EU. It is proved that the policy of the Russian monetary authorities, particularly the Central Bank, artificially limiting the money supply in the domestic market and pandering to the export of capital, compounds the effects of economic sanctions and plunges the economy into depression. The article presents practical advice on the transition from external to domestic sources of long-term credit with the simultaneous adoption of measures to prevent capital flight.

Since the economic reforms that began in the late 1970s, family businesses have reemerged in China. In general, social scientists have treated the Chinese family firm as a cultural and economic phenomenon. However, Chinese culture and family have usually been taken as an independent variable. Against the grain of this literature, this article treats the family as a social construct, whose boundary is constantly negotiated by family members. Based on an ethnographic study of a family firm in Zhejiang, China, this article argues that as the institutions of the family and lineage evolve, a new type of family firm is emerging in China.

What can we learn from "minimal" economic models? I argue that learning from such models is not limited to conceptual explorations—which show how something could be the case—but may extend to explanations of real economic phenomena—which show how something is the case. A model may be minimal qua certain world-linking properties, and yet "not-so-minimal" qua learning, provided it is externally valid. This, in turn, depends on using the right principles for model building and not necessarily "isolating" principles. My argument is buttressed by a case study from computational economics, namely, two agent-based models of asset pricing.

AbstractWe undertake an individual-level analysis of mass political behavior toward sovereign debt resettlement by leveraging the unique circumstances of a 2011 referendum on debt repayment in Iceland. This allows us to engage broader questions about mass international political economy. Against the recent thrust of a growing literature, we find evidence of material economic "pocketbook" effects—self-interest—on voting behavior, operating alongside symbolic/sociotropic and partisan/political logics. Contrary to expectations, these self-interest effects are not conditional on voter sophistication. We conclude that conventional sampling frames may be inappropriate for understanding contemporary democratic contestation over international economic policy.

Many see the western Balkans as the back yard of Europe. As the promise and reality of regional economic integration has weakened, however, Russia has returned to the area to play its historically important regional role. In the Balkans, a Russian or Russifying project competes against a European Union project, while Washington has shown little interest in the Balkans during the Barack Obama administration. The instruments of this rivalry are not only, or even primarily, armies but rather economic-political forces: control of energy pipelines and production, the use of that control for political objectives, and the attraction of competing political models.

Abstract
This paper studies the respective influences of intergenerational transmission and the environment in shaping individual trust. Focusing on second generation immigrants in Australia and the United States, we exploit the variation in the home country and in the host country to separate the effect of cultural transmission from that of the social and economic conditions on individual trust. Our results indicate that trust in the home country contributes to the trust of second generation immigrants in both of the host countries, and marginally more in the United States. Social and economic conditions in the host country also affect individual trust.

JEL classification

J15, O15, Z10

During 2011, the UK Government introduced the Mandatory Work Activity scheme, which requires JSA claimants to work in order to continue receiving benefit. Workfare has been viewed as a radical departure in the evolution of British labour market policy. However, an historical review of workfare in inter-war Britain reveals that the most recent proposals merely resuscitate a heritage of compelling the long-term unemployed to work for their benefit. Both then and now workfare has flourished in times of economic crisis, and particularly where Governments have pursued economic theories which exalt the market. Historical analysis reveals important continuities and changes in the nature of contemporary workfare.

Many scholars have debated Geertz's characterization of Java as a site of social and economic involution, in which impoverished peasants worked ever harder to achieve static results. Fewer have taken up his characterization of Indonesia's Outer Islands as a zone of extremes: islands of dynamic export production, often dominated by indigenous smallholders, surrounded by 'a broad sea of essentially unchanged swidden making'. Taking Geertz's analysis as a point of departure, I use comparisons across distinct conjunctures to explore the conditions under which smallholder production becomes dynamic, and to reflect on the role of culture in social and economic change.

The goal of this article is to understand the contemporary transformations of indigenous territories in relation to several factors, including urbanisation, population growth, economic development and conservation policies. Using socio‐economic, governance and land use data, we explain the current territorial reorganisations of theWayãpi andTeko indigenous peoples. We demonstrate the existence of an emerging 'multi‐sited' land use system that allows these indigenous peoples to benefit from resources in both urban and forest areas and ensures sovereignty over the territory. We emphasise the role of the delimitation of protected areas in catalysing identity claims and the process of land use reformulation.

This paper examines the impact of using narratives to frame a political issue on individuals' attitudes. In an experiment, we asked participants to read either narrative or informational news articles that emphasized the potential economic benefits or environmental consequences associated with shale gas drilling. Results indicated both news formats (narrative vs. informational) and frames (environmental vs. economic) had significant immediate effects on issue attitudes and other responses; narrative environmental news had a significantly greater impact than informational environmental news. Cognitive responses and empathy were significant partial mediators of narrative impact. Environmental narratives also had a more significant impact on individuals' delayed issue attitudes.

AbstractThe recent extremes in the real estate economic cycle have created an ideal setting to investigate the role of speculative trading. Specifically, we focus on speculative trading in real estate investment trusts (REITs) during the recent boom and bust in real estate. Although we find a strong relation between speculative trading in REITs and the economic cycle, we do not find evidence that speculative trading is related to future returns. Our results suggest that although increased speculative trading is apparent in REITs during the boom years, the level of speculative trading in REITs does not appear to affect the quality of markets at large.

The continued economic crisis has become a major test for the labour markets of individual member states. Labour mobility within the European Union has the potential to help to reduce labour market pressures and ease economic imbalances. However, a long-term loss of working age population can be detrimental to sending countries. This Forum explores mobility patterns within the European Union and analyses the labour market and welfare effects of labour mobility via case studies of the UK, Poland, Germany and Spain. It also examines a number of its aspects that have important political and institutional relevance for the European Union and its future.