Metropolitan land-change science: A framework for research on tropical and subtropical forest recovery in city-regions

In efforts to promote transitions to sustainability in city-regions, government and nongovernment actors throughout the world are devising comprehensive sustainability strategies and implementing a variety of environmental policies. Social actors in many city-regions view forest stewardship as an important element of this integrated approach. Generally, urban sustainability goals are guided by the principles of ecological integrity, environmental quality, social equity, social inclusion, and social justice. In other words, sustainable urban development should foster a good quality of life for all by providing equitable access to adequate economic opportunity, housing, education, public services, ecosystem services, and environmental amenities. Governance structures should pursue these goals democratically with legitimacy, transparency, and accountability. Effective sustainability planning and management depend on the reliability of land-use monitoring and modeling approaches. They also require field-based, qualitative empirical research to understand the complex social dynamics that are invisible from space. The aim of this paper is to encourage international, cross-disciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and practical groundwork necessary to effectively carry out metropolitan land-change science, particularly for rapidly expanding small- and medium-sized cities in developing countries. I begin by presenting the paper's central conceptual and theoretical framework. Next, I explore existing analytical and methodological approaches to the study of land-use dynamics in metropolitan regions. After a brief discussion of specific opportunities and challenges for collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of metropolitan land-change science, I conclude by proposing a four-part agenda for coordinated investigation of tropical and subtropical forest recovery in city-regions worldwide.     

Market sentiment: a key factor of investors’ imitative behaviour

The aim of this paper is to explore herding behaviour among investors to determine its rational and emotional component factors and identify relationships among them. We apply causality tests to evaluate the impact of return and market sentiment on herding intensity. The herding intensity is quantified using the measure developed by Patterson and Sharma (2006) . The research was conducted during the period 1997–2003 in the Spanish stock market, where the presence of herding has been confirmed. The results reveal that the herding intensity depends on past returns and sentiment or subjective assessments and confirm the presence of both a rational and an emotional factor.     

Developing pandemic communication strategies: Preparation without panic

Communication in the media regarding a potential avian influenza epidemic can serve to accurately and effectively inform the public OR misinform and contribute to unnecessary public panic and subsequent undesirable responses. Governments have time to develop communication strategies and specific messages that can effectively convey desired information at different stages of the anticipated pandemic. Effective social marketing incorporates the concepts of formative research, audience segmentation, and consumer focus. Based on the findings from earlier research on public awareness and understanding of bird flu, the collaborators of the project developed evidence-based advertising messages for two primary time-points in pandemic preparation and tested in a series of focus groups; modified them based on the findings; and then re-tested the final campaign. These findings provide important recommendations for the development of future social marketing campaigns in the event of pandemics or other public health crises.     

IDENTIFYING THE MODERATOR FACTORS OF FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE IN GREEK MUNICIPALITIES

The use of financial ratios is a widespread method for assessing the financial performance of private sector companies. However, the application of an analogous exercise in the public sector is a less straightforward one. In the later case it is a multifaceted task that involves judgments about the interplay of complex social, organizational and financial factors. In this paper we use accrual end of the year financial statements data of Greek Municipalities for the period 2002–2004 to compute nine commonly used performance assessment financial ratios. We find corroborative evidence that factors, which are exogenous to the municipalities’ control, such as their wealth and size, have statistically significant impact on ratio values. Thus, as financial ratios are significantly influenced by socio‐economic factors like municipal wealth and size, cross sectional comparisons on the basis of these ratios should be made with caution and performed for municipalities that exhibit similarities in terms of size and wealth.     

Comparing Environmental Policy Instruments in the Presence of Imperfect Compliance – A Case Study

In this paper, we aim to include rule making, implementation, monitoring and enforcement costs into the cost comparison of policy instruments. We use a simple partial equilibrium model and apply it to the textile industry. The model includes discrete abatement functions and costly monitoring and enforcement. The case study uses individual firm data to simulate the differences in abatement costs and compliance decisions between firms. We compare combinations of regulatory instruments (emission taxes, emission standards and technology standards) and enforcement instruments (criminal fines, civil fines and transaction offers). We show that the inclusion of information, monitoring and enforcement costs indeed alters the relative cost efficiency of the different instruments.     

Policy options for afforestation in Flanders

This paper analyses current and alternative afforestation policy instruments in Flanders. First we select forest sites that maximize net social benefits given a constraint on the total area of new forests and then we select policy instruments that yield this optimal combination of sites. For each policy option, we calculate the associated costs for landowners and government as well as net social benefits for society. Our empirical illustration shows that the welfare gain is considerable if the afforestation subsidy is conditioned on an objective criterion rather than a case-by-case approach. Our results also show that it is worthwhile to consider alternative policy instruments, such as auctions, not previously used in Belgian legislation.     

Internal competition in a nonprofit museum context: development of a scale

• External competition and marketing have been extensively researched in the for-profit environment and to a lesser extent in the nonprofit environment. However, the concept of competition within a nonprofit organization is indicative of another type of competition, that of ‘internal competition’. Internal competition, operating in the nonprofit's endemic environment of scarce resources, takes place between departments, between individuals, and even within individuals in terms of time and energy spent on differing objectives. Internal competition manifests itself as internal conflicts over not only objectives but also the means for achieving the objectives. This research examines the construct of ‘internal competition’ in the museum portion of the nonprofit sector where marketing is often seen as a ‘necessary but evil’ tool essential for survival. Museum retailing, which has taken on an increasingly vital role in the financial support of museums, offers an opportunity to analyze the nature of internal competition and for developing a scale for measuring internal competition.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

National minorities and their representation in social surveys: which practices make a difference?

This paper presents a systematic study of survey mechanisms that produce or reduce minority bias in social surveys. It extends the work of Lipps et al. (2011) who have demonstrated that, in the Swiss context, the more an ethno-national minority community differs, socio-culturally and socio-economically, from the national majority, the less it is likely to be represented in its proper proportion in the major national surveys. Minority bias furthermore has a vertical dimension: socio-economic bias against individuals from the most deprived backgrounds becomes extreme within ethno-national minority communities. Using data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey, the Swiss Household Panel, and the Swiss sample of the European Social Survey, in the present work we empirically assess the impact of three types of survey practices on minority bias: (1) strategies to increase overall response rates of the whole population indiscriminately from its minority status, (2) the use of pre- and post-stratification measures that take into account the overall share of foreigners in the national population, and (3) the conduct of interviews in a wider range of languages, in order to facilitate survey response among certain (linguistic) minorities. Our findings show that efforts to increase overall response rates can, paradoxically, create even more minority bias. On the other hand, they suggest that a combination of stratified sampling and a wider range of survey languages can have a positive effect in reducing survey bias, both between and within national categories. We conclude that measures that take into account and adapt to the social and cultural heterogeneity of surveyed populations do make a difference, whereas additional efforts that only replicate existing routine practices can be counter-productive.     

Asset Funding in der betrieblichen Altersversorgung

In Germany, the most widespread funding method for occupational pension schemes is self-funding via book reserve. The term “asset funding” applies to situations when the company sets aside separate assets to fund these liabilities. This is a significant factor for a company’s risk management. International accounting standards and the requirements of Basel II are helping to make asset funding of book reserves more and more attractive. This article represents a first step towards a full-scale scientific analysis of this complex of issues. In particular, it provides a systematic classification of the various methods of asset funding and presents corresponding investment strategies.