The institutional drivers of sustainable landscapes: a case study of the ‘Mayan Zone’ in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Research on the dynamics of tropical forest land use and cover change (LUCC) has focused on the three scenarios: (1) deforestation/degradation; (2) settled, degraded areas in recovery, and (3) sparsely settled, expansive, intact forest. Through examination of a central Quintana Roo, Mexico case study we propose a fourth scenario of a ‘sustainable landscape’: an inhabited, productively used, forested landscape that nonetheless shows little change or net gains in forest cover over the last 25 years. We use Landsat images to demonstrate a low incidence of net deforestation, 0.01% for the 1984–2000 period, the lowest recorded deforestation rate for southeastern Mexico. Institutional innovations such as an agrarian reform process that established large common property forests for non-timber forest product extraction, and later innovations such as sustainable forest management institutions have driven the outcome of low net deforestation, added to multiple organizational processes that promote sustainable land use.     

Does Monetary Policy Respond to Uncertainty? Evidence from Australia

We construct a novel measure of uncertainty using expert monetary policy recommendation data for Australia. Our results suggest that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) tends to lower the cash rate when expert uncertainty is high. This result is robust to using other uncertainty measures.     

Trump’s New Trade Tariffs: A Response to Voters’ Demands?

President Trump has dramatically changed U.S. trade policy through the adoption of steep tariffs. We argue in this article that even when there are significant geopolitical reasons, Trump’s actions on trade are a response to internal demands resonant with a long history of protectionism. We provide clear evidence of the impacts of social demographics on U.S. trade policy and show that individuals from capital-intense regions with high educational attainment tend to support protectionism.     

Deployment of Restaurants Websites’ Marketing Features: The Case of Spanish Michelin-Starred Restaurants

ABSTRACT

Websites have become a fundamental marketing tool for tourism businesses and have a special importance for highly rated restaurants. The aim of this article is to propose and apply a model to evaluate the deployment and adoption of website marketing features of restaurants from a specific category. The model is based on the application of an extended model of Internet commerce adoption (eMICA) technique for technical depth, combined with content analysis for breadth. This study analyzes the website features and capabilities for Spanish restaurants in the 2015 Michelin Red Guide. A total of 102 restaurants were analyzed. The results of the website evaluation model suggest that, despite the importance of the restaurant sector in the economy and in the tourism industry, the websites of high-quality restaurants require improvements to adapt to customers’ demands. Results further found that these websites are not tourist-orientated and are established at different stages of development.     

HOW DO SPOUSES SHARE THEIR FULL INCOME? IDENTIFICATION OF THE SHARING RULE USING SELF‐REPORTED INCOME

The paper applies the collective model to the analysis of intra-household inequality using one of the subjective-qualitative questions available in the RLMS (Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey) data, and provides a test for its assumptions. Interpreting the individual answers as reported budget scales we assume a correspondence between the budget level that household members report and their true income sharing. We first show that this assumption is supported by the data, and then use couples who report the same level of budget to identify the full sharing rule for the whole sample.     

Transmission of information within transnational social networks: a field experiment

Several studies have shown a relationship between the stocks of migrants and country-level investment in the home country; however the mechanism through which this relationship operates is still unexplored. We use a field experiment in which participants who are recent immigrants send information about risky decisions to others in their social network in their home country. The results demonstrate how this information influences decisions in the home country. We find that the advice given by family members and decisions made by friends significantly affects an individual’s risky decision-making.     

Does competition foster trust? The role of tournament incentives

Members of organizations are often called upon to trust others and to reciprocate trust while at the same time competing for bonuses or promotions. We suggest that competition affects trust not only within dyads including direct competitors, but also between individuals who do not compete against each other. We test this idea in a trust game where trustors and trustees are rewarded based either on their absolute performance or on how well they do relative to players from other dyads. In Experiment 1, we show that competition among trustors significantly increases trust. Competition among trustees decreases trustworthiness, but trustors do not anticipate this effect. In Experiment 2, we additionally show that the increase in trust under competition is caused by a combination of increased risk taking and lower sensitivity to non-financial concerns specific to trust interactions. Our results suggest that tournament incentives might have a “blinding effect” on considerations such as betrayal and inequality aversion.     

Governmental Financial Reporting of Heritage Assets From a User Needs Perspective

The implementation of IPSASs in European Union countries and the harmonization of governmental financial reporting are intended to respond to the needs of citizens. An important characteristic of reforms to governmental accounting and financial reporting is the incorporation within the accounting systems of all public authority assets, which include the case of ‘heritage assets’. This paper investigates to what extent IPSAS 17 responds to user needs of governmental financial reporting about heritage assets by conducting a survey of mayors and councillors in the Italian local government.