Preference for Landings’ Smoothing and Risk of Collapse in Optimal Fishery Policies: The Ibero-Atlantic Sardine Fishery

Several world fish stocks are being explored at unsustainable levels and require management plans to rebuild stock abundance. Defining a management plan is, however, a complex task that entails multidisciplinary work. In fact, while it requires solid scientific knowledge of fish stocks, the inclusion of economic and social objectives is crucial to a successful management implementation. In this paper we develop an age-structured bioeconomic model where the objective function is modified to accommodate preferences from different stakeholders. In particular, we consider important characteristics that a management plan should take into account: profit maximization, fishermen’s preference for reducing landings’ fluctuations and risk of fishery collapse. Modeling preferences for reducing landings’ fluctuations is accomplished by defining a utility function with aversion to intertemporal income fluctuations. Building upon biology literature, we model precautionary concerns by incorporating a probability of collapse that depends on current spawning biomass. We illustrate how this framework is able to assist in the analysis and design of harvest control rules applying it to the Ibero-Atlantic sardine stock.     

The next frontier in tourism emotion research

Emotion is emerging as a central concept in tourism research, critical for the delivery of memorable tourism experiences. However, existing approaches in tourism do not adequately explain the process by which emotions are elicited. Recent advances in cognitive and neuropsychology demonstrate that emotions are elicited through an appraisal process, which occurs in the cortex of the brain. These processes produce chemical monoamine neurotransmitters that lead to bodily feelings, which in turn enable our brain to recognise emotions. This research note draws on Lövheim’s Cube, a self-report scale that provides a proxy indicator of the likely presence of monoamine neurotransmitters of serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline. Six images of the Great Barrier Reef were used as a stimuli in an online panel survey (n?=?1249). Results demonstrate that images used by tourism stakeholders are likely to produce stronger neurological reactions than images from an environmental non-governmental organisation. Combining recent advances in self-report methods with a neurocognitive approach has the propensity to offers additional insight into emotional reactions to visual stimuli. Further research should focus on the efficacy of utilising self-report measures with cutting edge psychophysiological techniques, such as ambulatory electroencephalography (EEG) to open the door to the next frontier in tourism emotion research.     

Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping

Tracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most foreign owned land has been purchased by only 10 pastoral companies, which are implicated in speculative development activities. Second, foreign investment in cropping and horticulture is more significant than it appears in the Register, with investments in agricultural infrastructure increasingly driving land use change. Third, we illustrate the deepening entrenchment of institutional finance. By engaging with the findings from our dataset as well as with the politics of data that have shaped the availability of information, the paper progresses understandings of the financialization of farmland in both its material and ideational aspects.     

Risikoberichterstattung von Versicherungsunternehmen — Analyse der Risikoberichte im Zeitablauf

This paper presents the findings of an empirical study of the development of risk reports of German insurance companies from 1999 until 2003. The empirical study is based on formal aspects and a detailed content analysis of risk reports which companies have to publish by German Commercial Law (HGB). The analysis is based on generally accepted accounting principles for management reports in annual financial statements and GAS 5-20. The goal is to collect formal and qualitative information about changes in risk reports and their performance in terms of fulfilling industry-specific supervisory risk regulations over time. The sample shows a significant continuous improvement of risk reports from 1999 until 2003. The results of the paper lead to further implications regarding the specification of Solvency II: Improvements have to be made especially in terms of specifying and quantifying company risk. Finally the paper offers suggestions for improvements in risk reporting which should be considered in the development of european standards.     

Financial Risk Taking by Age and Birth Cohort

This study decomposes the effects of chronological age, birth cohort, and calendar year on the age profile of household financial risk taking. Using two measures of risk taking, one based on observed portfolio allocations of wealth and another based on survey respondents' stated willingness to take risk, the results support the conventional wisdom that risk taking decreases with age. The results also reveal a cohort effect that shifts the age-risk profile down from older to younger cohorts. This finding is consistent with households taking less risk in response to decreasing financial security over time. The results have implications for the impact of an aging population on stock prices and for the impact on household well-being of the trend toward individual responsibility for asset management in vehicles such as defined-contribution pensions and the proposed Social Security personal accounts.     

Private equity investment decisions in family firms: The role of human resources and agency costs

This study examines decision making criteria that are employed by private equity (PE) investors selecting family firms. Hypotheses test the likelihood of investment based on family firm characteristics. Findings show that PE professionals take into account family-specific criteria, including human resources and opportunities to reduce agency costs. Furthermore, PE professionals prefer family firms that are already professionalized. This research contributes to the family firm literature on both a theoretical and a methodological level, exploring nonfamily succession routes and employing techniques— conjoint analysis for data collection and multilevel models for data analysis— that have seldom been used in this context.     

Business Cycles,Core, and Periphery in Monetary Unions: Comparing Europe and North America

Using different levels of regional aggregation, we compare Europe with the USA and Canada as regards business cycle synchronization and core-periphery patterns. A long annual sample (1950–2005) makes it possible to study how these aspects have evolved over time. Results support the economic viability of EMU. Average cyclical correlations among European countries have risen significantly, reaching levels close to those of North American regions. Applying fuzzy clustering to the analysis of core-periphery issues, we find European countries to actually outperform USA Census Regions: the core-periphery divide is milder, and peripheral status seems generally less protracted.     

Using Lifestyle Analysis to Develop Lodging Packages for Staycation Travelers: An Exploratory Study

When the U.S. economy experienced a downturn in 2008, an alternative to travel known as a “staycation” became popular. This study investigated the lifestyle profiles of staycation travelers by using Activities, Interests, and Opinions statements to segment staycation travelers. Because the largest percentage of staycations is taken by the Millennial generation, students at a university in northeastern Ohio were surveyed. An exploratory factor analysis revealed six factors followed by a cluster analysis, which revealed four clusters. Travel packages that hotels could create to market to members of the four clusters were created. Limitations and future research are discussed.