1,720,962 research outputs found

    MALAWI AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY EXCHANGE AND SPATIAL RICE MARKET INTEGRATION

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    There has been a growing debate regarding the role of the government and the effects of agricultural policies and interventions on agricultural markets. This therefore prompted this study to analyse the role of Malawi Agricultural Commodity Exchange (MACE) project as a market-enhancing intervention on aggregate market performance in Malawi using cointegration methods. MACE was introduced to improve agricultural market functioning through market information system. The study specifically examined the extent of spatial rice market integration, causality relationships among spatially separated markets and the dynamic adjustments of rice price series. The study used monthly price series data from 1994 to 2007 obtained from the ministry of agriculture. The data was divided into three sets; full sample, Pre-MACE and Post-MACE. Stationarity tests were done and it was noted that Salima and Bangula for full sample and Chitipa for Pre and Post-MACE price series were stationary in levels implying that these markets did not share the long-term trend with the major urban centres in Malawi in their respective samples. Cointegration results have shown that spatial rice market integration in Malawi is on average marginally improving. Compared to Pre-MACE period, cointegration and interdependence among markets appeared to be increasing during the Post-MACE era. Cointegration has also revealed that rice markets have been operating as a unified market system over the period of study. However, the study left out other factors affecting market integration due to financial and time constraints hence this improvement can not be fully accredited to MACE intervention. Nevertheless, since the aggregate picture observed in this study is an improvement of market integration the study recommends a promotion of MACE intervention to reach even more remote areas. The project needs to consider collecting and disseminating other market information such as trade flows, transaction costs and transfer costs. The study also recommends that further studies on market integration should take care of other structural determinants of market integration such as marketing infrastructure e.g. transportation, government policies and should consider application of the threshold autoregressive models (catering for transaction costs).Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

    MALAWI AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY EXCHANGE AND SPATIAL RICE MARKET INTEGRATION

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    There has been a growing debate regarding the role of the government and the effects of agricultural policies and interventions on agricultural markets. This therefore prompted this study to analyse the role of Malawi Agricultural Commodity Exchange (MACE) project as a market-enhancing intervention on aggregate market performance in Malawi using cointegration methods. MACE was introduced to improve agricultural market functioning through market information system. The study specifically examined the extent of spatial rice market integration, causality relationships among spatially separated markets and the dynamic adjustments of rice price series. The study used monthly price series data from 1994 to 2007 obtained from the ministry of agriculture. The data was divided into three sets; full sample, Pre-MACE and Post-MACE. Stationarity tests were done and it was noted that Salima and Bangula for full sample and Chitipa for Pre and Post-MACE price series were stationary in levels implying that these markets did not share the long-term trend with the major urban centres in Malawi in their respective samples. Cointegration results have shown that spatial rice market integration in Malawi is on average marginally improving. Compared to Pre-MACE period, cointegration and interdependence among markets appeared to be increasing during the Post-MACE era. Cointegration has also revealed that rice markets have been operating as a unified market system over the period of study. However, the study left out other factors affecting market integration due to financial and time constraints hence this improvement can not be fully accredited to MACE intervention. Nevertheless, since the aggregate picture observed in this study is an improvement of market integration the study recommends a promotion of MACE intervention to reach even more remote areas. The project needs to consider collecting and disseminating other market information such as trade flows, transaction costs and transfer costs. The study also recommends that further studies on market integration should take care of other structural determinants of market integration such as marketing infrastructure e.g. transportation, government policies and should consider application of the threshold autoregressive models (catering for transaction costs)

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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