Environmental land use conflicts: A threat to soil conservation

Soil vulnerability and environmental land use conflicts were quantified and cross tabulated in the Sordo River basin (Trás-os-Montes Province, NE Portugal) to provide insights about the risk of soil degradation within that basin. Soil vulnerability was assessed by algorithms of multi criteria analysis and weighted linear combination, whereas environmental land use conflicts were described by an original approach. Three vulnerability scenarios were considered, enhancing the importance of topographic slope, soil class and use and occupation of soils, respectively, as vulnerability factors. Regardless the scenario, approximately two-thirds to the basin was defined as areas with high vulnerability. Fortunately, only 10.9% of the basin is in environmental conflict, where actual land uses deviate from natural uses determined by soil characteristics. The cross tabulation of high vulnerability areas with conflict areas, which defines the areas at risk of soil degradation, reveal that risk areas account for approximately 3.2–8.4% of the basin, depending on the scenario, being concentrated in steep slope hillsides suited for forest or mixed forest and pasture occupations but actually used for irrigated crop lands, vineyards and olive yards. Some conservation practices are implemented in the vineyard and olive yard areas, namely through the construction of terraces. These structures minimize soil erosion but are potentially unstable beyond given intervals of terrain slope. On the other hand, the maintenance of terraces is costly and for that reason eventually unaffordable for many farmers, and they also entail a mischaracterization of the historical and architectural heritage of the Douro Wine Region (UNESCO World Heritage). In this context, it was suggested the approval of legislation as regards the design, construction and maintenance of terraces, while in a broader perspective it was recommended the appreciation of a European Directive for soil protection and its subsequent transposition to the national legislation.     

THE EFFECT OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON ECONOMIC GROWTH: TESTING THE NON‐LINEAR HYPOTHESIS

Theoretical models suggest a non‐linear relationship between government size and long‐run economic growth. However, testing this hypothesis empirically in cross‐country studies is complicated by the endogeneity of government spending and the accurate identification of inflexion points. This paper examines the non‐linear hypothesis by incorporating threshold analysis in a cross‐country growth regression. The methodology utilizes a sample‐splitting framework and follows an objective strategy for identifying and testing changes in the slope. The results provide evidence in support of the non‐linear hypothesis for a broad panel of countries.     

Fisher and Wicksell on money: A reconstructed conversation

Abstract

The paper offers a reconstruction of the ‘conversation’ between Irving Fisher and Knut Wicksell on money as shown by references they made to each other's works. The first phase corresponded largely to the period between 1897 and 1911, when they proposed different explanations of the interaction between interest and prices, and incorporated aspects of each other's approaches into their own respective frameworks. This was followed by Wicksell's extended criticism of Fisher's compensated dollar plan and his bewilderment at its apparent lack of relation with the quantity theory of money (1912–1919). Finally, especially after Wicksell's death, Fisher came to support a significant part of Wicksell's monetary policy proposals, particularly in connection with the Swedish stabilisation experiment in the early 1930s. Fisher and Wicksell were both heirs of Böhm-Bawerk's interest theory, but interpreted and criticised the Austrian from different perspectives, which helps to explain the differences in their approaches to monetary dynamics.     

Evaluating the Utility of Touristic Information Sources for Planning Midwest Vacation Travel

Researchers in tourism have identified the information sources used most often by travelers in an effort to develop more efficient ways to communicate with potential visitors. The goal of this study was to extend our knowledge in this area by investigating the extent to which travelers actually use various information sources for planning Midwest vacations. The study clearly identified those information sources for planning trips. Furthermore, demographic analyses indicate that segments exist which derives greater utility from particular travel information sources. Simulation analyses were then used to evaluate alternative marketing communication strategies.     

Conditional price volatility,speculation, and excessive speculation in commodity markets: sheep or shepherd behaviour?

