Where Credit Is Due: Residential Mortgage Finance in Canada, 1901 to 1954

The experience of Canada in the first half of this century indicates that the importance of institutional mortgage lending for the growth of homeownership can be overstated. Home ownership rates in Canada and the United States were similar, but many fewer Canadians than Americans relied on lending institutions. Fewer incurred debt of any sort. A case study of Hamilton, Ontario, based on land titles records indicates that this was especially true during the interwar years. No Canadians lived in large metropolitan areas, where mortgage debt was most prevalent, while many built in stages as their finances allowed. Moreover, even in the early 1950s, half of all residential mortgage debt in Canada was held by private individuals, with brokers playing an important role. Despite the importance of the personal sector, above all in the markets for older homes and junior mortgages, the Canadian government made no effort to improve the way in which it operated.     

Sustainable Consumption Governance: A History of Promises and Failures

What are the implications of the current international political, and economic settings for consumer policy, and, in particular, those regarding sustainable consumption? In terms of improvements in the efficiency of consumption, the settings have induced efforts to this effect and show potential for further progress. In terms of necessary changes in consumption levels and patterns, however, little progress has been made since the Rio Summit nor is there likely to be any in the near future. These two dimensions of sustainable consumption need to be differentiated, as there is a substantial amount of controversy regarding our ability to achieve sustainable consumption on the basis of improvements in efficiency alone. The paper traces these differences with respect to the work of the major international governmental organizations (IGOs) engaged in developing sustainable consumption governance. It argues that the lack of commitment to strong sustainable consumption among IGOs can be explained by their “weakness” as actors in global governance and the existence of strong opposing interests among consumers and business actors.     

The Number of Bank Relationships of SMEs: A Disaggregated Analysis of Changes in the Swiss Loan Market

This paper investigates changes in the number of bank relationships of small and medium-sized enterprises in Switzerland from 1996 to 2002. It differentiates between overall bank relationships and lending relationships and disaggregates the loan market with respect to firm sizes, industries and banking groups. On average, bank lending declined, and the concentration of lending relationships increased. The changes seem to have been driven by demand and supply for medium-sized firms, but only by supply for micro and small firms. Supply-side reductions resulted from a merger and changes in credit risk management by major banks. We find evidence of increasing specialization of larger banks on transaction lending and of smaller and regional banks on relationship lending.     

Searching for the natural rate of interest: a euro area perspective

A time-varying natural rate of interest is estimated for the euro area using a multivariate unobserved components model. The problem of aggregating interest rate data for the pre-EMU period is directly addressed, and a simple method is proposed in order to adjust the risk premia in the interest rate data prior to 1999. We show that, for the pre-EMU period, using risk-unadjusted policy rates leads to periods of high risk premia being erroneously taken as monetary policy replies to the output gap; in contrast, using risk-adjusted policy rates yields an estimate of the reaction of monetary policy to the output gap corresponding approximately to an increase of 40 basis points for a 1%positive deviation of output from potential output. A positive deviation of inflation from its trend of 1%is estimated to have triggered an approximately 1.2%increase in short-term interest rates.     

Causal Inference by Independent Component Analysis: Theory and Applications*

Structural vector‐autoregressive models are potentially very useful tools for guiding both macro‐ and microeconomic policy. In this study, we present a recently developed method for estimating such models, which uses non‐normality to recover the causal structure underlying the observations. We show how the method can be applied to both microeconomic data (to study the processes of firm growth and firm performance) and macroeconomic data (to analyse the effects of monetary policy).     

Discursive power as a source of legitimation in food retail governance

In the food sector, retailers often present themselves as guardians of consumer interests, with superior efficiency and effectiveness in the governance of food, in relation to public actors. Concerns about retail governance institutions, such as private standards or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), mainly emphasise a lack of input legitimacy, that is legitimacy relying on democratic procedures. Less often concerns are raised regarding output legitimacy, that is legitimacy based on the effectiveness of retail governance institutions. Based on concepts of discursive power, this paper explores how retail corporations establish their claim to legitimacy in food governance via concepts of output legitimacy. The paper pursues its aim by performing a critical discourse analysis of retailers' discursive strategies identified here as imperialist, recursive, symbiotic and ironic.     

Impact of European Union funding on tourism in the Grampian Region

The European Union (EU) has no specific tourism policy. Even though there are divergent views on its involvement in regional development, there is a consensus on the fact that the EU is involved by its principle role of ‘Subsidiarity’. There is also continued participation of the EU in activities related to tourism development in the community. Undoubtedly, the EU is having an impact on regional development of members states. Research carried out shows the contribution of the EU in regional development and tourism. The EU funding has tended to focus on peripheral areas and where traditional industries are declining. Tourism related projects (such as visitor attractions) have benefited from such funding programmes, on the assumption that these projects will create employment and increase visitor numbers, as well as promote the economies of these regions. Consequently, this paper considers the contributions of EU funding of tourism attractions in the Aberdeen and Grampian region of Scotland and issues affecting the effectiveness of the attractions themselves. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A conceptual framework of impression management: new insights from psychology,sociology and critical perspectives

In this paper we develop a conceptual framework, based on the concepts of rationality and motivation, which uses theories and empirical research from psychology/behavioural finance, sociology and critical accounting to systematise, advance and challenge research on impression management. The paper focuses on research that departs from economic concepts of impression management as opportunistic managerial discretionary disclosure behaviour resulting in reporting bias or ‘cheap talk’. Using alternative rationality assumptions, such as bounded rationality, irrationality, substantive rationality and the notion of rationality as a social construct, we conceptualise impression management in alternative ways as (1) self-serving bias, (2) symbolic management and (3) accounting rhetoric. This contributes to an enhanced understanding of impression management in a corporate reporting context.     

Optimal Dynamic Control of Visitors and Endangered Species in a National Park

To enable visitors to enjoy nature while protecting endangered species is the key challenge for national parks around the world. In our optimal dynamic control model, a park management maximizes tourism revenues and conservation benefits net of control costs by choosing optimal dynamic levels of conservation and visitor management. The optimization is constrained by an extended food chain model representing species-habitat-visitor interactions. We illustrate for a game bird in an Alpine national park that ecotourism can indeed lead to ecosystem degradation when the park management is more concerned about increasing tourism revenues than about achieving the conservation target and if the endangered species is unknown to most visitors. If, however, the park management is well aware of the potentially negative consequences of ecotourism and hence cares for species conservation, limited ecotourism can provide funding for species conservation which ensures population levels above the uncontrolled steady state.