Discovering wildlife tourism: a whale shark tourism case study

This paper investigates the different sources of information used by tourists to learn about a particular wildlife tourism activity, specifically, whale shark tourism at Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia. The findings from this research concur with previous studies of wildlife tourism showing that wildlife tourism operations are reliant on more informal and general forms of promotion, in particular word of mouth and guide books. Conversely, more deliberate marketing mechanisms, such as the internet and documentaries, are not extensively utilised. To disaggregate consumer preferences for various information sources, this article segments the population into more homogenous groups, thereby demonstrating distinct differences in the choice of information source based on the participants’ normal place of residence.     

Discount Brokerage in Residential Real Estate Markets

Transaction costs are thought to affect asset prices and market liquidity, but the direction and magnitude of these effects continue to be the subject of debate. In the single‐family residential market, discount brokers offer to list a house for a lower price and thus reduce the transaction costs associated with obtaining a match. In this article we obtain empirical estimates of the price and liquidity impact of a seller selecting a discount broker to market a single‐family residential property. The unique data set allows for the identification of residential properties that were listed by a discount brokerage firm. The empirical results confirm the predictions of our theoretical model. Using a sample of 318,221 listings and 243,625 sales, we find that houses listed by discount brokers sell at prices similar to non‐discount brokerage listings, but are less likely to sell, and when they do sell, take approximately three days longer to sell. The results indicate that lower transaction costs do not impact housing prices in this market, but that they are related to asset liquidity.     

Nursing is the room rate

Shrinking dollars increase the need for health care stakeholders to clearly understand nursing's worth. For nursing to assure an adequate investment in nurses, it needs to articulate its value drivers. Nursing revenue offers a data source that reflects stakeholder choices and patient needs. The daily nursing billing supports hospital payment and provides cost data, important for hospital financial decision making. This revenue is a tangible asset reflecting nursing value and can be used to justify an investment in the profession. Nursing leadership can use this daily nursing charge data to monitor and measure the impact of efficiencies related to patient care.     

The Trade-off Between the Selling Price of Residential Properties and Time-on-the-Market: The Impact of Price Setting

When a house is placed on the market, the seller must choose the initial offer price. Setting the price too high or too low affects the marketability of the property. While there is near universal agreement that the seller faces a trade-off between selling at a higher price and selling in less time, there is less agreement about how to measure this trade-off. This paper offers a framework for analysis and shows that an increase in the list price increases expected time-on-the-market (TOM). Because house buyers must solve a type of signal extraction problem, the effect of a higher list price is magnified for houses in a market segment having a low predicted variance of the list price. This paper also shows that the list price of houses which are withdrawn before sale has a higher mean and variance, and that the possibility of withdrawal censors information about the time-on-the-market.     

The Construction and Presentation of Performance Indicators in executive Agency External Reports

For a variety of reasons, factors affecting the understandability and comparability of performance indicators, and perceptions of their status, may differ from those applying in the case of profit-seeking sector financial statements. This study examines the construction and presentation of performance indicators from the perspective of understandability, comparability and perceived importance. It identifies a number of aspects of reporting practice which may undermine these qualities.     

Reviews

“LOCAL ECONOMIC REGENERATION IN SCOTLAND” Hugh Morison, 1987: The Regeneration of Local Economies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, £19.50 HB.

“'MANAGING' URBAN CHANGE?” Department of the Environment, 1988: Managing Urban Change: A Report on the Management Training Needs of Urban Programme Project Managers. HMSO, £7.20

“WORKER CO-OPERATIVES” Mary Mellor, Janet Hannah and John Stirling, 1988: Worker Co-operatives in Theory and Practice. Open University Press, £25.00 cloth, £8.95 paper.

“COPING WITH RECESSION” Harris, C. C. 1987: Redundancy and Recession in South Wales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, £29.50 hardback.     

Trade Policy and Poverty Reduction in Brazil

A multiregion computable general equilibrium model is used toevaluate the regional, multilateral, and unilateral trade policyoptions of Mercosur from the perspective of the welfare of allpotential partners in several proposed agreements. The focusfor Brazil is on poverty impacts. The results show that thepoorest households in Brazil experience gains of 1.5–5.5percent of their consumption, which are about three to fourtimes the average gains for Brazil. Protection in Brazil favorscapital-intensive manufacturing relative to unskilled labor-intensiveagriculture and manufacturing. So trade liberalization raisesthe return to unskilled labor relative to capital and disproportionatelyhelps the poor.     

The impact of financing decisions on the security returns of real estate corporations

This research investigates the valuation impact of financing decisions on the common stock of real estate corporations. We compare the results of our study with the results of similar studies in the corporate finance literature to test whether the response to security offerings by real estate firms differs systematically from the response to offerings by industrial and utility firms. The results of this study indicate a generally favorable price response to straight bond announcements, and unfavorable responses to common stock, convertible bonds, and lines of credit announcements.