Defining agri-environmental schemes in the buffer areas of a natural regional park: An application of choice experiment using the latent class approach

Buffer areas can be created for improving the sustainable management of Protected Areas (PAs). These areas differ in their governance both from the park and from the rest of the territory.In the present study, we used choice experiments for identifying a set of political environmental measures to be applied in the buffer areas of the Trasimeno Regional Park (Region of Umbria). Particularly, we focused our attention on the role played by the farmers in those areas. We used choice experiments in a planning context, highlighting their ability to elicit the preferences of a group of producers and to identify several classes with different orientations, through the Latent Class Approach. We individuated classes of farmers with very different preferences about the possible measures to be applied in the contiguous areas. Our work provides two interesting indications for park management: the interest of some farmers in creating contiguous areas for the Trasimeno Park and the opportunity for policy makers to propose very different measures because farmers’ interests are not uniform.     

Timing of the Effects: A Dynamic Analysis of Pack‐Size Variety,Demand, and Cost

As an importation logistics factor, pack‐size variety (the number of different pack sizes, such as packs of 6 units and 12 units of products) is involved in a dynamic system. This system includes the forward impacts of the present pack‐size variety on the present demand and the present cost, as well as the reverse influences of past demand and past cost on present pack‐size variety decisions. Any static analysis of a segment of this system misses an important factor of these effects: the timing. In this study, I unveil the timing of these dynamic relationships among pack‐size variety, demand, and cost. The findings suggest that the effect of past demand on present pack‐size variety follows a short‐delayed and long‐lasting pattern, while the effect of past cost on present pack‐size variety follows a long‐delayed and short‐lasting pattern. These findings offer important implications for pack‐size variety decisions in industrial practices.     

Determinants of capital structure in emerging markets: Evidence from Vietnam

Capital structure decision is an important corporate behavior which draws strong interest from different stakeholders. It is more important in emerging markets due to their unique legal, cultural and institutional characteristics. This paper sheds further light on the question of whether capital structure determinants are different in emerging markets. We utilize a new and unique data set containing firm specific attributes over the period from 2006 to 2015. Employing GMM estimator to control for endogeneity, the results indicate that the determinants of capital structure are different for long-term and short-term indicators.     

Does Urbanization Mean Bigger Governments?

In this paper, we introduce urbanization as an important driver of government size. Using panel data for 175 countries from 1960 to 2010, we find that there is a close link between urbanization and the size of the public sector, especially when looking at education, health care, and social issues. Various robustness checks confirm this finding. An analysis of state‐level public spending in Colombia and Germany confirms our hypothesis on the subnational level. On the microeconomic level, people in urban areas acknowledge that governments should take more responsibility, and they are more in favor of redistribution. This finding can help to explain the evolution of government size, and it can also predict the present and future needs of urbanizing areas.     

Behavioral changes of multichannel customers: Their persistence and influencing factors

This study addresses how behavioral changes following a new channel's adoption persist over time, and how their patterns vary among customers. We verify the roles of individual behavioral traits reflecting self-selection, marketing exposure, and loyalty in explaining these differences. Based on the elaboration likelihood model and attitude commitment theory, we develop hypotheses to predict these traits' effects on customers' membership in a particular segment with a unique post-adoption behavioral pattern. A latent class model is developed to empirically identify various customer segments and connect behavioral traits to the probability of segment membership. The results reveal that only 25% of the sample exhibits permanent behavioral changes, and most of these tend to buy from numerous stores with intense cross-buying. Approximately 43% of customers who temporarily changed their behaviors were strongly inclined to use multiple shopping channels and spend substantial amounts on hedonic products. The remaining 32% who did not change their purchases appear to be frequent buyers. We also discuss the work's implications for managing multichannel customers.     

Income mobility and the middle class in Russia, 1995–2007

This article analyzes the determinants of income mobility between 1995 and 2007, using the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE). The analysis uses the mixture model method and is carried out between and within income groups, defined on the basis of household income. The results of the within-group analysis suggest that the probability of remaining in the middle of the income distribution is greater than that of remaining poor or rich. However, if a household moves away from the middle group, the probability of falling into the bottom group is much higher than that of moving upwards.     

