Cultural tourism as salvation for petty capitalists: the pedicab drivers of the Las Vegas of the east

‘Petty capitalism’ refers to the informal self-employment engaged in by the unskilled poor in order to earn or augment their income. In the tourism industry, they work as unlicensed souvenir vendors, street-food hawkers, drivers, prostitutes, etc. The pedicab drivers of Macao belong to this category of petty capitalists. Drawing on thematic interviews supplemented by observational data, this article documents how the pedicab drivers of Macao survive and keep a sense of self-worth after the near annihilation of their industry as a result of urbanization, and how tourism has been, in addition to government support, a positive social change agent that allowed them to survive. The small literature on pedicabs either documents the marginal lifestyle and poverty of their drivers as informal tourism workers, often in the developing world, or look at pedicab as a sustainable activity in the tourism sector. The findings of this article address two gaps, namely, (1) a lack of documentation on the working life of the pedicab drivers as petty capitalists in a highly urbanized environment and on their degree of self-worth (2) a comparative lack of testimonials on how tourism can be a powerful agent in the ‘worldmaking’ that is in the creation of change.     

Market responses to qualitative information from a group polarization perspective

This study examines the predictions of group polarization in response to the receipt of qualitative information (i.e., good or bad news) in a laboratory market. Qualitative information induces varying beliefs within the market because such information is interpreted using the relevant knowledge possessed by the recipients. Findings from the group polarization literature suggest that individuals who subsequently hold the most extreme price beliefs will influence the market to a greater extent than individuals holding the most conservative beliefs. Group polarization research also suggests that participation in a market will accentuate risk preferences so that good news produces a cautious shift in prices (i.e., towards lower prices) whereas bad news produces a risky shift (i.e., towards higher prices). The results confirm the predictions of group polarization and further suggest that if extreme reactions to information reflect recency, so too may the market price.     

Portfolio performance with controlled variables in the Singapore Stock Market

Recently, many stock return ‘anomalies’ have been identified. This leads to increasing agreement among researchers that these anomalies are relevant to enhancing investment performance. This study examines the existence of stock return anomalies on the Stock Exchange of Singapore in the period 1979–87, using a behavioural approach. The results reveal that the impact of anomalies on stock returns is unstable, with the direction of the impact determined by the strength of the stock market. This phenomenon and other observed anomalies may be partially explained by investors' psychology.     

China's Capital Controls: Through the Prism of Covered Interest Differentials

We study the renminbi covered interest differential, an indicator of the effectiveness of capital controls. It is found that the differential is not shrinking over time and, in fact, appears larger after the global financial crisis than before. That is, capital controls in China are still substantial and effective. In addition to exchange rate changes and volatilities, the renminbi covered interest differential is affected by credit market tightness indicators. The marginal explanatory power of these macroeconomic factors, however, is small relative to the autoregressive component and the dummy variables that capture changes in China's policy.     

The Contingent Effects of Social Network Sparseness and Centrality on Managerial Innovativeness

Prior research has highlighted that network sparseness and network centrality enhance innovativeness through access to information and influence, respectively. We advance this perspective by exploring the extent to which individual actions are needed to mobilize information and influence accessed through social networks, and whether such information and influence would mutually reinforce to enhance managerial innovativeness. Our findings found partial support for the idea that actions are needed to actualize potential resources embedded in social networks, as centrally positioned managers enjoy higher innovativeness when they engage in ambassador activities. We also found that advice network sparseness and advice network centrality had independent, not interactive relationships with managerial innovativeness, suggesting that they offer distinct routes to achieving managerial innovativeness. Overall, our research clarifies the relationships of two important social network attributes on managerial innovativeness, and also sheds new light on how managerial action matters in realizing social network advantages for innovative ends.     

More evidence that university administrators are utility maximizing bureaucrats

Coates and Humphreys (2000) found evidence that administrators affect enrollment supply and faculty demand using a panel of eleven public colleges and universities in Maryland, implying that institutions have enough market power to permit the preferences of administrators to influence these variables. We extend this framework to include political constraints on administrators behavior and add data from public higher education in Virginia. The results from these extensions are consistent with the earlier findings. However, we find that political considerations and differences in the governance of higher education in the two states have relatively little influence on enrollment supply and faculty demand decisions of university administrators.JEL Classification: I21, I28Paper prepared for the Research Conference Its Better to Rely on Well-designed Institutions Than on Well-behaved People held at UCLA, May 18/19, 2001. We thank Bob Lowry for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Nicole Myers and Ryan Mutter for able research assistance.     

How changes in global liquidity affect dynamics of banks’ leverage: A case in Hong Kong

This paper examines how abundant global liquidity could influence the adjustment of banks’ leverage. Using banks in Hong Kong as an example, we find that the global liquidity effect is significant, and that mean reversion of banks’ leverage may under certain circumstances be more than offset by abundant global liquidity. Furthermore, we find that changes in global liquidity not only affect the level of leverage adjustment but also the adjustment speed of banks’ leverage.     

The effects of irreversibility on the timing and intensity of lumpy investment

This paper examines how changes in irreversibility of investment affect the timing and intensity of lumpy investment. We develop a continuous-time model wherein a firm is endowed with a perpetual option to invest in a project at any time by incurring a partially reversible investment cost at that instant. The amount of the investment cost is directly related to the intensity of investment that is endogenously chosen by the firm at the instant when the investment option is exercised. We show that higher irreversibility of investment induces the firm to raise its optimal investment trigger, thereby deferring the undertaking of the project. Furthermore, we show that changes in irreversibility of investment have no impact on the firm's optimal investment intensity due to two opposing effects that exactly offset each other. Finally, we show that higher irreversibility of investment reduces the value of the investment option and, therefore, makes the firm less valuable.