Optimal regulation under imperfect enforcement: Permits,tickets, or both?

Economic activity is often regulated through both permits and tickets (subsequent inspections). We study the effectiveness of such policies where corruption and an underground economy make enforcement imperfect. In the theoretical model, asymmetric information justifies regulatory action which is enforced by corruptible bureaucrats. We find that regulation through permits alone is useless when corruption exists, while tickets still offer some benefit. Surprisingly, we also find that a system with both permits and tickets achieves welfare that is higher than that which can be achieved with only tickets—that combining the two mechanisms has an effect that is greater than the “sum of the parts.”     

Education Dashboards for Enhanced Learning: A Singapore Experience

Educators continue to utilize add-ons, extensions, or replacements to traditional Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to supplement capabilities and improve the classroom experience. This work resulted in the design and development of the Education Dashboards for Enhanced Learning (EDEL) template. The EDEL template enables faculty members to create dynamic web spaces called Knowledge Portals (KPortals). A semester-long introduction of KPortals proved to be positive and useful. Students tended to view the KPortal as a “go-to” webspace. The authors hope to refine the template in future studies and examine its usefulness in other countries.     

Leisure in Living Local through Food and Farming

This article reflects on aligning leisure research with the local foods movement while placing the local foods movement into the larger framework of sustainability and the fields of leisure and recreation. The local foods movement has persisted during difficult economic times; growth in local foods venues and young people endeavoring to establish small-scale sustainable farms continues to flourish. Given the history of leisure research and its continued success alleviating participation barriers and constraints, the need for leisure researchers to focus on local food systems is imperative and timely. This essay highlights the notion of leisure in living through local foods and the serious leisure aspects of small-scale sustainable agriculture. This article also encourages leisure researchers to explore and assess the relationships between the local foods movement and small-scale farming as embedded in the larger framework of sustainability.     

Incorporating distributional considerations in the safe minimum standard approach: endangered species and local impacts

Explicitly incorporating current distributional concerns into the safe minimum standard (SMS) approach is the objective of this study. The SMS approach is a collective choice process that prescribes protecting a minimum level of a renewable natural resource unless the social costs of doing so are somehow excessive or intolerably high. More complete implementation of an SMS approach, if it is to be a pragmatic policy tool, requires that distributional considerations be included in determining whether the economic consequences of preservation actions are intolerable. Two case studies involving the US Endangered Species Act are used to illustrate how distributional concerns might be incorporated into the SMS approach.     

A Comparison of Bundling and Sequential Pricing in Competitive Markets: Experimental Evidence

Technological advances enable sellers to identify relationships among offered goods. Sellers can leverage this information through pricing strategies such as bundling and sequential pricing. While these strategies have primarily been studied under monopoly assumptions, the strategies are available to competitive firms as well. This paper reports on a series of laboratory experiments comparing bundling and sequential pricing while varying the underlying relationship between the goods in markets where a fraction of buyers comparison shop. The results indicate that sequential pricing is generally as profitable to the seller; however, there is evidence that sequential pricing may be more harmful to consumers than bundling when the goods have complementary values or the buyer’s values are positively correlated.     

Modeling Financial Integration,Intra-EMU and Asian-US External Imbalances

Intra-EMU external imbalances in the pre-crisis period up to 2008 are traditionally explained by EMU-oriented factors, e.g. euro-related financial integration. Chen et al. (2013) also emphasize external trade shocks, such as the competitive challenge of emerging Asia and oil exporters to EMU-periphery’s exports. Moreover, Asian-U.S. external imbalances are attributed to financial integration between East Asia and the USA in the aftermath of the East-Asian currency crises in the late 1990s (Angeletos and Panoussi 2011). Acknowledging these empirical facts this paper develops a Buiter (1981) three-country (EMU, Asia, US), two-region (EMU core, EMU periphery) OLG model to investigate the effects of both intra-EMU and Asian-U.S. financial integration on intra-EMU, Asian and U.S. external imbalances. We find that the widening of the intra-EMU external imbalances, in particular of trade imbalances, is related to the growth in Asian-U.S. imbalances and the dynamic inefficiency of the world economy, caused by excessive saving in Asia.     

Rainfall variability in tropical Africa: Some implications for policy

Rain is the basic ingredient for the existence of Africa and its people. This article introduces the ‘baseline’ rainfall climatology of Africa and looks at examples of fluctuations in the last 50 years. The author then puts forward some suggestions on the implications of such variability for planning and policy making.     

Looking back at looking forward: A check of some fortune forecasts

We will have to wait to see how good our present forecasting methodologies are, but we can test futurologists of earlier times. The author has checked a selection of Fortune's forecasts as far back as 1933. Examination reveals that predictions were on target in three areas-technology, general trends, and structural change in the economy. They fell far short of the mark, however, in the areas of legal, political, and international constraints; the personal impact of economic factors; and the personal impact of various innovations. But the failures were often not too far off and the correct ones, if heeded, could have saved us time and money. Unfortunately, the people problems that plagued the Fortune forecasts are still unsolved today.