Exchange rate volatility effects on labour markets

With the transition to the euro, exchange rate volatility between the countries participating in European Monetary Union has been eliminated, reducing uncertainty and transaction costs. The other side of the coin is the loss of the exchange rate as a potential mechanism of adjustment to external shocks. The present article uses the case of Germany to study the implications of EMU for labour markets.     

Impacts of changing water inflow distributions on irrigation and farm income along the Drâa River in Morocco

Irrigation water is essential for agriculture in the arid Drâa River basin in Morocco but climate change leads to increasingly unreliable water supply in the area. This article analyzes impacts of changing water inflow distributions on irrigation and farm income extending a conjunctive river basin model toward a stochastic modeling approach. Regional climate scenarios are used to derive a maximum likelihood density estimate of current and future water supplies. Based on these distributions, Monte Carlo simulations are performed to obtain stochastic model results on surface and groundwater irrigation as well as economic indicators for six oases along the river. The probability of farmers to receive revenues below the subsistence level is around 2% under current conditions, but this is likely to rise to rates of 6% to 15% depending on the underlying climate change scenario. The composition of water sources for irrigation will shift to more groundwater use. The river basin model is able to represent complex spatial interactions between oases as well as a partial complementarity between groundwater and surface water irrigation due to salinity management effects. Interestingly, the value of groundwater is not necessarily increasing under future climatic conditions as salinity problems are aggravated with expanded groundwater use.     

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World Environmental Organisation: A Latin American Perspective

This paper offers insight into environmental problems that Latin American countries are currently facing. It also looks at how their domestic and global spheres are intertwined, and subsequently outlines pending roblems that would need international support from a World Environmental Organistion (WEO). One of the hardest and most important tasks of such an Organisation would be to render the Northern and the Southern environmental agendas compatible. While opinions concur on what the principle environmental problems in Latin America are – eforestation and natural resources degradation – the perception of these problems is quite different between North and South. For the former, the most important impact of the situation is the reduction of CO2 capacity and the biodiversity loss, while the main concern in Latin America is the poverty stricken economy behind the deforestation process and the vulnerability of the population that results from such phenomenon. Advancing simultaneously on both these tracks seems essential for a genuine improvement in environmental performance in the region.     

Intercommunity relationships and community growth in China's high technology industries 1988–2000

In this study, we examine how intercommunity relationships affect the growth of organizational communities. Using a unique panel dataset on 53 technology development communities in China spanning 1988–2000, we found that regional community density, a community's geographic proximity to the nearest community and its domain overlap with the nearest community have an inverted U‐shaped relationship with the community's growth. These non‐monotonic results suggest that adjacent communities have both mutualistic and competitive effects on each other. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving the writing of accounting students: A cooperative venture

Many accounting departments have initiated programs to integrate writing into the accounting curriculum; others have just begun the process. The purpose of this paper is to present the unique features of the writing program used at our university. As with many programs, this one elevates our accounting students' perceptions about the importance of writing, and improves the quality of accounting students' writing within the framework of the kinds of writing accountants actually do on the job. What's different about our approach is (1) a transition workshop, (2) the collaboration of an accounting instructor, a writing consultant, and professional accountants, and (3) a unique way of incorporating peer reviews. After these differences are discussed, a final section of the paper provides recommendations for designing a writing program.     

Food versus fuel: examining tradeoffs in the allocation of biomass energy sources to domestic and productive uses in Ethiopia

Rural households in Ethiopia have limited options to meet their domestic energy needs because they lack access to modern fuels and technologies. Domestic use of certain fuel sources, such as cow dung, can hinder agricultural outcomes and productivity. This article explores the tradeoffs between domestic and productive uses of biomass energy sources in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia using a nonseparable farm household model where labor allocation to energy collection and farming are analyzed simultaneously. We estimate a system of five structural equations using three‐stage least squares and find that the use of dung as a domestic fuel source has negative implications for the value of harvested crops, while use of on‐farm fuelwood is associated with increased value of agricultural output. On‐farm production of fuelwood appears to increase the value of crop output and provide labor savings, by making fuelwood collection more convenient for households. Policy interventions to support the expansion of agroforestry and increase access to new energy‐efficient technologies are needed to ensure that agricultural productivity can be both increased and sustained.     

A web-based multi-agent decision support system for a city-oriented management of cruise arrivals

Cruise tourism represents a strategic sector for the economic growth of several countries, impacting on different direct and indirect markets. The arrival of cruises in a city represents an unmissable opportunity to increment its tourist market penetration. Nevertheless, the management of an unforeseen number of passengers that need to visit a city in a short time may also have a negative impact, so reducing the expected benefits. This is mainly due to the difficulty of taking the right decisions when organizing the dispatching of passengers in different city areas since these decisions depend on several conditions that can also dynamically occur, and may have an impact on different city sectors. Here, a decision support system is proposed to help involved stakeholders to make decisions to plan passengers' transportation in the city and also to evaluate the consequences for the city if the plans are really implemented. The system is designed according to the multi-agent paradigm, so allowing one to easily manage the necessary coordination among different entities and data sources that are usually distributed and need to cooperate to provide useful suggestions. In addition, a prototype of a web-based application is provided to end users, so that it can run on heterogeneous platforms, and it can be easily accessed by different users from different devices, as it is the case for the considered application domain.