Negotiating leisure constraints: the case of an amateur musician with epilepsy

The purpose of this case study was to identify the negotiation strategies employed by an epileptic amateur musician engaged in serious leisure to overcome leisure constraints. Data were collected by semi-structured interview, observation and informal interaction. Results revealed that the subject employed various cognitive (i.e. anticipating benefits, weighing pros and cons, immediate resolving, accepting costs and pragmatism about performance) and behavioural (i.e. planning/event management, scaling back participation and communication and cooperation) negotiation strategies. While strategies were employed to overcome constraints, participation was also facilitated by individual beliefs and interpersonal relationships. Results also suggested that negotiation strategies are interconnected, and that perceived stigma did not influence participation in serious leisure.     

Issues in measuring success in community-based Indigenous tourism: elites,kin groups,social capital,gender dynamics and income flows

Tourism development is a key feature of the neoliberal economic development model. Through a mix of state and private investment, Indigenous communities in Mexico are encouraged to transform local cultural and environmental resources into tourist consumption sites. The process results in a shift toward reliance on tourism, in place of farming, leaving households with few alternative earning strategies amidst fluctuating tourist arrivals and income, confounding the relationship between tourism and sustainability and questioning the utility of tourism as a sustainable tool for development. This article analyses a community-based Indigenous tourism project in a rural Maya village in Mexico's Yucatan, and discusses strategies employed at household level to navigate the arrival of tourism. Funding agencies assessed this project based on a triple bottom line metric that accounts for ecological health, financial sustainability, and its relationship to local social capital; however, these fail to account for differences between local and non-local conceptions of authenticity, indigeneity, and success. From a social perspective, the project has exacerbated existing tensions and has arguably widened the gap between the politically and economically powerful and less powerful, marginalized families in the community. Questions about policy, governance systems, and elite domination and kin group control are raised.     

浅谈独立学院贫困生资助管理工作的几点思考——以江苏科技大学苏州理工学院为例

当前高校贫困生人数和比例呈上升趋势,高校贫困生资助管理工作应与时俱进,应把高校贫困生帮扶与教育相结合,把物质救助手段与精神鼓励手段结合起来,全面、系统的做好高校贫困生的资助管理工作。     

How can investors build a better portfolio in small open economies? Evidence from Asia’s Four Little Dragons

This study investigates the role of hedging and portfolio design among stocks, exchange rates, and gold in small open economies (SOEs) from 4 January 2000 to 31 March 2020. We adopt the trivariate dynamic conditional correlation-fractionally integrated asymmetric power ARCH model and unconditional quantile regression model, and our findings show that the hedging role of the U.S. dollar (USD) and gold against stocks differs under regular and extreme market conditions. The USD can act as a powerful hedge asset for stocks in regular market periods. Moreover, during the global financial crisis and COVID-19 outbreak, the safe-haven effect of gold becomes stronger for almost all stocks, whereas the USD can serve as a strong safe haven against stock markets of Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore when stock returns are extremely low. In terms of portfolio designing, we find that adding the USD and gold to portfolios improves their hedging effectiveness, and the optimally weighted stock-USD-gold portfolio is the best portfolio strategy, irrespective of referring to return or risk.     

Towards a ‘new normal’ growth strategy: China in comparative perspective

China’s move towards a new normal has been motivated by domestic factors and accelerated by the decline in export opportunities to developed countries. This decline, combined with the knock-on effects of China’s growth adjustments, is disrupting the favourable external environment that made developing countries’ export-led development strategies viable. This paper concentrates on a rebalancing of developing countries’ growth strategies towards a greater weight of household consumption as a potential alternative and discusses three challenges – market size, domestic purchasing power and balance-of-payments constraints. Concentrating on the latter, it analyses changes in sectoral compositions of consumer demand and patterns of international trade. Results point to the risk that a shift in growth strategy causes an import surge. The paper’s findings indicate the scope and speed of required product innovation that would prevent a rebalancing of growth strategies towards a greater role of consumption from running into balance-of-payments constraints.     

Competition in the stock market with asymmetric information

We build a game theoretical model to examine how the level of information advantage of insiders and the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors affect stock price movements and traders’ trading strategies and profits. We show that the competition between insiders and sophisticated investors can reduce the losses of less sophisticated investors, and thus alleviates the disadvantaged position of the less sophisticated investors. Further, traders’ profits are affected by the accuracy of insiders’ private information, and the number of days that insiders have obtained the information in advance. These findings show the importance of information transparency and the role of sophisticated investors in limiting insiders’ trading advantages and mitigating the expropriation of investors by insiders.     

The role of talent-perception incongruence in effective talent management

This study examines the effect of talent management (TM) practices, differentiation strategies, and incongruent talent perceptions in terms of psychological-contract fulfillment. The outcomes of the quantitative analysis of 2660 respondents within 21 organizations show the importance of actively attending to talent-perception incongruence. Incongruence occurs in situations where the organization's executives perceive an individual as ‘talent’, but the individual is unaware of this, and also the other way around: the situation in which the organization's executives do not consider an individual as ‘talent’ while the individual believes that they do. Although the increased use of TM practices is related to higher psychological-contract fulfillment, this relationship is negatively affected by incongruent talent perceptions. Our results show the importance of clearly defining talent and communicating this clearly to all employees. This is particularly important when the talent strategy is perceived as exclusive rather than inclusive.     

Determinants of Inflow to Mutual Funds: Criterion and Methodology for Their Application to the Mainland China Market

This study is based on the Froot, O’Connell, and Seasholes [2001] and Hsieh, Yang and Yu [2008] as foundations to study which reasons and control factors cause herding behavior of mutual fund inflows. The study uses the most popular Asian emerging market, China, as the sample to determine the real attractive reason behind the mutual fund inflows to China. The significant determinant of the mutual fund inflows to China is stock returns for both Shanghai and Shenzhen A stock markets.     

国际碳基金经营风险管理的经验与启示

当前，国际碳基金运营体系日趋成熟。本文总结了国际碳基金在治理运营模式、风险评价、风险控制与项目退出四个方面的运营经验；并结合实际，提出了中国进一步发展碳基金的建议。