Conservation finance and sustainable tourism: the acceptability of conservation fees to support the Tambopata National Reserve,Peru

Protected areas are key to the conservation of global biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, their success is contingent upon adequate funding. One possibility to increase funding for park management is to “sell” a wider suite of ecosystem services “produced” by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration. We conducted 420 tourist surveys to analyze willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem service benefits via a conservation fee in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We also interviewed eight tour operators about their perceptions of the proposed fee. The average stated WTP was 15 USD. Sixty-six percent of tourists stated they would pay 10 USD or more, which, if actually paid, would have resulted in 318,000 USD for park management in 2015. Most respondents stated they would pay an additional fee if it supported biodiversity conservation or local ecosystem services, such as water, but less than 10% of tourists were motivated by carbon sequestration as a reason to pay the fee. Most tour operators supported the additional fee. Our findings suggest that tourists are willing to pay higher fees to support conservation but that interest in paying for additional ecosystem services from parks may not extend to global and intangible benefits such as carbon sequestration.     

The role of relationship quality in raising organizational change acceptance: The case of the Greek hotel industry

This study examines whether the quality of an employee's relationships, within the context of the hotel industry, has an influence on their behavioral intention towards organizational change. The researchers suggest that the quality of relationships is an important element of an individual's social capital and can be evaluated using five key dimensions: the extent to which relationships are tangible, responsive and reliable, as well as the extent to which they offer empathy and assurance. Furthermore, this research examines whether organizational commitment and job satisfaction have an effect on the association between relationship quality and an individual's behavioral intention towards organizational change. The data collected from a sample of 100 hotel employees in Thessaloniki, Greece, show that relationship quality has a positive association with an individual's behavioral intention towards change. Additional results highlight the roles of job satisfaction and organizational commitment as mediating variables. Managerial implications relevant to the findings and pathways for further research are also discussed.     

A Development‐friendly Prioritisation of Doha Round Proposals

Agriculture looms large on the WTO's agenda. It was the first substantive item listed in the work programme of the Ministerial Declaration launching the Doha Round, and it was arguably at the centre of the failure at Cancun. Developing countries made it clear both before and during the Cancun meeting that progress on agriculture was their primary objective. Negotiations in other areas have received less attention and progressed more slowly. This paper considers that prioritisation, and suggests that the interests of developing countries in the current round of trade negotiations are much broader than is suggested by the narrow range of agricultural issues that have dominated negotiations. A true development round would require a significant reprioritisation of many areas of the WTO's current agenda.     

Backtesting Stochastic Mortality Models

Abstract

This study sets out a backtesting framework applicable to the multiperiod-ahead forecasts from stochastic mortality models and uses it to evaluate the forecasting performance of six different stochastic mortality models applied to English & Welsh male mortality data. The models considered are the following: Lee-Carter’s 1992 one-factor model; a version of Renshaw-Haberman’s 2006 extension of the Lee-Carter model to allow for a cohort effect; the age-period-cohort model, which is a simplified version of Renshaw-Haberman; Cairns, Blake, and Dowd’s 2006 two-factor model; and two generalized versions of the last named with an added cohort effect. For the data set used herein, the results from applying this methodology suggest that the models perform adequately by most backtests and that prediction intervals that incorporate parameter uncertainty are wider than those that do not. We also find little difference between the performances of five of the models, but the remaining model shows considerable forecast instability.     

An Assessment of Competitive Tendering using Transaction Cost Analysis

Competitive tendering is the means by which most goods and services are produced by public bodies: therefore it is important to try to improve it. Transaction cost analysis, in particular the concepts of bounded rationality, asset specificity and opportunism, provided the framework for examining two competitively tendered contracts let by the Government Purchasing Agency (in Northern Ireland). The firms tendering for the contracts were surveyed and interviews were carried out with purchasing staff managing the tendering process. The authors found that the main areas for further improvement in competitive tendering are the availability of information on previous contracts and debriefing, providing a clearer specification of user needs and of quantities.     

Locked Up by a Lockup: Valuing Liquidity as a Real Option

Hedge funds often impose lockups and notice periods to limit the ability of investors to withdraw capital. We model the investor's decision to withdraw capital as a real option and treat lockups and notice periods as exercise restrictions. Our methodology incorporates time-varying probabilities of hedge fund failure and optimal early exercise. We estimate a two-year lockup with a three-month notice period costs approximately 1% of the initial investment for an investor with constant relative risk aversion utility and risk aversion of three. The cost of illiquidity can easily exceed 10% if the hedge fund manager can arbitrarily suspend withdrawals.     

Monotonicity in asset returns: New tests with applications to the term structure,the CAPM,and portfolio sorts

Many theories in finance imply monotonic patterns in expected returns and other financial variables. The liquidity preference hypothesis predicts higher expected returns for bonds with longer times to maturity; the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) implies higher expected returns for stocks with higher betas; and standard asset pricing models imply that the pricing kernel is declining in market returns. The full set of implications of monotonicity is generally not exploited in empirical work, however. This paper proposes new and simple ways to test for monotonicity in financial variables and compares the proposed tests with extant alternatives such as t-tests, Bonferroni bounds, and multivariate inequality tests through empirical applications and simulations.     

Payment card rewards programs and consumer payment choice

By using a unique data set that contains detailed information about consumer payment choice and consumers’ attitudes toward each payment method, we estimate the effects of payment card rewards on consumer choice of payment methods. Our approach allows us to control for consumer heterogeneity. We find the effects of rewards to be statistically significant across five retail types. Our policy experiments suggest that for the sub-population who hold both credit and debit cards, removing rewards would increase their share of paper-based payment methods (i.e., cash and checks), measured in terms of in-store transactions, by no more than 4 percentage points.     

The effects of mergers on product positioning: evidence from the music radio industry

This article shows that mergers between close competitors in the music radio industry lead to important changes in product positioning. Firms that buy competing stations tend to differentiate them and, consistent with the firm wanting to reduce audience cannibalization, their combined audience increases. However, the merging stations also become more like competitors, so that aggregate variety does not increase, and the gains in market share come at the expense of other stations in the same format. The results shed light on the effects of mergers and, more broadly, on how multiproduct firms may use product positioning as a competitive tool.