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Weaknesses in the grades and standards system in low-income countries across Sub-Saharan Africa undermine the transparency of agricultural markets. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana and Mozambique rice is predominately sold in open bags and if rice price does not reflect its quality, then inefficiencies may lead to consumer welfare losses. Importantly, it is possible that impoverished communities are priced out of the market due to inflated and inefficient prices. The objective of this study is to examine determinates of rice price by estimating the impact of selected rice quality attributes on rice prices in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana and Mozambique.

We collected 363 rice samples from open air markets in Bukavu (DRC), Nampula (Mozambique) and across Ghana in 2019. Each rice sample was analyzed in a food science lab for the quality attributes: percentage of chalk and brokens, chalk impact, length and length-to-width ratio. We used multiple regression analysis to estimate if and to what extent quality attributes were the drivers of price.

Findings suggest that there are irregularities in the Ghanaian market for broken rice and that regardless of quality, imported rice is priced higher than domestic rice. In the DRC and Mozambique, our results indicate price is driven by length and length-to-width ratio in the former and length-to-width ratio in the latter.

Rice samples were purchased from market vendors and thus consumer preferences for attributes were not revealed.

These results provide valuable insight to policymakers regarding the need for proper labeling and regulation of open bag rice sales in an effort to increase consumer welfare and improve food security.

The article investigates the patterns of asset impairment recognition in search of signs of “big bath” earnings management practices across an internationally diversified sample of public companies. It also elucidates the incentives that may underlie such practices and explores possible safeguards embedded in the existing corporate governance mechanisms.

The article applied static panel and binary logit models to an international firm-level panel dataset of 1045 public companies observed between 2003 and 2018.

Our empirical results suggest that recognition of asset impairment has no determinate impact on earnings volatility. Investigating the possibility of “big bath” earnings management practices, the authors found no impact of asset impairment recognition on total senior executive compensation in firms, which pay performance-based remuneration. The quality of corporate governance has appeared to impact the firms’ intertemporal proclivity to recognize asset impairment with those having the more entrenched and management-controlled boards being more likely to time impairment recognition by delaying it during exceptionally good and exceptionally bad years. While generally unlikely, recognition of asset impairment in a period with a recorded negative operating performance is found to be closely associated with key executive departures.

The article corroborates the salient role of corporate governance mechanisms in shaping the intertemporal patterns of asset impairment recognition. The possible remedies to the phenomenon should be derived therefrom.

This paper aims to tackle an important question related to women’s economic empowerment in highly patriarchal societies like Egypt. The paper discusses individual, household, wealth and location factors determining women empowerment, as measured by two dimensions: decision-making power and mobility.

Using the “Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey” (ELMPS) 2012, a Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model was estimated to study the main economic resources and social constraints that determine women empowerment as measured by the power of women over household decisions and her freedom of movement in Egypt.

Three key messages could be delivered. First, women’s own economic resources as captured by her employment status are an important source of her empowerment. Second, contrary to theoretical prediction education is not playing its expected role in developing awareness and transforming ideas concerning gender roles in Egypt. Third, the importance of social local context is fundamental for Egyptian women empowerment.

This study is an attempt to address some of the gaps in the literature for the Egyptian case, where there is a lack in rigorous studies measuring women empowerment and examining its determinates. This is done by first, tackling multiple dimension of women’s empowerment, decision-making inside households and freedom of mobility. Second, using MIMIC model, which is a modeling approach that allows for studying the relations between several causes of a given latent variable, such as “Empowerment” in our case, and a number of its possible indicators, without a directly observable measure of the latent variable. Third, using the most recent set of data; the ELMPS 2012 which has a special focus on women’s resources and agency that permits greater content validity of the multidimensional setup. Forth, the macro level differences in women’s status are tackled through using location dummy variables. Finally, given the important correlation between wealth level and women empowerment, the paper is considered a first attempt to analyze such impact by including a variable that captures the wealth level of the woman’s household as one determinant of empowerment.

In the early 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor could be classified as an Austrian economist. The author reconstructs the intertwined paths of Kaldor and Friedrich A. Hayek to disequilibrium economics through the theoretical deficiencies exposed by the Austrian theory of capital and its consequences on equilibrium analysis.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The integration of capital theory into a business cycle theory by the Austrians and its shortcomings – e.g. criticized by Piero Sraffa and Gunnar Myrdal – called attention to the limitation of the theoretical apparatus of equilibrium analysis in dynamic contexts. This was a central element to Kaldor’s emancipation in 1934 and his subsequent conversion to John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In addition, it was pivotal to Hayek’s reformulation of equilibrium as a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). It also had implications for Kaldor’s mature developments, such as the construction of the post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution, the Cambridge capital controversy, and his critique of neoclassical equilibrium economics.

The close encounter between Kaldor and Hayek in the early 1930s, the developments during that decade and its mature consequences are unexplored in the secondary literature. The author attempts to construct a coherent historical narrative that integrates many intertwined elements and personas (e.g. the reception of Knut Wicksell in the English-speaking world; Piero Sraffa’s critique of Hayek; Gunnar Myrdal’s critique of Wicksell, Hayek, and Keynes; the Hayek-Knight-Kaldor debate; the Kaldor-Hayek debate, etc.) that were not connected until now by previous commentators.

In this work the author gathers several methods and techniques to construct systematically Stieltjes classes for densities defined on R+.

The author uses complex integration to obtain integrable functions with vanishing moments sequence, and then the author considers some operators defined on the vanishing moments subspace.

The author gather several methods and techniques to construct systematically Stieltjes classes for densities defined on R+. The author constructs explicitly Stieltjes classes with center at well-known probability densities. The author gives a lot of examples, including old cases and new ones.

