Price integration in the Australian rock lobster industry: implications for management and climate change adaptation

Rock lobster fisheries are Australia's most valuable wild fisheries in terms of both value of production and value of exports. Different states harvest and export different lobster species, with most of the landings being sent to the Hong Kong market. A perception in the Australian lobster industry is that the different species are independent on the export market, such that a change in landings of one species has no impact on the price of the others. This study investigates the market integration of Australian exports to Hong Kong for the four species and different exporting states. Our results indicate all four species and producers/export states are perceived to be substitutes for one another, so that, in the long run, prices paid to operators in the industry will move together. The integrated nature of the Hong Kong export market for Australian lobster suggests that the potential impacts of alternative fisheries management and development strategies at state and species levels cannot be considered in isolation, at least from an economic perspective. In addition, impacts of external shocks affecting production in one state (e.g. climate change) can be expected to affect all Australian lobster fisheries.     

Environmentally conscious consumption: The role of retailers and peers as external influences

Environmentally conscious consumption is one of the key concerns in modern society generally, and increasingly among the consumer population. However, consumers often overstate their willingness to purchase environmentally conscious products, with global purchasing of these products relatively low. Much research has considered the role of drivers internal to an individual in making such consumption choices; however there is less knowledge as to how external influences may impact environmentally conscious consumption behaviour. As retailers increasingly strive to adopt and communicate their environmentally sustainable business practices, and encourage parallel consumer behavior, the question arises: what role do retailers play in influencing consumers’ environmentally conscious consumption? In this paper we investigate this notion, specifically how external influences (the retailer and peers) impact environmentally conscious behavior. We investigate this behavior in terms of two outcomes; sustainable consumption (direct costs) and willingness to accept environmental taxes (indirect costs). Our research demonstrates that retailers can influence consumers to be more environmentally conscious in their consumption, with retailer influence a stronger mediator than peers in this relationship. One important implication of this research is that retailers have the opportunity to shape environmentally conscious consumption if they adopt sustainable business practices.     

Corporate Community Involvement: a case for regulatory reform

The central thesis of this paper is that Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) is not a neutral activity with positive and mutual benefits for all involved. Rather, it is a much more complex activity which may also have negative impacts. Using Donaldson and Preston's (1995) explanatory model of the stakeholding concept as a framework, this paper explores: (1) the practice of CCI in the UK (with some reference to US experience from which UK firms have drawn extensively), (2) the grounds on which it is justified, and (3) the material consequences of such activity for corporate governance. It concludes by arguing that there is a case for a review of the law on CCI to assess the need for fuller public disclosure so as to allow shareholders and other interested groups the opportunity to assess the impact and effectiveness of CCI more thoroughly.     

企业如何选择报告质量提升及评价策略？

大多数的中国企业都会在上半年发布企业社会责任报告,并遭遇同样的考验：如何保证报告得到公司内外利益相关方的最高认同？现在中国国内许多机构及专家都参与到企业社会责任领域评价报告,但是观点往往不尽相同。     

Asset pricing with partial-moments

I bridge the current pricing kernel framework with the early partial-moment pricing models of the beta framework, thereby reconciling and clarifying these bodies of literature. I argue for the inclusion of powers of min and max functions within a generalized kernel, and form a generalized beta model. Polynomial kernels and the kernel underpinning the partial-moment analogue of the Sharpe-Lintner CAPM are nested. I derive the partial-moment analogue to the Black CAPM, thus completing a theoretical parallelism, and compare the kernel-implied and canonical risk-neutral probabilities. A new model involving both lower and upper partial-moments, accommodating various kernel shapes present in the literature, is developed in the context of preference regularity conditions.     

Value versus Volume in the Catch of the Spanish South‐Atlantic Trawl Fishery

An understanding of the link between the level of inputs and resultant level of outputs is of considerable importance when trying to manage fisheries through input controls. To this end, studies of several fisheries have been undertaken to examine this relationship through the estimation of production functions and frontiers, using either catch weight or revenue as the dependent variable. The choice of the appropriate output variable to use in the analysis will depend on the objectives of the fishermen. Maximisation of catch weight is often proposed as an objective of fishermen rather than maximisation of profits. In this paper, the technical efficiency scores of vessels operating in the Spanish south‐Atlantic trawl fishery are estimated using the stochastic production frontier approach. The production frontiers are estimated with both the weight and the value of the catch as the dependent variable. The results of the analysis suggest that fishermen adopt a range of strategies but relatively few aim to maximise catch weight only. The differences in strategies may reflect heterogeneous attitudes towards risk, with more risk averse fishermen aiming to trade‐off some potential catch value for a more certain quantity of catch.     

A regional diffusion theory explanation for states’ proposal and adoption of anti-passive investment company laws

We investigate the propensity of states to propose and adopt laws prohibiting the deduction of intercompany interest or royalties in response to the passive investment company tax minimization strategy (anti-PIC statutes). Using event history analysis with panel data from 1991–2005, we investigate whether regional diffusion theory explains the proposal and adoption of anti-PIC statutes. Our results provide support for the regional diffusion theory explanation, in that both proposing and adopting states have a higher proportion of adopting states in their particular Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) region. We find no relationship between decreases in states’ real corporate income tax revenues and their adoption of anti-PIC statutes, but do find that proposals are more common in states with slower growth in real personal income. This study contributes to existing state and local tax policy research by demonstrating that certain types of policy decisions may arise from reasons closely linked to herding behavior.     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and Inflation Targets: Are Australia,Canada, and New Zealand Different from the U.S.?

Outwardly, the central banks of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. follow somewhat different approaches to controlling inflation. The U.S. does not explicitly target inflation while the other countries do. Canada and New Zealand have target bands for inflation while Australia has a point target. Results in this paper nevertheless find broad similarities in the monetary policies of these countries. Each can be described as having pursued optimal inflation targeting (explicit or implicit), with heavy interest rate smoothing, but perhaps placing little weight on output variability. We argue that interest rate smoothing is used to introduce gradualism into the response of monetary policy to inflation. We show that given heavy interest rate smoothing, a concern for output variability is redundant.     

European Air Transport — Uncabin the Consumer

The deregulation of air routes between London and Dublin has brought travellers the benefits of competition; and, hardly surprisingly, as prices have fallen the numbers making the journey have increased. Sean Barrett, Lecturer in Economics, and Mark Purdy of Trinity College, Dublin, compare the effects of liberalisation with those of the restricted entry to the European air transport market. How long, they ask, will the European consumer be denied similar benefits?