Search results
1 – 10 of 15Vladimir Hlasny, Reham Rizk and Nada Rostom
COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the…
Abstract
Purpose
COVID-19 has had various effects on women’s labour supply worldwide. This study investigates how women’s labour market outcomes in the MENA region have been affected by the stringency of governments’ COVID-19 responses and school closures. We examine whether women, particularly those with children at young age, reduced their labour supply to take care of their families during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
To investigate whether having a family results in an extra penalty to women’s labour market outcomes, we compare single women to married women and mothers. Using the ERF COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household Surveys, we analyse the key conditions underlying women’s labour market outcomes: (1) wage earnings and labour market status including remaining formally employed, informally, unpaid or self-employed, unemployed or out of the labour force and (2) becoming permanently terminated, being suspended, seeing a reduction in the hours worked or wages, or seeing a delay in one’s wage payments because of COVID-19. Ordered probit and multinomial logit are employed in the case of categorical outcomes, and linear models for wage earnings.
Findings
Women, regardless of whether they have children or not, appear to join the labour market out of necessity to help their families in the times of crisis. Child-caring women who are economically inactive are also more likely to enter the labour market. There is little difference between the negative experiences of women with children and child-free women in regard to their monthly pay reduction or delay, or contract termination, but women with children were more likely to experience reduction in hours worked throughout the pandemic.
Research limitations/implications
These findings may not have causal interpretation facilitating accurate inference. This is because of potential omitted variables such as endogenous motivation of women in different circumstances, latent changes in the division of domestic work between care-giving and other household members, or selective sample attrition.
Originality/value
Our analysis explores the multiple channels in which the pandemic has affected the labour outcomes of MENA-region women. Our findings highlight the challenges that hamper the labour market participation of women, and suggest that public policy should strive to balance the share of unpaid care work between men and women and increase men’s involvement, through measures that support child-bearing age women’s engagement in the private sector during crises, invest in childcare services and support decent job creation for all.
Details
Keywords
Marcel Peppel, Stefan Spinler and Matthias Winkenbach
The e-commerce boom presents new challenges for last-mile delivery (LMD), which may be mitigated by new delivery technologies. This paper evaluates the impact of mobile parcel…
Abstract
Purpose
The e-commerce boom presents new challenges for last-mile delivery (LMD), which may be mitigated by new delivery technologies. This paper evaluates the impact of mobile parcel lockers (MPL) on costs and CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emissions in existing LMD networks, which include home delivery and shipments to stationary parcel lockers.
Design/methodology/approach
To describe customers’ preferences, we design a multinomial logit model based on recipients’ travel distance to pick-up locations and availability at home. Based on route cost estimation, we define the operating costs for MPLs. We devise a mathematical model with binary decision variables to optimize the location of MPLs.
Findings
Our study demonstrates that integrating MPLs leads to additional cost savings of 8.7% and extra CO2e emissions savings of up to 5.4%. Our analysis of several regional clusters suggests that MPLs yield benefits in highly populous cities but may result in additional emissions in more rural areas where recipients drive longer distances to pick-ups.
Originality/value
This paper designs a suitable operating model for MPLs and demonstrates environmental and economic savings. Moreover, it adds recipients’ availability at home to receive parcels improving the accuracy of stochastic demand. In addition, MPLs are evaluated in the context of several regional clusters ranging from large cities to rural areas. Thus, we provide managerial guidance to logistics service providers how and where to deploy MPLs.
Details
Keywords
Bright Owusu Asante, Stephen Prah, Kwabena Nyarko Addai, Benjamin Anang and John N. Ng’ombe
This paper aimed to examine the impacts of agricultural services on welfare of rural farmers in Ghana.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aimed to examine the impacts of agricultural services on welfare of rural farmers in Ghana.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from 1431 rural maize farmers, we employ multinomial endogenous switching regression and multivalued inverse probability weighted regression adjustment to assess the impacts.
Findings
Results show that 19.8%, 9.7% and 3.42% of farmers adopted solely irrigation, extension and mechanization, respectively. Furthermore, utilizing a range of agricultural services significantly improves maize yields, gross income and per capita food consumption.
Research limitations/implications
This study recommends strategies that target the adoption of combinations of agricultural services to enhance rural farmers’ welfare in Ghana and other developing countries.
Originality/value
While agricultural services are claimed to improve agricultural production and peasants’ welfare, their impacts are not studied exhaustively. This paper contributes by providing empirical evidence of the impacts of agricultural services on farmers’ welfare.
