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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of pork consumption in urban western China and the different consumption patterns across income strata with respect to income elasticity and price elasticity of demand.

The double-hurdle model is fit to the household data of Sichuan and Xinjiang provinces which is from the National Bureau of Statistics urban household surveys.

The paper finds that consumers’ purchasing decisions regarding pork are related to both non-economic and economic factors. The results also indicate large differences among the determinants for decision of how much pork to buy across the three income strata. Low-income households have higher income elasticity than middle-income and high-income households. High-income and middle-income households’ level of pork consumption is more sensitive to pork price. High-income households have greater cross-price elasticity.

In the previous studies, the non-economic determinants of pork consumption have not been addressed, and neither does the issue of difference pork purchasing behavior across income strata for urban households in western China. So this study uses the double-hurdle model to investigate the determinants of pork consumption in urban western China.

This article aims to examine the determinants of farmers' decisions on the adoption of modern rice varieties in two stages, including whether to adopt and, if so, how much to adopt.

The Double-Hurdle and Tobit models are applied to determine whether farmers make their two-stage decisions separately or simultaneously.

The findings reveal that farmers make their decisions on the probability of adoption and the intensity of adoption separately. Ethnicity, agricultural labor, land, rice production asset and non-farm self-employment are determinants of the farmers' decision on the adoption of modern rice varieties in both stages. Previous adoption, gender and an irrigation program only have a significant effect on the farmers' probability of adoption, while the market only significantly explains the farmers' decision on the intensity of adoption.

Due to the unavailability of data, this article does not include the attributes of the rice varieties or farmers' perception about the varieties in the model.

The uniqueness of this research is that it attempts to examine the determinants of farmers' two-stage decisions on whether to adopt and how much to adopt the modern rice varieties by application of the Double-Hurdle method.

This paper aims to present a comprehensive view of the assets recognition criteria by providing a coherent set of pre-measurement themes that should be taken into consideration to be a candidate asset.

This paper is a conceptual review paper.

This synthesis review results in seven themes; the social constructionist nature of the conceptual framework (CF), the nature of assets, the changing nature of asset recognition, asset measurement bases, entity-specific vs market-specific recognition, the economic resource comprising “rights”, and finally, the role of “separability” in asset recognition.

With the increasing importance of internally created assets and their implications on the financial position of the business entity, and with coinciding of revisiting the CF for financial reporting (at the time of writing this paper), this paper shows a synthesis and comprehensive themes of asset-based recognition criteria for tangible and intangibles assets.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost of granting executive stocks with strike prices adjusted by the cost of capital. Design/methodology/approach – In the paper a Monte Carlo simulation approach developed in Longstaff and Schwartz is used in conjunction with the subjective valuation model developed in Ingersoll to value these executive stock options that are subject to performance hurdles. Findings – The paper finds that standard European Black‐Scholes‐Merton option values overstate the true cost to the firm of granting these executive stock options. The option values also decrease with a higher dividend yield, a higher performance hurdle, a longer vesting period, and a shorter maturity. Research limitations/implications – While the study in the paper is limited to the valuation of executive options, the methodology can be used to study incentive effects of executive stock options that have a performance hurdle. Practical implications – The approach used in this paper to estimate the cost of granting executive stock options is a clear improvement over standard European option pricing approaches that often result in biased estimates. Originality/value – This paper presents a first attempt to integrate the Ingersoll utility‐theoretic model and the Longstaff and Schwartz least squares Monte Carlo algorithm to estimate the subjective value and the objective cost of executive stock options with a performance hurdle. This valuation approach will be useful in the study of other types of executive compensation.

This study concerns an on-line path planning technique for a behaviour-based wheeled mobile robot local navigation in an unknown environment with hurdles, using the feedforward back-propagation neural network sensor-actuator control technique. The purpose of this study is to find the non-collision path for the mobile robot moving towards the goal in a cluttered environment.

Neural network architecture input layers are the different hurdle distance information, which are acquired by an array of equipped sensors, and the output layer is the turning angle (motor control). In this way, the mobile robot is effectively being trained to move autonomously in the environment.

Computer simulation and real-time experimental results show that the proposed neural network controller can improve navigation performance in cluttered and unknown environments.

The proposed neural network controller gives better results (in terms of path length) as compared to previously developed models, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed architecture.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the impact of a growth enhancement support scheme (GESS) on the enabling environment of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The main aim is to investigate the impact of the GESS on access to rural farm credit and the transport cost of smallholder farmers in the agricultural transformation agenda (ATA) in Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 1,200 were sampled across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.

