An economic analysis of factors influencing rural‐urban migration in southern Africa

Rural‐urban migration is a serious problem being encountered by developing countries, including South Africa. A single‐equation model is formulated to test hypotheses concerning the determinants, namely personal and household characteristics, of the decision by household heads in Ciskei to migrate. The migration model was expressed as a dichotomous ordered‐response model using logistic regression. The results suggest that the personal characteristics of the household heads had a bearing on the probability of migration. The coefficients of the household characteristics, with the exception of the number of adults in the household, were found to have a statistically weak association with the decision to migrate.     

THE RISK IMPLICATIONS OF FORECAST ERRORS OF BANK EARNINGS, 1976–1986

The forecast errors arising from security analysts' predictions of commercial bank earnings are investigated here and compared with the earnings forecast errors associated with savings and loans, other financial services organizations, and a random sample of nonfinancial firms from 1976 to 1986. Although bank earnings forecast errors did increase over 1976–1986, analyses suggest that the rise was less than at other industries considered in the study. The increase in forecast errors appears to be centered at multinational banking organizations, with only limited increases in earnings forecast errors at regional banks.     

Demand Estimation in the Presence of Stochastic Trend and Seasonality: The Case of Meat Demand in the United Kingdom

If budget shares have stochastic trend or seasonality or both, then demand equations based on the assumption of deterministic trend and deterministic seasonality will be mis-specified. We test this proposition by estimating a Linearized Almost Ideal (LAI) demand system for meat demand in the United Kingdom using Harvey's structural time series methodology. We demonstrate that the model specification allowing for stochastic trend and deterministic seasonality performs best in terms of diagnostic tests and goodness of fit measures. It is also shown that the model with stochastic trend is better at out-of-sample forecasting.     

Student Work Placements in Small Firms: Do They Pay-off or Shift Tastes?

We present a model of training investments and employment outcomes. In this model training may enhance trainees’ tastes for particular types of career (taste shift) and/or shift their wage offer distributions (pay-off). An empirical analysis is conducted with a unique data-set of UK graduates. These data contain information on students’ career tastes before small-firm placements as well as their employment outcomes after graduation. Analysis of these data indicates that the placements provide a pay-off among highly employable graduates who face certain disadvantages in the labour market. Conversely individuals, who expressed a taste for small-firm careers before placements, are more likely to take-up small-firm employment after placements suggesting these individuals experience enhanced opportunities for their preferred career. However individuals with pre-placement large-firm preferences have no greater likelihood of entering small-firms’ employment after placements indicating there is no fundamental effect on career tastes.     

Adverse Selection in the Environmental Stewardship Scheme: Does the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme Design Reduce Adverse Selection?

The Environmental Stewardship Scheme provides payments to farmers for the provision of environmental services based on foregone agricultural income. This creates a potential incentive compatibility problem which, combined with information asymmetry about farm land potential, can lead to adverse selection of land into the Scheme and therefore a less cost‐effective provision of environmental goods and services. However, the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) Scheme design includes some features that potentially reduce adverse selection. This paper studies the adverse selection problem of the HLS using a principal‐agent framework at the regional level. It is found that, at the regional level, the enrolment of more land from lower payment regions for a given budget constraint has reduced the adverse selection problem through contracting a greater overall area and thus higher overall environmental benefit. In addition, for landscape regions with the same payment rate (i.e. of the same agricultural value), differential weighting of the public demand for environmental goods and services provided by agriculture (measured by weighting an environmental benefit function by the distance to main cities) appears to be reflected in the regulator’s allocation of contracts, thereby also reducing the adverse selection problem.     

Bleisure: motivations and typologies

ABSTRACT

The theme of motivation in travel and tourism research has been largely dominated by a leisure focus and has consequently failed to reflect the changing landscape of business travel. This paper focuses on exploring the motivations of different types of “bleisure travelers”: individuals who combine leisure with professional business obligations when abroad. We employ a multi-disciplinary mixed-methods approach, using photo-elicitation to identify and describe five types of bleisure. As existing theories of tourist motivations have mainly been developed in a leisure context, they fail to fully capture the nuanced scope and subtle context of business and leisure motives. We therefore draw upon experiential learning, boundary-less career theory, expectancy theory, and social capital theory in order to put forward contemporary insights on the nexus between business and leisure tourism.     

Understanding pre-teen consumers social media engagement

Social media (SM) platforms are frequently used by pre-teen (8–12-year old) consumers for curating their self-identity, developing social relationships and for learning. This paper identifies the building blocks that drive pre-teen SM engagement. We use the Gioia method to analyse interview data collected from 32 pre-teens and parents, in France. Findings show that the primary building blocks are FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) and social inclusive experience, being noticed online, multiplicity, excessive use (without guidelines) and self-regulation. Identity constructs (self-identity and social-identity) are used to explain SM engagement – and to empirically define core conceptual building blocks (aggregate dimensions) that drive SM engagement. We contribute to consumer theory by developing a holistic research framework to examine pre-teen SM engagement. Self-identity and social-identity theories help explain the factors that drive pre-teen SM engagement and explain push/pull influences of parents and schools in encouraging or discouraging certain behaviour. We build on current research into SM usage, drawing from the fragmented existing literature, to reveal causes of both excessive screen-time and SM usage among pre-teen consumers, which may indicate antecedents of future adult behaviour. Practical and regulatory policy issues are considered and addressed.