Response by Adults to Increases in Cigarette Prices by Sociodemographic Characteristics

Cigarette excise taxes are widely viewed by health economists as an effective tool to reduce cigarette consumption. However, those opposed to increasing cigarette excise taxes often state that the taxes unfairly target certain segments of the population, notably the poor and minorities. Some of this opposition may have been fueled by a lack of understanding of how the tax will affect the health and welfare of various demographic groups of interest. This article provides guidance to policy makers by estimating price elasticities among adults by gender, income, age, and race or ethnicity. Women, adults with income at or below the median income, young adults, African-Americans, and Hispanics are most responsive to cigarette price increases. For example, adults with income at or below the median are more than four times as price-responsive as those with income above the median.     

Do outside directors and new managers help improve firm performance? An exploratory study in Russian privatization

In the context of privatization and restructuring in Russia, we test two standard agency theory hypotheses, namely, (1) outside board members and (2) new managers are positively related to firm performance. Based on a survey of 314 privatized firms, the evidence offers little support for the hypotheses. Historically, results refuting theories have been launch pads for scientific progress. Our findings, therefore, raise interesting questions about whether the underlying theory is appropriate, whether there are methodological problems, or whether there are institutional factors in Russia’s transition economy that need to be accounted for when we test agency theory in a new setting. We address these questions and discuss their implications for corporate governance theory, practice, and public policy.     

Beyond medicine : Health challenges and strategies in the 21st century

The future of health involves much more than the future of medical care since the major factors affecting health are environmental, social and economic ones. Health has generally improved in the past century, but the continuation of this trend is threatened by population growth, urbanization environmental change, poverty, inequity, war, existing communicable and chronic diseases, and possible new ones. New policies and strategies emerging to deal with these challenges include the formulation of healthy public policy, investing in health, and the development of new structures and processes of governance. Integrated national studies focused on human well-being and environmental health are one means through which the futures field could contribute to the improvement of health in 21st century. Visioning workshops and other participatory futures activities are equally important, since they enable people and communities to take part in the definition and achievement of their preferred health futures.     

How Standard is Standardized MNC Global Environmental Communication?

In this paper, we develop an argument to show why we expect that multinational companies will ensure that they communicate credibly about their environmental responsibility, across all their subsidiaries. Credible environmental communication helps to increase the firm’s legitimacy and reduce its liability of foreignness on an issue that is globally relevant. We develop a measure to test if there is a standardized level of environmental communication credibility on the country-specific web sites of MNC subsidiaries around the world and find, in fact, that there is considerable variation across countries, among subsidiaries of different firms and among subsidiaries of the same multinational. We discuss the reasons for this and the implications for firm legitimacy. Trevor Hunter is an assistant professor of business and coordinator of the Management and Organizational Studies program at King’s University College. He received his Ph.D. from the Richard Ivey School of Business. His research interests include the environmental management practices of MNCs and corporate governance. Pratima Bansal is an associate professor and the Shurniak Professor in International Business at the Richard Ivey School of Business. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of sustainable development and international business.     

Sustainability reporting by local government in Australia: Current and future prospects

Sustainability reporting research has historically focused on the corporate sector, with public sector research still very much in its infancy. This exploratory study extends such research in considering the current and future state of local government sustainability reporting in Australia. We utilized a mail survey instrument to collect data. We found that local government in Australia reports on aspects of sustainability, with 50% of respondents indicating that they report on at least one area of sustainability with social reporting being most prevalent. Reporting existed across an array of reports, with no standout reporting focus found. The future of sustainability reporting in local government looks promising, with almost 40% of current non-reporters indicating that they are likely to report in the future.     

The heritage of Chinese cities as seen through the gaze of zhonghua wenhua – ‘Chinese common knowledge’: Guilin as an exemplar

ABSTRACT

The pursuit of modernization in cities all over China has at one level resulted in the disappearance of much built heritage; yet at another level, millennia-old elements of urban traditions are as visibly present in contemporary cities as they were centuries ago. This visibility, however, is not always apparent to non-Chinese observers. To reach an understanding of this phenomenon, it is suggested that the normative ‘western’ approach to heritage with its focus on physical materialities, an orientation that explores in great detail the built fabric of monuments, buildings and sites and which embeds a definition of authenticity in how close to the original the current, existing manifestations are, needs to be put to one side. In Chinese history, the fundamental importance of incorporating cosmology into the entire being of towns and cities to ensure harmony between Heaven and Earth, as defined in the selection of their location in the landscape, cardinal orientation, spatial layout and the disposition of principal buildings – has been recorded in a template known as the ‘Zhou li’ or Rites of Zhou (circa 1035 BC). It was compiled by the Duke of Zhou, who is credited with transforming an abstract concept, the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven (through which emperors ruled as ‘Sons of Heaven’ by divine right), into physical city planning and design. However, he was preceded by the ‘Three Sovereigns’ and ‘Five Sage Emperors’, including Huang-di (the Yellow Emperor, eulogized as ‘the Father of the Yellow Race’) who in Chinese historico-mythology received divine instructions that laid the basis for feng shui and Daoism and provided a context for the compilation of the Zhou li. While this template evolved over centuries, its four key tenets based around cosmology remained much the same and throughout imperial China it continued as the master guide for planning towns and cities. Despite attempts during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) to destroy the ‘Four Olds’ (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits and Old Ideas), the essence of seeking harmony (integral to the belief system underpinning the Zhou li ) remains a predominant ideal in contemporary China, and some elements of the ancient template continue to be actively applied to the present day. Thus even though many Chinese cities may have ‘lost’ their built heritage as defined by western ‘authorities’ such as ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites, the technical body that advises United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on applications for World Heritage Site listing), their cosmological foundations remain and will often be as evident to Chinese observers today as when those cities were originally founded hundreds of years ago. The concept of ‘Chinese common knowledge’ is crucial to this comprehension. These varied historical and cultural traditions provide the setting to examine the origins of Guilin, a 2200-year-old city in Guangxi Province, which exhibits original aspects of its traditional heritage that are eminently visible in the twenty-first-century city to the Chinese gaze but are often out of sight from western observers who fail to recognize the Chinese tangibles and intangibles all around them.     

Implications of efficiency and productivity change over the season for setting MEY‐based trigger targets

The banana prawn component of Australia's Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) is currently managed through the use of annually updated trigger catch rates as a means of achieving maximum economic yield (MEY) in the fishery, taking into account the estimated price and cost components for that season. The estimation of these target catch rates is based on the assumption of relative homogeneity of the fleet in terms of efficiency, productivity and cost structure. In this study, these assumptions are examined through the estimation of a stochastic production frontier. While technical efficiency varies between vessels, average efficiency is relatively constant over the fishing season. However, average productivity of the fleet increases, with smaller vessels (in terms of engine power) exiting the fishery earlier. This would likely increase the average cost of fishing towards the end of the season, with implications for setting the target catch rate. Based on a standard assumption as to the relationship between costs and vessel size, we find that the MEY target catch rates are most likely currently underestimated. However, the implementation of a precautionary minimum catch rate (which is above the MEY target catch rates for recent years) has maintained the fishery at a profitable level.