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Studies the process of implementing industrial robots in Spanish industry. Most of the firms surveyed already had experience of automation and used the first robot to gain experience of this new technology. The training and integration of staff in the project, the firm′s technology level and support from top management were found to be the factors which have the most influence on producing positive results when robots are introduced.

The access to the rare originals of the early Spanish colonial imprints of the Philippines remains problematic. The reference librarians often are restricted to directing the students and scholars to the secondary resources that are available both in print and as a part of the digital assets within the North American academic libraries. This paper aims to focus on the select primary source editions including select Spanish language colonial imprints that are available electronically on the Web along the Open Access. These Web-based resources serve as the reference tools for the early history of the Philippines and Southeast Asia. As many of these publications are rare and extremely expensive for most libraries, the Open Access resources serve as an aid to building a virtual collection of these items.

The author had to create a data set of the early imprints of the Spanish Philippines using several bibliographic resources. The data set will be submitted as an Appendix for this research paper. The author did both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data set along with the voyant-based digital humanities approach for topic modeling.

The goals of this paper were to not only survey the early Spanish printing of the Philippines but also provide the reader with a somewhat complete picture of how the printing began in the Spanish Philippines, what kind of the first books were printed and how one can access them given their rarity and fragility. The collection building paradigms are undergoing significant shifts, and the focus of many academic libraries is shifting toward providing access to these items. As these items high-value low-use items continue to be part of the Special Collections, the access to these is problematic. The virtual collections thus serve as a viable alternative that enables further research and access. While the creators of these works are long gone, the legacy of the Spanish colonial domination, printing and the religious orders in the Philippines remain alive through these works.

As this is an introductory paper, the author focused on the critical editions rather than providing a comprehensive bibliographic landscape of the presses that produced these editions. He also did not take into consideration many pamphlets that were published in the same period. He also did not consider the Chinese language publications of the Islands. The Chinese had been block printing since medieval times (Little, 1996). In the context of the Spanish Philippines, the Chinese migration and trade have been studied in detail by Chia (2006), Bjork (1998) and Gebhardt (2017). The scope of this paper also was centered toward building a virtual collection of these rare books.

Rare books are often expensive and out-of-reach for many libraries; the virtual collection of the same along the Open Access model represents an alternative to collect and curate these collections. The stewardship of these collections also acquires a new meaning in the digital milieu.

This research paper will allow scholars to see past the analog editions and help them focus on curating a virtual collection. The questions of electronic access are often ignored when it comes to visiting and using them in a controlled environment of the reading room in the Special Collections. The author argues that one way to enable access to these rare and expensive books is to provide access to their digital counterparts. These digital/virtual surrogates of the originals will facilitate further research.

The author could not find similar research on the publications of the early Spanish colony of the Philippines.

The aim of this study is to estimate the technical efficiency of the massive and economically important crop of rice in Ecuador, and then conduct a comparison between groups of farmers with and without insurance.

The authors use an input-oriented data envelopment analysis approach (DEA) to estimate technical efficiency scores. The DEA is combined with the double bootstrap approach in Simar and Wilson (2007) to study factors that may affect technical efficiency. This method overcomes the traditional two-stage DEA approach frequently used in the efficiency literature. The authors thus research the role of insurance on rice efficiency production using this technique and sizeable field-level survey data from 376 rice farmers distributed in five provinces during the 2019 winter cycle in Ecuador.

Most uninsured rice farmers operate with increasing returns to scale, which means that farms improve their resource use efficiency by increasing their size. However, since scale efficiencies are relatively high, it appears that inefficiencies are explained by inadequate input use. Also, the authors find evidence that insured farmers have a negative relationship with technical efficiency in rice production. In other results, when exploring the influence of additional variables on efficiency, the authors find that parameters related to transplanting, high education, farm size and some locations are positive and statistically significant.

The results of this work are relevant for policymakers interested in evaluating technology performance, risk management instruments and farm efficiency in an industry in a developing country such as rice production in Ecuador.

This paper is the first attempt to estimate farm-level technical efficiency employing the double bootstrap approach to assess the efficiency and its determinants of Ecuadorian rice producers.

This research sheds light on the distinct decision-making behaviors and perceptions related to the value attributed to money, uncovering nuances in the interrelationship between money valuation and its ensuing influence on risk perceptions and related behaviors, mainly focusing on financial education.

Executed in the Brazilian market, this study employs a quantitative approach, encompassing 663 participants and deploying comprehensive statistical methodologies – principally, structural equation modeling based on variances – to scrutinize the amassed primary data.

The insights from the study reveal a significant impact of both negative money value (NMV) and positive money value (PMV) on participants' financial decisions, profoundly shaping perceptions, acceptances and responses to risk. Consequently, this study underscores the pivotal role the perceived value of money plays in sculpting financial behaviors and formulating risk management strategies. Distinctly, this research emphasizes intrinsic monetary values, extending unprecedented insights by delineating aversive behaviors toward losses and risks and probing the repercussions of both negative and positive monetary values.

It acts as an avant-garde exploration, unveiling new perspectives on upcoming consumers' anticipated financial decision-making approaches and pinpointing areas warranting deeper exploration and comprehension within the fluid consumer market landscape.

