Incentive generating state dependent penalty system: The case of income tax evasion

Penalty systems can very often be looked upon as corrective measures established in order to eliminate or reduce costly externalities generated by optimizing economic agents. Hence, penalties can be viewed as regulatory measures and their efficient structure should be of interest to economists. We propose a dynamic incentive generating penalty system which, if instituted, may reduce, at a given cost, the generation of undesirable externalities. The special case to which we refer is income tax evasion, although our scheme should be applicable to any kind of externalities, such as pollution of the environment, violation of antirust laws and others which are created by repititive actions of economic agents.     

Alternative Tourism and Sustainable Development in Kenya

This article examines alternative tourism and especially the form dubbed ecotourism and assesses its prospects for sustainable development in Kenya. It also considers community participation in ecotourism, the Kenya government policy on ecotourism, and the initiatives to yield sustainable development in the country. The findings show that biodiversity conservation encourages and supports tourism which, in turn, provides money for conservation efforts and local development programmes. However, ecotourism has not necessarily led to small scale, locally owned tourism enterprises expected in the ecotourism model. The analysis shows nevertheless that alternative tourism development has drawn attention to the role of local people in biodiversity conservation, the basis of ecotourism. Hopefully, this will lead to greater local participation in the ownership, management and control of ecotourism enterprises.     

Engaging the unengaged customer: The value of a retailer mobile app

Mobile apps are becoming a go-to tactic for retailers because they offer the promise of highly convenient digital engagement. We hypothesize that two types of customers are best served by these apps — “offline-only” customers currently purchasing exclusively from the retailer's physical store, and “distant” customers who reside far from the physical store. For offline-only customers, the app complements the physical engagement they currently have. For distant customers, the app offers convenient engagement their remoteness currently precludes. We model app access and purchase behavior of 629 customers who downloaded a retailer's app. We find that apps generate more incremental sales among distant customers compared to near customers, and more incremental sales among offline-only customers compared to online customers. On an illustrative base of 100 K app users, we find accessing the app would generate $2.3 M in incremental sales. Consistent with our segmentation results, we find that the users with the greatest purchase lift (9.5%) due to app usage are those that are distant and offline-only. Our results confirm the economic value of retailer apps and their role as a segmentation strategy to enhance customer engagement.     

The Intergenerational Propagation of Wealth Inequality

This paper highlights the crucial role of demographic assumptions in models of the intergenerational transmission of wealth inequality. Specifically, we show that Alan Blinder's surprising predictions that bequest and mating practices can sustain but cannot cause wealth inequality are extremely fragile. We show that these predictions depend on a common and apparently minor demographic assumption: fixed sex ratios in family composition. We implement the Blinder model as an agent‐based simulation and show that without this demographic assumption such familial institutions are causative for wealth inequality, even in the long run.     

FDI and Financial Market Development in Africa

The literature on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), financial market development (FMD) and economic growth focuses mainly on two aspects: the relationship between FDI and economic growth, and the role played by FMD in that linkage. The literature is almost silent on the relationship and the direction of causality between FDI and FMD. Although it has been established that FDI contributes more to growth in countries with a more developed financial market, it is not clear how FDI and FMD interact with each other. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap in the African context. Particularly, in Africa, where stock markets experience low liquidity and less transparency, FDI can be an impetus for financial market reforms and serve as a mechanism to improve the transparency and the depth of the financial markets. Also, well‐functioning financial markets can help channel foreign investments more efficiently into productive sectors, and therefore create more value for investors, hence making the countries more attractive to FDI. In short, both FDI and FMD will impact each other simultaneously, which is confirmed by our findings. We document a bidirectional causality between FDI and FMD. Furthermore, the multivariate regression results of the system of simultaneous equations also confirm the positive relationship between FDI and FMD in Africa. We also find that FDI contributes to economic growth in Africa after controlling for endogeneity between FDI, FMD and economic growth.     

Tourists’ destination image: an exploratory study of alternative tourism in Palestine

This study aims to understand how alternative tourism can contribute to the destination image of Palestine, given its negative image in the media. It proposes a framework for various destination image aspects and applies this framework in the context of alternative tourism in Palestine. It seeks to explore the key image formation factors, the perceived images of Palestine, and the post-visit behaviours of tourists who had engaged in alternative tourism in Palestine. This research contributes in fulfilling intriguing gaps in the Palestinian destination’s image literature, as well as the alternative tourism field that has emerged manifestly in Palestine. This study is exploratory in nature applying qualitative methodology by using open-ended questions in email interviews, and the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. The empirical results proved that tourists who had visited Palestine and engaged in alternative tourism, had positive destination images, opposite to the ones portrayed in the media that show Palestine as a dangerous place to visit. Finally, this research provides academic and managerial implications.     

CHOICE,CONFUSION AND COMPETITION IN THE MARKET FOR MARKETS: AIMING FOR AIM IN THREE JUNIOR ASIAN STOCK EXCHANGES

Abstract. A review of literature on the theory of stock exchange competition provides the basis for a template model of a successful stock exchange. Three junior stock exchanges in East Asia which stated their ambitions to become a regional exchange for emerging firms are compared with the template and with the AIM section of the London Stock Exchange; the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers, Hong Kong Stock Exchange Growth Enterprise Market and the Singapore Exchange Catalist. Our analysis indicates that the AIM and Catalist markets have the closest fit to our template model, while the GEM and Mothers show material departures from it.     

Health workers’ behavior,patient reporting and reputational concerns: lab-in-the-field experimental evidence from Kenya

Experimental Economics - We examine the effectiveness of accountability systems that rely on patient reporting in Kenyan health clinics. Patients and health care providers from public and private...