Is the abandonment of traditional livestock farming systems the main driver of mountain landscape change in Alpine areas?

Agricultural land abandonment and the consequent natural forest regrowth in areas once cultivated has significantly transformed Alpine ecosystems and landscapes. In this paper, we estimated the loss of agricultural areas due to reafforestation in the Belluno Province (Eastern Italian Alps) and integrated socioeconomic indicators with topographical features to evaluate the drivers of this change. Land use mapping, obtained from photo-interpretation of aerial photographs and technical maps, was used to quantify changes in forest and agricultural areas (crops, meadows and pastures) during the period of 1980–2000. On average, the forest surface expanded by 21%, while the agricultural areas decreased by 40%. This loss increased in areas with steeper slope, which confirms that the areas that would be first abandoned are those that are less productive and more difficult to manage. The reafforestation rate was particularly strong in the north of the province, where the livestock sector experienced a dramatic decline. In light of this situation and using multiple regression models with a large set of socioeconomic and agricultural indicators, we found that the loss of agricultural areas in 69 municipalities was primarily counterbalanced by the maintenance of livestock farming. The loss of steeper agricultural areas was counteracted by traditional extensive systems; however, it was not counteracted by modern intensive systems, which has important implications because steeper areas have higher landscape and biodiversity values. In addition, tourism development had a positive, although smaller, effect on the maintenance of agricultural areas, while industry development had a negative effect. The results of this study suggest that efforts are needed to maintain a territorial network of traditional extensive farms to avoid further landscape deterioration in Alpine areas. Likewise, certain choices toward the economic development of local communities might have an impact on land conservation.     

The Role of Political Institutions in the Resolution of Economic Crises: The Case of Argentina 2001–05

Many financial crises during the last decade have derived more directly from political than purely economic problems. When democratic institutions, government transparency, regulatory oversight or the rule of law break down, the likelihood that politicians will implement unsustainable economic policies rises. The economics literature analyses the role of poorly functioning government institutions in allowing a nation to slip into financial crisis. However, the literature on the effectiveness of post-crisis reforms focuses almost exclusively on whether the stated post-crisis policies are appropriate from an economic viewpoint. Oddly, that literature fails to examine the status of the underlying governmental deficiencies, assuming implicitly that they have been remedied. Because economic reforms are feasible only with wide political and social consensus, two important post-crisis issues are essential to the success of such reforms; namely, the political situation and politicians' management of economic policy. Political failures are particularly relevant to the Argentine financial crisis that began in December 2001. This paper identifies those political issues, which derived from an unstable political structure characterized by corruption and fragmented power between provinces and the federal government. Critically, the rule of law had been undermined in 1991. Interestingly, these same shortcomings still pervaded Argentina in 2004. The resultant lack of political consensus continues to delay implementation of the structural reforms necessary to return to sustainable economic growth. Social confidence in the government is low; the independence of the Supreme Court has been shattered; and the rule of law continues to be eroded, as the government tramples on the property rights of private firms and public debt-holders. Because it seems unlikely that Argentina can overcome its political deficiencies in the near future, its prospects for full economic recovery are limited, regardless of which economic reforms it implements.     

Determinants of pension funding and asset allocation decisions

Prior research suggests that the funding and asset allocation decisions for defined benefit pension plans may be based on tax, risk, and profitability factors. Much of the previous empirical work, however, suffers from statistical problems that may produce misleading or contradictory results. We employ a confirmatory factor analytic model to address the statistical problems plaguing pension research. Various competing hypotheses are tested simultaneously. Findings indicate that firms use pensions to offset business risk.An earlier version of this article was presented at the Financial Management Association Meetings held in Toronto, October 1993. Much of the work on this article was done while the authors were at the University of Texas-Arlington.     