Esta investigación arroja luz sobre los distintos comportamientos y percepciones en la toma de decisiones relacionadas con el valor atribuido al dinero, descubriendo matices en la interrelación entre la valoración del dinero y su influencia subsiguiente en las percepciones de riesgo y comportamientos relacionados, centrándose principalmente en la educación financiera.

Ejecutado en el mercado brasileño, este estudio emplea un enfoque cuantitativo, abarcando a 663 participantes y desplegando metodologías estadísticas integrales, principalmente el Modelado de Ecuaciones Estructurales basado en varianzas, para escrutar los datos primarios acumulados.

Las percepciones obtenidas en el estudio revelan un impacto significativo tanto de los Valores Negativos como de los Valores Positivos del Dinero en las decisiones financieras de los participantes, moldeando profundamente percepciones, aceptaciones y respuestas al riesgo. En consecuencia, este estudio subraya el papel fundamental que desempeña el valor percibido del dinero en la formación de comportamientos financieros y en la formulación de estrategias de gestión de riesgos. De manera distintiva, esta investigación enfatiza los valores monetarios intrínsecos, ampliando perspectivas sin precedentes al delinear comportamientos aversivos hacia pérdidas y riesgos y explorar las repercusiones de los valores monetarios negativos y positivos.

Actúa como una exploración vanguardista, desvelando nuevas perspectivas sobre los enfoques de toma de decisiones financieras anticipadas por parte de los consumidores emergentes y señalando áreas que requieren una exploración y comprensión más profundas dentro del dinámico panorama del mercado de consumidores.

In developing economies, 30% of the gross domestic product on average is undertaken by unregistered businesses. The informal economy leads to high opportunity costs by preventing gains from trade with strangers. To overcome this obstacle, sellers who usually operate in the informal economy should strive to move to formal markets. Current theories are drawn from a view of markets as institutions governed by formal and informal rules. In a nutshell, informal-formal market transitions must be met with a regulative solution. However, the overall results have been disappointing. This failure invites a re-diagnosis of the problem that informal sellers face to act in formal markets and suggesting novel solutions. This paper aims to address this gap.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors adopt MacInnis’s (2011) framework to characterize the approach to theory development.

The authors argue that extant views of formal/informal markets differences address only one of Scott’s (2014) three pillars (regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive). By drawing on Bourdieu’s legacy, the authors propose a cultural-cognitive reading of institutions and suggest it offers a lens to understand the problem as an access challenge, and thus a marketing problem. This perspective allows us to conceptualize informal/formal markets as two distinct institutional fields and argues that all individuals inhabit a particular habitus and contend that moving between markets requires a habitus shift. Thus, acting in formal markets involves bridging a habitus gap. Finally, the authors argue the need for a market-facing intermediary that takes on a market habitus bridging role.

The authors suggest future research efforts could benefit from this new conceptual lens as a means of re-diagnosing other forms of market access that have produced disappointing results.

By looking at differences between formal and informal markets as a habitus gap, the allocation of public funds to support transitions can be better targeted and spent.

The concept of market-facing intermediaries suggests that the beneficiary (e.g. informal seller) and target populations can be different. This insight could catalyze social innovation and trigger novel perspectives to design systemic solutions.

Conceptualizing the formal-informal market transition as a habitus gap suggests new directions to resolve access challenges and a new mediator solution.

The Geography of Tourism in Spain is now at a par in terms of its scientific production with other European countries. Since the middle of the '80s the quality and volume of contributions is analogous to the rest of the European Union, although as a part of University Geography in Spain it has not achieved the level of dedication reached by other subjects considering the importance of tourist activities to the economy, the society and the territory of Spain. It could be said that the Geography of Tourism in Spain is in the international vanguard in dealing with Mediterranean coastal tourism, with the relationships between the residential real estate and tourism sectors and with aspects related to tourism and leisure in rural and protected areas.

The aim of this research is to analyse the literature on drinking water management in Mexico City and Singapore, considering water supply, institutional organisation and management, and rates so as to propose recommendations for improvement in the water management of the Mexico City.

The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) methodology is used to review the literature on drinking water management in Mexico City and Singapore in time periods from 1325 to 2021 and from 1819 to 2021, respectively, emphasising the contemporary part. The information search was realised through different prestigious databases and official documents from the governments of Mexico and Singapore, as well as international organisations. After analysing, 40 documents were included to discuss the results.

There is a contrast between water management in Singapore and Mexico City because Singapore has strong institutions coordinated with each other along with the private and social sectors and has efficient fundraising and infrastructure investment systems. Although they are cities that developed in different circumstances, a comparison between them allowed to glimpse some aspects that may be useful to replicate in Mexico City.

This research is novel because there is no comparative analysis like the one presented in the literature, so it is suggested to continue delving into the topics covered in future research to have more elements that allow improving drinking water management in Mexico City.

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the contribution made by migrants in the territory that hosts them, particularly when they transfer their knowledge to members of the community. In the specific case of the sea urchin fishery, it is described how the Morishita family in Baja California undertakes the sea urchin value chain, from the location of population banks to the commercialization of the product in the Japanese market and, by therefore, the promotion of development in rural places while starting a culture of export and currency generation. An adventure of opportunities that has been successful for more than 50 years, whose origin is the sustainable use of “a plague” that today is a delicacy for many.