Contract Complexity, Incentives, and the Value of Delegation

In settings where the revelation principle applies, delegation arrangements are frequently inferior to centralized decision making, and at best achieve the same level of performance. This paper studies the value of delegation when organizations are constrained by a bound on the number of contingencies in any contract. For a principal-agent setting with asymmetric information, we compare centralized mechanisms where the principal retains sole responsibility for contracting and coordinating production, with delegation mechanisms where one agent (a manager) is delegated authority to contract with other agents and coordinate production. Relative to centralization, delegation entails a control loss, but allows decisions to be more sensitive to the manager's private information. We identify circumstances under which the flexibility gain outweighs the control loss, so that delegation emerges superior to centralized contracting.     

Minimal manipulability: Unanimity and nondictatorship

This paper is concerned with the number of profiles at which a nondictatorial social choice function is manipulable. For three or more alternatives the lower bound is found for unanimous social choice functions. In the case of three alternatives the lower bound is found for surjective social choice functions. In both cases all social choice functions reaching the lower bound are characterized for more than two agents. In the case of two agents the characterized social choice functions form a subset of the set of all social choice functions reaching the minimum.     

Roles of intangible cultural heritage in tourism in natural protected areas

The ‘new paradigm’ for protected areas emphasizes communities and their cultural assets, including intangible cultural heritage, as critical and inseparable parts of these areas. As tourism can be a significant factor in the economic framework of natural protected areas (NPAs), the prominent role of the community can have important implications. This paper reports on one of the first empirical studies on the interaction between intangible cultural heritage and tourism in an NPA with a special focus on the role of intangible cultural heritage. It is based on six months of qualitative ethnographic fieldwork in Qeshm Geopark, in the South of Iran. Local intangible cultural heritage is found to manifest and be used in tourism in three distinct ways: First, as a source of attraction and addition to any tourism offerings; second, as conservation tool, especially where the natural environment has strong cultural meanings for the local community; and third, as a driver for facilitating culturally and naturally sensitive behaviour by visitors. Concluding statements address any conceptual and practical implications.     

Stock Market‐Induced Currency Crises—A New Type of Twins

This paper explores the link between currency crises and the stock market in emerging economies. By integrating foreign stock market investors in a currency crisis model, we reveal a new fundamental inconsistency as a potential crisis trigger: since emerging economies' stock markets often have high returns, whereas central bank reserves grow slowly or decline, the amount of reserves foreign investors can deplete when selling their stocks and repatriating the proceeds grows over time and is considerably higher than funds that have been invested in the stock market. Capital withdrawals of foreign stock market investors can trigger currency crises by depleting central bank reserves, particularly in successful countries with booming stock markets and large foreign investment.     

Sustainable Development in Supply Chain Management: The Role of Organizational Learning for Policy Implementation

Implementing sustainable policies in supply chains is a significant challenge for businesses. Recent evidence has shown that failure to manage supply chains responsibly can have significant impacts on firms' reputation and financial performance. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework, which focuses on organizational learning, and outline specific channels through which firms can generate learning processes and build appropriate capabilities to successfully implement social and environmental supply chain policies. Drawing on 57 in‐depth interviews from a cross‐sectional sample of seven UK and nine German companies, we empirically assess our conceptual framework in accordance with a grounded, in‐depth case study analysis approach. We find compelling evidence to suggest that organizational learning is an important factor for a successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management. Organizational learning is often established as a result of training, knowledge acquisition, stakeholder engagement and collaboration between intra‐organizational and inter‐organizational partners, including suppliers and NGOs. Nonetheless, our results also emphasize that firms often have few systematic processes through which organizational learning is developed, and that such learning processes are often ad hoc at best, which in turn has significant implications for the responsible supply chain practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

News sentiment and overshooting of exchange rates

In a globalized world, the volume of international trade is based on both import and export prices, thereby making a country’s economy highly dependent on exchange rates. In order to study exchange rate movements, one frequently exploits the so-called Dornbusch overshooting model. However, the model is controversial from a theoretical point of view: it explains exchange rate movements by a number of fundamental variables but ignores how novel information in the form of news can enter the market. As a remedy, this article adjusts for information dissemination by performing a multivariate analysis to compare the classical overshooting model with an extended variant that includes news sentiment. Our results show that news sentiment has a substantial explanatory power of 11% of the exchange rate forecasting error variance. In addition, we also find statistical evidence that a shock in news sentiment may lead to overshooting.     

An Observation Station for Culture and Tourism in Vietnam: A Forum for World Heritage and Public Participation

World Heritage is increasingly approached in an international context and it seems appropriate for the protection of World Heritage sites in our globalised world. However, we should question whether or not the global aspects are not over-emphasised, leaving behind local and national interests. Increasing the number of stakeholders in the selection process of World Heritage sites, especially those mostly excluded from any decision-making process, seems to be a promising approach. It enlarges the debate and facilitates consensus at all levels on how to promote and to protect World Heritage. The creation of an observation station, together with a new local selection system of cultural heritage sites, a kind of participatory budget of cultural heritage, would be an important step in integrating more civic perception into World Heritage policy.