Using multiple indicators to evaluate the sustainability of dolphin-based wildlife tourism in rural India

Abstract

Assessing wildlife tourism sustainability in developing countries is crucial, but few studies analyse the sustainability of dolphin-based wildlife tourism in this context. We measure multiple indicators within the human dimensions of wildlife tourism, including tourist visitation numbers, satisfaction, preferences, perceptions, background and specialisation, to ascertain the extent to which the dolphin-watching industry at Chilika Lagoon, in rural India might be considered sustainable. Our methods included participant observation, tourist surveys, and the use of secondary data on visitation over 10 years. We found that the growth rate of tourist visitation over 10 years was beginning to decline. Tourists were mostly inexperienced, and dissatisfied with their dolphin-watching experience. Tourist preferences and perceptions showed useful insights and shortcomings in the way in which the industry was being conducted and managed, and reflected the expectations of non-specialist visitors. Our study highlights drawbacks in the way that wildlife tourism is managed in a rural, developing world context, which draws the sustainability of the dolphin-watching industry in Chilika into question. Future development of an early warning system that addresses combined governance or managerial, social, economic and ecological indicators, and an integrated management plan for conservation and wildlife tourism could contribute to the sustainable management of such industries.     

Characterization of additive cost sharing methods

The set of additive cost sharing methods when individual demands are integer valued and cost shares are non negative is characterized by its extreme points and by a network flow representation. The extreme methods allocate costs incrementally along a chain of demand vectors independent of the cost function. The result generalizes Wang’s characterization in that we do not assume the Dummy axiom.     

Deterrence and cooperation: A classification of two-person games

In two-person games in normal, bilateral threats succeed in self-enforcing any imputation. We discriminate among imputations by looking at various features of deterring threats. As a result we obtain a classification of two-person games. Finally a duopoly example is analysed.     

Debt ceiling and fiscal sustainability in Brazil: A quantile autoregression approach

In this paper we investigate fiscal sustainability by using a quantile autoregression (QAR) model. We propose a novel methodology to separate periods of nonstationarity from stationary ones, allowing us to identify various trajectories of public debt that are compatible with fiscal sustainability. We use such trajectories to construct a debt ceiling, that is, the largest value of public debt that does not jeopardize long-run fiscal sustainability. We make an out-of-sample forecast of such a ceiling and show how it could be used by Policy makers interested in keeping the public debt on a sustainable path. We illustrate the applicability of our results using Brazilian data.     

Proportional scheduling, split-proofness, and merge-proofness

If shortest (respectively longest) jobs are served first, splitting a job into smaller jobs (respectively merging several jobs) can reduce the actual wait. Any deterministic protocol is vulnerable to strategic splitting and/or merging. This is not true if scheduling is random, and users care only about expected wait.The Proportional rule draws the job served last with probabilities proportional to size, then repeats among the remaining jobs. It is immune to splitting and merging. Among split-proof protocols constructed in this recursive way, it is characterized by either one of three properties: job sizes and delays are co-monotonic; total delay is at most twice optimal delay; the worst (expected) delay of any job is at most twice the smallest feasible worst delay. A similar result holds within the family of separable rules,     

The preparedness of companies to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards: Portuguese evidence

This paper uses ordinal regression, structural equation modelling, and multivariate analysis techniques to investigate the preparedness to adopt IFRS that was exhibited by listed Portuguese companies in August 2003. We find the level of preparedness was significantly associated with company size, commercial internationalization, audit by a ‘Big 4’ accounting firm, and profitability. Our findings will help to indicate the pre-conditions that are likely to spur lagging companies (and countries) to prepare to implement IFRS.     

Modeling economic and agro-environmental dynamics of potato production systems

Crop rotation and other input management practices are of particular interest for their potential impacts on economic and agro-environmental components of potato production. Although crop yield and experimental impacts of rotations of grains, oilseed and legume crops have been published for several experimental studies in Canada there are few models related to the economic and environmental dynamics of potato production. We describe a dynamic model which integrates environmental and economic processes in potato production. The potato rotation model consists of interconnected modules of irrigation and precipitation, soil characteristics, soil erosion, soil water, phosphorus, nitrogen, soil organic matter, farming operations, crop yield and the related calculation of economic return. While not all aspects of crop production have been interlinked, including nitrogen carry-over, this model is the first step in the analysis of experimental data for irrigated potato rotations conducted in southern Manitoba.      

Risk management and value creation: new evidence for Brazilian non-financial companies

The practice of financial risk management with derivatives has received attention both from the academia and the market. In Brazil, there is a growing use of these instruments by companies, in line with the growth of such market in the global economy. This article aims to investigate the relationship between the financial risk management and the value creation to the shareholder for non-financial Brazilian companies. The sample was made up of 1794 firm-year observations from 2006 to 2014. Results obtained via panel data, including the GMM, point out that companies which used derivatives did not add value during the period analysed. An explanation for this result is that most of the companies use derivatives in order to manage the cash flow and not to add value.     

Housing the Urban Poor in Developing Countries

A bstract . Conventional Shelter policies that focus on slum clearance, public housing, sites-and-Services, upgrading of core dwellings and government assisted self-help are inadequate to meet the growing needs of the urban poor in developing countries for low-cost housing. An examination is made of alternative options including cooperative housing programs and of policies that lower housing construction costs and encourage the participation of the urban poor, the informal sector, and private enterprise in low-cost shelter construction. Such policies include those that modify land use and building regulations , that increase the incomes of the poor so that they can afford privately constructed dwellings or the materials to build their own houses , and that increase the security of land occupation to encourage self-help activities. Governments in developing countries must give more attention to tailoring housing policies to the needs of the urban poor, to developing multiple modes of shelter provision, and to strengthening the housing finance system.     

The price of anarchy of serial, average and incremental cost sharing

We compute the price of anarchy (PoA) of three familiar demand games, i.e., the smallest ratio of the equilibrium to efficient surplus, over all convex preferences quasi-linear in money. For any convex cost, the PoA is at least in the average and serial games, where n is the number of users. It is zero in the incremental game for piecewise linear cost functions. With quadratic costs, the PoA of the serial game is , and for the average and incremental games. This generalizes if the marginal cost is convex or concave, and its elasticity is bounded.