Business Administration

This paper addresses the need of finding new ways of measuring the environmental and economic consequences of farming. The aim of this study is to inquire into the impacts that excessive intensifi-cation has on productivity and environmental costs in the long term and additionally, to explore empirically the trend of these two indicators over time. The contribution of this paper is to perform an empirical study of the trends of productivity and environmental costs of farming in the long-term. To this end, this paper performs a panel data analysis of productivity and environmental costs on a farm accounting database across European regions over the 1989e2009 period. The models proposed take (i) farm output per hectare as indicator of productivity, and (ii) expenditures on energy, pesticides and fertilisers per hectare as proxy indicators of environmental costs. Results provide empirical evidence that the regions under study have a negative trend of productivity and a positive trend of environmental costs over the time frame mentioned. These results correlate negatively with both, economic and environmental sustainability of farms. Arguably, this is aggravated in the latter due to hidden environmental costs valued at zero in traditional accounting.

Works on student absenteeism in the universities have not been preferential for the authors in the field of educational research. Usually, what has been made is an approach to the available absenteeism data as an intervening variable or as a variable characteristic of the educational process, but not as a dependent variable in the strict sense of the term. In this work, we intend to make an empirical approach to the possible reasons of student absenteeism. There is a double point of view: the students’ and the professors’; the reasons that justify it according to its protagonists are studied. This paper focuses on the six university degrees taught at the School of Economy and Business of the University of Barcelona (Facultat d’Economia i Empresa de la Universitat de Barcelona). An “ad-hoc” questionnaire has been prepared and the opinions of 1,162 undergraduates have been analyzed. The reasons given by each population differ in hierarchy and motivations.

Description
Providing a global survey of public policies and programs for building national and regional ecosystems of science and technology based entrepreneurial development, this book offers a unique analysis of the advances, over the last several decades and in light of the experiential knowledge gained in various parts of the world, in the understanding of innovation systems in the pursuit of developing these economies. Presenting nineteen case studies of diverse developed and emerging economy nations and their regions, more than thirty expert authors describe an array of policy and program mechanisms that have been implemented over the years.

Further information
Providing a global survey of public policies and programs for building national and regional ecosystems of science and technology based entrepreneurial development, this book offers a unique analysis of the advances, over the last several decades and in light of the experiential knowledge gained in various parts of the world, in the understanding of innovation systems in the pursuit of developing these economies. Presenting nineteen case studies of diverse developed and emerging economy nations and their regions, more than thirty expert authors describe an array of policy and program mechanisms that have been implemented over the years.

The in-depth analyses of the worldwide efforts featured in this volume provide the reader with several valuable lessons. There are clear indications of a trend toward better cohesion and coordination of national efforts to improve innovation but also a trend toward the broadening of regional agendas to address technology, talent, capital, innovation infrastructure and entrepreneurship culture issues – considered essential for knowledge based entrepreneurial growth. The book also offers a unique treatment of grassroots level programmatic aspects of these efforts, including some novel entrepreneurial mechanisms employed for policy implementation.

The book’s blend of theory and practice provides valuable insights to the reader, particularly government, academic and private sector policymakers and scholars researching or involved directly with efforts to build and support the development of science and technology based entrepreneurial regions.

Henry Brubaker is a visual case used in different subjects in the area of business organization to delve into the subject of design and implementation of organizational structures. The projection to the students has been conducted by using different methodologies. The authors have already proven that the audiovisual case methodology is substantially related to the increases of student motivation not only to attend the lesson, but also to study the subject. It is not significant, moreover, that there is also a strong evidence for a positive correlation between the audiovisual case methodology used and improvements in the learning process. Likewise, the observations that the authors have collected so far suggest that this way of teaching fosters a better understanding of the theoretical concepts explained in the classroom.