Enterprise Risk Management Through Strategic Allocation of Capital

This article presents a conceptual framework for operationalizing strategic enterprise risk management (ERM) in a general firm. We employ a risk‐constrained optimization approach to study the capital allocation decisions under ERM. Given the decision maker's risk appetite, the problem of holistically managing enterprise‐wide hazard, financial, operational, and real project risks is treated by maximizing the expected total return on capital, while trading off risks simultaneously in Value‐at‐Risk type of constraints. This approach explicitly quantifies the concepts of risk appetite and risk prioritization in light of the firm's default and financial distress avoidance reflected in its target credit rating. Our framework also allows the firm to consider a multiperiod planning horizon so that changing business environments can be accounted for. We illustrate the implementation of the framework through a numerical example. As an initial conceptual advancement, our formulation is capable of facilitating more general ERM modeling within a consistent strategic framework, where idiosyncratic variations of firms and different modeling assumptions can be accommodated. Managerial implications are also discussed.     

Policy choices in South Asian tourism development

Government tourism initiatives in developing countries have been applauded by tourism scholars as a means of assisting a private sector that has insufficient resources and assuring public control of the industry's future. This article reviews the tourism development experience of seven South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldive Republic) on five policy options: public versus private tourism development; domestic versus international tourism; class versus mass tourism; centralization versus decentralization; and integrated versus enclave tourism. All of the governments in the region have been involved in tourism development to some degree, but they have shown considerable variation in their responses to these policy choices. Which choices are made by a specific country, it is suggested, will depend as much on political and cultural considerations as upon economic factors.     

Tourism politics and political science: A case of not so benign neglect

Tourism is today the second largest item of world trade. It is a source of bitter controversy and yet a topic of intense regional collaboration in both international and sub-national politics. It is a policy area infused with the most optimistic projections and the most vitriolic criticism. It is also almost totally ignored by political science. This paper presents a case for examining the politics of tourism by illustrating its intrinsic relevance to nearly every facet of the discipline. The paper also argues that in the absence of political science interest, important dimensions of the political costs and advantages of tourism have been neglected. As a consequence, the developmental potential of tourism has frequently collided unnecessarily with the public interest and even the long-run interests of the tourism industry.     

Can you sell philanthropy?

This paper provides a case study of a social marketing campaign developed in Canada to promote philanthropy — the giving of time and money. It reviews the basic elements of the campaign and outlines the key lessons learned throughout its development. It explores some of the barriers and opportunities to increased generosity and describes how a communication programme attempted to overcome the barriers and capitalise on the opportunities.     

美国对照临床试验研究进展

从抗酸药到任何一个新的肿瘤治疗药物,在FDA批准其在美国市场销售之前,每一个药物都必需经过对照的临床试验证明其安全性和有效性.……     

Capital Structure Swaps and Shareholder Wealth

We show how capital structure swaps can increase the wealth of a firm's long‐term shareholders when a firm's debt or equity is misvalued. We review the conventional rule that a firm should issue equity and use the proceeds to retire outstanding debt (an equity‐for‐debt swap) when equity is overvalued, or repurchase equity with proceeds of new debt (a debt‐for‐equity swap) when equity is undervalued. We also analyse the more complex case where a firm's debt and equity are both undervalued, showing the optimal swap may be to issue undervalued equity, contrary to the conventional rule.     

TIME, MONEY, AND OPTIMAL CRIMINAL PENALTIES

The economic approach to optimal criminal penalties measures the welfare effects of crime and punishment in dollar terms, ignoring differences in the marginal utility of money among people. This paper alternatively proposes using time as the unit of measure in determining optimal criminal penalties, measuring the costs and benefits of crime in hours or days instead of dollars. The policy implications differ substantially from those in the existing economic literature. Equal prison terms impose similar time costs on all individuals rather than being more costly for those with higher foregone earnings. Equal fines impose the same cost on all individuals in the dollar-based economic models but in a time-denominated system are costlier to those who require more time to earn the money to pay the fines. In principle, one can use either money or time in setting penalties. However, time-based penalties are more consistent with the fundamental and widely held principles of justice on which the U.S. legal system rests.