The present study aims to investigate the dynamics of primary commodity spot prices and the role of speculation for the period 1995–2012. Using a linear and nonlinear Granger causality analysis, the relationship between speculation and GARCH conditional price volatility on the one side, and the linkage between excessive speculation and GARCH conditional price volatility on the other side, is carefully examined with the scope to establish whether volatility drives speculation or speculation drives price volatility, or whether there are no linkages between the two variables. The results show that excessive speculation leads conditional price volatility, and that bilateral relationships often exist between price volatility and speculation. In addition, the lead-lag relationships are not found for the entire sample period, but rather when small sub-periods are taken into account. It turns out, in fact, that excessive speculation has driven price volatility for maize, rice, soybeans, and wheat in particular time frames, but the relationships are not always overlapping for all considered commodities. Generally, the results under linear causality tests are in agreement with those obtained under nonlinear counterparts.     

高校快递代取服务终端的优化——以江南大学为例

为了优化高校快递终端服务,解决高校师生不便自取快递的问题,通过在江南大学进行快递代取服务的实地调研与数据收集,运用统计学、运筹学、工效学等学科知识,对服务体系不断改进与完善,实现供应链式的服务系统管理,完整优化代取服务终端。     

税收优惠对节能环保上市公司研发投入影响的实证研究

伴随我国经济的快速发展，面临的资源与环境问题日益突出，激励节能环保企业增加研发投入进行技术创新具有重要意义。论文以深沪两市118家节能环保A股上市公司2011～2015年的数据作为研究样本，以研发投入作为被解释变量，以税负总额、所得税税负和流转税税负作为解释变量，结合节能环保产业自身特点，运用多元回归模型分析了税收优惠对节能环保上市公司研发投入的影响。实证结果表明：税收优惠政策对节能环保上市公司技术创新产生了正面影响，所得税优惠政策比流转税优惠政策对研发投入的影响更显著。建议从继续完善所得税税收优惠、逐步加大流转税优惠力度、建立健全配套措施等方面完善激励节能环保企业增加研发投入的税收优惠政策。     

Dynamic relationships between crude oil prices and socially responsible investing in Brazil: evidence for linear and non-linear causality

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in socially responsible investing (SRI), reflecting investors’ growing awareness of social, environmental, ethical and corporate governance issues. At the same time, the effect of oil price shocks on stock price returns has become a prominent issue due to surges in energy prices. Using the Brazilian corporate sustainability index (ISE) as a benchmark for socially responsible investments in the Brazilian stock market, the present study extends the understandings on the impact of oil prices on stock price behaviour, focusing on a new class of assets: those from socially responsible firms. To this end, apart from conventional linear causality approaches, we apply a nonparametric test by Diks and Panchenko (DP) on daily data spanning from January 2008 to December 2015 to test for non-linear causality, before and after controlling for conditional heteroscedasticity. Our findings show that, in spite of their efforts to become more socially responsible, firms that have adhered to the ISE in recent years are influenced by crude oil spot prices, especially the WTI crude. In line with previous studies, we also provide consistent evidence that the Brazilian stock market, as a whole, is associated with the international crude oil market.     

Oil prices,US stock return,and the dependence between their quantiles

In this article, we examine the relationship between oil prices and US equities by proposing a novel quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach to construct estimates of the effect that the quantiles of oil price shocks have on the quantiles of the US stock return. This approach captures the dependence between the distributions of oil price shocks and the US stock return and uncovers two nuance features in the oil–stock relationship. First, large, negative oil price shocks (i.e. low oil price shock quantiles) can affect US equities positively when the US market is performing well (i.e. at high US return quantiles). Second, while negative oil price shocks could affect the US stock market, the influence of positive oil price shocks is weak, which suggests that the relationship between oil prices on the US equities is asymmetric.     

Responses to risk in tournaments

Due to their inefficient use of information, promotion incentives, which can be modeled as tournaments, can induce sub-optimal actions on the part of managers. This is a problem for firms because it leads to choices that do not maximize profit. This also can pose interpretation and comparison problems for research studies that employ tournament incentives. We demonstrate a situation where tournament incentives eliminate the effects of project risk on managers’ decisions as concerns with winning take precedence over concerns of maximizing expected profit. We also report the results of an experiment and find actual behavior to be fairly well explained by theoretical predictions. However, we find systematic deviations that lead to decisions that are more consistent with profit maximization than the economic theory predicts.