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The purpose of this paper is to study an innovative rice value chain financing system (VCFS) established in Benin, to identify the determinants of producers and processors access to formal credit, both at intensive and extensive margins. It focuses on multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP) which connect producers and processors in need of credit to potential financial lenders.

The empirical analysis uses rich cross-sectional survey data collected in Northern Benin in 2018. The sample consists of 215 rice producers and 217 rice processors randomly selected through a multi-stage sampling and interviewed with structured questionnaires. The empirical models analyze the determinants of the likelihood to receive a credit and the amount of credit received. To account for the sample selection and censored nature of the main outcome variable, the study considers a Heckman two-stage model coupled with a Tobit model for robustness checks.

The study finds that the MSP are effective in increasing access to formal credit and the amount borrowed. Producers and processors who are members of the MSP are more likely to receive credit and, conditional on being approved for credit borrower, a larger amount. Other key factors that significantly explain access to credit include the use of soft guarantee for securing a loan, the degree of participation in the platform and demographic characteristics. These findings are consistent across the Heckman and Tobit models.

The study attempts to rigorously analyze the factors explaining producers and processors access to credit using cross-sectional survey data. But it has some limitations. The main limitation is the type of data used. Ideally, one would like to run a randomized control trial (RCT) to randomly assign participation in the MSP to causally estimate its impact of access to credit. The second-best option would be to have a panel data covering the period before and after the establishment of the platform. However, in the absence of an RCT or panel data, the study resorts to cross-sectional data and empirical models that account for sample selection bias and the censored nature of the credit received.

One of the key findings of the study is that participation in the MSP (through different value chain stages associations) increases access to formal credit. This highlights an important and effective mechanism, a well-coordinated value chains that integrated lenders, that policymakers can leverage to facilitate access to credit in the agricultural sector.

Access to credit is important to boost agricultural productivity and income. Hence, the findings of the study have social implications in terms of poverty reduction in rural areas.

The study contributes to earlier theories and empirical studies on the demand for credit. It focuses on an innovative VCFS, increasingly adopted in many developing countries, adds originality and value to the understanding of mechanisms to unlock agricultural actors’ access to credit in low-income countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of agricultural credit rationing by formal lenders in Ghana.

This study employed descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Heckman's two-stage regression model to identify types of rationing faced by farmers and investigate factors that influence agricultural credit rationing by formal financial institutions. Data used in this study are gathered through a survey of 595 farmers in seven districts within Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana.

The result reveals that farmers face three types of rationing. Evidence from the Heckman two-stage models shows that engagement in off farm income generating activities, increase in farm size, positive balances on accounts and commercial orientation of the farmers has the potential to reduce rationing of credit applicants by formal lenders.

The results provide information on the factors that need to be considered as important in an attempt to reduce agricultural credit rationing by formal lenders.

The value of this study is that farmers would use the results of this study to improve access to required amount of agricultural credit from formal financial institutions. The information would also benefit stakeholders in the agricultural sector, particularly youth in agriculture program organized by Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana as how to improve access to credit and reduce rationing of program participants by formal financial institutions.

This paper aims to examine the effect of audit firm governance on audit quality. Audit firm governance is broken down into two categories, namely, board ownership and engagement partner ownership.

Audit firms from Borsa Istanbul and their clients who are quoted there as well were used to test the hypotheses. The final sample covers 1,291 observations at the client level between 2013 and 2019. Ordinary least square was conducted to test the hypotheses. Heckman selection model and instrument variable regression with two-stage least square (IVREG with 2SLS) were also used to control the self-selection and endogeneity problems, respectively. To enhance the validity of the main results, alternative audit quality measures were used.

The empirical findings show that board ownership and engagement partner ownership have an impact on audit quality. The results indicate that engagement partners with high shares enhance audit quality only in Big4 audit firms. The positive effect of higher board ownership on audit quality is more prominent in non-Big4 firms. The Heckman two-stage procedure and IVREG with 2SLS were conducted, both of which were consistent with the main results. The results regarding alternative audit quality measures are in accordance with the main estimation results.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study examining the impact of audit firm board ownership on audit quality. In addition, this paper further advances the literature by investigating the effects of ownership at engagement partner levels on audit quality in the context of an emerging market, Turkey.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the nonlinear effects of corporate philanthropy on the responses of both internal and external stakeholders as well as its impact on corporate financial performance.

