Tourism in Scotland—under new management

Scotland's tourism product has its own national identity which is derived from the distinctive character of the country's climate, culture, tradition, and industrial and social history. In this report John Stuart, Director of External Relations at the Scottish Tourist Board, describes the new techniques that have been devised to manage the tourism industry in Scotland and promote its product in the UK and overseas.     

The Ethical Outlook of Micro Business Operators

This paper reports the findings of an investigation into the ethical outlook of micro business operators. The study was conducted in Australia and is the first such examination of ethical perspectives in this segment of the business population. Micro business is internationally recognizable, economically significant, and strongly entrepreneurial, and it has a high level of control over the values it enacts. The study indicates that ethical considerations are important to Australian micro business operators. While no one single ethical perspective was dominant, nonreligious beliefs and principles were found to be the most important determinant of their ethical values. Some variation was discovered in operator attitudes based on age, gender, and education.     

Estimating society's willingness to pay to maintain viable rural communities*

Declining populations in rural and regional areas have become a high political priority in Australia. Calls for measures to support rural communities have been prompted by substantial population declines in some country areas. In Europe and the USA, similar political pressures to halt population losses in rural and regional areas are also apparent; often as a component of the multifunctionality of agriculture. The question addressed in the present paper is whether or not the Australian tax‐paying public would be willing to pay to avoid losses of people from rural and regional areas that may result from environmental protection measures. As an integral component of two recent non‐market, environmental valuation exercises using Choice Modelling, the value of the benefits associated with the maintenance of rural populations has been estimated. The results demonstrate that a positive existence value is held primarily by urban dwellers for rural population levels.     

Third world industrialisation-The consequences for Western Europe

There is growing awareness that some fundamental change has for some time been affecting the major European economies, involving a shift of manufacturing away from the developed market economies of Europe towards the developing countries. The following article analyses the process of European deindustrialisation and discusses some of the possible consequences.     

Competition and the optimal control of externalities

Internal treatment of pollution and secondary treatment are possible in a simple economy. The relationship between the conditions for optimality and competitive equilibrium in this simple economy are examined.     

Swiss inflation and the two versions of the monetary approaches to the balance of payments

Summary and Conclusion The paper has discussed the distinction between a strong and a weak version of the MBOP first made by Rabin and Yeager. Empirical evidence has been provided to refute the strong version of the MBOP and the closely related global monetarist school of thought contention that the law of one price is the major conduit through which worldwide inflation is transmitted. Switzerland provides a case of a country which imported inflation via both a direct price effect from abroad and continuous balance-of-payments surpluses. The evidence does not explicitly confirm the weak version of the MBOP because it is not a theory of worldwide inflation. The evidence does suggest that there are at least two transmission mechanisms for worldwide inflation. Economists should be careful not to interpret the MBOP as a unicausal theory of world inflation.