Cutting wages and employment in the public sector: Smarter fiscal consolidation strategies needed

This article provides an overview of the impact of public sector pay and employment cutbacks in EU countries and discusses their justification as part of austerity packages. It begins with the outcomes in the countries first hit by the economic crisis before discussing the impact of the crisis and the perceived need for austerity on collective bargaining in the public sector of other EU countries. It then turns to the arguments put forward for focusing on public sector cuts as a means of fiscal consolidation and submits them to critical review. Policy conclusions are drawn regarding collective bargaining, public sector pay issues and pathways to fiscal consolidation in Europe that would be more effective in economic terms and more equitable in social terms.     

Process principle- The way to company＇s competitiveness

Seeking ways to increase company＇s competitiveness under current economic and social conditions brought us to investigate internal and external barriers. These reflect contradictions between participants to creation of company＇s output both in internal and external value creation process. These contradictions were identified and their causes are determined. That requires also considering about the trends that are characteristic of the current development in marketing where versatile development of customer orientation dominates. The general governing principle of overcoming the barriers to the growth of company＇s competitiveness is applied by the process approach in organisation and management. The mater is namely using the potential of supply chain management, as well as product and manufacture management, last but not least systematic creation of customer value with the objective of creating a loyal customer and employee.     

Measuring Individual Preferences for Rural Multifunctionality: The Importance of Demographic and Residential Heterogeneity

We propose an approach to conceptualise ‘rural multifunctionality’ and further investigate peoples’ preferences for it. We use an opinion survey concerning individual preferences for several functions that rural spaces should provide. We use the analytical hierarchy process approach to assess the relative importance of each function. The results show how the social weightings of these functions are balanced, confirming that society demands truly multifunctional rural territories. Nonetheless, differences are found in individual preferences. We explore the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of these individual preferences, paying particular attention to the importance of heterogeneity using seemingly unrelated regressions. In short, results from this research could be employed as a useful informative element for the future development of public policies related to rural spaces.     

Some results on “an income fluctuation problem”

A consumer at each period, given the income available, y, has to decide how much to consume and save. If he consumes c ? 0 units he gets u(c) units of satisfaction or utility, and if x = y ? c ? 0 is the amount saved then the available income in the next period is rx + ω^k, where ω^k is a random variable, and r is an interest factor that is assumed to be known with certainty. Infinite time horizon problems are considered, and it is shown that if 0 < δr < 1, where 0 < δ < 1 is a discount factor, then the limiting policy is optimal. Questions about the behavior of the stock level, such as boundness, are considered, and an example is given that shows that the stock level might converge almost surely to infinity. Finally an economic explanation is given.     

Nature-based tourism,resource dependence,and resilience of Arctic communities: framing complex issues in a changing environment

Current research on tourism in the Arctic has focused largely on the extent, location, and type of tourism activities that occur in the region. Recently, challenges have been identified that the tourism industry is likely to face in the wake of global changes, including climate change. Related research, conducted within and outside of the Arctic, suggests that rural communities can become economically dependent on natural resource extraction (e.g. oil, gas, timber harvesting, and mining of minerals) and non-extractive resources (e.g. nature-based recreation and tourism), limiting diversification and potentially threatening resilience of rural communities. In the western USA, communities have become dependent on both extractive and non-extractive natural resource activities including nature-based tourism; however, it is less clear whether a similar situation is occurring in Arctic communities. In this article, we propose a framework and indicators to analyze the potential dependence of Arctic communities on nature-based tourism and the resilience of Arctic communities to potential boom–bust cycles of nature-based tourism. To do so, we examine the current state-of-knowledge about tourism and nature-based tourism in the Arctic through the lens of boom–bust dynamics and social-ecological systems.     

Addressing Uncertainty in Efficient Mitigation of Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The agricultural sector, as an important source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is under pressure to reduce its contribution to climate change. Decisions on financing and regulating agricultural GHG mitigation are often informed by cost‐effectiveness analysis of the potential GHG reduction in the sector. A commonly used tool for such analysis is the bottom‐up marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) which assesses mitigation options and calculates their cumulative cost‐effective mitigation potential. MACCs are largely deterministic, typically not reflecting uncertainties in underlying input variables. We analyse the uncertainty of GHG mitigation estimates in a bottom‐up MACC for agriculture, for those uncertainties capable of quantitative assessment. Our analysis identifies the sources and types of uncertainties in the cost‐effectiveness analysis and estimates the statistical uncertainty of the results by propagating uncertainty through the MACC via Monte Carlo analysis. For the case of Scottish agriculture, the uncertainty of the cost‐effective abatement potential from agricultural land, as expressed by the coefficient of variation, was between 9.6% and 107.3% across scenarios. This means that the probability of the actual abatement being less than half of the estimated abatement ranged from <1% (in the scenario with lowest uncertainty) to 32% (in the scenario with highest uncertainty). The main contributors to uncertainty are the adoption rate and abatement rate. While most mitigation options appear to be ‘win–win’ under some scenarios, many have a high probability of switching between being cost‐ineffective and cost‐effective.