Peer review
The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0745.
Details
Keywords
Thanh Thi Hoang and Huu Cuong Nguyen
This study aims to investigate whether the extent of corporate disclosure, proxied by COVID-19-related disclosure, affects the dividend policy of listed firms.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate whether the extent of corporate disclosure, proxied by COVID-19-related disclosure, affects the dividend policy of listed firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a multinomial logistic regression model to examine the relation between corporate disclosure and the dividend policy of the 100 largest market-cap firms in Vietnam in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its unique impact on business operations, serves as the backdrop for this analysis.
Findings
The findings indicate that firms with more extensive COVID-19-related disclosure are more inclined to distribute dividends in the form of stocks or cash instead of omitting them.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the understanding of how corporate disclosure practices influence a firm’s financial decisions, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings hold implications for corporate financial decision-making during times of macroeconomic shock.
Details
Keywords
This study aims to explore the smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change and its adaptation options (changing crop variety; improved crop and livestock; soil and water…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change and its adaptation options (changing crop variety; improved crop and livestock; soil and water conservation [SWC]; and irrigation practices) and drought indices in the Dire Dawa Administration Zone, Eastern Ethiopia.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional household survey was used. A structured interview schedule for respondent households for key informants and focus group discussions were used. This study used both descriptive statistics and an econometric model. The model was used to compute the determinants of climate adaptation options in the study area. Drought characterization was carried out by DrinC software.
Findings
The results revealed households adapted to selected adaptation options. The model results confirmed that education level, farm size, tropical livestock units (TLUs) and access to agricultural extension services have positive and significant impacts on changing crop variety by 0.0014%, 0.045%, 0.032% and 0.035%, respectively. The likelihood of farmers’ decisions to use adaptation strategies (family size, TLU, agricultural extension service and distance from the market) has positive and significant impacts on SWC. The reconnaissance drought index (RDI6) of ONDJFM and AMJJAS showed extreme and severe drought index values of −2.88 and −1.96, respectively.
Originality/value
This study used a locally adopted climate change adaptation intervention for smallholder farmers, revealing the importance of drought characterization indices both seasonally and annually.
Details
Keywords
Sujoy Biswas and Arjun Mukerji
The purpose of this study is to examine the buyers’ preferences influencing the purchase of privately developed affordable housing in Kolkata and to determine whether unsold…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the buyers’ preferences influencing the purchase of privately developed affordable housing in Kolkata and to determine whether unsold houses result from misalignment with these preferences.
Design/methodology/approach
The literature review and user-opinion survey identified 119 independent variables that indicate buyers’ preferences. A questionnaire survey of 383 households in affordable housing units from 32 housing complexes in Kolkata recorded buyers’ preferences and satisfaction against the independent variables grouped under five levels of characteristics. The product weights of variables derived from the rank sum method and percentage satisfaction give the Utility Score. Multivariate regression and univariate linear regressions were conducted to determine the significance of each Level of characteristics and each variable, identifying the significant variables that would affect the sale of affordable houses.
Findings
The multivariate regression analysis has indicated that 68.56% of the variation in the percentage of unsold houses was explained by the five utility scores, which affirms that misalignment with buyers’ preferences significantly affects the sale of privately developed affordable houses. Furthermore, building and neighbourhood-level utility show the highest significance as predictors, while city-level and miscellaneous utility have moderate significance, but housing complex-level utility lacks statistical significance.
Originality/value
This study addresses a research gap in privately developed affordable housing in Kolkata, enhancing understanding of buyer preferences in this segment.
Details
Keywords
Indian railways (IR) is one of the largest railway networks in the world. As a part of its strategic development initiative, demand forecasting can be one of the indispensable…
Abstract
Purpose
Indian railways (IR) is one of the largest railway networks in the world. As a part of its strategic development initiative, demand forecasting can be one of the indispensable activities, as it may provide basic inputs for planning and control of various activities such as coach production, planning new trains, coach augmentation and quota redistribution. The purpose of this study is to suggest an approach to demand forecasting for IR management.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study is carried out, wherein several models i.e. automated autoregressive integrated moving average (auto-ARIMA), trigonometric regressors (TBATS), Holt–Winters additive model, Holt–Winters multiplicative model, simple exponential smoothing and simple moving average methods have been tested. As per requirements of IR management, the adopted research methodology is predominantly discursive, and the passenger reservation patterns over a five-year period covering a most representative train service for the past five years have been employed. The relative error matrix and the Akaike information criterion have been used to compare the performance of various models. The Diebold–Mariano test was conducted to examine the accuracy of models.
