Examining the predictive validity of SUS-TAS with maximum parsimony in developing island countries

The Sustainable Tourism Attitude Scale (SUS-TAS) has been used as a tool to gauge the sentiment of local residents toward sustainable tourism development. This scale has been validated in cross-cultural settings by several scholars. In a like manner, in order to validate this scale, data were collected in the Cape Verde islands (off the coast of Africa) and the results showed (1) a parsimonious version of the 21-item SUS-TAS that facilitates the process of data collection without compromising its robustness and psychometric properties, (2) a validated second-order factor model, confirming that the seven factors of SUS-TAS can be loaded in two broader dimensions named “perceived tourism impacts” and “expected tourism sustainability”, (3) a SUS-TAS second-order factor model with validity in predicting residents’ support for sustainable tourism development, (4) that SUS-TAS can be interpreted by seven individual factors and/or as a global factor as indicated by the hierarchical measurement model and predictive validity. Methodological and theoretical interpretations are discussed and future refinement and applications are also offered.     

The effects of acculturation and uncertainty avoidance on foreign resident choice for Korean foods

This study attempts to identify dining-out patterns among foreign residents in South Korea, examining the differences in foreign residents’ attitudes toward Korean foods and behavioral intentions to patronize Korean restaurants based on their acculturation and uncertainty avoidance levels. The results show that foreign residents in South Korea dine out frequently and intend to revisit Korean restaurants. However, the high acculturation group has a more positive attitude toward, better understanding of, and more preference for Korean foods than the low acculturation group. Satisfaction, revisiting, and recommendation intentions for Korean restaurants are higher among the high acculturation group than the low. The low uncertainty avoidance group spends more money for dining out than the high uncertainty avoidance group, who perceive Korean foods as expensive. Attitudes toward, understanding of, and preference for Korean foods, do not differ significantly between the two uncertainty avoidance groups; nor do satisfaction and behavioral intentions to Korean restaurants.     

河南小麦产业链各环节成本收益研究

本文通过对河南省小麦产业链各环节的深入、细致调研,利用调研的第一手数据全面剖析了小麦生产、收购、加工、销售各环节的成本收益情况.研究发现,粮食涨价是由于成本推动的,小麦制品的价格上涨主要是农业之外的因素引起的.控制粮食价格上涨的重点不在于小麦生产、收购环节,而是要限制投入品价格的不合理上涨、降低流通环节的费用、适当压缩销售环节小麦制品过大的利润空间.最后针对调研中发现的问题提出了相应政策建议.     

Is There an Optimal Constitution?

The optimal constitution is one that protects people from politicians' thirst of power and preserves citizens' civic virtues. This paper presents a model that blends David Hume's (1741) consideration that in politics every man ought to be supposed a knave, with John Stuart Mill's (1861) conception of self-interested politicians. The optimal constitution is proved to be feasible. However, there are two possible equilibria, the Frey and Brennan-Buchanan equilibrium. It is shown that Bruno Frey's (1997) crowding-in and crowding-out analysis is a particular case of our model. In the Brennan-Buchanan equilibrium there is a long-run neutrality of enforcement on citizens' performance. In general, a trade-off is expected between the optimal number of laws and enforcement. The comparison between the equilibria shows that the Frey equilibrium is the best option to enhance the civic virtues of citizens, while the Brennan-Buchanan equilibrium is the best way to deter the ambitions of self-interested politicians.     

Malmquist indices of productivity change in Portuguese banking: The deregulation period

This paper will evaluate productivity change in Portuguese banking using the Malmquist productivity index. The results show that between 1990 and 1997, banks in Portugal witnessed increased productivity and strong technological progress. Both small and large banks experienced higher productivity and technological change scores, while mid-sized institutions are putting more effort into catching-up policies. Rural banks have experienced strong productivity growth and are catching up with the best practices but lower levels of technological change. Urban banks show higher productivity growth and technological change levels. Government-owned banks have experienced lower levels of productivity change. Finally, the asset per employee ratio shows a positive correlation with the productivity scores, suggesting that this simple index is a good proxy for productivity.     

