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Premium subsidy rates were increased in 2019 and 2020 for livestock risk protection (LRP) insurance, which is price insurance for cattle producers. The authors examined if the LRP subsidy rate changes affected the LRP coverage levels purchased by feeder and fed cattle producers.

The authors collected the United States Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency summary of business sales data for daily LRP purchases from 2015 to 2023. The authors estimated a multinomial logit model to determine if subsidy rate changes were associated with the likelihood of LRP policies being purchased at different coverage levels.

After the 2019 and 2020 subsidy rate changes, the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage over 95% increased relative to the policies with coverage less than 89.99% but did not influence the likelihood of producers buying LRP-feeder cattle policies with coverage between 90 and 94.99% relative to policies with coverage less than 89.99%. Marginal effects show these subsidy rate changes increased the likelihood of buyers purchasing LRP-feeder cattle policies with greater than 95% coverage. The subsidy change did not affect the purchase of LRP-fed cattle policies.

The results demonstrate the influence of the recent LRP policy adjustments on insurance purchases, which could be important for agency officials and policy makers. This is the first study to explore the LRP policy purchases which provides the United States cattle industry insight into the LRP price insurance take-up, which can guide producer extension education on managing price risk.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship alumni may have with their institution’s library and its effect on student success, which, in turn, produces more engaged alumni.

This paper provides a base interaction model that describes this relationship.

Libraries are well positioned to not only engage current students but to establish the foundation for these students to become engaged alumni.

This base relationship model may help with advocating for secure funds of libraries and/or a higher priority for fundraising.

Livestock Risk Protection (LRP) insurance can reduce losses from price declines for cattle producers, but LRP adoptions has been limited. In 2019 and 2020, LRP subsidies were increased to lower the cost, but it is unclear how much these changes lowered the cost. The objective of this research was to estimate the impact of the subsidy increase on the cost of LRP for feeder and fed cattle by month and for various insurance period lengths and levels.

The authors collected United States LRP offering data from 2017 to 2021. The authors estimated separate generalized least squares regression for feeder cattle and fed cattle with producer premium as the dependent variable. Independent variables were dummy variables for coverage level, insurance period, month and year as well as dummy variables in commodity years 2019 and 2020 when the LRP subsidy was increased.

The authors found the subsidy increases did reduce the cost of LRP policies for feeder and fed cattle LRP policies. Producer premiums for feeder cattle LRP polices have declined between $1.41 to $1.90 per cwt and $0.95 to $1.56 per cwt for fed cattle LRP policies depending on the coverage level. Results indicate these subsidy increases did lower the LRP premium costs to producers.

Results show policy implications from the subsidy increases and will be informative to producers when exploring the cost of LRP. This study extends the literature by estimating the reduction in subsidy costs while considering total premiums changed.

The objective of this research was to determine the optimal age and pregnancy status for buying and selling replacement of beef females for risk-neutral and risk-averse producers.

A hedonic pricing model was estimated to measure how age, pregnancy status, breed and cull cow prices impact the sale price of these cattle. Data came from an annual heifer and cow sale in Tennessee between 2009 and 2018. A financial simulation model was developed to generate distributions of net present value (NPV) for buying replacement females at various ages and pregnancy status and then selling that female at various ages and pregnancy status.

The hedonic pricing model indicates sale prices were highest for five-year-old cows that were between four to five months pregnant. NPV was higher for buying heifers versus buying cows and for buying an open female versus a pregnant female. Regardless of age and pregnancy status when purchased, NPV was higher when the female was sold as pregnant prior to the end of her productive life. The risk analysis showed that risk aversion, buying older open cows and selling them as pregnant earlier in their productive life was preferred

This research offers unique insight into how pregnancy status and age at sale impacts the animal's NPV while considering risk. These results have implications for educating producers on purchasing and selling decisions of heifers and cows as well as for lenders who finance these purchases.

This paper aims to analyse the attitudes of Libyan retail customers to Islamic methods of finance.

The study conducted a survey of 385 Libyan retail consumers. Descriptive, factor and discriminant analyses of responses were performed to identify principal factors affecting attitudes towards and the potential use of Islamic financial products and services.