Based on the stakeholder theory, the authors developed a conceptual model to examine the nonlinear effects of corporate philanthropy on company performance. For the empirical analysis, data from 397 company-years was analyzed using a using a Heckman two-stage model. The robustness of the findings was also confirmed through panel regression analysis.

The study revealed a linear relationship between corporate reputation and corporate philanthropy, whereas job satisfaction exhibited a nonlinear relationship with corporate philanthropy.

This research bridges the gap in extant literature by scrutinizing the nonlinear associations between corporate philanthropy and financial performance. Additionally, it addresses an emerging scholarly demand to uncover the “dark side” of corporate philanthropy through an investigation into its adverse impacts on employee satisfaction. Moreover, the study augments existing understandings of stakeholder theory and corporate philanthropy, positing that the influence of corporate philanthropy, as conceptualized through stakeholder theory, hinges on perceived fairness in multilateral relationships.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of cooperative societies on household food security in six villages of Northern Ethiopia. Cooperative societies have significant contribution to the food security and poverty reduction. However, limited empirical studies exist in the study areas about the roles of cooperative societies on food security.

Primary cross-sectional data were collected from randomly selected 400 households. The study also gathered secondary data from the cooperative associations and government offices for comparison purposes. The paper applied Heckman two-stage model to capture the effect of cooperative societies on household food security.

The probability of the households to join cooperative societies and also ensure food security depends on various determining factors like institutional factors, demographic variables and rural functions. The paired sample t-test shows that the mean income and expenditure of the cooperative member households were 70 and 40 per cent higher in 2010 and 2011, respectively, than in the baseline. The two-sample independent t-test indicates that the mean income and expenditure of the member households were 47 and 32 per cent higher than the counterpart households. The Heckman model explains that cooperative societies have statistically significant, positive and robust effects on household food security at 1 per cent level.

A few variables might suffer from endogeneity problem, although theoretically insignificant and have no sound justification. The study also considers only two indicators of food security (income and expenditure), but the findings of the study would have been good and sound with several and composite food security index.

Such impact studies on cooperative societies are limited in the study areas. Thus, this study helps decision-makers, cooperative analysts and other concerned bodies to give priority for cooperative societies so as to curtail the food insecurity problem. It can also make meaningful contributions to bridge the gap in the cooperative literature.

The present study can improve the understanding of cooperative societies in the country. The finding of this paper can serve as an input for university students, decision-makers and cooperative analysts. The result can also strengthen the economic justification for policy intervention on cooperative societies.

Most studies in the areas address the financial performance, historical movement and opportunities and challenges of cooperative societies. This implies that more work is necessary to obtain a clear picture and broad spectrum about cooperative societies, and thus, this study addresses the effect of cooperative societies on household food security.

Using the most recent observations (2005‐2011) from a sample of UK listed companies, This paper aims to investigate whether Big 4 audit firms exhibit a “fee premium” and, if this is the case, whether the premium is related to the delivery of a better audit service.

Univariate tests, multivariate regressions and two methodologies that control for self‐selection bias are used to answer the proposed research questions. Data are collected from DataStream.

Findings provide consistent evidence about the existence of an “audit fee premium” charged by Big 4 firms while they do not highlight any significant relationship between audit quality and type of auditor with respect to the audit quality proxies investigated.

Evidence from this paper might signal the need for legislative intervention to improve the competitiveness of the audit market on the basis that its concentrated structure is leading to “excessive” fees for Big 4 clients. Findings might also enhance Big 4 client bargaining power. However, as the paper analyses only one country, generalizability of the results might be a limitation.

