Frontier tourism: Retracing Mythic Journeys

Tourism experiences can be interpreted and analysed using mythic constructs, which may help to explain some of the emotional attraction of destinations and shed light on tourist motivations. Tourists in the modern era can visit remote and exotic ‘frontier’ locations, which may involve the re-enactment of exploration myths through the retracing of famous historical journeys. This article considers the motivations behind metempsychotic tourist experiences, based on interviews with 37 participants and a content analysis of 50 texts written by and about these types of tourists. Findings suggest that these ‘voyages of discovery’ may be motivated in part by a desire for a truly authentic experience, regardless of the staging inherent in such an expedition.     

Backpacker tourism: sustainable and purposeful? Investigating the overlap between backpacker tourism and volunteer tourism motivations

Alternative tourism, particularly backpacker and volunteer tourism, has developed significantly in recent times. This rapid development has contributed to criticism of potential negative effects, notably of the environmental, cultural, economic and social impacts associated with backpacker tourism. Volunteer tourism, by contrast, has been seen in positive terms as more sustainable, combining altruistic motivations with the travel concept. This paper explores backpacker interest in volunteer tourism and identifies overlaps in motivations between the two forms of tourism; 249 self-administered questionnaires were collected from backpackers within backpacker hostels in central Melbourne, Australia. The findings of this study suggest that a motivational overlap exists between backpacker and volunteer tourists, indicating potential for the creation of volunteer tourism products catering specifically for the backpacker market. This may encourage more sustainable tourism experiences within the burgeoning backpacker market, thus addressing some of the negative criticism of the latter. This paper also discusses the implications of these findings for the marketing and development of volunteer tourism products for both the backpacker and volunteer tourism markets.     

The Bystander in Commercial Life: Obliged by Beneficence or Rescue?

The recent case between Apple and the FBI, in which Apple refused to comply with a court order to aid the FBI in overriding the security features of an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, brought the tension between national security and individual rights to the forefront. This article looks at the case and these two core values from a liberal communitarian ethics perspective, and provides an analysis of how these values are reflected in U.S. law. It concludes with an ethical discussion relevant to the resolution of differences between high-tech corporations and the government.     

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Anticipated Price Reform

This paper uses a two-period model to examine the macroeconomic consequences of anticipated price liberalization. In the first period prices are controlled, there is excess demand for goods and consumers must engage in costly queuing to make purchases. In the second period prices are freed, eliminating the need for queues. We establish the possibility of multiple Pareto-rankable equilibria and examine the effects of contingent policy rules. The framework enables us to examine a number of issues of importance, such as the problem of the monetary overhang, the relevance of budgetary policies and the effects of foreign aid.     

The economics of ‘new blood’

We construct a dynamic general-equilibrium model of search and matching where public knowledge grows through time and workers accumulate a fraction of this knowledge through education/retraining. Due to search delays, the unemployment pool is populated by vintages of workers of differing productivities. Through intergenerational rivalry, the human capital of older generations is rendered obsolete relative to that of the new blood. Higher knowledge growth exacerbates intergenerational competition, thereby lowering education and growth while raising unemployment and inequality. These findings help explain wage compression/expansion and the hump-shaped wage-tenure profile across cohorts.     

Immigrant earnings returns to post-migration education: Evidence for Canada, 1999–2013

Using the recently created Canadian Employer–Employee Dynamics Database (CEEDD), we analyze the earnings returns to investments in post secondary education by immigrants made after arrival in Canada. Fixed effects estimation results suggest that postsecondary education (PSE) in Canada increases annual earnings of men and women by 21.9% and 32.8%, respectively, for those enrolled full time and by 11.2% and 21.0% for those enrolled part time, respectively. Earnings effects of PSE are larger for immigrants admitted in the skilled worker category relative to family class immigrants and to refugees and are increasing in the level of education of the immigrants at landing. Immigrants from non-traditional source countries generally have larger returns to PSE than immigrants from English-language source countries, such as the US and the countries of Northwestern Europe.