We review research on power, dependency and the concentration of agrifood industries and report updated concentration figures for selected agrifood sectors. We then utilize network exchange theory to identify principles of dependency and network relations and describe network relationships...

Williamson argues that a principal will only trust an agent when there are safeguards to ensure the agent has an incentive for trustworthiness. However, such circumstances are devoid of vulnerability and possibility for betrayal. Williamson claims that this is not trust at all. I argue that a...

Generalized morality reflects ethical norms in society about the inappropriateness of behaviors that can cause harm to others. Generalized morality may be an important factor affecting the economic performance of countries. A measure of generalized morality is constructed from data from the...

We examine whether cooperatives are characterized by greater trust than investor-owned firms. We survey 2000 Missouri corn and soybean farmers and find that trust and farmer perceptions of honesty and competence are higher in cooperatives than in investor-owned firms and that trust is a...

We examine empirically the relationship between happiness and the ethical decisions of individuals. We use data from the 1995-97 wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) to test the hypothesis that the relationship between happiness and ethics is bicausal in the sense that personal ethics affects...

Purpose: We examine the role and importance of trust in a type of Chinese farmer cooperative organization called “Farm Bases,” considering the extent to which trust affects their performance and how the relationship between trust and Farm Base performance is affected by perceptions of risk...

We empirically test the effect of separating ownership and control and its interaction with farmer effort on farm success using USDA-ARMS data. We use a two-stage least squares approach and instrumental variables that proxy participation constraints to binding incentive contracts. We find the...

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis advances an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. Scholars have estimated turning point incomes for various pollutants within and across countries. However, the majority of these studies were conducted...

While the growth of family firms is widely recognized as important to the prosperity of free-market economies (Family Enterprise USA, 2011), a growing body of stakeholder research finds that family business ethics is important to advancing a society's moral progress. Yet, due to limits in...