Transformational tourism as a hero's journey

Transformational tourism is an emerging form of tourism that deserves better attention from researchers and reviewers. This article provides a better understanding of the phenomenon, its varieties and its different stages, drawing on the metaphor of Campbell's archetypical journey of transformation: hero's journey. Using a phenomenological approach, the article tries to shed some light upon the conditions of the touristic experiences that foster transformation. Eight factors were identified: personal situation, being away doing unfamiliar activities, interaction with people, live the moment, difficulty, setting, reflection and integration. The three stages of the hero's journey (departure, initiation and return) are subsequently applied to describe the transformative travel process. The paper concludes with implications for research and professional practice.     

I do not own a car any more: An analysis of possessions’ disposal and changes in consumers’ identities

This research aims to understand the process of cars' disposal, its context, its influences and its impacts on the meanings for consumers and their identities, as well as the new behaviours of these consumers when living without their car(s). We conducted, analysed and interpreted 20 in‐depth interviews with consumers that had previously owned at least one car and had no financial reasons for disposing of their car(s), but had decided to do it, and started to live without them, adopting alternative methods of transportation. Our findings show that these consumers faced a complicated process regarding the disposal of their car(s) but, due to the changes in their circumstances, they re‐signified relevant concepts that were connected to the ownership of a car: Their perception of freedom, comfort, safety and status changed during and after the disposal of their car(s). We also noticed that there were implications in terms of changes in their attitudes and behaviour as both citizens and consumers. As a contribution to the literature, our findings indicate that the re‐signifying of concepts related to possession of the object as well as changes in attitudes and behaviours that consumers undergo in the postdisposal stage, must be included in the model proposed for evaluating consumer behaviour in product disposal.     

Sparse Partial Least Squares in Time Series for Macroeconomic Forecasting

Factor models have been applied extensively for forecasting when high‐dimensional datasets are available. In this case, the number of variables can be very large. For instance, usual dynamic factor models in central banks handle over 100 variables. However, there is a growing body of literature indicating that more variables do not necessarily lead to estimated factors with lower uncertainty or better forecasting results. This paper investigates the usefulness of partial least squares techniques that take into account the variable to be forecast when reducing the dimension of the problem from a large number of variables to a smaller number of factors. We propose different approaches of dynamic sparse partial least squares as a means of improving forecast efficiency by simultaneously taking into account the variable forecast while forming an informative subset of predictors, instead of using all the available ones to extract the factors. We use the well‐known Stock and Watson database to check the forecasting performance of our approach. The proposed dynamic sparse models show good performance in improving efficiency compared to widely used factor methods in macroeconomic forecasting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling regional policy scenarios in the agri-food sector: a case study of a Spanish region

The agri-food industry has several features of great importance for sustainable economic growth in rural areas. The objective of this work is to evaluate the effects associated with different scenarios of growth, and changes in the regional agri-food industry. These scenarios simulate changes in exports and imports, changes in technology and changes in the level of industrial integration. We develop a computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the region. Our results indicate that policies trying to improve the competitiveness and dynamism of strategic sectors as the agro-industrial complex in this regional economy exert positive effects on its growth and income, having notable impacts on local job markets but also in other sectors and activities linked through the whole production chain.     

Fiscal Transparency,Fiscal Performance and Credit Ratings

Fiscal transparency can provide policymakers with incentives to adopt better policies by enhancing the public debate on the design and sustainability of fiscal policy and establishing accountability for their implementation. Fiscal transparency can also reduce uncertainty about fiscal policy and fiscal outturns by providing more information on the underlying fiscal position and fiscal risks. Both effects suggest that countries should benefit from adopting transparency enhancing policies through better market assessments of their sovereign risk. In this paper, we investigate whether fiscal transparency has an effect on market perceptions of sovereign risk, as measured by sovereign credit ratings, and if so, through which channels. We find that fiscal transparency has a positive and significant effect on ratings – one standard deviation increase in fiscal transparency increases credit ratings by 0.7 and 1 notches (or steps in the credit rating scale) in advanced and developing economies, respectively – but its effect works through different channels in advanced and developing economies. In advanced economies, fiscal transparency is associated with better fiscal outcomes, leading indirectly to higher credit ratings. In developing economies, the direct uncertainty‐reducing effect of fiscal transparency seems to be more important. Indeed, the effect of fiscal transparency on fiscal performance is found to increase with the level of institutional development.     