Formation of symmetric free-trade blocs,optimal tariff structure,and world welfare

We present a new tariff-game rule and a new numéraire rule in Krugman's celebrated model to form symmetric trading blocs. We hold that to maintain logical consistency in a world of symmetric trading blocs, an individual bloc should act on the actions of other individual external blocs in a one-to-one fashion, rather than to the actions of the rest of the world as a whole as assumed by Krugman, and show that Krugman's seemingly innocuous choice of the world price of a given good as the numéraire will produce asymmetry in the optimum Nash equilibrium tariff. We prove that the optimal tariff schedule is monotonically decreasing in our relative bloc size, and that the world welfare increases with our new relative bloc size as the latter grows beyond the lowest-welfare pessimal number, which is rather small by our simulations. Though confined to symmetric trading blocs, this paper fortifies the analytical foundation of Krugman's model. In some sense, it reinforces Kemp–Wan–Shimomura's and Ohyama–Panagariya–Krishna's results with the provisos that countries are symmetric and interact mutually in a symmetric fashion without a compensation scheme. It strengthens the case of regionalism as a stepping stone (building bloc) toward a complete world economic integration.     

Government extraction and firm size: Local officials’ responses to fiscal distress in China

This paper studies how government extraction behaviors respond to local fiscal distress in China. We exploit the 2002 Chinese Income Tax Reform which exogenously cut local government revenues from income taxes roughly by half. We find that, when facing fiscal distress, local officials resort to informal taxes, such as fees and levies, instead of formal taxes to supplement revenue. On average, the increase in informal taxes recovered 75 percent of the local government revenue loss due to the reform. The increases are more pronounced along the intensive margin and are primarily driven by more extractions from large firms. We also find that the reform led to reductions in investment and growth rates of small firms and consistently more small firms in the total size distribution.     

高管团队特征、薪酬激励对内部控制质量影响的实证研究——来自创业板上市公司的经验数据

近年来我国在内部控制建设方面成就显著，根据高层梯队理论和委托代理理论，内部控制的建设需要高管团队的执行，而高管的行为又会受到激励制度的影响，鉴于此本文以2010～2013年创业板173家上市公司为研究对象，实证检验了创业板上市公司高管团队特征及薪酬激励与内部控制质量之间的关系。高管特征方面，高管团队规模与内部控制质量成正相关。薪酬激励方面，高管的薪酬规模、持股比例与内部控制质量正相关。本文丰富了高管特征及薪酬对内部控制质量影响的研究成果，对于我国创业板内部控制制度的建设有现实的指导意义。     

Mapping properties to monitor forests: Landholder response to a large environmental registration program in the Brazilian Amazon

Across the tropics, development banks and conservation donors are investing millions in property mapping and registration projects to improve accountability for deforestation. An evaluation of the effectiveness and accuracy of existing environmental registries is crucial to assure the success of future efforts. This study presents an evaluation of deforestation and registration behavior in response to one of the largest of these property registration programs to date — the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) in the Amazonian state of Pará. From late 2007 to 2013, approximately 100,000 properties covering 30 million hectares of self-declared claims were entered in this digital registry. We used fixed effects regression models and property level data to assess how registration influenced deforestation on different sizes of properties. Registration had little impact on deforestation behavior, with the exception of a significant reduction on “smallholder” properties in the size range of 100–300 ha. We link this reduction to interacting incentives from forest protection and land regularization policies and suggest that desire to strengthen land claims motivates these landholders’ response to the environmental registry. We also present evidence that some landholders may be registering incomplete or inaccurate parcels into the self-declared system to strategically benefit from policy incentives. Our results for smallholder properties indicate that environmental registries may have potential to facilitate reductions in deforestation if combined with a favorable combination of incentives. However, in places where land tenure is still being negotiated, the utility of environmental registries for forest policy enforcement and research may be limited without ongoing investment to resolve uncertainty around land claims.