Reviewing integrated sustainability indicators for tourism

Integrated sustainability indicators for tourism (ISIT) address tourism as an element of both economic and socio-ecological systems and as actively integrated in multi-level policy-making and planning. This paper aims to review studies of ISIT in peer-reviewed journals with a focus on methodological approaches. By specifically examining ISIT, this study embraces the interdisciplinary nature of both sustainability science and tourism studies. The results are based on a systematic literature review and categorization of the studies’ academic disciplines, methods and organization of indicators. The results reveal that despite being a relatively young area of study, research on ISIT has developed simultaneously across multiple academic disciplines, and is expanding. There seems to be greater interest in developing new methodologies than applying existing indicator frameworks. Most papers refer to indicators thematically and thus discuss tourism separately in the contexts of environmental, social or economic impact. However, emerging approaches analyze tourism as a system of interconnected components and an element of multi-level policy-making. These approaches emphasize public participation and a continuous redefinition of sustainability challenges in response to changes in socio-ecological systems. Current research on ISIT thus focuses on the interconnectedness of indicators and sustainable development as a dynamic process rather than an end goal.     

Living standards and mortality since the middle ages

Existing studies find little connection between living standards and mortality in England, but go back only to the sixteenth century. Using new data on inheritances, we extend estimates of mortality back to the mid‐thirteenth century and find, by contrast, that deaths from unfree tenants to the nobility were strongly affected by living standards. Looking at a large sample of parishes after 1540, we find that the positive check had weakened considerably by 1650 even though living standards were static at best, but persisted in London for another century despite its higher wages. In both cases the disappearance of the positive check coincided with the introduction of systematic poor relief, suggesting that government action may have played a role in breaking the link between harvest failure and mass mortality.     

Implications of market orientation on the environmental transformation of industrial firms

This article examines the role of industrial firms' market orientation as a moderator of the economic-ecologic conflict. Specifically, the authors consider the effect of industrial firms’ market orientation on perceptions of the environmental pressure exerted by stakeholders and the environmental practices implemented in response to that pressure. Because market orientation is related to the collection and assessment of and response to opportunities and threats, market orientation should act as a driver of perceptions of and responses to environmental pressures exerted by stakeholders. An empirical analysis of a sample of Spanish industrial firms shows that market orientation is linked to more intense perceptions of pressure from nongovernmental stakeholders. However, the results are not conclusive with respect to the relationship between market orientation and the intensity of the response to environmental pressures characterized by the implementation of environmental practices.     

Linear contracts as incentives: a puzzle

This paper reexamines the linear schedule of compensation as a tool for providing incentives to managers when contractible output is a function of costly effort and a random shock. Two puzzling situations compatible with linear schemes of compensation are presented. First, if the model parameters are such that the optimal participation on output is below 50%, the variable compensation turns out to have a negative effect on manager’s utility. Second, if it is below 25%, linear incentives allow situations in which larger utilities are reached by means of smaller rewards.      

A review of determinant factors of environmental proactivity

This paper reviews the literature in order to identify the determinant factors of a company's environmental proactivity. It starts by arguing that environmental proactivity can be manifested through diverse practices and strategies and goes on to comment upon several variables that seem to influence the decision to implement such strategies. Some of these variables depict internal company features and others describe the general environment in which operations are carried out. Stakeholders' pressure is distinguished as a central determinant factor and it is argued that all the other variables affect either the intensity of this pressure or the company's capacity to perceive it. All the factors identified herein should be taken into account, at least as control variables, in those studies aiming at explaining and contextualizing environmental strategies. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The carry trade and fundamentals: Nothing to fear but FEER itself

Risky arbitraging based on interest rate differentials between two countries is typically referred to as a carry trade. Up until the recent global financial crisis, these trades generated years of persistent positive returns, which were hard to reconcile with standard pricing kernels. In 2008 these trades blew up, which seemed to weaken the case for a puzzle relating to predictable currency returns. But the rise and fall of this puzzle in the academic literature has only been concerned with naïve carry trades based on yield signals alone. We show, however, that some simple and more realistic fundamentals-augmented trading strategies would have generated strong and sustained positive profits that endured through the turmoil.     

‘I send the wife to the doctor’– Men's behaviour as health consumers

This paper explores men's behaviour and attitudes in relation to health matters. While there has been some practical and research progress in engaging with users of health services, there is less development in the area of engaging non‐users. In effect, all members of the society can be the consumers/users of health promotion, though not all are. This paper reports on the first stage of a wider project aimed at increasing the effectiveness of skin cancer awareness messages aimed at men. The project focuses on men over 50 from an area of socio‐economic disadvantage, since these men tend to have the lowest life expectancies in general, and the highest incidences of mortality for skin cancer both at a national and international level. The research was conducted through community‐based focus groups and while the sample was relatively, small it produced some interesting outcomes in terms of how this cohort audited and responded to public health promotion campaigns; how they perceive cancer and health issues in general; how they respond to health issues; and how they view both the public health service in Ireland and the ways health professionals relate to them. It confirms many theories about how men view their health and how they respond to health promotion campaigns. Among other points, it raises questions about the possible mixed benefits of testimonial‐based advertising. It also indicates that there may be further layers of complexity connected to identity, fatalism, problem solving and respectful treatment that have not been sufficiently articulated in the literature. It points to the need for greater engagement by service planners and providers with the needs of their target audience, which may require a more encompassing definition of service user.     

Health care utilization and self-assessed health: specification of bivariate models using copulas

The discernment of relevant factors driving health care utilization constitutes one important research topic in health economics. This issue is frequently addressed through specification of regression models for health care use (y—often measured by number of doctor visits) including, among other covariates, a measure of self-assessed health (sah). However, the exogeneity of sah within those models has been questioned, due to the possible presence of unobservables influencing both y and sah, and because individuals’ health assessments may depend on the quantity of medical care received. This article addresses the possible simultaneity of (sah, y) by adopting a full information approach, through specification of the bivariate probability function (p.f.) of these discrete variables, conditional on a set of exogenous covariates (x). The approach is implemented with copula functions, which afford separate consideration of each variable margin and their dependence structure. The specification of the joint p.f. of (sah, y) enables estimation of several quantities of potential economic interest, namely features of the conditional p.f. of y given sah and x. The adopted models are estimated through maximum likelihood, with cross-sectional data from the Portuguese National Health Survey of 1998–1999. Estimates of the margins’ parameters do not vary much among different copula models, while, in accordance with theoretical expectations, the dependence parameter is estimated to be negative across the various joint models.