This study examines the adoption of sustainable agricultural intensification practices— particularly cereal-legume intercropping—by smallholder farming households in Malawi. The focus of the study is on how spatial variation in key factors related to agricultural production and marketing influences farming households’ decision-making processes under risk. Separate analyses are done for six distinct agroecological zones in Malawi to evaluate how resource and market constraints affect farming households’ decisions to employ intercropping practices on their cropland and how the variations in these constraints have differing impacts on adoption of intercropping across different regions. This study provides valuable insights into the complexities of smallholder farming choices in diverse geographic contexts.

"Previous studies implicitly assume uniform price-effects across regions or provinces within countries. They also do not address the issue of integration between the world food market and local markets. Instead, they assume a complete transmission of changes in world food prices to local food prices. In this paper, we first establish evidence of regional price heterogeneity across Ethiopia. We also applied the Johansen test for market integration over 95 local maize markets and found that none of the Ethiopian regional markets for maize is integrated to the world market. However, there is significant short-term price effects between the world maize market and some Ethiopian regional markets. Using the Almost Ideal Demand System, we estimate loss in household consumption and calorie intake as induced by food price increases. The results suggest a great deal of heterogeneity across regions as well as between rural and urban areas. Studies that fail to account for the characteristics of household demand across locations are more likely to induce misleading policy recommendations."--Authors' abstract.

Corporate Payout Policy synthesizes the academic research on payout policy and explains "how much, when, and how". That is (i) the overall value of payouts over the life of the enterprise, (ii) the time profile of a firm's payouts across periods, and (iii) the form of those payouts. The authors conclude that today's theory does a good job of explaining the general features of corporate payout policies, but some important gaps remain. So while our emphasis is to clarify "what we know" about payout policy, the authors also identify a number of interesting unresolved questions for future research. Corporate Payout Policy discusses potential influences on corporate payout policy including managerial use of payouts to signal future earnings to outside investors, individuals' behavioral biases that lead to sentiment-based demands for distributions, the desire of large block stockholders to maintain corporate control, and personal tax incentives to defer payouts. The authors highlight four important "carry-away" points: the literature's focus on whether repurchases will (or should) drive out dividends is misplaced because it implicitly assumes that a single payout vehicle is optimal; extant empirical evidence is strongly incompatible with the notion that the primary purpose of dividends is to signal managers' views of future earnings to outside investors; over-confidence on the part of managers is potentially a first-order determinant of payout policy because it induces them to over-retain resources to invest in dubious projects and so behavioral biases may, in fact, turn out to be more important than agency costs in explaining why investors pressure firms to accelerate payouts; the influence of controlling stockholders on payout policy --- particularly in non-U.S. firms, where controlling stockholders are common --- is a promising area for future research. Corporate Payout Policy is required reading for both researchers and practitioners interested in understanding this central topic in corporate finance and governance.

An elegant and counterintuitive guide to achieving perfect timing Timing is everything. Whether we are making strategic business decisions or the smallest personal choice, we must decide not only what to do, but when to do it. Act too early—or too late—and the results can be disastrous. Based on a 20-year investigation into more than 2,000 timing issues and errors, When presents a single and practical approach for dealing with timing in life and business. Good timing, Albert argues, is not just a matter of luck, intuition, or past experience—all of which may be unreliable—but a skill. He describes that skill and details the tools and methods needed to conduct a successful timing analysis. The book is the first to offer an efficient and comprehensive way to think through any timing issue Filled with dozens of lively stories illustrating good and bad timing in all walks of life—business, warfare, medicine, sports, entertainment and the arts Written by Stuart Albert, one of the foremost timing experts in the world and developer of the first practical, research-based method for turning the skill of timing into a competitive advantage Engaging and counterintuitive, When will show everyone, regardless of the work they do, or the life they live, that "it's all in the timing."

In this timely book, New Zealand's best-known commentator on population trends, Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, shows how, as New Zealand moves into the 2020s, the demographic dividends of the last 70 years are turning into deficits. Our population patterns have been disrupted. More boomers, fewer children, an ever bigger Auckland, and declining regions are the new normal. We will need new economic models, new ways of living. Spoonley says: "It is not a crisis (even if at times it feels like it), but rather something that needs to be understood and responded to. But I fear that policy-makers and politicians are not up to the challenge. That would be a crisis."