How do country‐level governance characteristics impact the relationship between R&D and firm value?

This article addresses the question of how country‐level governance characteristics moderate the market valuation of research and development (R&D). Using a valuation model and panel data from companies in the European Union, United States, and Japan, we find that effective corporate governance allows the market to better assess a firm's R&D investments. This finding is the conjunction with the effect of the legal system, the financial system, and mechanisms of control. First, as effectiveness of investor protection increases, the market valuation of R&D projects also increases. Second, more developed financial systems do a better job assessing R&D. Third, effective control mechanisms reinforce the positive effect of R&D on a firm's market value. In sum, our findings shed light on how policymakers can increase the benefits from firms' R&D spending and thus foster economic growth and social welfare using these country‐level governance characteristics.     

Characteristics of non-fatal injuries in Leon, Nicaragua - 2004

This article describes the epidemiology of injuries collected in the Injury Surveillance System in Leon Hospital in Nicaragua. A total of 6659 persons were treated for injuries in 2004. It was discovered that 88% of all injuries were unintentional, 9% involved interpersonal violence, 2% were self-inflicted and 0.2% was undetermined. Men accounted for 64.7% of the cases, with the highest rate among 20 - 24 year olds (5625.8 per 100,000 inhabitants). Among women, the highest rate was in those aged 64 years and older (5324.2 per 100 000 inhabitants). The most common mechanisms were falls (33.9%), blunt force (26.8%), cut/pierce/stab (15.1%) and transportation-related (12.8%). These results indicate the need to identify prevention strategies for those injuries that were most commonly treated in emergency, such as unintentional falls among older women, self-inflicted poisoning among young women and blunt force and transportation-related injuries among young men.     

The determinants of industrial location in Spain, 1856–1929

During the 19th century, the Spanish economy went through the early stages of the industrialisation process. This process developed in parallel to the growing market integration of goods and factors as a result of the liberal reforms and the construction of the railway network, with the subsequent fall in transport costs. In that period, there were major changes in the pattern of industrial location across Spain, with an increasing spatial concentration of industrial activities between the 1850s and the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and a deeper regional specialisation. What were the forces behind these changes? On the theoretical side, the Heckscher–Ohlin model suggests that the spatial distribution of economic activity is determined by comparative advantage due to factor endowments. In turn, New Economic Geography models show the existence of a bell-shaped relationship between the process of market integration and the degree of concentration of industrial activity in the territory. This paper examines empirically the determinants of industrial location in Spain between 1856 and 1929 estimating a model that nests both Heckscher–Ohlin and NEG factors and tests the relative strength of these forces, since they are not mutually exclusive and might be at work simultaneously. The analysis of the results shows that both comparative advantage and NEG-type mechanisms were determinant drivers of industrial location in Spain, although their relative strength changed over time.     

On measuring speculative and hedging activities in futures markets from volume and open interest data

This article provides a critical assessment of the line of research that measures speculative and hedging activities in futures markets from volume and open interest data. It makes several contributions. First, a detailed theoretical analysis of the measures proposed in the previous literature as proxies for speculative activity clarifies the circumstances in which they fail, as well as the assumptions that have to be made, when they are used as intended. Second, we propose a new way of combining the volume and the open interest figures, which provides additional information regarding the type of trading activity that takes place in the market on a given date. Finally, we analyse empirically the basic statistical properties of all the ratios when they are applied to real data for some of the stock index futures contracts most actively traded in the world. This empirical analysis shows the diverse behaviour of the ratios when they are applied to a common sample of real data, which confirms our previous theoretical findings. Our contributions should be taken into account when any of the measures is used as a proxy for the relative importance of speculative demand in empirical analyses.     

Capital-induced labor migration in a spatial Solow model

Journal of Economics - In this work we consider labor mobility in the spatial Solow model for economic growth. Besides considering that labor diffuses from regions with higher density to regions...