The author computes the Hilbert transform of powers of |ln⁡x| to construct Stieltjes classes by using a recent result connecting the Krein condition and the Hilbert transform.

This paper aims to scrutinize and analyze the continuity and change in US foreign policy toward the Gulf region, with a comparison between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Also, it explores the nature of the changes in US foreign policy toward the Gulf region to explain the factors that lead to change and when this change occurs. Policymakers were one of the most important factors that led to the occurrence of change in US policy. Therefore, the study also focuses on decision-makers as an engine of change in foreign policy. In this vein, the study seeks to answer the following question: what is the extent of continuity and change in US foreign policy toward the Gulf region under both Bush and Obama administrations?

The study seeks to answer its research question by using the rational choice approach. This approach explains that foreign policy does not change because of change of leadership. Therefore, this approach is suitable to study the research question.

The study reached several points of results, the most important of which are as follows: there is continuity within US foreign policy toward the Gulf countries under the two Bush and Obama administrations. Despite the difference of mechanisms of implementing this foreign policy under both administrations, the objectives of the US foreign policy are still constant and continuous. For example, although the events of September led to the occurrence of tensions between the USA and the Gulf region, the repercussions of the events of September were ostensible where the effects were confined to a change in tactical objectives. Also, successive American administrations have recognized the USA’s enduring and salient interests in the Gulf region.

The region is important as a source of US energy supplies as a strategic military base of operations and also as a site of US foreign policy influence through relationship with individual nations such as Saudi Arabia and the smaller states of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

This paper adds to the existing literature which charts the effects of US foreign policy on the Gulf region.

Pragmatism is very relevant to workplace management and performance measurement, yet in the accounting literature, it is a term used loosely and in a colloquial manner. By drawing on a framework based on classical pragmatism, this study aims to examine how a pragmatic perspective is discernible in the form and use of management control (MC) practices.

This study collects data using a case study of a firm in the green energy construction sector.

Building on the analytical framework, this study provides evidence that a pragmatic perspective is discernible in both form and use of MC practices, through a clear focus on targets rather than variance analysis, the presence of mutable local MC practices characterised by interaction and problem-solving and the absence of other common MC practices with no clear links to ends-in-view. This study also provides evidence of the potential limitations of a pragmatic perspective including myopia and an exacerbation of the inherent bias in organisations towards exploitation.

This research brings analytical clarity to the study of pragmatism in the accounting literature and insights into how a pragmatic perspective is discernible in the form and use of MC practices. Further, the study shows the potential limitations of a pragmatic perspective for management.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of internal and external variables on the profitability of conventional banks operating on developing and underdeveloped countries, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) states.

In this paper, the author uses ordinary least squares fixed-effects model on an unbalanced panel data set of all conventional banks operating in OIC countries (52 countries included from 57) over the period 1989-2008, 686 banks.

The results suggest that equity, foreign ownership, off-balance sheet (OBS) activities, real gross domestic product growth, real interest rate and concentration foster banks’ profitability. In addition, the results showed that the banking sector development and loans will increase banks’ profitability in the long run in the countries of the studies. In contrast, the study reported that deposits lower profitability. The study also revealed that GDP per capita, market capitalization and banks size have no impact on profitability.

The findings of this study have considerable policy implications. First, policymakers need to regulate nontraditional activities to avoid any financial crisis because banks in OIC countries are heavily engaged in nontraditional activities to boost its profit. Second, policymakers are advised to improve the deposit insurance system to insure the stability of the financial system as well as improving banks’ profitability. Third, policymakers need to improve the efficiency of the stock market, maintain small banking system and encourage foreign investments in the banking system.

The paper adds to the literature on the commercial bank’s profitability determinants. In particular, such study has not been conducted on OIC countries, and the study included all mainstream banks and incorporated the effect of deposit insurance system so far. Also, pure sample of conventional banks used as many conventional banks in OIC countries have Islamic windows or offer Islamic products. In addition, this study investigated the effect of OBS activities on net interest margin (NIM) because the studies that explored this interrelationship are limited especially for developing and under developed countries. The results showed that OBS activities contributed significantly and positively to return on assets and NIM. Moreover, this paper used a pure sample of conventional banks to avoid any biasness; see data section. Moreover, this study gives an idea about the economic situation and financial conditions of OIC countries during the period of the study.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of the economic lot sizing and the time cycle period of reordering. The stochastic demand is quite common in the real environment of a cement retailer. The study compares three methods to obtain the optimal solution of a lot-sizing ordering from the real case of the previous study where the dataset is collected from the area of some retailers at Banda Aceh Province of Indonesia.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The problem model appears when the retailer with shortage has to fulfill the lot size in the optimal condition to the stochastic demand while at the same time has the backlog condition. Moreover, when the backorder needs the time horizon for replenishment where this condition influences the holding cost at the store, many retailers try to solve this problem to minimize the holding cost, but on the other side, it should fulfill the customer demand. Three methods are explored to identify that condition: a Wagner–Whitin algorithm, the Silver–Meal heuristic, and the holding and ordering costs. The three methods are applied to the lot sizing when there is a backlog.

Findings – The results of this study show that the Wagner–Whitin algorithm outperforms the other two methods. It shows that the performance increases around 27% when compared to the two other methods in this study.

Research Limitations/Implications – All models are almost approximate and useful to determine the cycle period on stochastic demand.

Practical Implications – The calculation of the dataset with the three methods would give the simple example to the retailer when he faces the uncertainty demand models. The prediction of the calculation is done accurately than the constant calculation, which is more economic.

Social Implications – The calculation will contribute to much better predictions in many cases of uncertainty.

Originality/Value – This is a initial comparative model among other methods to achieve the optimal stock and order for a retailer

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.