Renewable Resources,Pollution and Trade

Detrimental spillovers from industrial activity onto resource‐based productive sectors are very common, yet their effects remain understudied. While international trade often creates conditions for the over‐exploitation of open‐access renewable resources, it also provides opportunities for separating different productive sectors spatially. The existing literature suggests that a diversified exporter of the renewable resource good tends to lose from trade in both welfare and conservation terms as a result of over‐depletion, while the exporter of the non‐resource good gains. However, the resource stock externality of harvesting and the inter‐industry pollution externality often coexist in reality. In a small open economy framework, this paper shows that acknowledging their interaction changes the nature of the autarkic equilibrium and enriches the set of resource conservation and welfare outcomes from trade. Depending on the relative damage inflicted by the two industries on the environment, which in turn are functions of the pollution intensity and bioeconomic parameters, it is possible that the inter‐sectoral pollution externality persists and specialization in manufacturing is not optimal from a welfare perspective.     

A field experiment investigating age discrimination in four European labour markets

In a field experiment investigating age discrimination, pairs of men, aged 27 and 47, inquired about employment as waiters in towns across England, France, Germany and Spain. Statistically significant discrimination against the older waiter was found in all four countries, but it was considerably higher in France and Spain than in England and Germany.     

Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.     

ASIA'S ROLE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC ARCHITECTURE

The global economic and financial landscape has been transformed over the past decade by the growing economic size and financial power of emerging economies. The new Group of Twenty summit process, which includes the largest emerging economies, has established high‐level international policy cooperation in this new setting. This article argues that effective global economic governance will also require changes in key global organizations—such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and the Financial Stability Board—and closer collaboration between global and regional organizations. We suggest that federalism be introduced on a global scale by creating hierarchies of global and regional organizations with overlapping ownership structures in various functional areas (as is already the case with the World Bank and regional development banks in the area of development finance). Asia could contribute to this transformation by building effective institutions to promote macroeconomic and financial stability and deepen regional trade and investment integration. Similar logic could be applied to a broader issue of providing international public goods, such as environmental and climate protection, communicable disease control, and disaster risk management. (JEL F02, F13, F33, F55, O59)     

Erratic strategic decisions: when and why managers are inconsistent in strategic decision making

While decision makers in organizations frequently make good decisions rooted in stable and consistent preferences, such consistency in outcomes is not always the case. In this study, we adopt a psychological perspective of judgment to investigate managers' erratic strategic decisions, which we define as a manager's inconsistent judgments that can shape the direction of the firm. In a study of 2,048 decisions made by 64 CEOs of technology firms, we examine how both metacognitive experience and perceptions of the external environment (hostility and dynamism) could affect the extent to which managers make erratic strategic decisions. The results indicate that managers with greater metacognitive experience make less erratic strategic decisions. The results also indicate that in hostile environments managers make more erratic strategic decisions. But contrary to our expectations, in dynamic environments managers make less erratic strategic decisions. Similarly, hostility and dynamism interact in their effect on erratic strategic decisions in that the positive relationship between environmental hostility and erratic strategic decisions will be less positive for managers experiencing high environmental dynamism than those experiencing low environmental dynamism. These results have important implications for strategic decision‐making research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Russian enterprises at the end of 2016: Reaction to varying ruble exchange rate and the workforce situation

This article represents an analysis of and comments on the results of a regular survey of Russian enterprises operating in the real sector, which was conducted by the Institute of Economic Forecasting, Russian Academy of Sciences. It represents opinions of enterprises, the modern macroeconomic problems of which they believe to be the most acute. This article considers the responses of enterprises regarding how their activities have been affected by the mutual sanctions between Russia and Western countries, as well as by Russia’s WTO accession. We have shown the opinions of enterprises on their interests in the ruble exchange rate. This ref lects the current situation with the workforce at enterprises and gives data on their participation in solving of housing problems faced by their employees. This article contains information on how enterprises rate today’s level of competition with foreign manufacturers on Russian markets.     

Neighbors and the evolution of the comparative advantage of nations: Evidence of international knowledge diffusion?

The literature on knowledge diffusion shows that knowledge decays strongly with distance. In this paper we document that the probability that a product is added to a country's export basket is, on average, 65% larger if a neighboring country is a successful exporter of that same product. For existing products, growth of exports in a country is 1.5% higher per annum if it has a neighbor with comparative advantage in these products. While these results could be driven by a common third factor that escapes our controls, they align with our expectations of the localized character of knowledge diffusion.