A framework of tourist attraction research

Although tourist attractions are fundamental to the very existence of tourism, there have been few attemps to come to terms with the breadth of approaches that have been employed in their study. An examination of research methods used in the study of tourist attractions and the tourist attractiveness of places reveals that most studies can be classified into one or more of three general perspectives: the ideographic listing, the organization, and the tourist cognition of attractions. Each of these perspectives shares a distinct set of questions concerning the nature of the attractions, as expressed through the typologies used in their evaluation. At the same time, all three perspectives make comparisons based on the historical, locational, and various valuational aspects of attractions. This framework can be applied in the comparison and evaluation of tourist attraction related research.     

Financial crisis and relative productivity dynamics in Korea: evidence from firm-level data (1992–2003)

We have estimated the relative TFP growth at firm level and analyzed the firm dynamics in view of entry and exit of firms in Korea during 1992–2003, which includes the turbulent financial crisis of 1997–1998. Following Pyo and Ha, Hitotsubashi J Econ 48(1): 67–81, (2007), we have adopted a gross output model rather than a value added model of relative TFP analysis. We have found that the cyclical variation of productivity growth plays a dominant role in the decomposition effects before and after the 1997 financial crisis in Korea. Productivity growth is modest before the crisis and strong after the crisis owing to the recovering market efficiency. There is the likelihood that the productivity growth of stayers during the post-crisis period was significantly higher than new entrants. The net entry effect is found to be more sensitive in small business and export-based firms than in large business and domestic market-based firms. Our findings suggest that Korean firms have recovered a modest level of technical change after its severe financial crisis owing to the improvement of management transparency and the build-up of market efficiency during the IMF-mandated restructuring process. But since the entry effect is estimated to be still negative in Manufacturing and the exit effect is negative in Service sector after the crisis, the Korean economy has not fully recovered its metabolism in the post-crisis period and still lacks a creative destructive process to resume another round of sustainable growth path.     

Possibility of a Middle Income Trap in China： Assessment in Terms of the Literature on Innovation,Big Business and Inequality

This paper discusses the possibility of China falling into the so-called middle income trap in terms of three checkpoints： innovation capability, world-class big businesses, and inequality. Based on these criteria, our conclusions are as follows： First, China has increasingly become innovative and thus differs from other middle income countries. Second, China has many successful big businesses, a number disproportionate to its size. Thus, China differs from other middle income countries with few world-class big businesses, and the only qualification is that those big businesses are mostly non- manufacturing firms focused on such areas as finance, energy, and trading. Third, China faces great uncertainty in terms of inequality. Although several signs show that the Kuznets curve will come to represent China, as noted by the gradual reduction of surplus labor and rising wage rates starting in the coastal provinces, the Chinese are now facing new sources of inequality in China, such as wealth （including financial and real estate assets） and non-economic factors （including corruption）.     

Governance Role of Auditors and Legal Environment: Evidence from Corporate Disclosure Transparency

In a sample of firms originating from 20 countries, we examine whether and how auditor size (our proxy for audit quality) associates with corporate disclosure transparency. While prior studies examine the relation between auditor size and several aspects of financial reporting quality (e.g. discretionary accruals, restatements, etc.), there is limited evidence on how auditor size relates to disclosure transparency. There is also mixed evidence on how auditor size relates to reporting quality in different legal environments. We find that auditor size is positively associated with disclosure transparency around the world and that the association is stronger in code law regimes than in common law regimes. The latter finding supports the view that audits play a greater governing role in weaker legal environments.     

Economic assumptions and choice of functional forms: comparison of top down and bottom up approaches

Two alternative model building approaches are analyzed and compared. The general to specific modeling (top down approach) starts with a general model and subjects it to a sequence of restrictions to determine an acceptable specific model. This approach can start with a series expansion and the concavity or homotheticity conditions can be imposed to modify it into a cost or a production function. The simple to general modeling (bottom up approach) starts with a well known simple model and extends it until a complete system is formed. This approach can start with a Cobb-Douglas function (which satisfies the concavity and homogeneity conditions) and extends it to include the desired complexity. Relative advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches are discussed and tabulated. The electricity generation data is applied to compare the performance of these two approaches.

What was privacy?

Why is that question in the past tense? Because individuals can no longer feel confident that the details of their lives--from identifying numbers to cultural preferences--will be treated with discretion rather than exploited. Even as Facebook users happily share the names of their favorite books, movies, songs, and brands, they often regard marketers' use of that information as an invasion of privacy. In this wide-ranging essay, McCreary, a senior editor at HBR, examines numerous facets of the privacy issue, from Google searches, public shaming on the internet, and cell phone etiquette to passenger screening devices, public surveillance cameras, and corporate chief privacy officers. He notes that IBM has been a leader on privacy; its policy forswearing the use of employees' genetic information in hiring and benefits decisions predated the federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act by three years. Now IBM is involved in an open-source project known as Higgins to provide users with transportable, potentially anonymous online presences. Craigslist, whose CEO calls it "as close to 100% user driven as you can get," has taken an extremely conservative position on privacy--perhaps easier for a company with a declared lack of interest in maximizing revenue. But TJX and other corporate victims of security breaches have discovered that retaining consumers' transaction information can be both costly and risky. Companies that underestimate the importance of privacy to their customers or fail to protect it may eventually face harsh regulation, reputational damage, or both. The best thing they can do, says the author, is negotiate directly with those customers over where to draw the line.     

Mossin's Theorem Given Random Initial Wealth

The purpose of this article is to reexamine Mossin's Theorem under random initial wealth. Conditions necessary and sufficient for Mossin's Theorem depend on the stochastic dependence between risks. The correlation coefficient, however, is not an adequate measure of stochastic dependence in the general expected‐utility model, and so other notions of dependence are used to investigate Mossin's Theorem. The inadequacy of the correlation coefficient is illustrated with two counterexamples. Then, using notions of positive and negative dependence measures, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a generalized Mossin Theorem to hold. In addition, a generalized Mossin Theorem is interpreted using the notion of a mean preserving spread made popular by Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970) . Given a fair premium and dependent stochastic conditions, we show that an individual can obtain a final wealth distribution with less weight in its tails by selecting less than or more than full insurance.     

Late Marketisation versus Late Industrialisation in East Asia

This article analyses the complex interplay of various factors in the 'late marketisation' in China and Vietnam and the 'late industrialisation' in Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The article distinguishes the degree of 'comparative advantage-defying' and 'comparative advantage-following' strategies adopted, and thereby explains the different growth and transition records in the two groups of countries. The article also links the choice of reform strategies to the initial conditions, and attributes the post-transition economic record to the policies adopted. The differences in the allocation of rents and the principal ways in which market discipline was introduced are also discussed.