Board size,corporate regulations and firm valuation in an emerging market: a simultaneous equation approach

We investigate the association between board size and firm valuation for a sample of 169 firms from 2002 to 2011 in South Africa (SA). The SA corporate context is interestingly and uniquely characterised by an urgency to meet affirmative action regulations, such as black empowerment in board appointments, limited qualified and experienced directors, especially black directors, concentrated ownership, weak enforcement of corporate regulations and greater government ownership. These features make SA corporate boards perform a weaker agency (advisory, monitoring and disciplining) role than Western European and US boards, but a stronger resource dependence role, by providing access to resources, such as business contacts and contracts. This suggests that any positive impact of board size on firm valuation is likely to depend on the effective execution of the resource dependence role more than the agency role. Our results suggest that board size has a positive association with firm valuation, consistent with larger boards providing better access to resources. Overall, our results support the resource dependence role of boards more than their agency role. The results are robust across a raft of econometric models that control for different types of endogeneity, as well as different types of accounting and market-based firm valuation measures.     

WELFARE ENHANCING COORDINATION IN CONSUMER COOPERATIVES UNDER MIXED OLIGOPOLY

The recent globalization of world economies has led the retail markets of developed countries towards increasing levels of integration and strategic interdependence. A non negligible share of retail and food markets is currently served by co‐operative societies. Consistently with this trend, the consumer cooperatives have recently experienced increasing levels of integration. The main aim of this paper is to study the welfare effects of coordination among consumer cooperatives competing in quantities in a mixed oligopoly against profit‐maximizing firms. We show that, in absence of agency problems, under increasing or constant returns to scale a higher output coordination of the consumer cooperatives does not affect the total welfare as long as a nonnegative profit constraint holds in these firms. On the other hand, under decreasing returns to scale, the consumer cooperatives contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers. This is because, by coordinating consumers’ preferences, these firms can reduce their market output, thus helping the market to come closer to the first best. All together these results seem to provide an argument in favour of the recent process of integration involving consumer cooperatives in many developed countries.     

Economic Analysis for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment: Synthesis and Scenario Valuation of Changes in Ecosystem Services

We combine natural science modelling and valuation techniques to present economic analyses of a variety of land use change scenarios generated for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment. Specifically, the agricultural, greenhouse gas, recreational and urban greenspace impacts of the envisioned land use changes are valued. Particular attention is given to the incorporation of spatial variation in the natural environment and to addressing issues such as biodiversity impacts where reliable values are not available. Results show that the incorporation of ecosystem services and their values within analyses can substantially change decisions.     

The expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates: The Brazilian case revisited

This article tests the Expectations Hypothesis (EH) using Brazilian monthly data for bond yields spanning the 2000–2017 sample period and ranging in maturity from 3 months to 5 years. Three tests are examined: the first is based on interest rates spread and the other two are based on the forward rates. On balance our results suggest rejection of the EH throughout the maturity spectrum examined, and are broadly consistent with previous findings that a linear combination of forward rates provides a statistically significant prediction of bond excess returns.     

Entrepreneurial cognition and internationalization speed: towards a potential moderating effect of experiential and rational information processing

This study explores the influence that entrepreneurial cognition, in terms of the dichotomy in human information processing, has on the earliness of internationalization and post-entry speed. Entrepreneurial cognition is investigated through the lens of the dual-process theory, which posits that human information processing is formed of two systems, the experiential cognitive system (System 1) and the rational and analytical cognitive system (System 2). The speed of the entire internationalization process is analyzed in terms of earliness (how soon after inception a company enters its first international market) and post-entry speed (how fast it enters new markets after the first internationalization). Drawing on ten cases, we find that companies that internationalized earlier and faster were managed by entrepreneurs with higher levels of the experiential cognitive system. In contrast, companies that internationalized later and more gradually were managed by entrepreneurs with higher levels of the rational cognitive system. Thus, our study reveals that the speed of the entire process of internationalization is governed, at least partially, by the entrepreneur’s cognition. On the basis of our findings, we introduce three propositions on the moderation that the entrepreneur’s cognition exerts on the well-established relations between environmental signals and both earliness of internationalization and post-internationalization speed.