The art of tourism-driven development: economic and artistic well-being of artists in three Balinese communities

One route from coastal to inland Bali traverses three communities with different types of art, from mass-produced art for beachside tourists in Sanur, through the village of Mas, home to mask and wood carving workshops, to several high-end galleries and renowned museums in Ubud, known for painting. This comparative case study, based on our interviews with artists, museum directors, collectors, community activists and leaders, arts entrepreneurs, and civil servants, focuses on the economic and artistic well-being of artists in three communities. This well-being approach overcomes a preoccupation with ‘authenticity’ characteristic of older scholarship on tourism and the arts in Southeast Asia. We conclude that the impact of tourism-driven development on artists' well-being varies tremendously even within one region in Bali and that ‘slow’, purposeful arts tourism and forward-looking, hybrid approaches offer the most artistic and economic benefits to local artists. Examples, both positive and negative, provide lessons or strategies for other communities that have distinctive artistic heritages and increasing numbers of tourists.     

Food Stamp Benefits and Child Poverty

In 2000, 8.8 million children lived in households participating in the Food Stamp Program, making this assistance program a crucial component of the social safety net. Despite its importance, little research has examined food stamps' effect on children's overall well-being. Using the Current Population Survey from 1989 to 2001, we consider the impact of food stamps on three measures of poverty—the headcount, the poverty gap, and the squared poverty gap. We find that in comparison to the headcount measure, food stamp benefits lead to large reductions in the poverty gap and squared poverty gap measures.     

Diversity of incentives for private forest landowners: An assessment of programs in Indiana, USA

 Many government and private programs provide incentives for non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners. Due to the complexity of this web of programs, the incentives of the programs are unclear. We focus on four specific programs that represent different rule structures—a federal cost-share program, a state tax incentive program, a nationwide private stewardship program, and a local private conservation organization. We perform institutional analysis of the formal and informal rules of the programs based on literature review, discussions with officers, and formal guidelines of the programs. We classify different types of rule structures, and explain them in relation to goals and organizational structures of the programs.     

A Fuzzy clustering approach to the key sectors of the Spanish economy

The search for key sectors in an economy has been and still is one of the more recurrent themes in input–output analysis. When using clustering techniques, sectors can only belong to a group, having a particular performance. But, actually, the same sector could be important from different perspectives at the same time, to a different degree. So, a fuzzy clustering approach is needed. In this work we propose a multidimensional approach to classify the productive sectors of the Spanish input–output table for 1995, based on three groups of variables: those related to their productive integration, others measuring their specific weight in the economy and finally some showing their economic dynamic. We also incorporate into the analysis the technological level, which being a categorical variable presents special methodological problems. All these questions are tackled applying a robust and fuzzy clustering analysis, which gives as a result a classification of sectors illustrating the role that each one plays in the Spanish economy.     

Value,Exchange and the Social Economy: Framework and Paradigm Shift in Urban Policy.

A market paradigm has been dominant in the field of community development, defining how governmental officials, development professionals and even academics view the world, and influencing the way problems are identified, the kind of questions asked, the solutions considered, the criteria for ‘success’ and even the evaluative methodologies employed. This article maintains that the market paradigm has not succeeded from the micro-social perspective of the residents or the development of their communities as a whole. By problematizing two concepts embedded in the market economy paradigm, value (both monetized and non-monetized) and exchange (terms of trade), we offer a concrete vision of urban policy analysis from a social economy paradigm.     

Humor and cognitive responses to advertising stimuli: A trace consolidation approach

Despite the predictions of several attitude change theories, most empirical research suggests that humorous communications are no more persuasive than their serious counterparts. The present study adopted a trace consolidation theory approach and tested the hypothesis that humorous appeals are more persuasive than serious appeals when time for trace consolidation is allowed. The trace consolidation theory hypothesis was supported most directly by shifts in cognitive responses. On some measures, sex differences were also observed. Specifically, males were found to be more susceptible than females to the humorous persuasive appeal.     

An economic analysis of cooperative research

The U.S. government's most recent policy initiative to increase industrial research activity is the National Cooperative Research Act of 1984. Since its passage much attention has been given to this new organizational research form, but to date there has not been any systematic investigation of the participants in cooperative research. This paper is an initial attempt to fill that void. First, a classification scheme is presented to describe the research activity of firms currently engaged in cooperative endeavors, as evidenced by mandated filings reported in the Federal Register. Then, a model of inter-firm differences in cooperative research activity is posited and tested using survey-based data for a sample of R&D active firms in the U.S. manufacturing sector. We conclude that market power is the principal determinant of involvement in cooperative research.     

On the Equivalence between the APV and the wacc Approach in a Growing Leveraged Firm

While in a steady state framework the choice between the wacc approach ( Modigliani‐Miller, 1963 ) and the adjusted present value (APV) approach ( Myers, 1974 ) is irrelevant since the two approaches provide the same result, however, in a growing firm context the wacc equation seems to be inconsistent with the APV result. In this paper we propose a simple model to evaluate the tax savings in a growing firm in order to show under which assumptions the two approaches lead to the same results. We demonstrate that the use of the wacc model in a steady‐growth scenario gives rise to some unusual assumptions with regard to the discount rates to be used in calculating tax shields. We show that the widely used wacc formula, if used, as it is in most cases, in a growth context, implies that a) debt tax shield related to already existing debt are discounted using k_d; b) debt tax shield related to new debt, due to company's growth, are discounted, according to a mixed procedure, using both k_u and k_d. We discuss the inconsistency of such a discounting procedure and the preferred features of the APV approach.     

Insiemi invarianti globalmente attrattivi nell'interazione fra il “mercato dei beni” ed il “mercato della moneta”

Si studia il comportamento dinamico locale e globale di un modello macroeconomico che si rappresenta con un sistema nonlineare di due equazioni alle differenze (sistema dinamico discreto, o mappa). Si mostra come l'uso di un nuovo strumento di analisi, le linee critiche, consenta di studiare molte delle proprietà globali (quali i bacini di attrazione di insiemi invarianti) e delle biforcazioni globali, che si verificano in mappe del piano con inversa non unica. Si prova che il punto fisso localmente attrattivo è anche globalmente attrattivo, mentre in regimi di instabilità del punto fisso esistono curve chiuse, o altri insiemi invarianti (regolari o caotici) di attrazione, in aree assorbenti globalmente attrattive.

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Summary The local and global dynamical behaviour of a macroeconomic model, represented by a nonlinear system of two difference equations (discrete dynamical system or map), is studied. It is shown how several properties (as basins of attraction of invariant sets) and global bifurcations occurring in two-dimensional maps with a non-unique inverse can be studied by use of a new analytical tool, the critical curves. It is proven that the locally attractive fixed point is globally attractive, while closed invariant curves or other attractive invariant sets (regular or chaotic) exist in globally attractive absorbing areas, when the fixed point is repulsive.

     

Corporate Financing Decisions and Non-Debt Tax Shields: Evidence from Italian Experiences in the 1990s

Between 1995 and 1999, Italy experienced three episodes of fiscal reform during which different categories of non-debt tax shields were introduced, including a classical investment tax credit, a system of dual income taxation, and an investment tax credit restricted to equity financed investments. Using the balance sheets of a large sample of Italian companies, we construct a data set which allows us to evaluate the impact of the different fiscal interventions. We apply MacKie-Mason's (1990) method to study incremental financing decisions using discrete choice analysis. The analysis shows that the measures introduced were successful in reducing the advantage of debt financing relative to equity financing. We relate the findings to the current literature on the determinants of capital structure. JEL Code: G32, H25