Latin American Ecotourism: What is it?

Defining – and agreeing upon a definition of – the word 'ecotourism' poses a challenge. This is especially true in Latin America where the buzzword remains a vague term used t o market anything related to nature or environmental tourism. 'Proyectos ecoturisticos' sell everything from community development projects to jet skis. There are pros and cons in using any specific viewpoint – if we insist on high environmental standards and minimal impacts, the costs skyrocket. This places the services and destinations into a 'luxury class' tourism – sometimes without the amenities to which those who pay high-end prices are accustomed. These five-star operations often run into conflict with more humble, grassroots operations. At risk are rural and/or indigenous guides who do not have the financial resources to take part in established guide training programmes – not offered in the field, but usually in the capital city. Good intentions lie behind guide training and accreditation, but if governments or agencies do not empower rural guides and tourism operations, the absence of 'local participation' betrays one of the main components of ecotourism.     

Reporting public sector financial results

Part of the process of recent public sector reform has involved replacing traditional cashbased accounts with accrual-based financial statements, similar to those found in the private sector. This article examines the use of accrual-based accounting in the public sector and provides examples from the UK National Health Service of situations where the accruals system may be deemed inappropriate. It shows that one possible response is to withdraw from the accruals mode and revert to cash measures, deeming the accruals adjustments to be ‘merely technical’. An alternative response is to change the mode of operating so that the cash impact of a transaction matches its accruals reporting impact. The conclusion is that there are modifications to public sector accounting practices away from those of the private sector that undermine the metaphor of running the public sector ‘like a business’.     

Agricultural and resource economics and economic development in Aboriginal communities

Economic development is seen as the best way for Aboriginal communities to improve their welfare and lessen the considerable disadvantages they suffer. Unfortunately, the economics profession has shown little interest in their plight. Agricultural and resource economists have much to offer in helping to foster economic development in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. Suggestions are made as to various ways in which our particular interests and experiences can hopefully be applied.     

Session I: Corporate Purpose and Governance

In this first of five sessions of a recent Columbia Law School symposium devoted to discussion of his new book, Prosperity—and The Purpose of the Corporation, Oxford University's Colin Mayer begins by calling for a “radical reinterpretation” of the corporate mission. For all but the last 50 or so of its 2,000‐year history, the corporation has combined commercial activities with a public purpose. But since Milton Friedman's famous pronouncement in 1970 that the social goal of the corporation is to maximize its own profits, the gap between the social and private interests served by corporations appears to have grown ever wider, helping fuel the global outbreaks of populist protest and indictments of capitalism that fill today's media. In Mayer's reinterpretation, the boards of all companies will produce and publish statements of corporate purpose that envision some greater social good than maximizing shareholder value. To that end, he urges companies to make continuous investments of their financial capital and other resources in developing other forms of corporate capital—human, social, and natural—and to account for such investments in the same way they now account for their investments in physical capital. Although the author appears to prefer that such changes be mandatory, enacted through new legislation and enforced by regulators and the courts, his main efforts are directed at persuading the largest institutional owners of corporations—many of whom are already favorably predisposed to ESG—to support these corporate initiatives. Marty Lipton, after expressing enthusiasm about Mayer's proposals, suggests that mandating such changes is likely neither feasible nor desirable, but that attempts—like his own New Paradigm—to gain the acceptance and support of large shareholders is the most promising strategy. Ron Gilson, on the other hand, after voicing Lipton's skepticism about the enforceability of such statements of purpose, issues a number of warnings. One is about the political risks associated with ever more concentrated ownership of public companies in a world where populist distrust of all concentrations of wealth and power is clearly on the rise. But most troubling for the company themselves is the confusion such proposals could create for corporate boards whose responsibility is to limit two temptations facing corporate managements: short‐termism, or underinvestment in the corporate future to boost near‐term earnings (and presumably stock prices); and what Gilson calls hyperopia, or overinvestment designed to preserve growth (and management's jobs) at all costs.     

The Effectiveness and Targeting of Television Advertising

Television networks spend about 16% of their revenues on tune-ins, which are previews or advertisements for their own shows. In this paper, we examine two questions. First, what is the informational content in advertising? Second, is this level of expenditures consistent with profit maximization? To answer these questions, we use a new and unique micro-level panel dataset on the television viewing decisions of a large sample of individuals, matched with data on show tune-in advertisements. The difference in effectiveness of advertisements between “regular” shows (about which viewers are assumed to have substantial information a priori) and “specials” (about which they have very little) reveals the value of information in advertisements and the different roles that information can play. The number of exposures for each individual is likely to be correlated with their preferences, since networks target their audiences. We address this endogeneity problem by controlling for observed, and integrating the unobserved, characteristics of individuals, and find that the estimated effects of tune-ins are still large. Finally, we find that actual expenditures on tune-ins closely match the predicted optimal levels of spending.     

Brand Values and Capital Market Valuation

Brand value estimates are significantly positively related to prices and returns, incremental to accounting variables. Questionable brand value estimate reliability underlies lack of financial statement recognition for brands. Findings suggest estimates are relevant and sufficiently reliable to be reflected in share prices. Simultaneous equations estimation reveals inferences are unaffected by potential bias resulting from simultaneity between brand value estimates and equity market value. Brand value estimates are positively associated with advertising expense, operating margin, and market share. Yet, brand value estimates provide significant explanatory power for prices incremental to these variables, and to recognized brand assets and analysts earnings forecasts.     

Globalization and Economic Development: Impact of Social Capital and Institutional Building

Countries engaged actively in globalization have experienced phenomenal changes in economic, social, cultural, political, and technological progress. Some countries have benefited significantly from greater integration, while others have held globalization accountable for their economic failure and instability. Globalization introduces new political and social challenges. Benefiting from globalization requires complementary institutions and social development to deal with the changes and risks introduced by greater openness. This article examines whether globalization benefits economic development and how the developing countries could gain from globalization through their social capital and institutional building.     

Introduction-virtue and virtuousness: when will the twain ever meet?

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition.     

Structural Applications of the Discrete Choice Model

A growing body of empirical literature uses structurally-derived economic models to study the nature of competition and to measure explicitly the economic impact of strategic policies. While several approaches have been proposed, the discrete choice demand system has experienced wide usage. The heterogeneous, or mixed, logit in particular has been widely applied due to its parsimonious structure and its ability to capture flexibly substitution patterns for a large number of differentiated products.We outline the derivation of the heterogeneous logit demand system. We then present a number of applications of such models to various data sources. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of directions for future research in this area.