Sustainable Tourism or Sustainable Development? Financial Crisis,Ecotourism, and the 'Amazing Thailand' Campaign

Although the issues of sustainable tourism and sustainable development are receiving increasing attention from tourists, government planners and scholars, few studies have examined their overlap, tensions and complex linkages in practice. In southern Thailand, the sustainability of tourism, defined as the ongoing growth and survival of the tourism industry, has compromised the ecological sustainability of key tourism destinations sites. The recent financial crisis has forced the Thai government to sacrifice long-term sustainability for the sake of quick, and desperately needed foreign exchange. The 'Amazing Thailand' promotional campaign, which aims to attract 17 million tourists over 1998 and 1999, promises to exacerbate further the environmental degradation of tourism destinations in southern Thailand by pushing for enhanced tourist numbers. Ironically, by changing the composition of tourist arrivals (and in particular, attracting more European and North American tourists) the currency devaluations associated with the Asian financial crisis may simultaneously boost demand for nature-based tourist activities in southern Thailand while also adding stress to ecologically deteriorating destinations.     

基于竞争态模型的安徽省FDI来源地地域结构研究

运用竞争态模型对安徽省外商直接投资(FDI)资金市场2001-2010年统计数据进行深入分析,揭示安徽省FDI资金市场来源地地域结构时空演替规律,研究发现:安徽省FDI资金市场竞争态在时间维度上呈现出"复苏-衰退-跳跃-稳定-衰退"的复杂波动演替态势,空间维度上表现为明星市场缺失,金牛市场稳中有降,瘦狗市场和幼童市场波动较大的特征。据此,提出稳定和拓展安徽FDI资金市场若干针对性策略。     

财产保险赔款支出核算标准和数据一致性问题

本文考察和分析从2001年至2010年十年间,我国财产保险业核算赔款支出及未决赔款准备金提转差的计算标准。具体以一家具有行业代表性的财产险公司最近十年披露数据为例,并以《中华人民共和国金融行业标准——保险公司统计分析指标体系规范》(JR/T0047-2009)为标准,分别计算在实施该标准之前和之后的赔付支出、未决赔款准备金及其利润值。研究发现,实施该标准后的近十年平均赔付支出普遍增加,未决赔款准备金增加尤为显著。赔付支出和未决赔款准备金数据的变化将导致承保业绩变化,甚至导致承保周期等后续研究的结论发生改变。     

全球经济滞胀风险成因及前景

当前全球通胀压力不断加大,从欧盟的情况来看,由于减碳力度加大,碳价及能源价格暴涨正在推动电价飙升,多国PPI突破10%,创近30年之最;从美国情况来看,政策刺激力度超过次贷危机,短期内需求扩张推升了通胀;从生产要素看,疫情下的供应链中断叠加油气价格暴涨,各国都面临要素成本上升的问题;从不可控因素看,极端天气变化导致全球食品价格大幅上涨。在通胀压力与日俱增的同时,全球经济在短暂修复后出现放缓的趋势,呈现出滞胀的特征。为了避免经济滞胀向中长期演化,需要加强国际政策合作。     

Reformulating Environmentally Constrained Traffic Equilibrium via a Smooth Gap Function

Various government laws have recently been enacted to alleviate the environmental deterioration of transportation systems. Environmental constraint is a valid means to explicitly reflect various environmental protection requirements imposed by the government. In this paper, we examine the environmentally constrained traffic equilibrium problem (EC-TEP), which is a fundamental tool for modeling and evaluating environmental protection requirements. Specifically, we provide an equivalent reformulation for the EC-TEP. The proposed reformulation adapts the concept of gap function to simultaneously reformulate the nonlinear complementarity conditions associated with the generalized user equilibrium conditions, environmental constraints, and conservation constraints as an equivalent unconstrained optimization problem. This gap function reformulation has two desirable features: (1) it can handle a general environmental constraint structure (linear or nonlinear; link-based or area-based) and a general link and route cost structure, enhancing the modeling adaptability and flexibility; (2) it is smooth and unconstrained, permitting a number of existing efficient algorithms for its solution. A gradient-based solution algorithm with a self-regulated averaging stepsize scheme is customized to solve the reformulated unconstrained optimization problem. Numerical examples are also provided to demonstrate the modeling flexibility of the proposed EC-TEP reformulation.     

An Empirical Analysis of Synthesizing the Effects of Festival Quality,Emotion, Festival Image and Festival Satisfaction on Festival Loyalty: A Case Study of Macau Food Festival

This study aims to examine the interrelationships among the festival quality dimensions, festival quality, emotion, festival image, festival satisfaction and festival loyalty. Analysis of data from 454 attendees in the 12^th Macau Food Festival indicates that the proposed model fits the data. The result of this study will assist festival management in developing and implementing market‐orientated service strategies to increase quality and image, and enhance the emotion and satisfaction of attendees in order to attain their loyalty toward food festivals. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spillover Effects of Internal Control Weakness Disclosures: The Role of Audit Committees and Board Connections

We find that firms are less likely to report an internal control material weakness (as mandated by the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act) in a given year if one of their audit committee members is concurrently on the board of a firm that disclosed a material weakness within the prior three years. We find a similar spillover effect for financial restatement disclosures. The spillover from material weakness disclosures is evident only if a shared director has more experience with the disclosing firm or can channel more information about the disclosed material weakness. Our findings suggest that prior director experiences outside the firm influence the work of audit committees inside the firm. One rationale is that a director's prior experience with an adverse disclosure helps diffuse important insights and serves as a catalyst for improvements in a firm's internal control and financial reporting practices. An alternative explanation, which we cannot dismiss, holds that a director's prior experience helps a firm to underreport material weaknesses and financial restatements without any attendant improvements in the underlying practices.     

Information effects of dividends: Evidence from the Hong Kong market

The literature has suggested that earnings and earnings forecasts provide stronger signals than dividends about future performance of a firm. We test the information effects of simultaneous announcement of earnings and dividends in the Hong Kong market, distinguished by three interesting features (concentrated family-shareholdings, low corporate transparency, and no tax on dividends). Our results show significant share price reactions to unexpected earnings and dividend changes, but dividends appear to play a dominant role over earnings in pricing, a result contrary to findings in the literature. The signaling hypothesis works primarily for firms with earning increases, while the maturity hypothesis works mainly for firms with earnings declines.

效率、公平与区域协调发展

任何国家都存在由区域差异而导致的区域差距,政府的责任是要控制乃至缩小这种区域差距,实现区域的协调发展.改革开放以来我国的区域差距逐步扩大,这与中央政府区域政策目标在效率与公平上的孰为"优先"的偏差有关.本文认为,效率与公平是两个不同层次的概念,中央政府应该确立效率与公平兼顾的区域政策目标,并建议国家开征"统筹税",促进在效率与公平兼顾基础的区域协调发展.     

依托资源优势发展哈尔滨市森林旅游业

哈尔滨市的森林旅游资源十分丰富,有众多的森林公园和自然保护区,但哈尔滨森林旅游尚处于起步和发展阶段,如何利用森林旅游资源,发展森林旅游,对其今后的发展战略和科学规划进行研究是目前亟待解决的问题.哈尔滨市应依托资源优势,大力发展森林旅游业.