Suchergebnisse

Over the last decade, the international legislation related to corruption — in particular, bribery — has been significantly reformed (since the 1998 OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions) and has put significant pressure on organisations to act with integrity, especially when operating abroad. Compliance with the new legislation is becoming increasingly complex and the consequence of non-compliance may have substantial financial and reputational impacts on organisations. Recent high-profile cases include Balfour Beatty paying £2.25m over allegations of bribery in Egypt (Leigh and Evans 2008); Aon, which was fined £5.25m for failings in its anti-bribery and corruption systems and controls resulting in illegal payments to third parties to obtain business overseas (Essen 2009); and BAE Systems, which pleaded guilty to making false statements about its corruption compliance programme and was ordered to pay $400m (£288m) to settle bribery charges (Thompson 2010). These high-profile events highlight the vulnerability of many of today's global organisations to bribery/corruption risk and have brought anti-corruption compliance to the top of boardroom agendas.

Pangolins are currently the most smuggled mammals in the world. Meanwhile, Taiwan has demonstrated the world's first case of the use of artificial feeding to raise pangolins to adulthood. The government has also begun to cooperate with farmers in pangolin-spotted areas. Agricultural products can earn the green label once they have passed the evaluation. The challenge is that very few farms have obtained the pangolin-friendly label so far. Our hypothesis is that farmers lack the knowledge that consumers would pay additional money for products that are labeled pangolin-friendly compared to regular ones. Thus, farmers have an insufficient incentive to apply for this label. This research aims to fill this gap by providing people with the necessary knowledge. Contingent valuation with the single-bounded dichotomous choice format was used, which involved investigating 417 valid observations. We found the following: (1) customers are willing to pay about 8.06 USD for pangolin-friendly rice (an increase of 397% in relation to the mean price of rice) ; (2) customers are willing to pay for about 11.46 USD for pangolin-friendly tea (an increase of 179% in relation to the mean price of tea) ; and (3) customers are willing to pay about 25.81 USD for pangolin-friendly coffee (an increase of 509% in relation to the mean price of coffee). Our findings give farmers more incentive to conduct eco-friendly production. Consequently, the quality of agricultural products as well as the habitats of endangered pangolins improve. Thus, consumers' health, the environment, and the future of pangolin conservation can benefit in this attempt to achieve sustainability.

AbstractAn alarming number of students drop out of junior high school in developing countries. In this study, we examine the impacts of providing a social–emotional learning (SEL) program on the dropout behavior and learning anxiety of students in the first two years of junior high. We do so by analyzing data from a randomized controlled trial involving 70 junior high schools and 7,495 students in rural China. After eight months, the SEL program reduces dropout by 1.6 percentage points and decreases learning anxiety by 2.3 percentage points. Effects are no longer statistically different from zero after 15 months, perhaps due to decreasing student interest in the program. However, we do find that the program reduces dropout among students at high risk of dropping out (older students and students with friends who have already dropped out), both after eight and 15 months of exposure to the SEL program.