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The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has realized significant advances toward improving women's well-being and social status over the last few decades. However, women's employment rate in the MENA region remains one of the lowest in the world. This paper examines the implications of firm-related and national factors for female employment in manufacturing firms located in the MENA region. The empirical analysis is implemented for firm-level data derived from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys database. It uses fractional logit and other econometric models to perform the estimations for female overall employment, female non-production employment, and female employment in managerial positions. The results reveal significant implications of firm-related factors, such as private foreign ownership, exporting activities, firm size, and labour composition, for female employment. They also show that national factors, such as economic development and gender equality, promote female employment. There are considerable differences in the estimated marginal effects across female employment categories. This paper provides policy-makers with directions to design strategies aiming at enhancing women's economic opportunities and employment rates.

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This study investigates the determinants affecting producers' adoption of some Best Management Practices (BMPs). Priors about the signs of certain variables are explicitly accounted for by testing for inequality restrictions through importance sampling. Education, gender, age, and on-farm residence are found to have significant effects on the adoption of some BMPs. Farms with larger animal production are more apt to implement manure management practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Also, farms with larger cultivated acres are more inclined to implement herbicide control practices, crop rotation, and riparian buffer strips. Belonging to an agro-environment club has a positive impact for most BMPs.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse the export behaviour of manufacturing firms located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys Database. Design/methodology/approach -This paper examines the factors influencing the export behaviour of manufacturing firms located in the MENA region through a probit model for export decision and through a fractional logit model for export intensity. Findings -The empirical results show significant positive effects of private foreign ownership, information and communication technology, and firm size on the probability of exporting and on export intensity of MENA manufacturing firms. Government ownership tends to exert negative effects on firms' propensity to export. The results underscore enhancing effects of national economic development levels on firms' export performance. Also, they indicate that firms' propensity to export decreases with larger domestic market size. The empirical analysis reveals considerable heterogeneity in the implications of firm characteristics for firms' export behaviour through firm size categories and across MENA countries. Originality/value -This paper contributes to the literature by conducting overall and comparative cross-country empirical analyses of the factors influencing the export behaviour of manufacturing firms located in the MENA region. It also explores the specificities of small and large firms' responses to the factors influencing firms' export behaviour. The results have implications for policies intended to enhance industrial growth and international competitiveness of the manufacturing sector in the MENA region.

This study uses a random parameter probit estimation to examine the effects of tariff liberalization on the probability of establishing new trading relationships in meat commodities. Our simulation results indicate that the effects of tariff reductions decrease with distance, but increase with the level of development. The probabilities of trade increase at an increasing rate with the size of tariff reductions thus justifying calls for ambitious liberalization schemes. Canada and Mexico are the NAFTA countries that are most likely to export in response to EU tariff reductions on bovine and poultry meats, while Brazil and Argentina emerge as the MERCOSUR countries most likely to penetrate the EU bovine meat market after EU tariff reductions. Uruguay's probability to export poultry meat is most responsive to EU tariff reductions. Copyright (c) 2009 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

The authors derive a gravity framework that is compatible with the existence of reference prices for agricultural commodities. A commodity-specific gravity equation, estimated with Poisson pseudomaximum likelihood and threshold Tobit estimators, is used to investigate the effects of regional trade preferences for meat commodities.

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