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The purpose of this paper is: to track the methods by which farmers access groundwater for irrigation in the North China Plain (NCP); to explore whether climate factors influence farmers’ decisions on the methods of groundwater access for irrigation; and to examine whether the amount of groundwater use for irrigation and crop yield systematically differ across groups of farmers using various methods of groundwater access, and how climate factors affect them.

Descriptive statistical analysis and econometric models are used on household survey data collected over several years and county-level climate data.

Over the past few decades, a significant share of farmers have switched the methods of groundwater access from collective tubewells to own tubewells or groundwater markets. Farmers who bought water from groundwater markets applied less water to wheat plots than those who had their own tubewells. However, wheat yield was not negatively affected. Both average climate conditions and long-term variations were found to be related to farmers’ choice of methods of groundwater access for irrigation. More frequent droughts and increasingly volatile temperatures both increased the likelihood of farmers gaining groundwater irrigation from markets.

The analysis results suggest farmers are using groundwater markets to help them adapt to climate change. Applying empirical analysis to identify the impact of the methods by which farmers access groundwater for irrigation on the amount of groundwater use and crop yield will help policy makers design reasonable adaptation policies for the NCP.

The study aims to evaluate the long- vs short-run relationships between crops' production (output) and crops' significant inputs such as land use, agricultural water use (AWU) and gross irrigated area in India during the period 1981–2018.

The study applied the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to estimate the co-integration among the variables. The study uses the error correction model (ECM), which integrates the short-run dynamics with the long-run equilibrium.

The ARDL bounds test of co-integration confirms the strong evidence of the long-run relationship among the variables. Empirical results show the positive and significant relationship of crops' production with land use and gross irrigated area. The statistically significant error correction term (ECT) validates the speed of adjustment of the empirical models in the long-run.

The study suggests that the decision-makers must understand potential trade-offs between human needs and environmental impacts to ensure food for the growing population in India.

For a clear insight into the impact of climate change on crops' production, the current study incorporates the climate variables such as annual rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature. Further, the study considered agro-chemicals, i.e. fertilizers and pesticides, concerning their negative impacts on increased agricultural production and the environment.

The problem addressed is how policies to promote sustainable development may be implemented in market practice. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework on which further research on sustainable market practice can be based.

Literature and conceptual analysis as regards sustainable development and policies to promote sustainable markets. Frameworks from theorizing about markets and about institutions.

The context of policy initiatives aiming at sustainable development is characterized by substantial heterogeneity and is inherently conflictual and multidimensional. Stakeholders, NGOs, governments as well as market actors are involved in policy processes. A market practice perspective is suggested. Specific issues for research are how policy practice interacts with market practice and how sustainable markets actually perform sustainable development over time and space.

Implications for how policy actors and market actors might act to bridge the gap by awareness of market shaping process in market practice.

Contribution to holistic understanding of links between policies, market practice and sustainable development.

It is difficult to develop an overall picture of the practice of management accounting (MA) in farms and farm enterprises (FEs) because little research has been published on the topic, and these studies are mostly discrete and unconnected to the others. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the available research, develop an explanatory framework for MA practices in farming entities and identify some major avenues for future research on the topic.

This paper uses systematic literature review methods. After an extensive database search and an examination of references/citations, 41 empirical journal articles published between 1964 and 2016 are identified, described and analyzed in this research paper.

The findings reveal that the practice of MA in farms is subject to information problems and that the empirical research on this topic largely lacks a theoretical explanation. Therefore, the explanatory framework of MA practices in farming entities reveals that these practices are subject to influencing factors such as familism, government farm policies, market competition, technological changes, the seasons and the weather/climate.

The overall limited findings on the practice of MA in FEs indicate that caution should be taken when generalizing the current knowledge on the use of MA practices in other organizational forms to farming entities. Moreover, future research should draw on explicit theories to explain empirical results.

This paper is the first comprehensive literature review of studies on MA practices in farms and FEs.

Increased competition in the banking sector coupled with long queues in the banking hall has necessitated the introduction of internet banking among banks in Ghana. As a result, internet banking has attracted a great deal of attention from both academicians and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of internet banking on the performance of banking institutions in Ghana.

