A Response to 'Ecotourism on Trial: The Case of Billfish Angling as Ecotourism'

This paper estimates the quantity of pollutant produced by the Hong Kong hotel industry through diesel oil consumption. A survey of 20 hotels was carried out to collect three years' energy consumption data. Regression analysis indicated that gross floor area was a major and statistically accepted factor in explaining diesel oil consumption. Diesel oil consumption had reduced from the early 1990s and stabilised by the late 1990s. The sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide and particulate pollution created by the hotel industry's diesel oil usage from 1990 to 1999 is estimated. The findings indicate that existing green measures and devices are passive and depend on the assimilation of the atmosphere. Environmental costs have stabilised at about HK$54,000 per annum. More proactive approaches to reduce usage and environmental impacts are proposed.     

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Financing Health Insurance

Employer-financed health insurance systems like those used in the United States distort firms’ labor demand and adversely affect the economy. Since such costs vary with employment rather than hours worked, firms have an incentive to increase output by increasing worker hours rather than employment. Given that the returns to employment exceed the returns to hours worked, this results in lower levels of employment and output. In this paper, we construct a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model where individuals differ with respect to their productivity and employment opportunities. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, we generate steady state results for several alternative models for financing health insurance: one in which health insurance is financed primarily through employer contributions that vary with employment, a second where insurance is funded through a non-distortionary, lump-sum tax, and a third where insurance is funded by a payroll tax. We measure the effects of each of the alternatives on output, employment, hours worked, and wages.     

Estimates of Mincerian Returns to Schooling in Nigeria

In the face of declining rates of primary and secondary school enrolment and increasing post-secondary school enrolment rates, the Nigerian government introduced the free universal basic education programme in 1999. To understand better the economic forces underlying the recent trends in school enrolment rates and appraise the new education policy from the perspective of private efficiency returns, I estimate the private returns to schooling associated with levels of educational attainment for wage and self-employed workers using data from the General Household Survey. The estimates for both men and women are small at primary and secondary levels, 2–3% and 4%, respectively, but are substantial at post-secondary education level, 10–15%. Inter-generational returns to schooling decline for primary education but rise for post-secondary education. These schooling return estimates may account for the recent trends in school enrolments. Thus, increasing public investment to encourage increased attendance in basic education is not justifiable on grounds of private efficiency, unless investments to increase school quality have higher private returns. With high private returns to post-secondary schooling, students at this level should pay tuition to recoup more of the public costs of schooling, which may be redistributed to poor families through scholarships.     

The sources of the Kuznets relationship between road fatalities and economic growth

This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the Kuznets curve relationship between per capita income and road fatalities across 60 countries over the period 1972-2004. This relationship hypothesizes that the number of road fatalities increases with increasing motorization in the early stages of economic growth. Eventually, due to advances in technical, policy and political institutions, it declines as per capita income increases. The quality of political institutions as well as improvements in medical care and technology are hypothesized to impact road fatalities. Results indicate evidence of a Kuznets curve relationship between per capita income and road fatalities for both highly developed and less developed countries and support our hypothesis that changes in institutional quality and medical improvements underlie the Kuznets relationship. The evidence presented in this study suggests that lowering corruption levels as well as improvements in medical care and technology would help to reduce road fatalities.     

The dynamics of responder behavior in ultimatum games: a meta-study

Using data aggregated from seven papers that study repeated play in standard ultimatum games with either stranger or absolute stranger matching, we show that the behavior of responders changes with experience. High offers are more likely to be accepted with experience and low offers are more likely to be rejected. At the individual level, there is a negative relationship between the likelihood that a given offer is accepted and the size of the preceding offer. We compare the results with predictions generated by static models of distributional preferences, implicitly dynamic models of preferences with reciprocity, and explicitly dynamic models of adaptive learning. The data is most consistent with models of preferences with reciprocity.     

Pricing multi-class network services using the Shapley Value

This paper investigates pricing issues in class-based networks. Classes of packets having lower impatience and longer average delay receive monetary compensations. The inter-class price differential is determined by the inter-class compensations. The paper also presents rules for allocating network resource to each class. The corresponding payoff (disutility share) for each class is driven by the Shapley Value of the associated cooperative game.     

Strategic Leadership Communication for Crisis Network Coordination

In large-scale societal crises, organizations involved in saving lives and protecting the public need to collaborate and coordinate their crisis communication to minimize damage and increase resilience. This study analyzed strategic leadership communication fostering such coordination in a network consisting of 24 members representing a variety of authorities, organizations and units established during a large forest fire in Sweden. As the crisis unfolded over a two-week period, 10 network meetings were observed and audio recorded. Discourse analysis was employed to analyze network leaders’ and members’ communication during the meetings. Findings illustrate that leadership communication strategies that fostered networked coordination of organizations’ crisis communication differ in significant ways from leadership communication in noncrisis and team contexts. Salient leadership communication strategies of directing/structuring and encouraging/facilitating were employed during crisis network meetings and functioned to coordinate involved organizations’ crisis communication efforts during time pressure. The study contributes with new knowledge of strategic leadership communication for crisis network coordination, which is important to crisis management and can be used in crisis preparation to enhance resilience.     

International transfer pricing and income shifting: evidence from the UK

The potential use of international transfer pricing (ITP) as an income-shifting mechanism by multinational enterprises (MNEs) has long been recognized. However, there is relatively little evidence to substantiate or discount this claim in relation to UK-based foreign-controlled enterprises (FCEs). This paper examines the possible use of ITP as an income-shifting mechanism by FCEs operating in the UK. The methodological approach involves the comparison of the profitability (performance) and dividend (post-performance) distributions of a sample of FCEs with those of UK-controlled enterprises (UKCEs) over a two-year period. The two samples are matched on the basis of their total assets (capability). Results reveal significant differences in the profitability and dividend distributions of the two groups. FCEs underperform UKCEs, but their level of dividend distribution outstrips those of UKCEs. Based on this sample of seventy-two companies, a firm is more likely to be an FCE, rather than a UKCE, if it reports a combination of lower performance and higher post-performance distribution. Evidence of significant income shifting by FCEs is confirmed and the claim that ITP is the key mechanism for such shifts cannot be dismissed.     

Managerial Selection Decisions in Multinational Corporations: Teaching International Business Using Problem-Based Learning

Companies face many challenges as they staff managerial positions in overseas operations, including decisions on whether to staff using expatriates, host-country nationals, or third-country nationals. We developed an exercise—designed to help students understand the differences between these three groups of employees—that requires students to develop a set of criteria that would form the basis for choosing the candidate they deem to be the best one. In addition, the exercise can serve as a springboard to discussion of the different training and compensation requirements for each of the three different types of employee. The steps involved in the exercise are presented together with suggestions for debriefing the exercise.