The Tourism Penetration Index in Large Islands: The Case of the Dominican Republic

The Tourism Penetration Index (TPI) (McElroy & de Albuquerque, 1998) provides an overall measure of economic, social and environmental impact in small islands. Thus far it has not been used to gauge tourism’s spatial concentration in different regions within a given destination. This study develops a TPI for four regions in the Dominican Republic (DR), and these regional scores are compared with a sample of 42 small islands. Results place Punta Cana in the east among the most penetrated islands/ regions, Puerto Plata/Samana in the north among the intermediate, and La Romana/San Pedro and Santo Domingo in the south among the least developed. Results are also compared with surveys on visitor satisfaction, perceptions of safety, and propensity to return. Planning and research implications are discussed.     

WHY ARE SOME PLACES RICH WHILE OTHERS ARE POOR? THE INSTITUTIONAL NECESSITY OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM

We survey perspectives on the economic differences between countries and argue that economic freedom is the key to prosperity. We close by outlining the policy implications. Specifically, removing obstacles to the exercise of economic freedom is an important step towards prosperity.     

汽车·画廊·电视的合作火花

2010年中的每一个周六夜晚,在家的民众多了一个机会去了解一个艺术家的生平与创作历程。这个由奥迪一汽、旅游卫视、天安时间当代艺术中心联合打造的《艺文中国》节目,通过翁菱与艺术家对谈的方式引导观众去认识每一个艺术家独特的个性与艺术观点,使得大众对于艺术不再只是站在边缘上的窥探而是目睹其艺术历程,同时这种由画廊、电视台、奢侈品三方的互赢互利的方式,也深具启发性。     

Strategic positioning of global manufacturing virtual networks in the aeronautical industry

The evolution of organisations that work in multinational environments has considerably altered their production strategies. One of the consequences has been the appearance of global manufacturing virtual networks (GMVNs), which include all kinds of production centres. These networks establish a new type of vertical and horizontal collaboration between independent companies or even competitors who launch occasional collaborations on projects they could not take on individually. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the main reasons that determine the formation of GMVNs as well as the strategy of the companies involved in these organizations and how GMVN will evolve in the future. For that purpose, a conceptual framework is proposed based on four network features: strategy, structure, communication systems and culture. This work will delve into the strategy network feature by applying a strategic positioning model to a practical case in the aeronautical industry to gain a better understanding of how GMVNs work, its effectiveness by clarifying and putting these organisations in perspective and how they may evolve in the future.     

How variation in management perceptions affects organizational performance

This research project uses innovative techniques (multiple respondents and partial relative standard deviations) to examine organizational management ratings of their implementations of market orientation, learning orientation, entrepreneurial management, and organizational flexibility. This study included manufacturers and service businesses, and also not-for-profits in education and healthcare to reflect the 21st century economy. The major finding of this study was larger than the expected response variation within management teams and how this correlated negatively with performance. The results are eye-opening and should be a concern for both management in organizations and the research community.     

Rank based cointegration testing for dynamic panels with fixed <Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis>

In this paper, we show that the cointegration testing procedure of Binder et al. (Econom Theory 21:795–837, 2005) for Panel Vector Autoregressive model of order 1, PVAR(1) is not valid due to the singularity of the hessian matrix. As an alternative we propose a method of moments based procedure using the rank test of Kleibergen and Paap (J Econom 133:97–126, 2006) for a fixed number of time series observations. The test is shown to be applicable in situations with time-series heteroscedasticity and unbalanced data. The novelty of our approach is that in the construction of the test we exploit the “weakness” of the Anderson and Hsiao (J Econom 18:47–82, 1982) moment conditions. The finite-sample performance of the proposed test statistic is investigated using simulated data. The results indicate that for most scenarios the method has good statistical properties. The proposed test provides little statistical evidence of cointegration in the employment data of Alonso-Borrego and Arellano (J Bus Econ Stat 17:36–49, 1999).     

Exploring complementarity in on‐ and off‐job training for apprenticeships

The differences between on‐ and off‐job learning environments continue to be the subject of much debate, and the notion of complementarity between them is a perennial issue for most forms of training and development. This paper grapples with this issue in relation to apprentices in the building industry in Australia. It analyses the different perceptions of complementarity held by apprentices, host employers and college teachers. It strives to understand the diverse meanings of complementarity within the context of communities of practice in which apprentices acquire not only vocational knowledge and skills, but also a sense of identity through internalising sometimes complementary but often contradictory messages from their different learning environments. Their development towards the status of ‘competent tradespersons’ heavily depends on their individual abilities to integrate and synthesise these messages.