Agricultural Economics, 2017 (vol. 63), issue 5

Mobile accessibility expense analysis of the agrarian WWW portalOriginal Paper

Pavel SIMEK, Jiri VANEK, Michal STOCES, Jan JAROLIMEK, Jan PAVLIK

Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2017, 63(5):197-203 | DOI: 10.17221/313/2015-AGRICECON  

The article analyses the potential expenditures that would be required in order to make the agrarian web information source (the areas of agriculture, food industry, forestry, water management) accessible from the mobile devices. The following approaches were analysed: creating of the responsive layout for mobile web browsers, creating a native application for the Android platform, and creating three native applications in the cross platform environment for the Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The experimental evaluation was performed using the Agrarian WWW portal AGRIS (www.agris.cz), which is one of the most visited online information source in the...

Farmers' motivation and perceived effects of participating in short food supply chains: evidence from a North Italian surveyOriginal Paper

Eugenio DEMARTINI, Anna GAVIGLIO, Alberto PIRANI

Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2017, 63(5):204-216 | DOI: 10.17221/323/2015-AGRICECON  

Local production supports the economies of place and increasingly makes sense as the citizen-consumers increase in number and awareness. Nonetheless, despite the value of the short supply chains, some researchers have reacted sceptically to the irrational optimism around this sales structure. A close relationship with consumers does not imply more profit or exchange fairness by definition. In fact, increasing marketing costs must be considered and there is still information asymmetry, and the profiteering farmers could take advantage of the consumer trust. Through data reduction we explored the farmers' motivation and perceived effects of participating...

Employer branding in the agricultural sector: making a company attractive for the potential employeesOriginal Paper

Hana URBANCOVA, Petr RICHTER, Lenka KUCIRKOVA, Martina JARKOVSKA

Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2017, 63(5):217-227 | DOI: 10.17221/338/2015-AGRICECON  

The specificity of the agricultural sector (seasonality, the methods of obtaining human resources and so on) affects the situation in the labour market. The demand of agriculture companies for qualified workers is relatively high; unfortunately, people still prefer to work in the related or other fields where they have more suitable work conditions related. Building the brand of the employer, improving the awareness of the public and increasing the loyalty of the present employees can raise the offer of vacancies and obtain new qualified employees. The aim of the paper is to identify the benefits of human resource branding in businesses arising therefrom....

A conjectural variation approach to vertical integration in agricultural cooperativesOriginal Paper

Yung-Chang WANG

Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2017, 63(5):228-233 | DOI: 10.17221/202/2016-AGRICECON  

Under the assumption that agricultural cooperative is a form of vertical integration, this paper, using conjectural variations, solves the profit-maximizing problem faced by the members in the multi-plant firm model in which they are vertically integrated with the agricultural cooperative. The average principle, the marginal principle, and the linear combination principle are derived for the competitive behaviour, collusive behaviour, and Cournot behaviour, respectively. The Nash equilibrium and economic efficiency in the cooperative system are then discussed. Finally, the model is numerically solved in an illustration. The marginal principle ensures...

The performance measurement of listed companies of the agribusiness sector on the stock exchange of ThailandOriginal Paper

Rapee PONGPANICH, Ke-Chung PENG, Kamonthip MAICHUM

Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2017, 63(5):234-245 | DOI: 10.17221/291/2015-AGRICECON  

Listed companies in the agribusiness sector of the stock exchange play a key role in driving the economic system of Thailand. They have an important role in terms of being the producers of agricultural commodities by covering all products from the upstream to downstream. The performance measurements of listed companies contain important information for forecasting the trends of agricultural production and yield. The paper studied and considered much of the literature on the performance measurement of organizations to look for relative variables and the optimal methodology. The study used panel data from 2011-2014, which collected the listed annual...