In total, 20 banks in Ghana were selected from the Bank of Ghana website for the study. The financial information about the banks’ operations was retrieved from the financial statements of the respective banks for the end of the year 2016. The data envelopment analysis-bootstrap approach with principal component analysis and cluster analysis was used to estimate 49 models.

The findings of the study indicated that the integration of internet banking into traditional banking methods has led to superior bank performance in Ghana. It was observed that while the independent application of internet banking as a strategy to raise performance was not yielding higher returns due to the low patronage of internet services among banking consumers, its integration with possible traditional methods is widely observed among the top performers in the banking industry.

Traditional banking methods, integrated banking service strategies and the internet banking service-oriented strategy emerged as the main banking strategies among the banks.

Extant literature is quite silent on the effect of internet banking on bank performance in Africa. However, this paper is among the first significant attempts to examine the effect of internet banking on bank performance.

To illuminate the underlying logic of western Kansas farmers’ decisions to irrigate at unsustainable rates and the state’s regulatory policies and practices that enable depletion of the Ogallala aquifer.

Ethnographic interviewing of 39 western Kansas farmers, state water management personnel, and archival research.

Farmers occupy an ambiguous position as petty capitalists who focus attention on their own farms with seasonal planning horizons, and they hold a view of “good stewardship” that melds economic and noneconomic considerations, and that provides a rationale for unsustainable irrigation practices. The state resolves the contradiction between the finite groundwater resource and ideological commitments to economic growth by devolving responsibility for water management to groundwater users.

While the small sample size is likely to be representative of the larger pool of irrigators, further research with other farmers representative of the region will be necessary to verify findings.

Depletion of the Ogallala aquifer contributes to farm consolidation and community decline, and the ecological costs will leave future farmers and remaining communities without the benefits of groundwater. Western Kansas will likely have to revert to a system of dryland farming.

Major land use changes can have a significant impact on the environment, e.g. increased leaching and run‐off losses of nutrients and water contamination. Nitrate (NO₃^–) can be easily leached and, when present at high concentrations in drinking water, can be a health hazard. This paper seeks to report an easy‐to‐use computer model designed to provide predictions of possible impacts on groundwater NO₃^– concentration on a regional scale.

The model takes into account NO₃^–‐N concentrations from various land use activities, land surface recharge rates (as affected by soil water retention capacity, land management, irrigation and rainfall), and mixing of surface recharge and river recharge. Spatial information on land use and groundwater recharge sources are lumped into groundwater management zones (100‐500 km²), and vertical concentration profiles of NO₃^– in groundwater are estimated from a one‐dimensional dispersion model. The model is applied to the 2,300 km² Central Canterbury Plains of New Zealand.

A scenario analysis for the Bankside groundwater management zone showed that the NO₃^–‐N concentration at the groundwater surface could increase from 7.8 mg N L^‐1 to 11.3 mg N L^‐1 if all the land used for sheep farming is replaced by dairy farming (increasing dairy land from 21 per cent to 64 per cent of the total land area). However, the impact of such land use changes on the NO₃^–‐N concentration 50 m below the groundwater surface was relatively small, resulting in an increase of NO₃^–‐N concentration from 0.4 to 0.5 mg N L^‐1. This is because of the significant mixing of surface recharge with river recharge at this depth.

The model can serve as a useful tool for first‐order estimation of possible trends of NO₃^–‐N concentration profiles in aquifers as a result of land use changes.

Urban groundwater is an important and valuable resource for Shijadran City, China. With the impact of rapid urban growth Shijadran is at risk of severe aquifer depletion, regional water table decline and supply facilities refurbishment. This paper presents a multi‐plan management of urban groundwater with two optimisation scenarios in order to alleviate and improve the environmental, social and economic situations caused by over‐exploitation of groundwater. It was developed based on the analysis of regional hydrogeology, water use and land use. A calibrated groundwater flow model was incorporated into the optimisation models through a water head response matrix of the Quaternary aquifer. The current supply optimisation not only met the increasingly growing need of water demand but also controlled and eliminated the various hazards caused by groundwater over‐pumping. Artificial recharge management, with conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater, provided a practical solution to the overall groundwater exhaustion and led to a solution for water table recovery, aquifer protection and sustainable water use. A comprehensive water management strategy for decision making was developed to reduce the negative impacts of urban growth on water use.