Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Václav KLEPAC Author-Name: David HAMPEL Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Statistics and Operation Analysis, Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic Title: Predicting financial distress of agriculture companies in EU Abstract: The objective of this paper is the prediction of financial distress (default of payment or insolvency) of 250 agriculture business companies in the EU from which 62 companies defaulted in 2014 with respect to lag of the used attributes. From many types of classification models, there was chosen the Logistic regression, the Support vector machines method with the RBF ANOVA kernel, the Decision Trees and the Adaptive Boosting based on the decision trees to acquire the best results. From the results, it is obvious that with the increasing distance to the bankruptcy, there decreases the average accuracy of the financial distress prediction and there is a greater difference between the active and distressed companies in terms of liquidity, rentability and debt ratios. The Decision trees and Adaptive Boosting offer a better accuracy for the distress prediction than the SVM and logit methods, what is comparable to the previous studies. From the total of 15 accounting variables, there were constructed classification trees by the Decision Trees with the inner feature selection method for the better visualization, what reduces the full data set only to 1 or 2 attributes: ROA and Long-term Debt to Total Assets Ratio in 2011, ROA and Current Ratio in 2012, ROA in 2013 for the discrimination of the distressed companies. Keywords: agribusiness, classification, constrains, decision tree, default, nonlinear techniques, support vector machines Journal: Agricultural Economics Pages: 347-355 Volume: 63 Issue: 8 Year: 2017 DOI: 10.17221/374/2015-AGRICECON File-URL: http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/374/2015-AGRICECON.html File-Format: text/html X-File-Ref: http://agriculturejournals.cz/RePEc/caa/references/age-201708-0001.txt Handle: RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:63:y:2017:i:8:id:374-2015-AGRICECON Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jindrich SPICKA Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information, Prague, Czech Republic Author-Name: Zdenka NAGLOVA Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Agricultural Economics and Information, Prague, Czech Republic Author-Name: Martin GURTLER Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic Title: Effects of the investment support in the Czech meat processing industry Abstract: The goal of the paper is to quantify and evaluate the effects of investment subsidies in the Czech meat processing industry. The investment subsidies should enhance the economic results of the supported companies and increase their competitiveness. The analysis is based on the fixed-effect modelling of balanced panel data of 130 meat processors in the period 2008-2013. It quantifies the impact of investment subsidies from the Rural Development Programme (RDP) and the national support programme (Decree of MoA) on profitability, labour productivity, credit debt ratio and the efficiency of production consumption. The conclusions can be generalized for medium-sized and large companies. The results show that investment subsidies from the RDP had not such a significant effect as expected. Investment subsidies from the RDP affected only the labour productivity of large meat processors and the ROA of non-family companies. However, they should preferably help small and medium-sized companies to be more competitive. Subsidies from the national programme increased the profitability of family-owned and medium-sized companies and changed the capital structure of the supported companies which used more bank loans for upgrading the technology. Keywords: fixed-effect model, impact assessment, national subsidies, Rural Development Programme Journal: Agricultural Economics Pages: 356-369 Volume: 63 Issue: 8 Year: 2017 DOI: 10.17221/367/2015-AGRICECON File-URL: http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/367/2015-AGRICECON.html File-Format: text/html X-File-Ref: http://agriculturejournals.cz/RePEc/caa/references/age-201708-0002.txt Handle: RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:63:y:2017:i:8:id:367-2015-AGRICECON Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jorge LOZANO Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of la Rioja, Logrono, Spain Author-Name: Juan Carlos SAENZ-DIEZ Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of la Rioja, Logrono, Spain Author-Name: Eduardo MARTINEZ Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of la Rioja, Logrono, Spain Author-Name: Emilio JIMENEZ Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of la Rioja, Logrono, Spain Author-Name: Julio BLANCO Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of la Rioja, Logrono, Spain Title: Integration of the SMED for the improvement of the supply chain management of spare parts in the food sector Abstract: The Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) methodology is well-known. A great variety of studies in the field of manufacturing and production process use it, but there are few applications of this methodology in the area of the supply chain management. In the paper, the philosophy of the SMED methodology is applied to the part of the supply chain that includes the spare parts and fixtures in the food sector. This involves studying the relationship with the supplier of the installation of spare parts and fixture on the machine. The study shows how the spare parts management has several phases: the coordination and purchase of the spare parts to the supplier, the storage of these spare parts, the coordination of these spare parts and the scheduled maintenance, and the installation of these spare parts on the machine. The implantation of the developed working methodology has obtained a relevant improvement in the coordination and management of the spare parts. In such a way, that storage time has been reduced (inside the company's storages) and the performance has been increased, focusing on and detailing the maintenance task and scheduling the available resources. Keywords: food industry, inventory management, SMED, spare parts management, supply chain management Journal: Agricultural Economics Pages: 370-379 Volume: 63 Issue: 8 Year: 2017 DOI: 10.17221/69/2016-AGRICECON File-URL: http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/69/2016-AGRICECON.html File-Format: text/html X-File-Ref: http://agriculturejournals.cz/RePEc/caa/references/age-201708-0003.txt Handle: RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:63:y:2017:i:8:id:69-2016-AGRICECON Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Radosław PASTUSIAK Author-Workplace-Name: Corporate Finance Department, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland Author-Name: Magdalena JASINIAK Author-Workplace-Name: Corporate Finance Department, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland Author-Name: Michał SOLIWODA Author-Workplace-Name: Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics, National Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland Author-Name: Joanna STAWSKA Author-Workplace-Name: Centre of Central Banking and Financial Intermediation, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland Title: What may determine off-farm income? A review Abstract: Farming is treated as one of the riskiest businesses. Political decisions, especially these related to the agricultural sector, may be treated as of a great importance. As a consequence, farm owners seek to diversify their sources of income and run other strategies aiming to stabilize their earnings i.e. by off-farm activities. The paper selected key groups of the determinants of the off-farm income with the aim to evaluate the current state and to propose further steps of the detailed analysis. The authors identified the mechanisms how the particular instruments influence farmers' decisions on generating the off-farm income. It may be concluded that the significance of direct payments is still very high. Subsidies generally discourage farmers from the non-agriculture employment. The influence of socio-demographic characteristics is significant, however, the strength of this impact is determined by the additional factors like the situation in the labour market. In case of environmental determinants, it should be noted that there is a limited group of factors that may be out of control by the farm operators. The value added of the article is an attempt to identify the mechanisms how the particular instruments may influence farmers' decisions on generating the off-farm income. The article finishes with the authors' recommendations for further empirical studies. Keywords: agriculture, farm efficiency, income diversification, off-farm employment Journal: Agricultural Economics Pages: 380-391 Volume: 63 Issue: 8 Year: 2017 DOI: 10.17221/123/2016-AGRICECON File-URL: http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/123/2016-AGRICECON.html File-Format: text/html X-File-Ref: http://agriculturejournals.cz/RePEc/caa/references/age-201708-0004.txt Handle: RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:63:y:2017:i:8:id:123-2016-AGRICECON