Determinants of Equity Style

This paper provides a unifying empirical treatment of propositions explaining equity style cycles with a four-factor model that combines risk factors central to style theory. Tests on style autocorrelations and performance over the period January 1979–December 2004 generally affirm theoretical expectations. We employ cointegration methodology to analyze the stationarity of style covariances and dissect the diversification contributions of styles. We document style diversification gains but discover an asymmetry: value gains are derived from small company stocks while growth benefits come from large stocks. The asymmetry implies portfolios comprised of independent large growth and small value styles since the twin small growth and large value styles are cointegrated and redundant diversifiers. Performance tests show superior performance by the independent styles over the sample period, two equal intertemporal periods, and an extended 5-year period that directly contradicts a risk based explanation. The influence of institutional traders on style trends is also documented. Our findings affirm the predictions of behavioral models and provide more empirical evidence of superior performance unrelated to risk or fundamentals.

Global Property Market Diversification

This paper examines global diversification benefits provided by developed property markets over 1992–2007. We employ a cointegration methodology, invariant to pair-wise correlational instability plaguing MPT approaches, to investigate regional and country property market diversification benefits for U.S. domiciled global real estate investors. We show, theoretically and empirically, the cointegration procedure aptly identifies markets integrated by common trends that mitigate diversification potential. We show global property markets are interregionally independent but find intraregional market cointegration. A portfolio of markets independent of cointegrating relationships performs best during the period but is insufficiently diversified relative to a cointegrated portfolio. Independent country markets do account for the bulk of global property diversification gains but cointegrated markets, particularly from the North American and Asia Pacific regions, retain some diversifying qualities. We also show cointegrated markets converge toward benchmark characteristics, reducing their attraction as portfolio candidates.     

Coherent Modeling and Forecasting of Mortality Patterns for Subpopulations Using Multiway Analysis of Compositions: An Application to Canadian Provinces and Territories

Mortality levels for subpopulations, such as countries in a region or provinces within a country, generally change in a similar fashion over time, as a result of common historical experiences in terms of health, culture, and economics. Forecasting mortality for such populations should consider the correlation between their mortality levels. In this perspective, we suggest using multilinear component techniques to identify a common time trend and then use it to forecast coherently the mortality of subpopulations. Moreover, this multiway approach is performed on life table deaths by referring to Compositional Data Analysis (CoDa) methodology. Compositional data are strictly positive values summing to a constant and represent part of a whole. Life table deaths are compositional by definition because they provide the age composition of deaths per year and sum to the life table radix. In bilinear models the use of life table deaths treated as compositions generally leads to less biased forecasts than other commonly used models by not assuming a constant rate of mortality improvement. As a consequence, an extension of this approach to multiway data is here presented. Specifically, a CoDa adaptation of the Tucker3 model is implemented for life table deaths arranged in three-dimensional arrays indexed by time, age, and population. The proposed procedure is used to forecast the mortality of Canadian provinces in a comparative study. The results show that the proposed model leads to coherent forecasts.     

TRADE POLICY AND PROTECTIONISM IN ARGENTINA

Protectionism can take many different forms. In some cases, strong export performance can mislead observers assessing the trade policy of a country. Such is the case with regard to Argentina, where the strong showing in exports is not the result of a strategy of export‐led economic growth, but rather reflects a complex strategy of government intervention and isolation from international markets in general.     

Directed hypergraphs as a modelling paradigm

We address a generalization of graphs, the directed hypergraphs, and show that they are a powerful tool in modelling and solving several relevant problems in many application areas. Such application areas include Linear Production Problems, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Propositional Logic, Relational Databases, and Public Transportation Systems.     

The Performance,Asset Allocation,and Investment Style of International Equity Managers

This paper evaluates the performance of 114 international equity managers over the January 1988–December 1997 period. Performance tests are conducted using Sharpe (1966) and Jensen (1968) performance methodologies. The managers are divided into mutual fund (n=54) and separately managed fund (n=60) investment management categories. Each management category is further divided by foreign and world (global) investment objectives. Three major findings are reported. First, international equity managers, on average, were unable to outperform the MSCI World market proxy during the sample period. However, world managers did perform better than their foreign counterparts. Second, geographic asset allocation and equity style allocation decisions enhanced the performance of international managers during the sample period. Third, separately managed funds outperformed mutual funds during the period studied when mutual fund returns are measured net of management fees. The apparent managed performance advantage abates, however, when mutual fund returns are adjusted to include management fees. Thus, we find no significant difference in the performance of the management categories when returns are measured gross of fees.