Road accessibility is considered to be one of the major factors influencing (or correlated to) rural households’ access to- and participation in markets. However, there are few studies that investigate this important topic. This paper, therefore, explores the issue from both theoretical and practical perspectives with household and village level data from Northern Ethiopia. It is generally assumed that road accessibility significantly contributes to both access to- and participation in markets by rural households. The results in this study, however, suggest that neither participation in major markets nor the amount of purchased agricultural inputs use are significantly different for households with respect to the degree of road accessibility in the study area. Nevertheless, the situation seems somewhat better in locations with good access to roads. On the other hand, the results in this study confirm that road accessibility significantly contributes to reducing farm gate prices of manufactured goods and increasing farm gate prices of agricultural goods

Promotion of low-skilled off-farm rural labor market participation can be an important strategy to improve livelihoods and food security of the poor in developing countries. This paper investigates rural farm households’ participation in low-skilled off-farm labor markets with disaggregate data from a survey of 400 households in Tigray, the northern highlands of Ethiopia. Adopting Heckman’s two stage approach, we examined households’ decisions to participate or not in markets by probit model in the first stage and level of participation by ordinary least squares procedures in the second stage. The results show that households’ decision to enter into a labor market significantly depends on the characteristics of the households such as sex, age of the household heads and labor endowments in the households. Similarly, the level of participation in labor markets measured by the amount of off-farm wage income depends on labor endowments in the households and the place where the households are located. Since cash constrained rural households do not find themselves advantageous to participate in off-farm labor markets, the reduction of cash constraint is the major policy implication of the paper. This holds true in general for all cash constrained rural households in developing countries. Similarly, the empirical results in the paper suggest removal of locational barriers to access labor markets. This helps them to earn off-farm income. It is necessary to eliminate (or at least reduce) obstacles for rural households to enter into a market of off-farm wage earning activities. This holds true in general for all rural households in developing countries. This paper is therefore expected to contribute to frame appropriate policy that promotes participation in low-skilled off-farm rural labor markets in developing countries where many rural households are not only poor but also low-skilled.

This study will focus on students' attitude towards mathematics. A negative attitude might be one reason for choosing practical mathematics in upper secondary school. The sample includes 230 students from 3 business schools in Norway in their first half-year, when business mathematics was on their schedule. The data were collected through surveys. Then, using a factor analysis, a measurement instrument for 'attitude towards mathematics' was constructed. The chosen methods were the independent-samples t-test and a binary logistic regression. A substantial difference was found among the students depending on their choice of the mathematical level at uppersecondary school. The findings suggest that students with practical mathematics have substantially lower self-confidence, value and enjoyment in mathematics than those who chose the other levels of mathematics. Should Norwegian universities consider changing their requirements to a qualification level of skills within mathematics for degrees in economics and business administration? Changing the enrolment rules -requiring theoretical mathematics from uppersecondary school -would perhaps lead students with low selfconfidence and enjoyment in mathematics to choose courses that involve less use of mathematics.

This study explores leadership challenges related to the operationalisation of sustainable business models in offshore shipping. Based on a comparative case study, the study finds that the business model framework and the business model canvas' building blocks must be adapted and adjusted to the resources and capabilities of the firm and its strategic and industrial context and operation. Another crucial finding is that the processes and relationships between the business model's building blocksthe day-to-day actions and activities in developing, implementing and gradually revising and auditing a chosen business modelare strongly leadership and management intensive. By giving an example of sustainable value-creation, the study contributes to the state-of-the-art of corporate sustainability management and development by illustrating how new business models can be pursued in the maritime shipping industry.

Norway is a leading nation pursuing egalitarian public policies. With an aim to smooth out income differences between municipalities and to stabilize individual municipality's revenue over time, Norway has implemented a scheme called the income equalization system among municipalities. The scheme, which transfers revenue to poor municipalities, helps to maintain similar welfare services in all municipalities. We present and illustrate the model with data from all municipalities in Norway. We also demonstrate how the scheme helps stabilize tax revenue across municipalities over time. Furthermore, we show how the scheme can cause poor municipalities to have reduced incentives to increase their tax revenue.