This study joins two streams of the extant literature that investigate the existence of a “Big 4 audit fee premium” and different levels of audit quality among Big 4 and non‐Big 4 clients. Evidence supports the concerns raised by the UK House of Lords in 2010 that the concentrated structure of the audit market could be the driver of “excessive” fees for Big 4 clients as it does not find differences in audit quality between Big 4 and non‐Big 4 clients.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how the extent of religion in a firm’s social environment affects corporate innovation and innovation efficiency from the perspectives of religion-related risk aversion and religion-based social norms.

Using a sample of 8,601 Chinese firm-year observations from 2007 to 2012, this paper examines the relationship between religion and innovation intensity, as well as innovation efficiency. A battery of checks, that is, adopting Heckman selection model, using a province-level measure of religiosity and an alternative measure of innovation intensity, and taking the stochastic frontier analysis method to capture corporate innovation efficiency, are conducted to alleviate the concern of self-selection and to guarantee the robustness of the findings of this paper.

This paper finds strong evidence that firms registered in more religious regions, that is, regions with more Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius, undertake fewer innovation activities as measured by the ratio of R&D investment over total sales income but achieve higher innovation efficiency reflected by the value-relevance of R&D investment.

This paper complements the existing literature by suggesting that religion can serve as an informal social mechanism and performs a “less is more” effect in disciplining corporate innovation activities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transactional costs on smallholder avocado farmers’ participation in the export market and the extent of participation in Murang’a County, Kenya.

Data was collected from 384 avocado farmers in Murang’a County, following stratified sampling. The Heckman two-stage model was used for analysis.

Results showed that the cost of information search was an important variable that impedes smallholders’ participation in export marketing while harvesting costs inhibits the extent of participation in export marketing.

This study used data at the farm level. Therefore, insights on transaction costs among other marketing agents in the export market value chain would be an issue for future studies.

Following the debate on transaction costs and market participation among farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa, this paper models transactional costs and export market participation among avocado smallholders and measures the extent of participation with the inclusion of harvesting costs, negotiation costs, monitoring costs and information search costs that are not common in previous studies, thus contributing to the development of literature.

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the questions and answers (Q&A) between investors and enterprises from the China stock exchange investor interactive platforms on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises.

To show how the interaction influences the TFP of enterprises, the authors select Q&A records from the interactive platforms related to production, R&D and technology through the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model and choose A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 in China as a sample. To treat the data and test the proposed hypothesis, the authors applied OLS regression and endogeneity testing methods, such as the entropy balance test, Heckman two-stage model and the two-stage least squares regression.

This paper finds that interaction between investors and enterprises is positively correlated with TFP, and that improvements in content length and the timeliness of response can promote TFP. Interactive behavior mainly improves the TFP of enterprises by alleviating financing constraints and encouraging enterprises to increase R&D investment. This positive effect is more pronounced in companies with higher agency costs, non-high-tech companies and companies not supported by industrial policy.

The novelty of the research stands in the application of Python's LDA topic model to screen out Q&A records that are directly related to TFP, such as production, R&D, technology, etc., and measures the degree of information interaction between investors and enterprises from multiple dimensions, such as interaction frequency, content length and the timeliness of response.

Aquaculture insurance has the potential of redressing climate-change because it serves as an alternative source of finance in the event of unforeseen circumstances. To this end, the authors examine the prospects, determinants and profitability of aquaculture insurance among fish farmers in the Eastern region of Ghana.

A total of 140 fish farmers were sampled for the study. Thematic analysis was used to determine perceived aquaculture insurance prospects. The Heckman's two-stage model, profitability index (PI) and return on investment (ROI) was employed to respectively determine the factors influencing aquaculture insurance participation and amount intensity and the profitability of aquaculture.

The thematic analysis revealed three themes on the perception of aquaculture insurance prospects: loss recovery, farm renovation and promotes agriculture. Different sets of demographic and institutional factors have varying influences on aquaculture insurance participation and amount intensity. Profitability index (PI) and return on investment (ROI) were respectively 2.07 and 3.2%.

The research provides relevant information on perceived aquaculture insurance prospects, aquaculture insurance participation, and amount intensity and profitability of aquaculture which can contribute to enhancing aquaculture insurance and the aquaculture industry in Ghana.