The results from the use of a double-hurdle model indicate that the GESS has a significant impact on farmers’ access to credit, but does not significantly impact on rural farm transport cost, which subsequently influences the price of food in the country.

This implies that if the Federal Government of Nigeria is to work toward an ideal agricultural transformation agenda, transport networks should be closely aligned with the GESS priorities to provide connectivity to rural areas that provide most of the country’s agricultural output.

This research adds to the literature on the agricultural and rural development debate in developing countries. It concludes that embracing a rural finance and transportation infrastructure should form the foundation of the ATA in Nigeria, which, in turn, would provide a conducive environment for a more widespread rural economy in sub-Saharan Africa.

China is not only the biggest mutton consumer, but also the top mutton importer in the world. China’s urban households are becoming the key driving force behind a surge in mutton consumption. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of mutton demand in urban China.

Based on a sample of 32,910 urban households across six provinces and autonomous regions, an inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS) double-hurdle model is estimated, by maximum likelihood estimation, to reveal the determinants of mutton consumption-at-home.

The empirical results indicate that, first, household income has a positive effect on mutton consumption, and higher income households have a higher income elasticity; second, wet weather increases probability, but reduces conditional level and unconditional level; finally, minority group households consume more mutton than Han group households.

It is necessary for policymakers to develop a long-term outlook in relation to the increase of China’s mutton appetite and to shift from a domestic perspective to a global one and develop diversified import strategies. Furthermore, policymakers require to make a practicable emergency preplan for tackling short-term agglomeration of demand for mutton, attributed to festivals, and religious events of a minority ethnic group.

This is a major work based on a large sample of 32,910 urban households conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. This paper uses an IHS double-hurdle model to quantify the determinants of mutton consumption; it sheds light on the climatic, regional, and ethnic characteristics of mutton consumption in urban China.

This chapter examines the differing ways in which the criminal responsibility of children has been understood in English and Australian common law. The doctrine of “doli incapax” has for many centuries worked to establish a presumption in law that children between the ages of around 10 and 14 are incapable of forming criminal intent, unless it can be shown that they are capable of ‘guilty knowledge’ about their actions. In this approach, children are presumed to be ‘naughty’ until it can be shown that they are ‘bad’. However, events such as the murder of James Bulger in 1993 have led to the abolition of the doctrine in the UK, and its questioning in Australia. The chapter will outline how and why the law’s distinction between adults and children in relation to crime has become unstable, and explain the implications of the legal conception of childhood for the sociology of childhood more broadly. It will also explore how a closer look at the history of the doli incapax presumption sheds considerable light on the central and active role played by the judiciary and the legal profession, as opposed to other social and professional groups, in the development of a particular legal construction of childhood.

Credit is essential in the farm business because it facilitates the adoption of productive technologies such as irrigation. However, access to credit remains a significant hurdle for sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghanaian farmers. Therefore, the authors assessed credit utilization and the intensity of borrowing by irrigated rice farmers in the Upper East region. In addition, how extension moderates the amount borrowed was analysed.

The multistage sampling approach was used in the study. The Tono and Vea irrigation schemes were purposively selected. Proportionally, 318 rice farmers were sampled from the Tono irrigation scheme and 159 from the Vea irrigation scheme. Cragg's double hurdle and moderation analysis were used.

It was uncovered that gender, age, years of farming, total farm size, rice farm size, contract farming and off-farm employment explain farmers' decision to borrow. On the other hand, the intensity of borrowing was influenced by gender, age, years of farming, rice farm size, contract farming and the number of extension contact. The moderation analysis revealed that extension contact improves the amount borrowed by farmers.

While there are irrigated rice farmers in other regions of Ghana, this study was limited to rice farmers under the Tono and Vea Irrigation schemes in the Upper East region.

This study investigated the moderating role of extension contact on amount borrowed in Ghana. This makes a modest addition to the limited literature on the moderating role of extension and credit access.

It has been recently argued that managers do not use creative problem‐solving techniques because of concerns about managing the ideas produced. This paper examines five different ways of “closing down” during creative problem solving, and suggests factors which influence the selection of a technique: voting is the preferred choice for consensus‐seeking; clustering is a means of transforming data qualitatively; hurdles provide a means of managing data arriving over disparate time periods; weighting is best reserved for standard and quantifiable data; while gut feel can deal best with decision making involving “fuzzy” data. A psychological rationale for the use of the various techniques is proposed, and a contingency model of decision making developed which may give managers confidence to experiment with the creative problem‐solving mechanisms for generating options, because of increased knowledge of effective mechanisms subsequently for closing down those options.