The decarbonisation impasse: global tourism leaders’ views on climate change mitigation

Abstract

The Paris Climate Agreement is based on pledges from 195 countries to substantially reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) to prevent dangerous climate change. The tourism sector has likewise pledged to reduce its GHG emissions (?70% by 2050); however, current emission trends would result in a tripling in the same timeframe. In order to understand how the sector understands the decarbonisation challenge, 17 senior tourism leaders were interviewed with regard to their perspectives on the risks and opportunities associated with climate change impacts and action. Respondents affirmed that the climate is already changing, fuelled by human activities, including tourism, and that its impacts on society and tourism will be largely negative and devastating in some regions. Opinion was divided regarding mitigation timelines, the compatibility of continued tourism growth with Paris Climate Agreement decarbonisation goals, and the role of technology and governance in reducing emissions. The paper examines leaders’ perspectives in terms of “belief systems” that interpret information in decision-making, as well as forms of agnogenesis; this is, the fabrication of uncertainty to justify non-action. Belief systems and agnogenesis are thought to represent important barriers to progress on the decarbonisation of tourism, as they are for the global low-carbon transition.     

The future of agriculture and society in Iowa: four scenarios

Iowa is a leader in crop and livestock production, but its high productivity has had concomitant negative environmental and societal impacts and large requirements for fossil-fuel-derived inputs. Maintaining agricultural productivity, economic prosperity and environmental integrity will become ever more challenging as the global demand for agricultural products increases and the resources needed become increasingly limited. Here we present four scenarios for Iowa in 2100, based on combinations of differing goals for the economy and differing energy availability. In scenarios focused on high material throughput, environmental degradation and social unrest will increase. In scenarios with a focus on human and environmental welfare, environmental damage will be ameliorated and societal happiness will increase. Movement towards a society focused on human and environmental welfare will require changes in the goals of the economy, whereas no major changes will be needed to maintain focus on high throughput. When energy sources are readily available and inexpensive, the goals of the economy will be more easily met, whereas energy limitations will restrict the options available to agriculture and society. Our scenarios can be used as tools to inform people about choices that must be made to reach more desirable futures for Iowa and similar agricultural regions.     

Wolves' contribution to structural change in grazing systems among swiss alpine summer farms: The evidence from causal random forest

The return of wolves to Swiss mountains and the damage they cause to sheep and goat herds in the region have raised concerns about a consequent wave of farm closures. In this paper, we examine the relationship between wolf attacks and the decline of Alpine summer farms, a specific high-altitude farm type. We collected farm structure data and monitoring data on wolf attacks between 2004 and 2021 and analysed them using a causal random forest method, enabling a detailed analysis of the relation between wolf attacks and the number of different types of Alpine summer farms at a regional level. The results show that the farming systems are unaffected by incidental and infrequent wolf attacks, but that a high number of wolf attacks in a region is related to faster decrease in number of grazing systems where sheep are most vulnerable to such attacks. In contrast, systems that allow for better herd protection tend to show an increase in areas with frequent wolf attacks.     

Optimal internal control regulation: Standards,penalties, and leniency in enforcement

To protect investors, regulators increasingly rely on regulating firms’ internal controls over financial reporting, but they punish noncompliance only if an internal control weakness enabled accounting manipulation. In other words, enforcement is manipulation-contingent. We develop an economic model with a manager who sequentially chooses internal control quality and manipulative effort, and a welfare-maximizing regulator who determines an internal control standard, the penalty size for internal control weaknesses, and when to invoke such a penalty. Internal control regulation under manipulation-contingent enforcement not only provides incentives to invest in internal controls, but also improves manipulation deterrence when there are internal control weaknesses. The optimal regulation takes advantage of this additional deterrence effect by using a very strict internal control standard and an intermediate penalty that is only levied in the event of accounting manipulation. Overall, we rationalize why the commitment to lenient enforcement of internal control regulation is optimal.     

Novel advancements in the Markov chain stock model: analysis and inference

In this paper we propose further advancements in the Markov chain stock model. First, we provide a formula for the second order moment of the fundamental price process with transversality conditions that avoid the presence of speculative bubbles. Second, we assume that the process of the dividend growth is governed by a finite state discrete time Markov chain and, under this hypothesis, we are able to compute the moments of the price process. We impose assumptions on the dividend growth process that guarantee finiteness of price and risk and the fulfilment of the transversality conditions. Subsequently, we develop non parametric statistical techniques for the inferential analysis of the model. We propose estimators of price, risk and forecasted prices and for each estimator we demonstrate that they are strongly consistent and that properly centralized and normalized they converge in distribution to normal random variables, then we give also the interval estimators. An application that demonstrate the practical implementation of methods and results to real dividend data concludes the paper.     

Corporate taxes,capital structure,and valuation: Combining Modigliani/Miller and Miles/Ezzell

The valuation of a firm with discounted cash flow (DCF) approaches requires assumptions about the firm’s financing strategy. The approaches of Modigliani and Miller and Miles and Ezzell assume that either a passive debt management with predetermined debt levels or active debt management with capital structure targets is applied. Over the last decades, various extensions of these approaches have been developed to allow for a more realistic depiction of financial decision making. However, recent empirical analyses indicate that current theories still have limited power to explain large variances in capital structure across time. We provide an alternative explanation for the empirical observation by assuming that firms combine both capital structure targets and predetermined debt within future periods, and we show how to value a firm given such a partially active debt management. The approaches of Modigliani and Miller and Miles and Ezzell are embedded into a common valuation framework, with the familiar valuation formulas shown as special cases. In a simulation analysis, we illustrate that the textbook valuation formulas may produce considerable valuation errors if a firm applies a partially active debt management.     

Keeping it real or keeping it simple? Ownership concentration measures compared

We analyze the distributional properties of ownership concentration measures and find that measures come from different underlying statistical distributions. Consistent with theory, some measures that are classified to represent a monitoring dimension have a positive influence on firm performance; other measures that are interpreted to represent a shareholder conflict dimension are negatively related to firm performance. However, other measures deviate from this pattern, and therefore, we cannot conclude that simple measures can replace complicated measures. Some measures are more suitable for analyzing the relationship between management and owners, whereas other measures are more suitable for analyzing the relationships among owners.     

Employee stock options with performance conditions: do commonly used valuation heuristics work?

Valuation heuristics are widely used to value traditional time vesting option plans. This study analyses if these heuristics also qualify for valuing performance vesting plans. We examine performance conditions tied to the underlying stock, the stock's performance relative to a stock index, and an earnings measure. The differences between the approximated option values and the values assuming optimal exercise are overall smaller with the performance conditions than without them. In particular, this result holds when the heuristic exercise assumptions are based on the case without performance conditions, which is a considerable simplification in practice.     

Effiziente Risikosteuerung durch die Kfz-Versicherung – Eine verhaltensökonomische Untersuchung

From an economic perspective, the automobile insurance plays an important role in regulating the activity level of driving by closing a prevention gap of the strict liability for automobile accidents. The gap is caused by bounded rationality of car owners and drivers. Unrealistic optimism and self-serving bias lead to an underestimation of expected damages. As a result, the activity level of driving would rise above the optimum, social costs would exceed the utility from driving and too many accidents would occur. The article illustrates how the automobile insurance counteracts these inefficiencies and thereby leads to a more efficient activity level.