The role of health,experience, and educational attainment in agricultural production: Evidence from smallholders in Burkina Faso

We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to data from smallholders in Burkina Faso and assess the role that human capital characteristics play in the agricultural production process. Our results point to the technology‐changing nature of health, education, and experience. However, effects are rather heterogeneous. The productivity elasticity of health is much larger for households in the lowest landholding quintiles, while returns to experience are larger for households in the upper quintile. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that productivity can be stimulated through the allocation of expenditure to social services that enhance certain types of human capital. Interventions aimed at improving the health status of households with smaller landholdings could have particularly strong welfare effects.     

基于绿色营销理论的森林旅游产品开发方法

指出森林旅游产品开发必须在兼顾生态旅游专门层次的基础上,应着重满足大众旅游市场基本层次的需求;并应用绿色营销理论为指导,从森林旅游产品的可持续发展目标、开发技术和市场需求等层面,探讨森林旅游产品开发的应用性方法——以生态理念为先导,以产品创新为核心,以主题形象为特色,以本土设计为内容,以休闲体验为重点的"生态、创新、主题、本土、休闲、体验"6环节开发方法,使指导理论具象化,更具操作性。     

对新经济时代人才资本的思考与实践

在新经济时代 ,企业要在激烈的竞争中取得优势 ,就必须依靠高新技术与科技创新 ,而人才资本是科技创新的主体。文章结合平果铝业公司的成功经验 ,论述了如何充分利用人力资本问题。     

The Coal Crisis in Appalachia: Agrarian Transformation,Commodity Frontiers and the Geographies of Capital

Capital's commodity frontiers strategy has at once woven together regional differences within an expanding world‐system and remade the productive and reproductive activities of humans and the rest of nature. The development of successive commodity frontiers gave way to long waves of economic expansion that have been pivotal to accelerating accumulation and transcending capital's recurrent crises. In short, commodity frontiers are constitutive of world‐ecological moments premised on booms and crises of accumulation. In this paper, I examine the coal commodity frontier in Appalachia, to illustrate the region's history as one of succeeding frontiers in and out of the region over the long twentieth century of American capitalism. I argue that the origin of Appalachia's coal frontier was decisively made through the nineteenth‐century agricultural revolution expressed outside of the region. Appalachia's full‐fledged development was an outcome of capital's under‐reproduction strategies. The crisis of the region's frontier turned on a lack of surplus from under‐reproduction strategies, competing coal basins, economic diversification and competing energy sources. I find that the commodity frontier concept not only illuminates regional political economies and ecologies of difference, but also explains the production of nature of historical capitalism.     

The M4 Competition: Results,findings, conclusion and way forward

The M4 competition is the continuation of three previous competitions started more than 45 years ago whose purpose was to learn how to improve forecasting accuracy, and how such learning can be applied to advance the theory and practice of forecasting. The purpose of M4 was to replicate the results of the previous ones and extend them into three directions: First significantly increase the number of series, second include Machine Learning (ML) forecasting methods, and third evaluate both point forecasts and prediction intervals. The five major findings of the M4 Competitions are: 1. Out Of the 17 most accurate methods, 12 were “combinations” of mostly statistical approaches. 2. The biggest surprise was a “hybrid” approach that utilized both statistical and ML features. This method’s average sMAPE was close to 10% more accurate than the combination benchmark used to compare the submitted methods. 3. The second most accurate method was a combination of seven statistical methods and one ML one, with the weights for the averaging being calculated by a ML algorithm that was trained to minimize the forecasting. 4. The two most accurate methods also achieved an amazing success in specifying the 95% prediction intervals correctly. 5. The six pure ML methods performed poorly, with none of them being more accurate than the combination benchmark and only one being more accurate than Naïve2. This paper presents some initial results of M4, its major findings and a logical conclusion. Finally, it outlines what the authors consider to be the way forward for the field of forecasting.     

Simplified Jackknife Variance Estimates for Fuzzy Measures of Multidimensional Poverty

In this paper, we present a practical methodology for variance estimation for multi‐dimensional measures of poverty and deprivation of households and individuals, derived from sample surveys with complex designs and fairly large sample sizes. The measures considered are based on fuzzy representation of individuals' propensity to deprivation in monetary and diverse non‐monetary dimensions. We believe this to be the first original contribution for estimating standard errors for such fuzzy poverty measures. The second objective is to describe and numerically illustrate computational procedures and difficulties in producing reliable and robust estimates of sampling error for such complex statistics. We attempt to identify some of these problems and provide solutions in the context of actual situations. A detailed application based on European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for 19 NUTS2 regions in Spain is provided.     

The motivations and expectations of international volunteer tourists: A case study of “Chinese Village Traditions”

International volunteer tourists devote not only financial support but also time and effort to conservation, preservation, or humanitarian projects outside their original countries. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a qualitative study on the motivations of ten international volunteer tourists who joined the “Chinese Village Traditions” expedition of the Earthwatch Institute in the summer of 2008. The main research question was, “Why do people join international volunteer tourism trips?” Eleven themes dealing with motivations emerged and were categorized into three groups: personal, interpersonal, and other. Four personal factors were measured: authentic experience, interest in travel, challenge/stimulation, and other interest. Four interpersonal factors were also considered: desire to help, interaction with locals/cultures, encouraged by others, and enhancing relationships. Other factors included unique style of the trip, time/money, and organization goal. The findings of this study echo previous literature reviews in different settings.     

The effects of beach characteristics and location with respect to hotel prices

This paper measures the effects of beach characteristics and hotel location with respect to the beach on sun-and-beach hotel prices by using a well-established hedonic perspective. The paper’s main results are that, after controlling for the relevant variables, location in front of a beach increases the price of a room in costal hotels of Catalonia by a figure between 13 and 17%, and that a Blue Flag increases the price by around 11.5%. The effects on hotels’ prices of other beach characteristics (such as beach length, width, sand type or beach services) are also estimated. With these estimates, the paper ranks beaches according to their characteristics and provides a setting to assess different policies regarding beaches from the point of view of hotels, such as regeneration, maintenance or achieving a Blue Flag award.     

上市公司财务实力定量评价方法探析——基于主成分分析框架研究

上市公司是我国的绩优公司,对上市公司财务实力进行定量分析具有重要的现实意义。文章详细介绍主成分分析法的基本模型思想和解决问题思路,并构建了上市公司财务实力评价指标体系,进一步指出主成分分析法在上市公司财务实力定量评价中的具体运用以及怎样去对比和分析计算结果,总结了主成分分析法在上市公司财务实力定量评价中的优缺点并进行展望。