Spatial allocation of forest recreation value

Non-market valuation methods and geographic information systems are useful planning and management tools for public land managers. Recent attention has been given to investigation and demonstration of methods for combining these tools to provide spatially-explicit representations of non-market value. Most of these efforts have focused on spatial allocation of ecosystem service values based on land cover types, but recreation value has yet to be considered. This article presents an objective method for spatially allocating forest recreation value that is based on readily available data, demonstrates the method for a Southern California study site, and discusses the policy relevance of the method and how it might be extended to other applications and tested with additional primary survey data.     

The effect of World Bank trade adjustment assistance on trade and growth, 1987–2004: Is the glass half full or half empty?

This paper studies the association between trade reform, growth, and trade adjustment assistance in a sample of developing countries that underwent trade reforms during 1987–2004. Our analysis explicitly differentiates between a group of countries that received trade adjustment loans from the World Bank and a non-recipient group. The results suggest that trade adjustment assistance is positively associated with economic growth after trade reform in the medium to long run. In comparison to a pre-reform period and to the non-recipient group, the recipient countries registered 0.2 percent higher growth of real GDP per capita, 5.0 percent higher import growth, and 2.5 percent higher export growth over a period of three to five years after trade reform.     

Evaluating the introduction of a quasi-market in community care

It is often the case that only routinely collected, highly aggregate administrative data are available for the purposes of evaluating major public policy initiatives. Such data clearly fall short of the information advocated by statisticians and economists for the purposes of policy evaluation. This paper examines the extent to which methodologies developed in the productivity literature can nevertheless extract useful evaluative information from administrative data. A non-parametric Malmquist Index approach is used that seeks to decompose changes in efficiency into technical efficiency changes, scale effects and technological change. The study applies the methods to the system of “community care” introduced in 1993 for people affected by problems associated with ageing, mental illness, learning disability or physical disability. Non-parametric methods are used to estimate productivity changes amongst 39 English county councils over a four-year period from 1992 to 1995. The results suggest a steady annual increase in productivity of about 1.4% per annum over the period under investigation, but it is not possible to determine the extent to which this progress can be attributed to the introduction of community care. The paper nevertheless concludes that the methods deployed can exploit readily available datasets at low cost, and are a valuable form of exploratory data analysis, if interpreted with discretion.     

Model stability and forecast performance of Beta-t-EGARCH

We show that the model stability of the recent QAR(1) plus Beta-t-EGARCH(1,1) is superior to that of the well-known ARMA(1,1) plus t-GARCH(1,1) because QAR plus Beta-t-EGARCH discounts extreme observations, while ARMA plus t-GARCH accentuates them. Model stability of QAR plus Beta-t-EGARCH is an elegant property; however, we show that the out-of-sample density forecast performance of ARMA plus t-GARCH is superior to that of QAR plus Beta-t-EGARCH. We study model stability and density forecast performance for a set of rolling data windows. We use data on the S&P 500 index for the period 1990–2015. For robustness analysis, we also study Monte Carlo simulations of asset returns for the stochastic volatility model.     

Effective Enforcement of a Transferable Emissions Permit System with a Self-Reporting Requirement

We propose an enforcement strategy to achieve complete compliance in a transferable emissions permit system when firms are required to provide reports of their own emissions. Like the literature on self-reporting in the enforcement of standards, we find that self-reporting can conserve monitoring costs, but for a different reason. In addition, we show that targeted monitoring—the practice of monitoring some firms more closely than others—is not necessary in a competitive permit system. Furthermore, tying penalties to the equilibrium permit price can stabilize the monitoring effort necessary to maintain full compliance in the face of permit price fluctuations.     

Pushing subjects beyond rationality with more alternatives in experimental auctions

The use of experimental economics in valuation of market and nonmarket goods has grown over the past few years. The ability of experimental auctions (EUs) to reveal consumer preferences and their malleability has been praised in previous literature. Because of the high cost of conducting EUs, researchers usually present multiple products to participants, determining how many products to present has no clear guideline. The results of this study show that subjects do not value products the same way across different number of options offered to them. The main indicator is the increasing variance in responses for a benchmark product when more products are available. With an econometric specification allowing for heteroscedasticity as a function of the number of product offerings, the results indicate that the number of goods available for bidding is not to be taken as a trivial task in experimental design for value elicitation.     

The Hershey sugar mill in Cuba: from global industrial heritage to local sustainable tourism development

Although now abandoned, the Hershey sugar mill represents much of Cuba’s history, heritage, culture, and economy. The associated company town, nature gardens, and electric rail line remain in use to date, albeit in deteriorating condition. This paper presents the history of Hershey investment and significance in Cuba, the current state of the site, and the results of an evaluation of the potential for developing the Hershey complex as a sustainable tourism destination and source of local employment. The study concludes that conservation of the site is a cultural imperative for Cuba, but with many obstacles and challenges. Incremental steps toward development may be feasible – particularly with growing potential for open tourism from the US.     

Characteristics of high-growth entrepreneurs in Latin America

Scholars and governments presumed that growing the rate of entrepreneurs would naturally result in economic and job growth, and entrepreneurship has widely been viewed as an important tool for developing economies. Yet recently scholars have questioned the empirical evidence regarding the actual contribution of entrepreneurship to economic development. Recent contributions to the field suggest that not all entrepreneurial activity has a positive effect on economic growth in developing regions. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) provides a unique lense in assisting the predictive capability of entrepreneurial motivation. In this research, we focus on what factors influence the motivation of some entrepreneurs to seek a high-growth model as these growth oriented entrepreneurs, usually associated with opportunity-motivated firm founding, are the most likely to actually create jobs in developing countries. We utilize motivation for founding, five entrepreneurial competencies and three firm characteristics to predict growth expectations of entrepreneurial growth expectations. Leveraging responses to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey from more than 100,000 entrepreneurs in 19 Latin American countries, we discovered the existence of a triple interaction effect amongst opportunity-based entrepreneurs with higher levels of education and an export orientation and their growth expectations. In discussing the results, we reflect on the public policy implications for promoting the desired types of entrepreneurship in developing regions.     

Factors affecting corporate environmental strategy in Spanish industrial firms

During the last 30 years, environmental issues have become very important for governments, consumers and companies. Firms, aware of their environmental responsibilities, have started to show an important commitment to society and the natural environment, developing environmentally friendly strategies. However, the factors that determine the choice of environmental strategies are still unclear. They range from ethical motivations to social, legislative and competitive factors. This study analyses the main antecedents that influence firms' ecological behaviour, distinguishing between environmental orientation and environmental strategies. The hypotheses proposed in this study are analysed by means of a structural equation model on a sample of 235 industrial firms. The results reveal that competitive motivations and management commitment are the most important factors explaining why firms incorporate environmental issues into their strategic planning process. Moreover, management commitment is a critical factor for firms because managers' perception about customers' ecological concern directly influences firms' environmental behaviour. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Developing an evolutionary tourism partnership model

Partnerships have become a popular tourism management strategy for leveraging scarce resources in an era of fiscal constraint. Despite this popularity, little empirical research has been done to explain the processes that occur when such interactions take place. An evolutionary model is presented based on an empirical study of three tourism partnerships, a review of existing tourism partnership case studies, and the integration of emerging theory from the organizational behavior field. The model suggests that tourism partnerships begin in a context of environmental forces and evolve sequentially through problem-setting, direction-setting, and structuring phases. Special facultative skills are needed to sustain and nurture tourism partnerships.