Meditation as a kind of leisure: the similarities and differences in the United States

Meditation has been shown to be a cost-effective means to help individuals reduce stress, alleviate anxiety and depression. Similarly, leisure has been found to reduce stress, improve mood and contribute to overall health and well-being. The similarities and differences in outcomes between meditation and leisure suggest that a comparative analysis may determine if and how experiences and outcomes of meditation may be similar to and different from those of leisure and provide deeper insights into the ways in which both can contribute to improved quality of life. The purpose of this study is to examine the similarities and differences in meditation and leisure as perceived by a range of individuals engaging in meditation. Results indicate that meditators experience stress reduction, emotional balance and an enhanced quality of life during both their leisure and meditation. Many of the positive experiences and outcomes derived from meditation render it very similar to leisure. Nevertheless, meditation and leisure also differ in several important ways.     

An impact of economic integration through trade: on business cycles for 10 East Asian countries

Many recent studies about East Asian countries discussed “natural” economic integration through trade, but there are few rigorous empirical studies on how their economies were affected by the evolution of economic integration within the region. This paper investigates the effect of bilateral trade dependence on the co-movement of business cycles for 10 East Asian countries. We find that economic fluctuations tend to be more synchronized within the region as trade interdependence among them deepens. This finding suggests the necessity of cooperative efforts to prevent or adjust unfavorable future economic crisis in East Asia.     

Motivations of non-Buddhists visiting Buddhist temples

The current study employs the leisure motivation scale to examine motivations of non-Buddhists visiting Buddhist temples. Specifically, this investigation builds on tourism literature to explore the motivations of non-Buddhists visiting Buddhist temples in Los Angeles, California. Motivations to Buddhist temples are of particular interest given the increasing popularity in the West of Eastern spiritual activities, such as yoga and meditation, as well as the exponential growth of Buddhist-themed tourism campaigns. The findings provide insights for tourism officials responsible for promoting ways to attract tourists to Buddhist temples within their respective destinations.     

Residual claim and information acquisition in partnerships

This paper deals with a partnership facing an investment decision which is facilitated by costly but valuable information acquisition. When agents are identical in preference and endowment, it is shown that a partnership arrangement that makes one agent a residual claimant can sustain optimality, under which the residual claimant acquires information and assumes decision authority. Also, it is shown that different risk aversions and relative efficiency in information gathering determine who should be the residual claimant in an optimal partnership arrangement. Finally, an example of an optimal partnership arrangement is presented, where the residual claimant does not play any role except having a residual claim, hence a (partial) counterexample to Alchian and Demsetz's theory of classical firms.     

Holding or not holding a mega-event: case of the F1 Korea Grand Prix

This study aims to estimate visitors’ consumption benefits using the double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation method. The results of this study show that the per capita consumption benefit of the F1 Korea Grand Prix, a study context used in this study, were approximately US$307 and then, the total aggregated economic value generated by the event was US$49,262,301 in 2011. These results indicate that visitors of the F1 Korea Grand Prix perceive huge economic benefits from their visitation and activities during the event. In addition, the results show that prior visit experience and a sport identification are significantly associated with visitors’ perceived consumption benefits while other variables (e.g. age, gender, nationality, automotive club membership) are not. Several theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of this study are discussed.     

Testing financial contagion on heteroskedastic asset returns in time-varying conditional correlation

We suggest that there is a significant relationship between cross-market comovement and time varying volatility. The time-varying component of cross-market dependence is attributed to the intertemporal risk-return adjustment by rational, risk-averse investors who systematically revise their expectation in response to changing volatility. To reflect the time-varying component of cross-market dependence, we propose a time-varying correlation test for contagion. Our results show that out of the countries reporting contagion evidence under the constant correlation test, none of the countries exhibits contagion evidence from the 1997 Asian crisis. We conclude that a high level of cross-market correlation during a crisis reported as contagion evidence under the standard constant correlation test is mostly due to the high level of cross-market co-movement resulting from the intertemporal risk-return adjustment.     

Digital Privacy: GDPR and Its Lessons for Australia

Australia's Privacy Act 1988 is under review with a view to bringing Australia's privacy laws into the digital era, more in line with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This article discusses how the GDPR can be refined and standardised to be more effective in protecting privacy in the digital era while not adversely affecting the digital economy that relies heavily on data. We argue that an ideal data policy should be informative and transparent about potential privacy costs while giving consumers a menu of opt-in choices into which they can self-select.