This study employed data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the comparative efficiency performance of selected commercial banks, rural financial institutions and microfinance institutions in China. The first pairwise comparison indicated that commercial banks achieved higher level of overall...

The world food crisis has brought about heated discussions on policy responses and actions to achieve future stability and security in food consumption for the poor. While many viewing it as a supply proglem and propose to cope with it by incrasing self-supply, there are also propostitions of...

I study the determinants of ISO 14001 certification in a sample of manufacturing firms in China as well as the effect of ISO 14001 certification on firm environmental performance. Results indicate that ISO 14001 plays an important role in signaling the firm's environmental technology to...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/14/11.

In light of the discovery of BSE infected cattle in Canada in 2003, a number of efforts have been undertaken to ensure the safety of beef produced in Canada. Recent discussion has focused on testing live cattle for the BSE prion. This paper investigates consumer acceptance and valuation of beef...

The economy of Dominica faces a unique set of challenges. As with many other Caribbean nations, Dominica has historically been dependent upon agriculture. Over the past several hundred years, the island's economy has been largely supported through the concentrated mono-cropping of a variety of...

The effect of a Chinese minimum wage increase on China’s textile market as well as on the world cotton market is evaluated. Based on a Nonlinear Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (NQAIDS) model of China’s textile demand, the results suggest that the income elasticity for textiles is...

This paper demonstrates that dietary knowledge can influence nutrient intake differently depending on whether expected food availability is increasing or decreasing. Using data from China, we find that overall dietary knowledge has larger and more statistically significant effects on total...

Commodity price transmissions between China and the U.S. are examined. The results indicate that variations in Chinese cotton and soybean prices are transmitted to U.S. cotton and soybean prices while variations in Chinese wheat and rice prices do not get transmitted to U.S. wheat and rice...