Estimating the Costs of Protecting Native Species from Invasive Animal Pests in New South Wales,Australia

Invasive animal pests reduce crop and livestock output, require management and control measures, and threaten native plants, animals and their habitat. The agricultural and management costs are often directly measurable. But the costs to protect threatened native plants and animals are harder to assess. The Rural Lands Protection Boards were the government agency in New South Wales that managed invasive animals. An analysis of their decisions provided the opportunity to estimate the costs of protecting native species. The number of native plants and animals threatened by invasive pests was modelled against the expenditure, area, pest abundance, climate and location of 38 Board districts. There was a strong negative relationship between the number of threatened native species and Board expenditure. This relationship was interpreted to estimate the marginal cost of protecting a threatened native species, the downward shift in the supply curve necessary to protect all threatened native species, and the gains from the shift in the form of cost savings in the continued protection of non-threatened native species. These results value some of the costs that invasive animal pests impose on the environment.     

Closing large open economy models

A large class of international business cycle models admits multiple locally isolated deterministic steady states, if the elasticity of substitution between traded goods is sufficiently low. I explore the conditions under which such multiplicity occurs and characterize the dynamic properties in the neighborhood of each steady state. Models with standard incomplete markets, portfolio costs, a debt-elastic interest rate, or an overlapping generations framework allow for multiple steady states, if the model features multiple steady states under financial autarchy. If the excess demand for the foreign traded good is increasing in the good's own price in a given steady state, the equilibrium dynamics around this steady state are unbounded. Otherwise, the dynamics are bounded and unique. By contrast, with Uzawa-type preferences, the steady state is always unique and the associated equilibrium dynamics are always bounded and unique. The same results obtain under complete markets.     

How humor in advertising works: A meta-analytic test of alternative models

This study tests a cognitive and an affective model based on extant explanations of the effects of humor along with a new affective?Ccognitive model. Results are derived from meta-analytic data and show how previous explanations may be integrated in order to explain how humor in advertising works. Humor reduces negative cognitions related to the ad because it serves as a distraction from counter-argumentation. In order to maintain positive affect, humor reduces cognitive efforts, in particular those related to brand-related cognitions, thus supporting a vampire effect; that is, humor distracts from processing central benefits of the brand. Humor exerts its strongest impact along affective paths, supporting the dominance of affective mechanisms. Affect and cognition do interplay in line with a congruency effect where the impact of positive affect on attitudes towards the ad is mediated by positive cognitions. The models differ when they are performed based on data from studies using either real or fictitious stimuli. Depending on the type of stimuli, slight changes occur that can be explained by the lack or existence of prior brand experience. Overall, the integration of affect and cognitions into one model provides a better explanation than the previous solely cognitive or solely affective models.     

Diminishing effects of location? Some evidence from Swiss municipalities, 1950–2000

This paper analyzes how location has affected, in the second half of the twentieth century, the population growth of 2889 municipalities in Switzerland. The analysis demonstrates the temporal relativity of location attributes, even for small territorial divisions, such as the Swiss cantons. However, we also show that, both absolute and relative location attributes have weakened over time as population growth predictors, apparently due to improving road infrastructures, and growing motorization. The study has been made possible by a detailed historical population and accessibility database available for Swiss municipalities. To the best of our knowledge, no database of such scope and quality is available for any other European country.     

Methods and tools for integrated assessment of land use policies on sustainable development in developing countries

For stimulating sustainable development in developing countries, land use patterns and land use changes are considered critical, and therefore effective and efficient land use policies are needed. In this paper we present a methodological framework that has been developed in a joint European and developing countries project (LUPIS – Land Use Policies and Sustainable Development in Developing Countries), to assess the impact of land use policies on sustainable development in developing countries. An illustrative application is presented for a case study in China, where water pollution due to agriculture in Taihu Basin is a major problem.     

股权稀释中的价值增值

由于缺乏可担保的资产和经营业绩的历史纪录,初创企业难以从外界获取资金,风险投资就成为其主要的融资途径,但许多创业者在寻求风险投资的支持时,担心风险投资的加入会稀释他们的股权,使他们的利益旁落。诚然,风险投资家在向创业企业注资时,往往要求苛刻,在股权分配上尽量提高自己的分配份额。风险投