Embodied social capital and geographic perspectives: performing the habitus

This paper reopens debates of geographic theorizations and conceptualizations of social capital. I argue that human geographers have tended to underplay the analytic value of social capital, by equating the concept with dominant policy interpretations. It is contended that geographers could more explicitly contribute to pervasive critical social science accounts. With this in mind, an embodied perspective of social capital is constructed. This synthesizes Bourdieu's capitals and performative theorizations of identity, to progress the concept of social capital in four key ways. First, this theorization more fully reconnects embodied differences to broader socioeconomic processes. Second, an exploration of how embodied social differences can emerge directly from the political-economy and/or via broader operations of power is facilitated. Third, a path is charted through the endurance of embodied inequalities and the potential for social transformation. Finally, embodied social capital can advance social science conceptualizations of the spatiality of social capital, by illuminating the importance of broader sociospatial contexts and relations to the embodiment of social capital within individuals.

Input usage, output mix and industry deregulation: an analysis of the Australian dairy manufacturing industry

In this paper we estimate a Translog output distance function for a balanced panel of state level data for the Australian dairy processing sector. We estimate a fixed effects specification employing Bayesian methods, with and without the imposition of monotonicity and curvature restrictions. Our results indicate that Tasmania and Victoria are the most technically efficient states with New South Wales being the least efficient. The imposition of theoretical restrictions marginally affects the results especially with respect to estimates of technical change and industry deregulation. Importantly, our bias estimates show changes in both input use and output mix that result from deregulation. Specifically, we find that deregulation has positively biased the production of butter, cheese and powders.

Geographic distribution of plant pathogens in response to climate change

Geographic distributions of pathogens are the outcome of dynamic processes involving host availability, susceptibility and abundance, suitability of climate conditions, and historical contingency including evolutionary change. Distributions have changed fast and are changing fast in response to many factors, including climatic change. The response time of arable agriculture is intrinsically fast, but perennial crops and especially forests are unlikely to adapt easily. Predictions of many of the variables needed to predict changes in pathogen range are still rather uncertain, and their effects will be profoundly modified by changes elsewhere in the agricultural system, including both economic changes affecting growing systems and hosts and evolutionary changes in pathogens and hosts. Tools to predict changes based on environmental correlations depend on good primary data, which is often absent, and need to be checked against the historical record, which remains very poor for almost all pathogens. We argue that at present the uncertainty in predictions of change is so great that the important adaptive response is to monitor changes and to retain the capacity to innovate, both by access to economic capital with reasonably long-term rates of return and by retaining wide scientific expertise, including currently less fashionable specialisms.

Community patterns of soil bacteria and nematodes in relation to geographic distance

Ecosystems consist of aboveground and belowground subsystems and the structure of their communities is known to change with distance. However, most of this knowledge originates from visible, aboveground components, whereas relatively little is known about how soil community structure varies with distance and if this variability depends on the group of organisms considered. In the present study, we analyzed 30 grasslands from three neighboring chalk hill ridges in southern UK to determine the effect of geographic distance (1e198 km) on the similarity of bacterial communities and of nematode communities in the soil. We found that for both groups, community similarity decayed with distance and that this spatial pattern was not related to changes either in plant community composition or soil chemistry. Site history may have contributed to the observed pattern in the case of nematodes, since the distance effect depended on the presence of different nematode taxa at one of the hill ridges. On the other hand, site-related differences in bacterial community composition alone could not explain the spatial turnover, suggesting that other factors, such as biotic gradients and local dispersal processes that we did not include in our analysis, may be involved in the observed pattern. We conclude that, independently of the variety of causal factors that may be involved, the decay in similarity with geographic distance is a characteristic feature of both communities of soil bacteria and nematodes.

Liability of country foreignness and liability of regional foreignness: their effects on geographic diversification and firm performance

The costs of inter- and intra-regional diversification have been widely discussed in the existing international business literature, but the findings are mixed. Explanations for the mixed findings have important managerial implications, because business managers have to estimate accurately the costs of doing business within and across regions before they make their internationalization decisions. To explain the existing mixed findings, this study differentiates between liabilities of foreignness at the country and regional levels, and explores the joint effects of liability of country foreignness (LCF) and liability of regional foreignness (LRF) on the performance of internationalizing firms. Using data from 167 Canadian firms, we find that LCF may not necessarily be negatively correlated with intra-regional diversification, but LRF is positively correlated with inter-regional diversification. LCF moderates the relationship between LRF and inter-regional diversification, and also mediates the relationship between intra-regional diversification and firm performance. LRF mediates the relationship between inter-regional diversification and firm performance. Missing one or more of these variables may result in different cost estimates. Identification of the relationships between these variables helps to improve the accuracy of estimating the costs of doing business aboard.

The politics of temporary work deregulation in Europe: solving the French puzzle

Temporary work has expanded in the last three decades with adverse implications for inequalities. Because temporary workers are a constituency that is unlikely to impose political costs, governments often choose to reduce temporary work regulations. While most European countries have indeed implemented such reforms, France went in the opposite direction, despite having both rigid labour markets and high unemployment. My argument to solve this puzzle is that where replaceability is high, workers in permanent and temporary contracts have overlapping interests, and governments choose to regulate temporary work to protect permanent workers. In turn, replaceability is higher where permanent workers’ skills are general and wage coordination is low. Logistic regression analysis of the determinants of replaceability — and how this affects governments’ reforms of temporary work regulations — supports my argument. Process tracing of French reforms also confirm that the left has tightened temporary work regulations to compensate for the high replaceability.

The influence of geographic origin and food type on the susceptibility of Callosobruchus maculatus (Fabricius) to Piper guineense (Schum and Thonn)

The tolerance of Callosobruchus maculatus from different geographical locations reared on two cowpea varieties, pale brown Ife Brown (IFBV) and dark brown IAR48 (IAR48V), to seed powder of Piper guineense (Schum and Thonn) was investigated. C. maculatus populations were collected from nine different locations across Osun state in the South Western part of Nigeria. The main and interactive effects of cowpea variety, population origin and dose on C. maculatus tolerance to P. guineense were explored. It was observed that bruchids that emerged from IAR48V had greater tolerance of P. guineense than bruchids reared on IFBV. There were significant effects (P < 0.001) of cowpea variety, population and dose, and significant interactions among these factors (except variety � dose, P > 0.05) on the response of bruchids to P. guineense. When reared on IAR48V, bruchid populations from the North-Eastern part of the state show greater tolerance to P. guineense than their counterparts from the SoutheWest. This study underscores the importance of knowledge of the origin of the population and the cowpea variety on which C. maculatus developed when managing bruchids damage using P. guineense

The impact of deregulation and re-regulation on bank efficiency: evidence from Asia

Following the 1997 crisis, banking sector reforms in Asia have been characterised by the emphasis on prudential regulation, associated with increased financial liberalisation. Using a panel data set of commercial banks from eight major Asian economies over the period 2001-2010, this study explores how the coexistence of liberalisation and prudential regulation affects banks’ cost characteristics. Given the presence of heterogeneity of technologies across countries, we use a stochastic frontier approach followed by the estimation of a deterministic meta-frontier to provide ‘true’ estimates of bank cost efficiency measures. Our results show that the liberalization of bank interest rates and the increase in foreign banks' presence have had a positive and significant impact on technological progress and cost efficiency. On the other hand, we find that prudential regulation might adversely affect bank cost performance. When designing an optimal regulatory framework, policy makers should combine policies which aim to foster financial stability without hindering financial intermediation.