The results indicate that while most respondents have at least some knowledge about some Islamic products, especially Musharakah (full-equity business partnerships) and Quard Hassan (interest-free benevolent loans), they are generally unaware of many other products. Nonetheless, most respondents (85.9 per cent) are potential users of Islamic methods of finance at the retail level, though potential use varying markedly according to age, level of education, employment, income and nationality. Factor analysis reduces the large number of variables that determine retail consumers’ attitudes towards Islamic methods of finance to just community service, profitability, religion and unique services. Discriminant analysis shows that religion and community service are the most important positive attitudes determining the potential use of Islamic methods of finance by retail consumers in Libya.

The study is undertaken in a single national context, so there is no possibility of comparing the results with alternative financial systems in different stages of the adoption of Islamic finance. Research was completed in 2010, with the ongoing unrest in Libya precluding publication until recently.

Religious motivations rank highest in determining positive attitudes to Islamic methods of finance, and marketers should ensure that Islamic financial products and services strictly comply with Sharia. However, it may be possible to strengthen these positive attitudes by promoting that the community service role of Islamic finance is also important. Consumers also react favourably to marketing that either admits something negative about the product (e.g. Islamic finance is Sharia-compliant, but less profitable for depositors) or something positive about a competing product (e.g. conventional finance is more profitable, but cares less about the community). Marketers should emphasise the strengths of Islamic finance across the several sources of positive attitudes the authors have identified.

There is no published work on Libyan retail consumers and limited study of attitudes towards Islamic methods of finance more generally.

This paper identifies the value of Indigenous processes in developing a reciprocal working relationship between a Pasifika grass roots community organisation, Pasifika Church and an Australian university. The focus is on the capacity of Indigenous methodologies to authentically attain equity, diversity and inclusion, during the development of stakeholder partnerships, particularly when there are power and resource imbalances between parties.

This paper is about the process of how Pasifika methodologies, namely talanoa, e-talanoa and teu le va, were used to create positive reciprocal relationships in a culturally grounded manner. The outcome was an agreement of the three stakeholders, the Pasifika Church, the Pasifika organisation and a tertiary institute to work together on a community educational and training project.

The agreement by all parties to adopt Indigenous methodologies from inception enabled the process to be community-led in a culturally safe manner. Critically, these cultural processes established a foundation of trust, expanding possibilities for shared work and projects. For migrant communities, the advocacy and employment of cultural methodologies can empower them through negotiations to maintain their sovereignty over their Indigenous knowledge and priorities. Similarly, it is important for universities and mainstream organisations not only to acknowledge power imbalances and to support community-led priorities but also to cede power around processes of negotiation and discussion.

This is an experience of four organisations working together. It is uncertain whether the same outcome could be attained with other organisations, personalities and cultural groups.

The same principles may be harnessed for other migrant communities, allowing for their cultural practices to inform the ways in which stakeholders work together as opposed to the often-dominant euro-centric practices of the West. It is a deliberate effort that privileges Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing.

Migrant communities that perhaps may be subject to the more Western dominant environment are empowered to use their cultural frameworks to create an equal ground with government, tertiary and not-for-profit stakeholders.

This article is one of the first in Australia to document how talanoa, e-talanoa and teu le va were used to develop a working partnership in a culturally grounded manner to uphold the sovereignty of grassroots Indigenous organisations. This strengthens relationships between migrant communities and mainstream organisations. It outlines Pasifika protocols and successful use of equitable decision-making, led by a grassroots community organisation, a Pasifika Church, whilst liaising with a multi-campus university.

The study aims to extend the conventional triple bottom line (TBL) framework (prosperity, people and planet) to the quadruple bottom line (QBL) by newly adding a “prophet” dimension for Islamic banks seeking compliance with Islamic law in their pursuit of sustainability.

Employ Chapra's corollaries of maqasid al-shari'ah (the goals of Islamic law) to develop constructs for a survey of 504 Islamic bank stakeholders from five Indonesian provinces to gather primary data to quantitatively verify the dimensions and items in the proposed QBL framework. Categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) then identifies the sustainability of ten Islamic banks from ten countries as a trial application of the resulting QBL index.

