Community participation in heritage tourism planning: is it too much to ask?

Considering the complications of collecting empirical data on community participation, this study proposes a new methodological approach that departs from the current literature. For the first time, an experimental procedure is adopted to conduct a direct comparison between participatory and non-participatory decision-making in the context of heritage tourism planning. Contrary to previous work, this is the first ex-ante assessment of community participation at a destination with no such prior experience. The analysis relies on behavioural data on choices, deliberation and conflict studied in the context of a controlled collaborative environment. The findings suggest that choices and deliberation between participatory and non-participatory groups exhibit no statistically significant differences although participatory groups were more susceptible to conflict. However, interestingly, conflict was constructive as it increased provisions for heritage goods. Furthermore, intra-group heterogeneity did not always affect collective decisions negatively whereas trust and institutional credibility played a major role in influencing both individual and collective preferences. These findings have important implications for research and policy, opening a novel avenue for the systematic study of participation dynamics to inform the instigation of participatory endeavours.     

Neighbors' Income,Public Goods,and Well‐Being

How does neighbors' income affect individual well‐being? Our analysis is based on rich U.S. local data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which contains information on where respondents live and their self‐reported well‐being. We find that the effect of neighbors' income on individuals' self‐reported well‐being varies with the size of the neighborhood included. In smaller areas such as ZIP codes, we find a positive relationship between median income and individuals' life satisfaction, whereas it is the opposite at the county, MSA, and state levels. We provide evidence that local public goods and local area characteristics such as unemployment, criminality, and poverty rates drive the association between satisfaction and neighbors' income at the ZIP code level. The neighbors' income effects are mainly concentrated among poorer individuals and are as large as one quarter of the effect of own income on self‐reported well‐being.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

‘Market failure’ arguments are a poor guide to policy

‘Market failure’ is frequently offered as a justification for government intervention in the economy. Proponents of interventions can point to almost limitless examples of markets which do not meet all the criteria for Pareto optimality and argue that government taxation, subsidies or regulation can perfect them, maximising social welfare. But comparing market outcomes with an unattainable and unidentifiable ideal is not useful in a world of imperfect knowledge and government failure. It is better to compare market outcomes against realistic alternatives. Furthermore, even within the market failure paradigm, concepts such as ‘public goods’ and ‘negative externalities’ are routinely misunderstood and inconsistently applied. This leads to predictably poor policy outcomes.     

The effect of diplomatic representation on trade: A panel data analysis

This study addresses current gaps in the empirical literature regarding the effect of diplomatic representation on trade using a panel data set for 100 countries with 5‐year interval data from 1985 to 2005 and four‐digit level industry data. The results indicate that the effect of diplomatic representation on exports in differentiated goods is positive and significant and larger than on exports in homogeneous goods on average, but not statistically different from it. Furthermore, diplomatic representation only increases trade along the extensive margin and not along the intensive margin. The results indicate that diplomatic representation is effective in performing its function as a network search intermediary and that it is a useful policy tool to alleviate market failure.     

Sticky Price Models,Durable Goods,and Real Wage Rigidities

The standard two‐sector New Keynesian model with durable goods is at odds with conventional wisdom and vector autoregression (VAR) evidence: Following a monetary shock, the model generates (i) either negative or no comovement across sectoral outputs and (ii) aggregate neutrality of money when durable goods' prices are flexible. We reconcile theory with evidence by incorporating real wage rigidities into the standard model: As long as durable goods' prices are more flexible than nondurable goods' prices, we obtain positive sectoral comovement and, thus, aggregate nonneutrality of money.     

Herbert J. Davenport on Conspicuous Consumption and the Economics of Feminism

This article analyzes Herbert J. Davenport’s discussions of conspicuous consumption and feminism. Even though these (typically) Veblenian topics represent two “episodes” in many respects disconnected with the central body of Davenport’s theoretical interests, the assessment of Davenport’s views on these matters enlarges our knowledge of the development of his thought. Our analysis shows how Davenport can be enrolled among the forerunners of the modern theory of positional goods. Moreover, our article offers some new findings on the impact of Veblen’s ideas on one of his closest students at the Chicago University.     

One-sided provision of a public good through bargaining under representative democracy

We examine a trade-off between strategic delegation and the internalization of interregional externalities through bargaining in the context of political economy. We show that in the case of one-sided provision of a public good, if the public good produced by one region generates a sufficiently significant spillover to another region, then interregional negotiation increases the total surplus of the entire economy.     

高科技社会我国风险沟通重塑

高科技社会衍生“人为风险”，西方发达高科技国家倡导新型风险沟通，而后发场域由于系统落差，呈现出迟滞型风险沟通。通过构建全球化高科技风险社会、全球本地化风险沟通的新分析框架，发现高科技社会我国风险沟通面临着风险的社会放大、气泡结构、路径互动阙如、手段叠加、目标战略缺失、过程碎片化等迟滞困境。通过创新理念、吸纳型风险沟通、复合式路径、平衡化手段、连续统、政府学习和政府职能的“七位一体”再造，可有效重塑高科技社会我国风险沟通，推进国家风险治理体系和治理能力现代化。     

Natural resources,technological progress,and economic modernization

The present inquiry focuses on the modernization perspectives of the commodity‐exporting countries through the lens of development economics. To this end, the study adopts the Kaldorian framework to address the modernization effects, epitomized in the absorption of surplus labor. To trace the process of economic modernization, the study augments Lewis’s dualistic economy model by the extractive sector. Three different scenarios for the management of resource revenues are scrutinized. An altruistic mode, which implies a pure redistribution of the revenues among the poor swaths of the population, protracts the process of economic modernization, requires a greater amount of capital stock, and harbors a greater risk of a poverty trap. This effect is less pronounced if the modern sector is more capital‐intensive. A productive mode, which elicits full reinvestment of the commodity revenues, in contrast, accelerates the pace of economic modernization. Further, predicated on the scrutiny of a more realistic scenario, a bargaining mode, the study derives the condition for a net positive (or negative) modernization effect. The study identifies technical progress alongside capital accumulation as a further important source of economic modernization.