Conference Reports

Governments at all levels have assumed greater responsibility for, and involvement in, tourism destination planning and development. In the post-Brundtland era local governments in particular have been under closer scrutiny for their role in driving the sustainable development agenda in tourism destination contexts. Yet, a notable research gap still exists despite the increased focus on local government, particularly in terms of empirical research investigating the roles and responsibilities of local government in addressing sustainable tourism development. Given this context, this paper explores the role of local government in facilitating, or indeed inhibiting, sustainable development objectives in a tourism destination context. To assess this issue, it uses in-depth interviews with local government representatives and key destination stakeholders from five local government areas in Queensland, Australia. It shows that local government had assumed responsibility for facilitating the sustainable tourism agenda, due to the absence of strong industry leadership and due to top-down directives from state and federal governments. However, power struggles, tokenistic public participation and the strong influence of the local government authority in local governance structures were found to be inhibitors to sustainable tourism development.     

Whose property is it anyway? The social nature of economic actors and egalitarian remuneration ∗

This article formulates an egalitarian theory of property based on an ethic of remuneration for economic contributions. The principle of egalitarian remuneration is developed by revising basic notions of economic contributions. Economic contributions are found to be those activities that contribute to the value of commodities not just those that produce a product. Consumers, and not only producers, contribute to the creation of value, and these economic contributions make consumers eligible for remuneration. However, the concept of consumer contributions needs to be recast, for consumer contributions do not consist of neoclassical, individualistic actors maximizing subjective preferences. Rather, consumers economic contributions flow from their socially self-determined attributes as formed through relation to the system of economic actors. Indirect social contributions spread responsibility throughout the members of the system, affecting calculations of dueness. Other members indirect contributions are relatively equal in degree of responsibility for the social formation of the consumer's economic contributions. The dispersion and equalization of responsibility for the creation of economic contributions entails a correlative equalization of claims to remuneration, on a principle of dueness for economic contributions. This implies a property right to egalitarian remuneration.     

Can OECD Countries Afford Demographic Change?

This article provides new calculations on the effects of demographic change on living standards in all 30 OECD countries using the latest demographic projections up to 2050 from the United Nations, World Population Prospects, 2004 Revision. The calculations include several potential dividends that could offset, at least in part, the costs of a lower working age population share. The effects of demographic change calculated here are mechanical in that there is no explicit optimising behaviour. In the worst case scenario, which assumes zero potential dividends and no increase in labour force participation rates, the negative effect of demographic change on living standards among OECD countries over the whole period from 2006 to 2050 ranges from zero to 28 per cent, with an average over all countries of 15.5 per cent. In the best case scenario the average effect is zero. About half of the difference between the best and worst case scenarios is accounted for by higher labour force participation and about half by the potential dividends from demographic change.     

Method for identifying strategic objectives in strategy maps

This paper describes a simple tool for identifying strategic objectives as part of the design of strategy maps, based on the balanced scorecard, and meant to be used in organisations to establish performance indicators. To design the tool, a number of companies that implemented the balanced scorecard were analysed, in order to obtain their methodologies to create strategy maps. Three types of methods were found, different from each other in the way the strategic objectives are defined. By studying the benefits and drawbacks of the three methods, a simple, method was obtained. Basically, the method identifies general and specific strategic objectives and uses a modified SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. This paper also makes an analysis of the type of strategic objectives that the studied companies defined as part of the balanced scorecard implementation process.     

Universal Service: Competition,Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System. Milton L. Miller,Jr.

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Sunk Costs and the Entry Decision

This paper considers the role of sunk costs in the decision to enter a market. Its goal is to provide a policy-relevant approach to the question: when are sunk costs so great as to serve as a barrier to entry? To do this, the model presented nests both a model of pure hit-and-run entry and a simple “lottery-ticket” model of long-term entry in which the entrant knows that entry may or may not ultimately prove successful. It illustrates clearly the strategic differences between sunk and nonsunk fixed costs. The paper also considers the incumbent’s problem of choosing between entry deterrence and accommodation. Finally, out of this model comes a measure of the height of the sunk cost barrier to entry that may be useful for competition policy purposes.