The relevance of mobile tourism and information technology: an analysis of recent trends and future research directions

Although there have been studies concerning information and communication technologies adoption in the tourism industry, the research trends of mobile tourism (m-tourism) are still not very clear due to the short development time and emerging nature of the technologies. To fill this gap, this study reviewed and analyzed articles related to online reviews of tourism and hospitality published in academic journals between 2002 and 2015. Through a keyword-driven search and content analysis, 92 articles are identified as relevant and classified into three topics. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of this promising research direction by presenting the interesting classification methods used by relevant publications and their insights. This paper also discusses significant topical and methodological trends, and contributes to an overall understanding of existing research and its limitations.     

Beyond the Pampas: Global capital and uneven development in Argentine soybean expansion

The article analyses the social processes introduced by globalization into agrarian production systems. In particular, it explores how capital installs a new agriculture that generates an urban fringe in rural localities. We claim that the expansion of agricultural frontiers is also associated with the rise of new actors, residential changes and transformations in labour markets. The objective is to study the transformation that takes place in the agrarian social structure of a marginal agricultural area. It shows how this transformation leads to new residential behaviour that redefines the local relational system and to a transition from a “peasant” way of life to an urban‐type through the logic of the expulsion of the peasant population and the logic of agribusiness.     

Is there a “triffin dilemma” for the EMS?

The question explored in this paper is whether the EMS can continue to perform efficiently and ensure low inflation in an economically and financially integrated area with a high degree of currency substitution. A dilemma may arise: on the one hand, currency substitution should be accommodated to provide market participants with the currency they desire; on the other, currency substitution should not determine an excess of liquidity in the system leading to inflation. These objectives might be difficult to reconcile in a system with decentralized asymmetric monetary policy cooperation such as the EMS and might have adverse consequences for the monetary stability of the system.     

Asset allocation and portfolio performance: Evidence from university endowment funds

We use university endowment funds to study the relationship between asset allocation decisions and performance in multiple asset class portfolios. Although endowments differ substantially in asset class composition, policy portfolio returns and volatilities are remarkably similar across the sample. The risk-adjusted performance of the average endowment is negligible, but actively managed funds generate significantly larger alphas than passive ones. This is consistent with endowment managers exploiting their security selection abilities by over-weighting asset classes in which they have superior skills. Contrary to both theory and prevailing beliefs, asset allocation is not related to portfolio returns in the cross-section but does indirectly influence performance.     

Improving expected tail loss estimates with neural networks

Expected tail loss (ETL) and other ‘coherent’ risk measures are rapidly gaining acceptance amongst risk managers due to the limitations of value‐at‐risk (VaR) as a risk measure. In this article we explore the use of multilayer perceptron supervised neural networks to improve our estimates of ETL numbers using information from both tails of the distribution. We compare the results with the historical simulation approach to the estimation of VaR and ETL. The evaluation results indicate that the ETL estimates using neural networks are superior to historical simulation ETL estimates in all periods except for one, and in that case the historical ETL is slightly superior. Overall, therefore, when the whole period is considered, our results indicate that the network estimates of ETL are superior to the historical ones. Finally, one of the most interesting results of the study is the fact that the neural networks seem to indicate that VaR and ETL (as a function of VaR itself) are dependent not only on the negative returns observed, but also on large positive returns, which indicates that too much emphasis on losses could lead us to overlook important risk information arising from large positive returns. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Short Overview of a Methodology for the Ex-Post Review of Merger Control Decisions

Summary  This paper is based on a study commissioned by the European Commission, in which we proposed a detailed methodological approach for the ex-post assessment of decisions reached by the European Commission in the field of merger control. The methodology focuses on how to establish whether the market structure arising from the decision is apt to protect consumer welfare better than the market structures that could have arisen from alternative decisions. It provides suggestions on how assess the impact of the decision relative to the possible counterfactuals and discusses the empirical techniques that can be used to perform this evaluation.     

Technological catch-up: Gradual diffusion of technology and convergence in the neoclassical growth model

In this paper, I study the effects of the international gradual transmission of technology on the convergence processes among countries. In this way, the international gradual diffusion of technology makes possible a greater potential improvement capacity to the less developed country in its technological level. When this hypothesis is included in the Solow-Swan growth models, the paper shows that the convergence hypothesis will now be maintained only in the growth rates since a gap in income levels will remain in the long run. That conditional convergence will be explained by two factors: the diminishing returns for cumulative factor and the gradual diffusion of technology. I will finish this paper with empirical evidence of these two factors explaining convergence.     

Israel’s open-secret trade

This paper uncovers and quantifies Israel’s exports to countries that ban trade with Israel. Israel exported a total of $6.4 billion worth of merchandise to boycott countries between 1962 and 2012, and most of this trade is illicit, i.e. not recorded by the importers. We find that electronic exports to Malaysia account for the lion’s share of this trade but it also includes a wide array of products from footwear to fruit and vegetables. Our estimates suggest Israel’s exports to these countries would be 10 times larger without the boycott. On top of providing further evidence on the unintended consequences of unilateral trade bans, this paper provides a case study on the role of politics in international trade.     

A dynamic approach to voluntary environmental contributions in tourism

In an evolutionary game-theoretical model of tourism firms that use an endogenous natural Common Pool Resource (CPR) we show that stable equilibria with voluntary environmental initiatives may coexist with other equilibria where voluntary abatement is absent. The basins of attraction of the equilibria are identified and a bifurcation analysis is carried out producing two results with policy implications. First, there is a highly non-linear relationship between the cost of abatement required to be green and the share of green firms. Second, increases in the number of the CPR's users will ultimately dissipate the incentives to make abatement beyond regulation.