Tourism development in the SADC region: The opportunities and challenges

This article presents an assessment of recent tourism performance in the countries of the Southern African Development Community region, as well as an evaluation of future prospects. It examines growth rates and source markets in developing a profile of current tourism to the region. It identifies and assesses the current and probable future impact of a range of issues and problems, which are serving either to help or hinder tourism development. It suggests necessary actions for facilitating the accelerated development of tourism. The article also analyses the countries' tourism development policies and their competitive standing with other parts of Africa and other world regions from the market's viewpoint. It evaluates future growth prospects for the region by relating these various strands of analysis to the assessments made in the World Tourism Organization's Tourism 2020 vision study. The conclusion is one of qualified optimism: the natural and sociocultural resources of the region match the growing tastes of the international tourism market but, without concerted action to improve international access and tackle the major (real and imagined) threats to tourist safety prevailing in the region, growth rates will continue to be below their potential. The region's physical remoteness from the military theatre of action consequent to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States could well bring the countries of the SADC, and especially South Africa, some benefit from being perceived in tourist-generating markets as safe from these activities.     

Expenditure on different categories of meat in Greece: the influence of changing tastes

This paper employs a latent variable approach to isolate the effects of changing tastes on the share of total meat expenditure on different categories of meat products in Greece during the period 1965–1995. We find that changes in the relative expenditure on different categories of meat cannot be explained by changes in the relative prices of the different meat products and increased expenditure alone. For pork products in particular, the increase in the share of expenditure has been greater than would be expected as a result of the relative fall in their price. The increase can therefore be associated with changes in taste. This finding is of general interest to those conducting empirical research into consumer behaviour both in economies where there have been significant changes in patterns of food consumption, and where, as in the case of many less industrialised economies, rapid structural changes in food consumption patterns are still to come. It is also of importance to policy makers in assessing die effectiveness of advertising or promotional campaigns in influencing longer term changes in consumer preferences for different products.     

Bivariate and multivariate scaled association models. An application to homogamy of social origin and education in Hungary between 1930 and 1979

In this article we compare bivariate and multivariate models for homogamy of social origin and education to test whether bivariate models of homogamy lead to biased results. We use data on Hungarian couples married between 1930 and 1979 and loglinear models of scaled association. The results indicate some differences between bivariate and multivariate analyses. At each point of time bivariate models overestimate homogamy, both with respect to education and social origin. However, results on trends in time do not differ much between the two analyses. The exception is the period 1940–1959, in which bivariate analysis showed decreasing educational homogamy, and multivariate analysis showed an increasing trend. The latter finding can be explained by declining homogamy of social origin, as well as the weaker reproduction and cross-effects in this period.     

Regulation of Corporate Governance: Will it Improve Corporate Performance?

In 1995, the New South Wales Court of Appeal handed down a significant judgment on directors' duties in Daniels v Anderson¹ (the AWA case), following the landmark decision of Rogers CJ (Comm. D.)². In the same year, the Australian Stock Exchange introduced a listing rule under which listed Australian companies will for the first time be required to disclose their corporate governance practices. This article places the important decision in AWA and the ASX's corporate governance rule in the context of recent research in the United States on whether there is a link between corporate governance and corporate performance.     

Cross Entropy Estimation of the Almost Ideal Demand System for Greek Consumption

Cross entropy is used to estimate the Almost Ideal Demand System for consumption in Greece. The entropy estimates are found to improve upon the SUR estimates. It is recommended that practitioners consider employing entropy based procedures in systems where the data set is small, where there are a large number of parameters, or where the data are deficient.