The future of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Concern about the future of Amazonian forests is growing as both the extent and rate of primary forest destruction increase. We combine spatial information on various biophysical, demographic and infrastructural factors in the Brazilian Amazon with satellite data on deforestation to evaluate the relative importance of each factor to deforestation in the region. We assess the sensitivity of results to alternative sampling methodologies, and compare our results to those of previous empirical studies of Amazonian deforestation. Our findings, in concert with those of previous studies, send a clear message to planners: both paved and unpaved roads are key drivers of the deforestation process. Proximity to previous clearings, high population densities, low annual rainfall, and long dry seasons also increase the likelihood that a site will be deforested; however, roads are consistently important and are the factors most amenable to policymaking. We argue that there is ample evidence to justify a fundamental change in current Amazonian development priorities if additional large-scale losses of forests and environmental services are to be avoided.     

Gains to Mutual Fund Sponsors Offering Multiple Share Class Funds

Although the number of mutual funds grew during the 1990s, much of the growth is attributable to the introduction of multiple share class (MS) funds. Proponents argue that the MS structure leads to cost savings, which can be passed onto investors as lower expenses. However, if the structure lowers costs, sponsors are likely to profit from it. Though investors are concerned about the base expense ratio, the sum of administrative and management fees, fund sponsors generate profits from the management fees. As such, they would prefer to increase the management fee if they can simultaneously lower administrative fees. Our results indicate that MS fund investors pay lower administrative fees, but management fees are approximately 7 basis points higher than single-class funds. Overall, base expense ratios are higher than for single-class funds, suggesting fund sponsors capture the cost benefits the MS structure provides. Our results are robust to different model specifications and different estimation techniques.     

Policy responses to unauthorized or irregular workers

Conclusions  Managing migration is one of the key challenges facing nation states in a 21st century marked by closer connections and rising inequality between countries. In a world in which travel and tourism are becoming a major industry, and in which wages across borders can be 20 or 30 times higher, there are increasing incentives to cross national borders for employment. The industrial countries, which have about 12 percent of the world's labor force but 60 percent of the world's migrants, are struggling with the best ways to respond to rising numbers of irregular workers. Most responses are some combination of prevention, interior enforcement, and legalization: the challenge is how to include the fourth element, cooperation with migrant countries of origin. chair of the University of California's Comparative Immigration and Integration Program; editor of the monthly Migration News and the quarterly Rural Migration News.     

Local Rural Labour Markets: Enterprising or Constraining?

This paper examines SMEs' experiences of labour markets and their adoption of technology, including ICTs, in two rural areas: South Warwickshire and North Devon. Findings are assessed within the context of existing theories of rural industrial growth, which have tended to stereotype firms on the basis of location, and have underplayed the role of 'non-local' factors such as supply chains in influencing both the behaviour and 'success' of individual SMEs. In contrast, this paper contends that understanding the true complexity of the SME sector is essential if efforts to foster and support enterprise in rural areas are to be successful.     

Deriving target selection rules from endogenously selected samples

The selection of the most profitable customers in a customer database for targeted activities is often done based on observed behaviour in the past. Consequently, databases arising from the responses to, for example, direct mailings in the past are not random samples. When not all heterogeneity across customers is observed, target selection will be based on unobserved heterogeneity and hence it is endogenous. We develop a method to adjust the likelihood function of latent class models to correct for this endogenous sampling process. We apply this technique to the selection of mail targets for a Dutch charity. Based on a joint model for the response rate and the amount donated, we create a target selection rule that maximizes expected revenues. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generalizations of the KPSS-test for stationarity

We propose automatic generalizations of the KPSS-test for the null hypothesis of stationarity of a univariate time series. We can use these tests for the null hypotheses of trend stationarity, level stationarity and zero mean stationarity. We introduce the asymptotic null distributions and we determine consistency against relevant nonstationary alternatives. We compare the properties of the tests with those of other proposed tests for stationarity. Monte Carlo simulations support the relevance of the tests when an autoregressive process with large positive autocorrelations is likely under the null hypothesis.     

基于米歇模型的会计信息化发展规律研究

本文采用米歇关于信息化发展阶段模型考察会计信息化的发展历程,发现与会计信息化发展是吻合的。在此基础上,分析了影响会计信息化发展进程的因素,进而预测了会计信息化的未来发展趋势,并提出了我国企业实施会计信息化的对策,认为我国部分企业可充分发挥后发优势跨越某个发展阶段。     

Insecure property rights and growth: the role of appropriation costs, wealth effects, and heterogeneity

Summary. We extend the model from Tornell and Velasco [13] and Tornell and Lane [12] by adding three features: (i) extracting the common property asset involves a private appropriation cost, (ii) agents derive utility from wealth as well as from consumption, and (iii) agents can be heterogeneous. We show that both an increase in the appropriation cost and, when appropriation costs vary across agents, an increase in the degree of heterogeneity of these costs reduce the growth rate of the public capital stock. We also show that, in the interior equilibrium, the private asset can have either a lower or a higher money rate of return than the common property asset.Received: 22 June 2004, Revised: 20 April 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C73, O40.This research is supported by SSHRC, FQRSC, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Thanks are due to Hassan Benchekroun, Parkash Chander, Gerard Gaudet, Basant Kapur, Kim Long, Colin Rowat, Koji Shimomura, and an anonymous referee for comments and discussions.