Findings
The coach production strategy has been proposed on the most suitable auto-ARIMA model. Around 6,000 railway coaches per year have been produced in the past 3 years by IR. As per the coach production plan for the year 2023–2024, a tentative 6551 coaches of various types have been planned for production. The insights gained from this paper may facilitate need-based coach manufacturing and optimum utilization of the inventory.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature on rail ticket demand forecasting and adds value to the process of rolling stock management. The proposed model can be a comprehensive decision-making tool to plan for new train services and assess the rolling stock production requirement on any railway system. The analysis may help in making demand predictions for the busy season, and the management can make important decisions about the pricing of services.
Details
Keywords
Mehir Baidya, Bipasha Maity and Supriyo Ghose
There has been a lot of research on how to set marketing budgets, but the overlooked aspect was how allocating funds influences business performance in a multi-goal context. This…
Abstract
Purpose
There has been a lot of research on how to set marketing budgets, but the overlooked aspect was how allocating funds influences business performance in a multi-goal context. This study aims to examine the relationship between business performance, the process of allocating funds to multiple goals and the interaction among the goals.
Design/methodology/approach
Ratio data were generated through “a constant sum scale” from a sample of 362 managers from the B2C sector, besides data on after-tax revenue for two years. The data file was created. Then, a factor analysis was performed on the data. Furthermore, an econometric model with interaction terms was fitted to the data.
Findings
The results show that allocating funds to multiple marketing goals – demand generation, customer experience, brand image, marketing competency and purchase intention – influences business performance. Furthermore, a goal’s impact on business performance is higher when coupled with other goals than in isolation.
Practical implications
The findings of the study should assist managers in increasing revenue while spending less on marketing and shifting funds from less efficient goals and pairs of goals to highly efficient ones.
Originality/value
By extending the relevant theory on the relationship between the process of marketing fund allocation, multiple goals and business performance, this study contributes to the literature on marketing.
Details
Keywords
Usman Farooq, Abbas Ali Chandio and Zhenzhong Guan
This study investigates the impact of board funds, banking credit, and economic development on food production in the context of South Asian economies (India, Pakistan…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the impact of board funds, banking credit, and economic development on food production in the context of South Asian economies (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal).
Design/methodology/approach
This study used data from the World Development Indicators covering the years 1991–2019. To investigate the relationship between the variables of the study, we employed the panel unit root test, panel cointegration test, cross-sectional dependence test, fully modified least squares (FMOLS), and panel dynamic least squares (DOLS) estimators.
Findings
The empirical results indicate that board funding significantly increase food production; however, banking credit had a negative impact. Furthermore, the findings indicate that economic development, Arable land, fertilizer consumption, and agricultural employment play a leading role in enhancing food production. The results of the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test also show substantiated the significance of the causal relationship among all variables.
Practical implications
South Asian countries should prioritize board funding, bank credit, and economic development in their long-term strategies. Ensuring financial access for farmers through micro-credit and public bank initiatives can spur agricultural productivity and economic growth.
Originality/value
This study is the first to combine board funding, banking credit, and economic development to better comprehend their potential impact on food production. Instead of using traditional approaches, this study focuses on these financial and developmental aspects as critical determinants for increasing food production, using evidence from South Asia.
Details
Keywords
Kwadwo Opoku, George Domfe and Emmanuel Adu Boahen
The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of labour force participation and the factors affecting labour supply among older persons in Ghana. Both the extensive and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of labour force participation and the factors affecting labour supply among older persons in Ghana. Both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply were analysed.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses nationally representative samples of household and individual data in 2016–2017 – Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7) data – for the analysis. Heckman’s sample selection model is used to analyse both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply.
Findings
The study found that older persons in Ghana who are pensioners, widowed, have high levels of education, poor health status and live in urban areas are less likely to participate actively in the labour market. On the other hand, being head of a household, married and owning certain assets increase the likelihood of an older person to work. Furthermore, pensions, household headship and post-secondary education have negative effects on the labour supply as having them make older persons work fewer hours per week compared to their counterparts.
Originality/value
This research is the first study to examine the prevalence of old age employment and factors that affect labour market decisions of older persons in Ghana. It also adds to the limited literature on pension and retirement decisions in developing countries.
Details