The social construction of the tourism degrowth discourse in the Balearic Islands

Abstract

In recent years, overtourism and tourism gentrification have been a central feature of public debate in the Balearic Islands, one of the most touristified regions on the planet. In this context, the discourse of tourism degrowth has thrived, being discussed across the political spectrum and even serving to legitimize a sustainable tourism plan and a new Tourism Act. This article provides a brief analysis of the debate around tourism degrowth in the 2014–2019 period and differentiates between two approaches. On the one hand, tourism degrowth has been used by socio-environmental platforms as a byword for detourisfication and the politicization of the hegemonic consensus on tourism. On the other, degrowth has been adopted as a green washing rhetoric in order to justify public policies aimed at tourist decongestion through deseasonalizing, while promoting tourism expansion. This work brings into focus the social construction of the tourism degrowth narrative by applying critical discourse analysis. We conclude that the debate over tourism degrowth is not just a discrepancy between different approaches to deal with overtourism, tourism pressure and gentrification. It is also a social struggle where the discourse over tourism degrowth has helped new democratic political subjects to coalesce and organize in civil society.     

Unemployment and the shadow economy

Current research links the shadow economy (SE) and the unemployment rate either indirectly or by means of a preliminary estimate. This article establishes and empirically implements a methodology for estimating the size of the SE as a direct function of the tax and unemployment rates. This link is found to be extremely relevant in countries with high unemployment rates (such as Greece and Spain) and less relevant in countries with moderate unemployment rates (such as Germany and Italy). Unemployment’s contribution to the SE is shown to be significant, especially in the years following the economic downturn of 2008. The calculation of the variance and distribution of these estimates is another significant contribution. The common criticism that SE estimates are unreliable is addressed by calculating the variance and the distribution of the estimates, and the large size of the SE in Greece and Spain is once again confirmed.     

Claiming Rights To Mobility Through The Right To Inhabitance: Discursive Articulations from Civic Actors in Montreal

How do claims for rights to mobility intersect with grievances pertaining to spatial justice in the city? This article addresses the issue by studying the concrete connections made by activists promoting car alternatives in Montreal. The activists' discursive categories point to the centrality of their conditions of inhabitance in their claims for certain rights to mobility. The discourses are analysed in the context of demands for safe spaces to walk and cycle in Montreal, and in the context of opposition to the rebuilding of the Turcot highway interchange. The article discusses internal dynamics of collective action, as well as the external influences and controls on activists contesting automobility to various degrees and with different spatially grounded priorities. The claims for rights to mobility rely on locally articulated priorities for better conditions of inhabitance, yet with a transversal reliance on a shared sense of threat and vulnerability, and on the representations of a community (whether local or multi‐scalar), enabling changes in the physical framing of mobility.     

Institutional Constraints,Stakeholder Pressure and Corporate Environmental Reporting Policies

Within the theoretical framework of socio‐political economics, and more specifically of stakeholder theory, this work examines whether companies operating under different institutional constraints and stakeholder pressure tend to emphasize different models of corporate environmental reporting. Furthermore, the paper tests whether different corporate environmental reporting policies are driven by the countries' corporate governance systems. A sample of 3931 international companies was examined through a logistic biplot and conditional mean linear regression models. The main results reveal that companies follow two distinct environmental reporting approaches, which depend on specific stakeholders and institutional requirements. The first model, which is followed by firms within codified law countries, mostly focuses on water and emissions. The second approach, mainly followed by companies operating in common law countries, emphasizes materials and energy issues. This finding reveals that companies gradually modify their environmental strategies to make themselves more compatible with the characteristics of the social and institutional environment, which will result in several corporate benefits. The paper provides several outstanding implications for companies' strategic managers, national institutions and firms' stakeholders, especially for investors and customers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

