Fiscal policies, environmental pollution and economic growth

This paper develops a model of endogenous economic growth with special consideration to the role of productive public expenditure and environmental pollution; and analyses the properties of optimal fiscal policy in the steady state growth equilibrium. We consider the level of consumption as the source of pollution. Government allocates its tax revenue between pollution abatement expenditure and productive public expenditure. Optimum ratio of productive public expenditure to national income is equal to the competitive output share of the public input, when productive public expenditure is depicted as tax revenue minus abatement expenditure. However, the proportional income tax rate exceeds the competitive output share of the public input. There is no conflict between the social welfare maximizing solution and the growth rate maximizing solution in the steady state growth equilibrium. The unique steady state growth equilibrium appears to be a saddle-point when the growth rate is above a critical level and the steady state equilibrium growth rate in the market economy is not necessarily lower than the socially efficient growth rate.     

Religion and identity in India’s heritage tourism

The growing worth of heritage in the renegotiation and dissemination of identities has intensified conflicts over whose voice dominates heritage tourism representations. Therefore, this study compares the way India’s heritage is represented by the Indian government, by the domestic tourism trade media and by the popular tourism media. The findings reveal that India is consistently represented as an ethnically diverse nation in which Hinduism preceded and prevailed over all other ethnicities/religions; a portrayal that consolidates the state’s secular nationalist narrative. Furthermore, the trade and popular media emphasize nostalgic experiences of a sanitized colonial history while the government emphasizes accounts of resistance against colonial powers and of suffering due to Muslim atrocities.     

Resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of crop management innovation packages in Ethiopia

Crop management innovations are often not discrete fixed stand‐alone options—and their adoption may imply various combinations and adaptations. This potentially confounds their impact assessment. This article assesses the resource saving and productivity enhancing impacts of a crop management package revolving around minimum tillage in maize‐based farming systems in northwest Ethiopia. An endogenous switching regression model was applied to plot‐ and household‐level survey data collected from 290 rural households operating 590 maize plots during the 2012 production year. Controlling for variations in plot and household characteristics, the average effect of minimum tillage package (minimum tillage package) on maize productivity is 0.44 t/ha. Compared to conventional practice (CP), adoption of the MTP decreased the average male and female labor use in maize production by 14.4 and 8.2 person‐days per ha, respectively. Similarly, MTP adoption decreased draft power use for land preparation by 13.2 pair of oxen‐days per ha. Compared to CP, in general, there is a considerable short‐run maize productivity gain and reduction in labor and draft power use under MTP.     

Classification of spammer and nonspammer content in online social network using genetic algorithm-based feature selection

ABSTRACT

The emergence of online social network invokes social actors to share their personal information digitally. Moreover, it provides the facility to maintain their links with people of same interest globally. Take advantage of these services; it has become a fascinating testbed to invite various threats like a spammer. Detection of spammer in OSN is one of the most critical tasks. Spammer not only spreads unwanted or bad advertisement but does certain malicious activity in others' profiles. By clearly understanding the activities of different threats, some incremental and accurate approaches are needed for detecting spammer content and profiles involved in these activities by using social network services. Therefore, the focus of this article is to detect spammer content and account, specifically on the leading microblogging platform called Twitter. We propose a hybrid approach which leverages the capabilities of various machine learning algorithms to separate spammer and nonspammer contents and account. Initially, the optimisation algorithm called genetic algorithm analyses the various features and selects the best suitable features that influence the behaviour of user account, and these features are then used to train classifiers. Our framework achieved to severalise spammer and nonspammer content in an effective way. Finally, to prove the efficiency of our proposed framework, a comparative analysis is conducted with some existing state-of-art techniques. The experimental analysis shows that our approach achieves a high detection rate of 99.6%, which is better than other state-of-art techniques.     

A nested test of the Barten model of equivalence scales

The Barten model, as the principal equivalence scale model, has considerable policy importance. It has, however, never been subjected to a statistically satisfactory test. This note proposes a simple modelling artefact that allows the Barten model to be nested and tested in the conventional way. Illustrative estimation is, then, carried out on U.K. budget data.     

