In Sickness and in Health: Implications for Employers when Bipolar Disorders are Protected Disabilities

This paper explores the potential conflict between employment protections afforded to individuals with bipolar disorder, and employers’ obligations to maintain a safe working environment for others in the workplace. Both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAA) provide workplace protections to those employees or applicants who are classified as qualified individuals with a disability. A disability is “a substantial impairment—a physical or mental impairment—in a major life activity that would substantially limit that major life activity.” ( 42 U.S.C. §§ 12102(1)(A)-(C)), and “mental impairment” is defined to include individuals with bipolar disorder (42 U.S.C. § 1630.2(h)(2)). These statutes further impose a requirement on employers to make reasonable accommodations for such individuals. In essence, they protect the bipolar employee from any discrimination in the workplace based on their disability, to include harassment by coworkers. However, employers may find themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma. Depending on the nature and severity of the bipolar employee’s conduct toward coworkers, they may also be exposed to liability for harm done to coworkers under negligent retention laws, or even the anti-harassment provisions of other equal employment statutes. If a bipolar employee’s negative behaviors toward coworkers are sufficiently severe or pervasive, they can result in coworkers suffering harassment sufficient to constitute actionable conduct under the ADA. To reduce exposure to litigation, employers must understand both their obligations under the ADA, and the nature of bipolar disorder.     

Consumer confusion from own brand lookalikes: An exploratory investigation

Lookalikes are a new generation of own brand products that have similar packaging and labelling characteristics to leading branded products. Their current success and proliferation (in Britain) has raised ethical and legal issues about whether they confuse consumers. A set of factors that foster or inhibit consumer confusion adapted from a framework on consumer confusion, were tested on a sample of 50 shoppers at the end of their shopping visit. No incidents of consumers having falsely bought a lookalike product were identified. However, low‐price products subject to impulse buying were found to be more likely to confuse shoppers. Additionally, elderly and impulsive shoppers appear to be more susceptible to confusion. Thus, effective brand identification or confusion‐protection strategies are more important for the above sets of products and shoppers. However, future research should concentrate on what extent consumers infer “misleading” that the original brand attributes are similar to the lookalike brand attributes and how this is linked to their choice.     

Perceptions of visitor relationship marketing opportunities by destination marketers: An importance-performance analysis

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) initiatives are increasingly being adopted by businesses in the attempt to enhance brand loyalty and stimulate repeat purchases. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which destination marketing organisations (DMOs) around the world have developed a visitor relationship marketing (VRM) orientation. The proposition underpinning the study is that maintaining meaningful dialogue with previous visitors in some markets would represent a more efficient use of resources than above the line advertising to attract new visitors. Importance-performance analysis was utilised to measure destination marketers’ perceptions of the efficacy of CRM initiatives, and then rate their own organisation’s performance across the same range of initiatives. A key finding was that mean importance was higher than perceived performance for every item. While the small sample limits generalisability, in general there are appears to be a lack of strategic intent by DMOs to invest in VRM.     

Tourist–resident interfaces: using reflexive photography to develop responsible rural tourism in Indonesia

This study examines how Indonesia can responsibly develop rural tourism within the tolerance range of local people, particularly for controlling their unique landscapes. It employs reflexive photography as a tool to involve residents for rural tourism development in Sambi village. Data were collected in Sambi using reflexive photography procedures, including a photo-making process and photo-interview. Twenty-eight residents were issued a single-use camera and requested to take photographs of what they deemed important to them. Cameras were provided for a two-week period followed by individual interviews; 618 useable photos were taken. They were coded into 15 topics, and then consolidated into five themes that residents wanted to share: their way of life, environmental features, built structures, people, art and ceremony, while also protecting the cemetery and mosque from tourists. Two strategies (time and space) were utilized by the residents to negotiate what they wanted to share as well as conceal. Residents view time in terms of sacred time (residents time spent alone, family time and time for religious prayer) and impartial time (devoted to working and other daily routines). A model based on four time and space zones was formulated to understand how residents control their landscapes for tourism development.     

