Estimating the Costs of Protecting Native Species from Invasive Animal Pests in New South Wales,Australia

Invasive animal pests reduce crop and livestock output, require management and control measures, and threaten native plants, animals and their habitat. The agricultural and management costs are often directly measurable. But the costs to protect threatened native plants and animals are harder to assess. The Rural Lands Protection Boards were the government agency in New South Wales that managed invasive animals. An analysis of their decisions provided the opportunity to estimate the costs of protecting native species. The number of native plants and animals threatened by invasive pests was modelled against the expenditure, area, pest abundance, climate and location of 38 Board districts. There was a strong negative relationship between the number of threatened native species and Board expenditure. This relationship was interpreted to estimate the marginal cost of protecting a threatened native species, the downward shift in the supply curve necessary to protect all threatened native species, and the gains from the shift in the form of cost savings in the continued protection of non-threatened native species. These results value some of the costs that invasive animal pests impose on the environment.     

Charter value, Tobin's Q and bank risk during the subprime financial crisis

Charter value is important in the banking industry because of its ability to reduce the moral hazard incentives that result from government-provided deposit insurance. Previous research suggests that geographic deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s increased competition and eroded charter values. Yet, a common proxy for charter value, Tobin's Q, increased significantly in the 1990s and beyond even as bank deregulation continued. We show that Tobin's Q is a poor cardinal measure of charter value though it still has merit as an ordinal measure. Our findings suggest that charter value has been declining through time, contributing to the increase in risk-taking that led to the subprime financial crisis.     

Extending the BG/NBD: A simple model of purchases and complaints

Extant customer-base models like the beta geometric/negative binomial distribution (BG/NBD) predict future purchasing based on customers' observed purchase history. We extend the BG/NBD by adding an important non-transactional element that also drives future purchases: complaint history. Our model retains several desirable properties of the BG/NBD: it can be implemented in readily available software, and estimation requires only customer-specific statistics, rather than detailed transaction-sequence data. The likelihood function is closed-form, and managerially relevant metrics are obtained by drawing from beta and gamma densities and transforming these draws to a sample average. Based on more than two years of individual-level data from a major U.S. internet and catalog retailer, our model with complaints outperforms both the original BG/NBD and a modified version. Even though complaints are rare and non-transactional events, they lead to different substantive insights about customer purchasing and drop-out: customers purchase faster but also drop out much faster. Furthermore, there is more heterogeneity in drop-out rates following a purchase than a complaint.     

Older adult pedestrian injuries in the United States: causes and contributing circumstances

As the US population ages, more older adults will face transportation and mobility challenges. This study examines the characteristics and contributing circumstances of nonfatal older adult pedestrian injuries. Data were obtained from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Programme (NEISS-AIP) for the years 2001 through 2006. Cases included persons aged 65 years and older who were nonfatally injured on a public roadway. The results indicated that on average, an estimated 52,482 older adults were treated in emergency departments each year for nonfatal pedestrian injuries. Falling and being hit by a motor vehicle were the leading mechanisms of injury, resulting in 77.5% and 15.0% of older adult pedestrian injuries, respectively. More than 9000 older pedestrian fall-related injuries each year involved a kerb. It is concluded that the growth in the older adult population could add to the overall burden of these nonfatal pedestrian injuries. Making transportation and mobility improvements, including environmental modifications, is important for preventing these injuries.     

A new release of the ASTM CHETAH program for hazard evaluation: Versions for mainframe and personal computer

CHETAH, which stands for the Chemical Thermodynamic and Energy Release Program, was introduced in 1974. Since then, the CHETAH program has been widely used in the chemical industry for hazard evaluation. Although its chief aim is to predict deflagration/detonation potential from molecular structure, it can also be used to estimate heats of reaction, heat capacities, and entropies. One of the limitations of the original program was its rigid, punched card oriented format for data input and the lack of an overall hazard rating derived from the several hazard criteria. A new release of this program alleviates these shortcomings and includes other improvements. The main features of the new release are: 1) a totally interactive front end, 2) an interpreter subroutine which uses sophisticated pattern recognition techniques to combine the four hazard criteria into an overall hazard rating, 3) recognition of certain atomic groupings which are known to be sensitive, 4) correct handling of the symmetry number, and 5) an updated data bank. One of the most important features of this release is its availability in an IBM PC compatible version, making the program accessible to more users.     

An eclectic investigation of tourism multinationals: Evidence from Greece

This paper analyses determinants of profitability differences between subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic enterprises (DMEs) in the tourism industry, using firm-level data. Previous studies focus on the hypothesis that ownership-specific advantages are a major determinant of performance differences. This paper explores performance issues using the eclectic paradigm configuration of tourism multinationals (NACE = 55), operating in Greece and a panel dataset for 95 firms and 10 years. A quantile regression technique is used to estimate the proposed model. Results indicate that, overall, MNEs out-perform their domestic competitors and are generally larger in terms of size. The study reveals, though, that when breaking MNEs into majority and minority owned, the latter perform better, as they make substantial use of local partners. These partners contribute with knowledge of the local market, which is an important aspect for the tourism industry. Finally, the authors discuss the conclusions and managerial implications of the findings.