Encouraging behavioural change towards sustainable tourism: a German approach to free public transport for tourists

Constantly growing transport demand by tourists within holiday destinations and related increases in CO₂ emissions have helped foster a new trend amongst German destinations towards promoting a green transportation mode for vacationers. A key innovation is the “Gästeticket” or Guest Ticket concept, which offers tourists free public transport, on buses and trains, within defined destination areas throughout their stay. This paper describes the background to this concept, and the many different ways in which it has been created, designed, implemented and administered. A qualitative research methodology interviewed key public and private sector stakeholders, including local and regional politicians, accommodation providers, public transport providers and public transport authorities to identify favourable starting conditions, successful financial and institutional implementation strategies, and both supporters and opponents of guest tickets. Local politicians and many small accommodation providers opposed the concept, while regional and national politicians supported it, as did public transport providers and public transport authorities. The concept is compared to the more holistic Alpine Pearls concept founded in Austria, and the case made for better explanation of the Guest Ticket concept to its opponents, better marketing, further research and closer cooperation between transport providers and planners with tourism attractions and accommodation providers.     

Collaborative approaches to public sector innovation: A scoping study

In the last 15 years, European countries have invested considerable resources to provide e-government services. Despite of its increasing availability, its level of adoption has not been satisfying. On the other hand, over the last years, coinciding with the web 2.0 trend, the e-government services co-produced by citizens start to appear, often without the support, acknowledgement and even awareness of the government. This trend stems from a well-established tradition of offline co- production of public services, i.e. services provided by the voluntary sector, but brought to an unprecedented scale thanks to the advent of web 2.0. Still, the concept remains not well-defined and its impact is not yet well studied. The paper explores on a limited sets of cases what does it mean to collaboratively deliver online public services; what are the success factors based on the cases under study and what are the incentives for service providers (other than public administration), citizens as users and public administration. The authors propose an ostensive definition of the collaborative delivery of public services: collaborative public services are created and run by government, civil society or by private sector building on the re-use of government data or citizens data. Those services are focused on public goods delivery (e.g. health, education, public transport) and are meant to change the traditional government services by engaging in an open dialogue with public administration about the best way to deliver those services. The analysis of six case studies of innovative collaborative online public services suggests that the online collaborative public service delivery increases its quality with the users׳ growth contrary to the traditional offline service delivery. The study results indicate that the current developers interest lies in delivering complementary services to the government run services rather than substitutive services. The authors propose also the initial list of success factors, enabling conditions, and benefits for all main stakeholders (users, innovators and public administration).     

以贯彻新会计准则为契机，提高会计信息质量

新的会计准则施行后,对会计信息质量的提高起到极大的促进作用。指出目前制约会计信息质量的因素主要有公司治理结构的缺陷、会计信息失真带来的收益与损失不对称、剥离与模拟等会计创新的负面影响等,分析了新会计准则。对于提高会计信息质量的要求。基于此,提出了现阶段提高会计信息质量的几点措施。     

财政外溢下的地方政府公共服务提供——以教育为例

主流财政分权和公共服务提供理论在强调地方政府竞争效率的同时,较少考虑联邦体制与单一集权体制的制度差异,而且忽视了地方政府在提供一些公共服务时面临着巨大的财政外溢。考虑到我国单一集权的政体背景,应用多任务代理框架来构建理论模型,可以发现。地方政府会忽视产出不易测量的文教卫生等社会民生类公共服务的提供。在人口大规模迁移使得教育支出具有显著财政外溢情况下,地方政府将进一步削减教育支出,并向居民转嫁。未来的政策调整方向是,淡化地方政府经济活动激励的同时,加大对社会民生类公共服务的激励强度,并增加对具有财政外溢的教育的专项转移支付,使其经费负担主体逐步上移。     

二元金融下的“双缺口”悖论研究

自1990年开始,我国出现了国内储蓄过剩与以FDI为主的外资涌入并存的现象,与传统发展经济学中的"双缺口"理论相悖。对此,本文认为主要的原因在于,我国在向市场经济过渡时期存在的"二元金融",使得国内储蓄过剩,与此同时,以FDI为主的外资的涌入,出于"效率互补",利用其配置资源的优势,弥补国内金融控制的缺陷,促进国内储蓄向投资的有效转化。     

Underwriter reputation,earnings management and the long‐run performance of initial public offerings

This study contributes to the extant literature on the nature of earnings management surrounding initial public offerings (IPOs) by investigating the role of underwriter reputation. We argue that prestigious underwriters will protect their reputation by carefully monitoring and certifying financial information on IPO firms, thereby limiting any potential earnings manipulation. As a result, those IPO firms that are associated with more prestigious underwriters are likely to exhibit substantially less‐aggressive earnings management. Conversely, we find the existence of a negative relationship between earnings management and the post‐offer performance of an IPO firm’s stocks only for those firms associated with less‐prestigious underwriters.     

行为公司财务的最新发展及其启示

行为金融学目前已逐渐成为金融学研究中的一个重要领域,在它的影响下,公司财务领域内也形成了行为公司财务的研究范式。与经典的公司财务理论相比,行为公司财务引入了行为因素的影响,它认为外部市场的非有效性和内部管理者的非理性影响着公司的财务决策和公司价值最大化的行为。文章简单总结了行为公司财务的最新研究进展,也就是市场的非有效性和管理者的非理性对公司的融资政策、投资政策、股利政策和并购行为等各方面的影响。针对目前我国资本市场的非有效性,文章认为在我国上市公司的财务研究中应该引入行为公司财务的理论范式和研究方法,才能使得研究前提和结果符合我国的实际经济情况。     

Supply and demand of policy indicators

The aim of this article is to question the idea that all professional service organizations are undergoing a process of inter-archetype transformation. This idea, originating in organizational archetype theory, is now being used to interpret contemporary processes of change in British and other public sector services. Drawing on an example of management UK restructuring in social services during the 1990s – that of local authority social services in the UK – two main problems with this thesis are identified. First, this service demonstrates that ‘radical’ change has not occurred and that older professional values and working practices persist. Second, it reveals how, in at least one part of the public sector in the UK, management reforms have been partly undermined by a specific constellation of institutions and practices. These observations call for questioning the proposition that inter-archetype change is what has occurred and that current reforms will inevitably have this sort of transformational effect.     

The Board of Directors and The Adoption of Quality Management Tools

Abstract

The article examines the role of the board of directors in Local Public Utilities (LPUs). It aims at verifying empirically if a correlation exists between specific characteristics of the board of directors and the adoption of innovative arrangements addressing emerging needs of users and citizens (i.e. quality). By means of applying multivariate statistical methods to a random sample of sixty Italian LPUs, this study finds the relational capital of the boards affecting the take up of quality-oriented actions by LPUs. These results support the resource-dependence theory, neglected by mainstream literature.