OPTIMALLY UNIFORM COMMODITY TAXES IN A NON LINEAR DEMOGRAPHIC DEMAND MODEL

This paper derives a sufficient condition for optimally uniform commodity taxes within the demographically generalized RNLF'S demand functional form framework. This paper, besides admitting child subsidies, allows for non linear equivalence scales and demographically varying utility and demand functions. The derived condition is shown to yield some recent uniformity results as special cases.     

Volunteer tourism and “The White Man’s Burden”: globalization of suffering,white savior complex,religion and modernity

While many volunteer tourism studies have acknowledged the significance of volunteer tourism and challenged conventional understandings of socio-economic change in the Global South, the ways in which ideas about globalization of suffering and religion and modernity flow through volunteer tourism and development discourses are rarely spoken about. Utilizing postcolonialism and whiteness studies theoretical framework, this study intends to take volunteer tourism research into a different trajectory by arguing that much like imperialism is operationalized through different kinds of institutional power (agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank), similarly volunteer tourism exerts power and exploits the Orient as the West’s pleasure periphery. Taking the case of Mother Teresa, this study also argues that Christian ideologies, which were so dominant during the colonial days, continue to pervade the structures and institutions in society with similar hegemonic connotations of privilege based on religion and race. Future tourism scholars should investigate these remarkable yet somewhat ignored issues in contemporary volunteer tourism practices.     

Classification of various attacks and their defence mechanism in online social networks: a survey

Due to the popularity and user friendliness of the Internet, numbers of users of online social networks (OSNs) and social media have grown significantly. However, globally utilised, social networks are the consequence of the lack of understanding of secrecy and protection on OSN and media has increased. Secrecy and surety of OSNs need to be inquired from various positions. According to recent studies, OSN users expose their private information such as email address, phone number etc. In this paper, we have presented a high-level classification of recent OSN attacks for recognising the problem and analysing the blow of such attacks on World Wide Web. We have also discussed OSN attacks on different social networking web applications by citing certain recent reports such as Kaspersky security network and Sophos security threat report. We also offer some simple-to-implement user practice tips to protect the system and user’s information. In addition to this, we have discussed a comprehensive analysis of numerous defensive approaches on OSN security. Lastly, based on the acknowledged strength and faults of these defensive approaches, we have explained open research issues.     

Estimating Purchasing Power Parities from Household Expenditure Data Using Complete Demand Systems with Application to Living Standards Comparison: India and Vietnam

This study departs from the previous literature on purchasing power parity (PPP) by proposing a demand system based methodology for calculating the PPP that takes account of consumer preferences and allows for the substitution effect of price changes. The methodology is used to calculate the PPP between the Indian Rupee and the Vietnamese Dong. The study allows for regional variation in preferences and price changes both inside the country and between countries. It proposes and applies a methodology for constructing prices from unit values after adjusting them for quality and demographic effects. The adjusted unit values are used as prices in the demand estimations, and the demand parameter estimates are used to calculate both spatial prices within each country and the PPP between the two countries within a consistent framework. The study illustrates the usefulness of preference consistent methods to calculate the PPP by applying the PPPs to compare living standards between India and Vietnam. The significance of the results follows from the fact that the levels of living comparisons are quite sensitive to the PPP used in converting the Rupee expenditure into Vietnamese Dong. The present results on food PPPs question the relevance of the PPPs from the ICP project in cross‐country welfare comparisons especially in a period of high food inflation.     

Organizational Governance and Ethical Systems: A Covenantal Approach to Building Trust

American businesses and corporate executives are faced with a serious problem the loss of public confidence. Public criticism, increased government controls, and growing expectations for improved financial performance and accountability have accompanied this decline in trust. Traditional approaches to corporate governance, typified by agency theory and stakeholder theory, have been expensive to direct and have focused on short-term profits and organizational systems that fail to achieve desired results. We explain why the organizational governance theories are fundamentally, inadequate to build trust. We advance a conceptual framework based on stewardship theory characterized by “covenantal relationships” and argue that design of governance mechanisms using a covenantal approach is more effective in building trust in organizations. A covenantal relationship is a specialized form of a relational contract between an employee and his or her organization. We argue that regardless of incentives and control mechanisms carefully designed through contractual mechanisms, in the absence of covenantal relationships it is extremely difficult to build trust within organizations. We propose that organizations are more likely to build trust – both at the organizational level and at the interpersonal level – when they create reinforcing and integrated systems that honor implied duties of “covenantal relationships.”