Modelling international tourism and country risk spillovers for Cyprus and Malta

Small Island Tourism Economies (SITEs) are developing sovereign countries that rely on tourism as a source of exports, and need a consistent inflow of foreign investment in order to facilitate economic growth. Access to international capital markets helps SITEs smooth out their consumption over time, while absorbing adverse domestic production shocks. This paper provides a comparison of tourism growth, country risk returns and their associated volatilities (or uncertainty) for 2 SITEs, namely Cyprus and Malta. Monthly data are available for both international tourist arrivals and composite country risk ratings compiled by the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) for the period May 1986 to May 2002. The time-varying conditional variances of tourism growth and country risk returns for the 2 SITEs are analysed using multivariate models of conditional volatility. Empirical results show that Cyprus and Malta are complementary destinations for international tourists. Changes to tourism patterns in Cyprus lead to changes to tourism patterns in Malta. Hence, tour operators and national tourism promotion authorities in Cyprus and Malta should collaborate closely in marketing and promoting joint tourism products. Moreover, foreign entities interested in investing in the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta should consider investment projects that span a long period of time. The performance of the tourism sector and the associated composite risk are independent of each other for the two countries. However, there is a direct relationship between the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta and their respective country risk settings.     

Does corruption increase emerging market bond spreads?

We study the relationship between corruption and borrowing costs for governments and firms in emerging markets. Combining data on bonds traded in the global market with survey data on corruption compiled by Transparency International, we show that countries that are perceived as more corrupt must pay a higher risk premium when issuing bonds. The global bond market ascribes a significant cost to corruption: an improvement in the corruption score from the level of Lithuania to that of the Czech Republic lowers the bond spread by about one-fifth. This is true even after controlling for macroeconomic effects that are correlated with corruption. We find little evidence that investors became more sensitive to corruption in the wake of the Asian financial crisis.     

Aquaculture imports from Asia: an analysis of U.S. consumer demand for select food quality attributes

The increasing share of imported food in the United States, coupled with highly publicized incidents of food contamination and adulteration in Asia, particularly China, is posing new challenges for consumers and food safety regulators. In this study, we focus on imported shrimp and tilapia, to evaluate consumer willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for enhanced food safety, use of antibiotics, and eco‐friendly environmental practices. Results show that U.S. consumers were willing‐to‐pay more for enhanced food safety, followed by the use of no antibiotics and environmental friendly production practices. American consumers in our sample were found to have a higher WTP for domestic products and placed more trust on U.S. government verification of product attributes followed by third‐party certification.     

“长春县银行”及所发支票

"长春县银行"是"中国农民银行东北分行"降为支行后,于1947年10月26日在长春设立的唯一一家分支机构。长春市解放后,"长春县银行"被东北银行长春分行接收。东北银行成立之初,百废待兴,为节俭起见,利用原长春县银行支票背面空白处印制了"东北银行收据",因此便有了正面是"中华民国"的支票,背面是"一九五*年"收据的特殊凭证单据。这张特殊支票的发现,填补了这一时期的一个空白点,成为长春市金融史不可缺少的实物佐证和珍贵的金融文物。     

Country of origin: A competitive advantage?

Country of origin has been identified in the literature as an important cue that might be used by global marketers to influence consumers' valuation of the brand. Its effect on consumer perceptions, affect and behavioral intentions has been widely documented, based on consumer surveys and laboratory experiments. Despite this empirical evidence, we argue that country of origin is only one extrinsic cue among many extrinsic and intrinsic cues available to the consumer in a real purchase situation. Furthermore, in real life, consumers are likely to engage in some level of information search, which would further dilute the country of origin effect in the marketplace. Based on these arguments, we conclude that country of origin might not necessarily lead to a competitive (dis)advantage in terms of a price premium or discount. For a sample of products, we show that the objective product quality varies significantly by country of origin, and that these differences are consistent with extant research on country of origin effects on consumers' perceptions. After controlling for quality differences across brands, we demonstrate that marketers from different countries charge prices that are justified by differences in product quality. Price premiums or discounts are therefore explained by differences in product quality rather than the image effect produced by the country of origin cue.     

发展观前提下的城乡统筹蹊径独辟

本文通过对目前农村现状与科学发展观目标之间差距的分析,反映出我国县级政府职能存在的主要问题,进而探讨科学发展观指导下的我国新农村建设中进一步转变县级政府职能的路径和措施。     

Spatial Pattern of Tourist Flows Among the Asia-Pacific Countries: An Examination over a Decade

The spatial dimension of tourism provides insights about travel demands and travel flows and helps destinations in planning, development and management. The last decade has witnessed a steady and rapid growth in the Asia-Pacific region's tourism industry, in terms of both inbound and outbound travel. This particular study aimed to: (a) provide information and explore the changes on the nature of travel flows as measured by the tourist arrivals among the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) member countries for the years of 1995 and 2004; (b) assess general propensity to travel among PATA countries using the concepts of Country Potential Generation Index and Gross Travel Propensity; and (c) examine the shift in the past decade in terms of the relative tourism generation power of PATA countries by comparing and contrasting the 1995 and 2004 indices. The results of the study provide an overview of the spatial patterns of travel flows and travel propensity in Pacific Asia region over a 10-year period. The study demonstrates that the functions of travel flows and indices are complementary and provide an informative picture of spatial travel behavior and demand.     

The Country-of-Origin Effect and Consumer Attitudes to “Buy Local” Campaign

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ethnocentrism of Ghanaian consumers and their attitudes toward a “buy local” campaign. Two hundred and thirty three consumers were interviewed in Cape Coast, the capital city and administrative centre of the Central region of Ghana. Data for the study were collected through interviewing using the mall intercept approach and factor analysed. Our findings show a relationship between ethnocentrism and attitudes of Ghanaian consumers toward the “buy local” campaign. Furthermore, the factor analysis results indicate that the attitudes of the Ghanaian consumers to the buy locally-made products can be characterized as protectionist, nationalistic, and self-interest. Implicitly, the consumers will buy Ghanaian-made products where they are of comparable quality and price as foreign-made products. This requires companies to ensure that their products are of high quality and prices are commensurate with quality. This study contributes to the ethnocentrism and country of origin literature pertaining to the African region, which is sorely under-researched.     

Country size and the rule of law: Resuscitating Montesquieu

In this paper, we demonstrate that there is a robust negative relationship between the size of country territory and a measure of the rule of law for a large cross-section of countries. We outline a framework featuring two main reasons for this regularity; firstly that institutional quality often has the character of a local public good that is imperfectly spread across space from the core of the country to the hinterland, and secondly that a large territory usually is accompanied by valuable rents and a lack of openness that both tend to distort property rights institutions. Our empirical analysis further shows some evidence that whether the capital is centrally or peripherally located within the country matters for the average level of rule of law.     

浅析节目主持人的人格价值

一个优秀的节目主持人最后的成功体现在人格价值里,而这里的人格价值包括主持人出色的记者素质、积极的人格因素以及丰富的人生体验等方面:主持人的媒介人格最重要的一点就是记者素质;主持人的知识和素养是人格的基本组成部分;主持人丰富的人生体验使跨角色传播成为可能。