Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.     

Versicherungsvertragliche Anzeigepflicht und Garantiehaftung für culpa in contrahendo

To sanction the insurant’s obligation to disclose the risk-relevant circumstances by the insurer’s exemption from performance does not comply with the ordinary pattern of pre-contractual liability. Instead of making the insurant responsible for the consequences of his breach of duty, the German Insurance Act subjects him to a guarantee which is comparable to the one imposed by the German Civil Code in the case of initial impossibility. The insurant has to guarantee that the facts which he did not, or at least not entirely, disclose do not cause any obligation of the insurer. The structure of this sanction is equivalent to the insurer’s so-called liability of performance. But contrary to the latter it can be justified by the specific importance of the insurant’s pre-contractual obligation of disclosure.     

Visitors’ acceptance of negative ecological impacts in national parks: comparing the explanatory power of psychographic scales in a Norwegian mountain setting

Even in protected areas, it is inevitable that any human use will produce some impact on natural resources. This study identifies visitors’ tolerance of potential negative ecological impacts from tourism activities and facilities in a Norwegian national park context, based on park visitors’ expressed degree of acceptance of negative effects on particular species of wildlife (wild reindeer and raptors) and on vegetation. Attitudes were analysed using psychographic scales, reflecting respondents’ nature orientations, their specific facility desires, their preferences in a wilderness setting and their concerns about human interaction with the natural environment. Fourteen research hypotheses were tested. Findings demonstrated that the psychographic scales explained more variation in attitudes than most social background and trip characteristics. Higher levels of education among visitors were strongly associated with increased ecological concern; age and gender were not. There was generally strong ecological awareness and eco-centrism among park visitors in general, with a small proportion of wilderness purists. Better trail conditions, signposting and interpretation were sought. But park visitors were also found to possess a complex mixture of needs and drivers. The study found significant potential for strategic alliances between tourism and conservation interests, and key value issues for park governance systems.     

BLACK–SCHOLES REPRESENTATION FOR ASIAN OPTIONS

Asian options are securities with a payoff that depends on the average of the underlying stock price over a certain time interval. We identify three natural assets that appear in pricing of the Asian options, namely a stock S, a zero coupon bond B^T with maturity T, and an abstract asset A (an “average asset”) that pays off a weighted average of the stock price number of units of a dollar at time T. It turns out that each of these assets has its own martingale measure, allowing us to obtain Black–Scholes type formulas for the fixed strike and the floating strike Asian options. The model independent formulas are analogous to the Black–Scholes formula for the plain vanilla options; they are expressed in terms of probabilities under the corresponding martingale measures that the Asian option will end up in the money. Computation of these probabilities is relevant for hedging. In contrast to the plain vanilla options, the probabilities for the Asian options do not admit a simple closed form solution. However, we show that it is possible to obtain the numerical values in the geometric Brownian motion model efficiently, either by solving a partial differential equation numerically, or by computing the Laplace transform. Models with stochastic volatility or pure jump models can be also priced within the Black–Scholes framework for the Asian options.     

ARBITRAGE BOUNDS FOR PRICES OF WEIGHTED VARIANCE SWAPS

We develop a theory of robust pricing and hedging of a weighted variance swap given market prices for a finite number of co‐maturing put options. We assume the put option prices do not admit arbitrage and deduce no‐arbitrage bounds on the weighted variance swap along with super‐ and sub‐replicating strategies that enforce them. We find that market quotes for variance swaps are surprisingly close to the model‐free lower bounds we determine. We solve the problem by transforming it into an analogous question for a European option with a convex payoff. The lower bound becomes a problem in semi‐infinite linear programming which we solve in detail. The upper bound is explicit. We work in a model‐independent and probability‐free setup. In particular, we use and extend Föllmer's pathwise stochastic calculus. Appropriate notions of arbitrage and admissibility are introduced. This allows us to establish the usual hedging relation between the variance swap and the “log contract” and similar connections for weighted variance swaps. Our results take the form of a FTAP: we show that the absence of (weak) arbitrage is equivalent to the existence of a classical model which reproduces the observed prices via risk‐neutral expectations of discounted payoffs.     

THE NUMÉRAIRE PROPERTY AND LONG‐TERM GROWTH OPTIMALITY FOR DRAWDOWN‐CONSTRAINED INVESTMENTS

We consider the portfolio choice problem for a long‐run investor in a general continuous semimartingale model. We combine the decision criterion of pathwise growth optimality with a flexible specification of attitude toward risk, encoded by a linear drawdown constraint imposed on admissible wealth processes. We define the constrained numéraire property through the notion of expected relative return and prove that drawdown‐constrained numéraire portfolio exists and is unique, but may depend on the investment horizon. However, when sampled at the times of its maximum and asymptotically as the time‐horizon becomes distant, the drawdown‐constrained numéraire portfolio is given explicitly through a model‐independent transformation of the unconstrained numéraire portfolio. The asymptotically growth‐optimal strategy is obtained as limit of numéraire strategies on finite horizons.     

Real call options to enlarge foreign subsidiaries – The moderating effect of irreversibility on the influence of economic volatility and political instability on subsequent FDI

This paper develops a real option model to explain the decision of enlarging a new foreign subsidiary by subsequent investment. The model is tested on a panel of 1148 subsidiaries in 22 host countries. The findings complement the traditional process model of firm internationalization. Rather than abiding by an incremental pattern of investment, internationalizing firms seem to keep foreign investment strategies flexible and build up their subsidiaries contingent upon the interaction of economic volatility and irreversibility of investment. However, the moderating effect of irreversibility on the relationship between uncertainty and investment may not hold for downside risks such as political instability.     

On Conditional Density Estimation

With the aim of mitigating the possible problem of negativity in the estimation of the conditional density function, we introduce a so-called re-weighted Nadaraya-Watson (RNW) estimator. The proposed RNW estimator is constructed by a slight modification of the well-known Nadaraya-Watson smoother. With a detailed asymptotic analysis, we demonstrate that the RNW smoother preserves the superior large-sample bias property of the local linear smoother of the conditional density recently proposed in the literature. As a matter of independent statistical interest, the limit distribution of the RNW estimator is also derived.     

Munificence of Parent Corporate Contexts and Expatriate Cross-Cultural Training in China

The practice of providing expatriates with cross-cultural training varies widely among business corporations. To examine the proposition that some characteristics of the parent corporation context could be munificent to the practice of providing cross-cultural training, a mail survey was addressed to business expatriates in China. Surprisingly, the results showed no association between corporate size, international stake, and international experience on the one hand and the extent to which the expatriates had received cross-cultural training on the other hand. Although an ad hoc analysis found a positive relationship between international experience and the provision of sequential cross-cultural training, there was no association between any of the variables depicting corporate context and predeparture or postarrival training. The findings and their implications are discussed in detail.