OPTIMAL HIGH‐FREQUENCY TRADING IN A PRO RATA MICROSTRUCTURE WITH PREDICTIVE INFORMATION

We propose a framework to study optimal trading policies in a one‐tick pro rata limit order book, as typically arises in short‐term interest rate futures contracts. The high‐frequency trader chooses to post either market orders or limit orders, which are represented, respectively, by impulse controls and regular controls. We discuss the consequences of the two main features of this microstructure: first, the limit orders are only partially executed, and therefore she has no control on the executed quantity. Second, the high‐frequency trader faces the overtrading risk, which is the risk of large variations in her inventory. The consequences of this risk are investigated in the context of optimal liquidation. The optimal trading problem is studied by stochastic control and dynamic programming methods, and we provide the associated numerical resolution procedure and prove its convergence. We propose dimension reduction techniques in several cases of practical interest. We also detail a high‐frequency trading strategy in the case where a (predictive) directional information on the price is available. Each of the resulting strategies is illustrated by numerical tests.     

Approaching virtuousness through organizational ethical quality: toward a moral corporate social responsibility

Today, in both theory and practice, the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics are not necessarily related. Organizations can demonstrate high levels of social proactivity in their CSR policies with or without having laudable levels of ethical quality or virtuousness. This article introduces the concepts of organizational ethical quality (OEQ) to evaluate the moral excellence of CSR actions and policies, identifying and categorizing varying levels ranging from the absence of ethical virtuousness, termed immoral CSR (ICSR), to high levels of moral CSR (MCSR), or ethical virtuousness. High MCSR is the product of both high levels of OEQ in conjunction with more proactive CSR policies based on social action.     

Human Capital Spillovers and Regional Development

This paper introduces technological interdependence into the theoretical framework of Gennaioli et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics 2013; 128 : 105–164). This extension leads to an expression for regional development with spatial effects that motivates the incorporation of the geographical dimension into their newly constructed database and empirical analysis. Our estimation results corroborate both the necessity of accounting for the presence of spatial dependence to study the determinants of regional income per capita and the importance of educational attainment in explaining regional development differences. Furthermore, we provide evidence that human capital generates positive spatial spillovers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Injury-related hospitalizations in 2002 and 2012 in a Mexican rural hospital: differences between indigenous and non-indigenous inpatients

Data are lacking on the extent and distribution of injuries in rural areas. This study aimed at comparing injury-related hospitalizations between 2002 and 2012 at a rural hospital of northern Mexico focusing on differences between indigenous (IP) and non-indigenous patients (NIP). A retrospective design based on the review of records of patients hospitalized with injury diagnoses was used. Information extracted included ethnicity, sex, age, hospital duration, surgical procedures, complications and discharge outcome. Injury data comprised of main diagnosis, mechanism and body part affected. Patterns were stratified by year and ethnicity. Logistic regression was used to determine the probability of being hospitalized for >1 day. Injury-related mortality increased from 0.4% in 2002 to 3.1% in 2012. The proportion of non-indigenous patients hospitalized also increased by 4.5%. Men accounted for two-thirds of all inpatients. Weapon involvement doubled from 16.6% to 33.6%. Almost half of the patients in 2012 were victims of interpersonal violence. Indigenous patients had a 2.7 higher adjusted odds ratios of being hospitalized for >1 day in 2002 (95% CI 1.2–5.7), though the gap was reduced to 1.9 (1.1–3.5) in 2012. While indigenous patients continue to be more disadvantaged than the non-indigenous, the gaps closed in 2012; the reasons behind these disparities need to be further investigated.     

Networks,Entrepreneurial Orientation,and Internationalization Scope: Evidence from Chilean Small and Medium Enterprises

During the last 20 years, the literature on internationalized small firms discussed at length the speed of internationalization, illustrating the importance of born globals. The geographic scope of small firm internationalization and its implications for international business and entrepreneurship theories has however been overlooked, especially with regard to firms based in Latin America. This study expands the research agenda on the effects of networks and entrepreneurship orientation for the internationalization strategy of small firms by examining their effects on internationalization scope. It uses survey data from small firms based in Chile. The findings suggest that the greater the number of networks utilized, the more entrepreneurs are likely to target markets based in diverse regions of the world. The study has managerial and policy implications, suggesting that nurturing diverse international networks can help entrepreneurs reach a broader number of markets.