Research engagement,impact and sustainable tourism

In this editorial, we reflect on how the Journal of Sustainable Tourism can contribute towards sustainable tourism researchers achieving more impact with their research. We propose some changes that can be tested in, and introduced gradually and collaboratively with, the community of the editorial board and authors. To support impactful mind sets, we will promote research that reflects diverse academic communities. To promote impactful research topics, we will encourage authors to frame their submitted articles against the Sustainable Development Goals, while research that is time sensitive will be fast tracked so it can contribute to current debates. To promote impactful methodologies, we shall favour articles that use mixed methods and action research, and those that conduct longitudinal, experimental, and evaluative research. To promote impactful partnerships, we will favour multidisciplinary approaches and research that has been co-created with stakeholders. To promote impactful communication and dissemination, we will continue to build an online community on social media for sustainable tourism researchers, we will promote articles in social media to raise their visibility, and we will provide free access to those articles that are deemed to have the greatest potential to impact positively on society.     

Decoupled Farm Payments and Expectations for Base Updating

The degree to which U.S. farm programs are decoupled from production has been a central issue in recent trade disputes. Several authors have suggested producer expectations for base acreage and yield updating in future farm bills create an incentive to alter planting and input decisions. This article reports analysis of the subjective expectations of producers for base updating and an analysis of the effect these expectations have on producer willingness to accept a buyout of the right to update. On average, producers think the chances of updating in the next farm bill are about 40%, but less than 17% indicate adjusting acreage or yields in anticipation of updating.     

Measuring Residential Real Estate Liquidity

There are many factors, other than price alone, that may affect the liquidity of real estate. This study develops a liquidity measure based on the Cox proportional hazard technique, a statistical model widely used in the epidemiologic and social sciences. The odds ratio, along with an estimate of market value for a home, are used to construct a liquidity measure. This measure can extract from the data a rich statistical profile of the variables that affect liquidity.     

Performance deviations and acquisition premiums: The impact of CEO celebrity on managerial risk‐taking

Research summary: This article draws on identity control theory and a study of acquisition premiums to explore how CEO celebrity status and financial performance relative to aspirations affect firm risk behavior. The study finds that celebrity CEOs tend to pay smaller premiums for target firms, but these tendencies change when prior firm performance deviates from the industry average returns, thereby leading these CEOs to pay higher premiums. The study also finds that the premiums tend to be even larger when celebrity CEOs have more recently attained celebrity status. Taken together, these findings contribute to identity control theory and CEO celebrity literatures by suggesting that celebrity status is a double‐edged sword and that the internalization of celebrity status by CEOs strongly influences the decision‐making of CEOs. Managerial summary: The purpose of this article is to examine how CEO celebrity status and financial performance relative to aspirations affect the size of acquisition premiums. The study finds that celebrity CEOs tend to pay smaller premiums for target firms. However, when celebrity CEOs' prior firm performance is either better or worse than the industry average, these CEOs pay higher premiums. This situation is exacerbated when the CEO has only recently been crowned a celebrity. In effect, these CEOs feel great pressure to match the inflated performance expectations that come with celebrity status. These findings suggest that being a celebrity is a double‐edged sword. The implication here is that CEOs who have recently been crowned a celebrity should be aware of these pressures and cope accordingly. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling and Extrapolating Wheat Producer Support Using Income and Other Factors

Using wheat market support data from 55 countries for 1961–2011 from the World Bank Agricultural Distortion database, we develop a fixed effect model that shows a more complicated, nonlinear relationship between income and wheat support and its components than previously realised. We find that income generally has a greater effect on border market price support than on domestic price support. Moreover, the difference between these types of support is greater for net importers than for net exporters and has increased with the URAA or WTO accession. Holding other variables constant, the wheat support level of China, driven mainly by border market price support, is projected to rise with future income growth. Meanwhile, Japan is projected to maintain its high level of support, while the US and EU are projected to maintain their lower levels of support. These results are relevant in the context of multilateral trade negotiations, arguing against a narrow focus on past or current policy profiles and for long‐run analyses that might mistakenly rest on the inconsistent assumptions of constant agricultural policies against the backdrop of rising incomes.     

Economic and Household Impacts of Projected Policy Changes for the Irish Agri‐food Sector

The policy environment for the Irish agri‐food sector could change rapidly in the coming decade. A potentially positive factor will be the elimination of milk quotas in 2015, although a potentially negative factor will be further trade liberalisation and increased import competition. These changes come on top of the move to decouple direct aids to farmers in 2005 as part of the Mid‐Term Review of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy agreed in 2003. This paper examines these reforms and their impacts on the Irish economy and income distribution using a CGE model particularly rich in detail on the agri‐food sectors, differentiated household groups, and agricultural policy instruments including their links to productive factors and households. The results suggest that the past and projected changes in the policy environment have, in sum, a small positive impact on GDP and household income. However, the gains and losses are unequally distributed across sectors and household groups due to the highly differentiated distribution of support and protection. Although all households generally gain from the sequence of policy reforms in the long run, some experience strong adverse effects from particular reforms and in the medium term.