Using the dimensions and items identified using CATPCA, the authors develop a QBL index to assess the sustainability of the ten Islamic banks. The findings suggest that half of the banks are sufficiently sustainable, with three being proactive (doing more than is required) and two being accommodative (doing all that is required). The remaining five banks are unsustainable, with two banks being defensive (doing the least that is required) and three being reactive (doing less than is required). Most of the banks perform relatively poorly according to the “planet” (38%) and “people” (41%) dimensions and perform better on the “prosperity” (53%) and “prophet” (63%) dimensions. Nonetheless, there is ample room for improvement across all dimensions of sustainability.

The generalizability of the findings is limited by the small-scale single-country survey used in the CATPCA part of the analysis. Only ten Islamic banks were included in the QBL scoring and ranking exercises

Islamic banks can improve their sustainability by increasing green financing and reaching out to rural areas and disadvantaged populations. In countries with Islamic banking systems, regulators can support this through training, guidance and incentives.

Pioneering exploration of TBL from maqasid al-shari'ah perspective. First, we develop a QBL index to assess the sustainability of Islamic banks in line with actual stakeholder expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how realistic ambitions for growth are in craft micro‐enterprise.

The paper presents observations from a series of studies of the craft sector in the UK. These were large‐scale questionnaires focusing on socio‐economic characteristics.

While many owners express an ambitious desire for growth, the question of whether that desire is at all realistic is often not explored in studies. By linking ambition to the skills required to develop the product, a better classification of the enterprise is developed.

This work begins to create a research agenda for understanding growth in the micro‐enterprise.

By focusing on the level of skill needed to produce the product, it is argued that a more workable approach to understanding growth ambitions can be achieved, while at the same time allowing policy makers to identify which enterprises to support and on which to focus limited resources.

Studies of the craft sector are relatively few. The data set from which these observations are drawn is the best available. The attempt to dig below stated ambitions by linking it to the skills required is a new contribution.

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the impetus for this edited book. We introduce activist, critical and feminist criminological theorizing and research on gender, intersectionality, criminalization, and carceral experiences. The scene is set for the chapters to follow by providing a general overview of gender, criminalization, imprisonment, and human rights in Southeast Asia with particular attention being paid to Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines. We consider trends and drivers of women’s imprisonment in the region, against the backdrop of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders, also known as the Bangkok Rules, which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly just over a decade ago. We reflect on the dominance of western centric feminist (and malestream) criminological works on gender, criminalization and imprisonment, the positioning of Southeast Asian knowledge on the peripheries of Asian criminology and the importance of bringing to light, as this book does, gendered activist scholarship in this region of the world.

Parents' exposure to children's brands appears rather limited; while brands sell at Christmas, there are extraordinary purchases of low‐cost toys and stocking filler fun toys. Maybe, toy brand purchases satisfy the child's request, rather than parents' value or quality preferences. Generally, the theories of branding feature the positive functional, symbolic and emotional attributes. This paper aims to examines parental evaluation of popular brand names to be given as gifts at Christmas and the sources used to gather information about brands.

Data were gathered via a survey of parents in the period prior to Christmas. The analysis consisted of a principal component analysis of the functional, symbolic and emotional evaluations. A frequency analysis and a gender‐based crosstabs series identified gender variations in the evaluations and use of information sources.

The study indicated that parents hold low evaluations of popular brands when buying Christmas gifts for their children. These low evaluations are across functional, symbolic and hedonic elements. Since mothers generally attend to the gift purchase decisions, there were significant gender differences on a few evaluations. The most popular source of information is asking children what they want and is closely followed by the use of store catalogues.

The evaluation and purchase of toys and gifts predominate at Christmas. Having such a high level of product or brand choice in the children's market could create confusion or uncertainty for parents. A negative image of children's exposure to toy advertising and the resultant pester power may combine to cloud parents' evaluations of giving brands as gifts. In essence, Christmas is the major chance for brand owners to sell their toys and other products. The idea of “… ask mom to get one … ” may be appropriate in high turnover, supermarket products, but not effective in a one‐chance, Christmas gift situation.

This research spans the value sets of two generations. Simply, the promotion of toys is primarily directed toward children who develop desires, expectations and values that are different from those values and attitudes of parents. Research into parental Christmas giving ascertains the value of children's brands to parents.