Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.

No abstract

Economic crisis and labour force transition to inactivity: a comparative study in German rural and urban areasThis study analyses the determinants of labour force transition to inactivity in the German labour market. Using German Labour Force Survey data the infl uence on the transition fl ow to inactivity of factors such as age, education, marital status, sex and registration with the public employment service are examined. We present estimates of degree of urbanisation-specifi c multinominal logit models to analyse the determinants of individuals' transition probabilities in rural and urban areas. By comparing the infl uence of the factors that affect transition to inactivity before (2002-07) and during (2008-09) the global economic crisis, this paper contributes to the general understanding of transitional labour market fl ow dynamics during the crisis period. The fi ndings suggest that during the crisis period education level and marital status have had different impacts in rural and urban regions on the transition to inactivity. While these two factors infl uenced the transition to inactivity before the crisis, their effect has been stronger during it. Additionally the results suggest that the interaction of individuals with institutional settings (e.g. registration with the public employment service) have to be taken into account when designing active labour market policy measures, especially during crisis periods. Knowledge about the infl uence of these factors on the transition to inactivity, and their different effects in rural and urban areas, provides important information for designing policies aiming to reduce the transition to inactivity during crisis periods.

Abstract:The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of interpersonal networks and other information sources on the innovativeness of farmers. This understanding can be useful for organizations that are involved in extension work that aims to increase the farmers' innovativeness and/or farmers who aim to be more innovative. The study focuses on two types of farmers' network ties: friendship ties (ties to other farmers) and affiliation ties (ties to associations). Additionally, the importance of information gathered by farmers from interpersonal sources and from media is compared. We collected data within the EU-funded FOODIMA project using face-to-face interviews.Our sample, which consists of 72 farmers (organic and conventional) in Germany, was used to map farmers' innovativeness (number of innovations adopted). We use the logit and OLS regression models to find out if the structure and strength of network ties can be used as predictors of innovativeness for organic and conventional farmers. When considering both the friendship and affiliation ties, the main results show that organic farmers who communicate more frequently with other farmers are more likely to be highly innovative. The large network size indicates low innovativeness on the part of organic farmers. Membership in at least one association is positively interconnected with high innovativeness of conventional farmers. Regarding information sources, the results indicate that highly innovative farmers appreciate information from research institutes moreand information from agricultural organization less-than less innovative farmers.Key Words: Innovativeness, social network ties, communication frequency, information sources, organic and conventional farmers 1 The final version of this paper was published in Technology and Innovation, Vol. 16, pp. 3-17, 2014. This version presents authors' own final version, not the publisher's version.

No abstract