A theorem on interest rate differentials,risk and anticipated inflation

This paper develops a theorem to the effect that the difference in nominal interest rates between two securities of the same maturity but different risk is an increasing linear function of the anticipated rate of inflation. Even when society's inflationary. A preliminary attempt is made to estimate the real risk premiums that finance paper, bankers's, acceptances, commercial paper, certificates of deposit, and Eurodollar deposits command over treasury bills. It is found, for example, that the real risk premium commanded by bankers’ acceptances over treasury bills is five basis points. This means that in a non-inflationary environment, bankers' acceptances would yeild five basis points more than treasury bills. This estimate and the other estimates obtained are not implausiable, but they are probably minimum estimates because of bias in the estimate of inflationary expectations.     

RESIDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF A WORLD HERITAGE SITE: The Pitons Management Area, St. Lucia

This study examined the factors that influence local community residents’ support for the Pitons Management Area (PMA) as a World Heritage Site and their support for Sustainable Tourism Development. Community Attachment, Environmental Attitudes and Involvement in PMA were hypothesized as independent variables. Results of a structural equation modeling analysis using 319 resident samples suggested that Community Attachment positively influences their support behaviors, and Environmental Attitudes indirectly influence the support behaviors through Perceptions about PMA. Level of Involvement in the PMA was not found to have any significant relationships. The notable lack of involvement of residents presented critical implications for the sustainability of the site.     

Impact of Crop Diversification on Rural Poverty in Nepal

Crop diversification into high‐value crops (HVCs) can be an important strategy to augment income, generate employment, and reduce poverty in developing countries. We study the impact of crop diversification (share of production value obtained from the HVCs) on household (HH) welfare measures in Nepal. We use three rounds of the nationally representative Nepal Living Standard Surveys: NLSS I (1994/95), NLSS II (2004/05), and NLSS III (2010/11). The dose–response function, propensity score matching, and instrumental variable techniques are used to estimate the impact of crop diversification. Results show the positive impact of HVCs on the monthly per capita consumption expenditure and poverty outcomes. Among HVCs growers, HHs growing vegetables have the better welfare outcomes. While establishing the relationship between degree of agricultural diversity and poverty measures, we find that the marginal farmers need to at least derive 35% of the share of revenue from HVCs to escape from poverty.     

Trade liberalization and food security in Nepal

Among South Asian countries, Nepal liberalized most extensively during the 1980s and 1990s on both domestic and external fronts. In South Asia, Nepal has the lowest per capita income, highest dependence of population on agriculture and second highest poverty rate. At the same time, Nepal has the lowest average tariffs in South Asia and has taken several steps to downsize its public food distribution system and remove a host of agricultural subsidies. The outcomes from these policy reforms in Nepal are mixed. Aggregate indicators of food sufficiency and security (per capita food availability, extent of malnourishment) show improvement in Nepal since liberalization. Relative to other South Asian countries, Nepal is doing better on some indicators, like extent of undernourished population, while on other indicators, like stunting of children, Nepal is actually doing the worst. More importantly, the gains from liberalization across regions in Nepal have been uneven. The reason for such an uneven outcome is lack of complementary policies from the government that would lead to spatial integration of markets (e.g. the creation of physical and marketing infrastructure). Liberalization has in effect reinforced the ex-ante hierarchy across regions in Nepal. The paper then reviews the role and reform of the Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) within this broader context.     

Consumer expectations and short-horizon return predictability

Lettau and Ludvigson [Lettau, M., Ludvigson, S, 2001. Consumption, aggregate wealth and expected stock returns. Journal of Finance 56, 815–849] argue that fluctuations from the equilibrium ratio of consumption to wealth (cây) reflect changing expectations of asset returns and document significant short-horizon predictability based on cây. This paper further explores the role of consumer expectations in modeling time variation of expected equity returns by considering two measures of consumer expectations: (i) consumer behavior as reflected in cây, and (ii) a more-direct measure of expectations captured by the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS). We report strong regression-based evidence of return predictability based on cây, which remains evident even after accounting for various sources of estimation risk. However, the regression-based evidence of predictability does not necessarily imply that shifts in aggregate consumption and the components of aggregate wealth give rise to economically significant investment signals. The survey-based measure of expectations (ICS) is shown to complement the behavioral measure (cây) but has no apparent stand-alone predictive value in forecasting equity returns.